Owning my 2015 coaching season

Members Area My Training Journal
1

Hey all,

I’m a 4th year head coach of now moderately-sized high school program in New England. In the last 2 years I’ve really committed to coaching, reading/watching everything I could get my hands on (Charlie, Verkoshansky, Bompa, Bondarchuk, Pfaff, Schexnayder [apologies for butchering the spelling]) and even went and attended the USATF Level 2 school for jumps (plan on attending the USTFCCCA academy for sprints this summer). It turns out as awesome as all of that is, all the knowledge in the worlds means jack if you can’t apply it. Furthermore, thanks to the general isolated nature of coaches, getting honest and intelligent feedback is virtually impossible.

So, I’m writing this log to hold myself accountable and hopefully, improve my coaching (and knowledge) with whatever feedback you kind folks are willing to give. Much thanks!

My program has 50 some-odd athletes, of which the sprint/jump squad (which I’m responsible for) contains 30. Within that group, I have one returning senior, and 1 returning junior, the rest are all freshmen or sophomores (the youngest group I’ve worked with in my memory). Almost all of my spring athletes play a different winter sport (and all of my winter athletes play a different spring sport). It means a lot of remediation is necessary.

At the moment, our track is still under 2 feet of snow, so despite it being our spring season we are largely training inside on a 2 lane square track (40m straightaways).

Workouts in next post.

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Day 1:
Warm-up (skipping, static stretches into dynamic)

Wall drills x2, x3, x5, x7
Partner push, 4x10m fast walk/run

How-to: SLJ and 5-step

3-step sprint drills x5

SS/HH/Jumps
4x10m, R=1’
4x20m, R=2’, hill
4x30m, R=3’

LS
4x30m, R=3’ - use Freelap

Multi-throws, 4 set
UHFx5
OHBx5
Squat Push x5

A Lift
3 sets of 6 x sumo deadlift, 8x incline bench, 6x step up each leg - weight at “you should feel tired at the last rep”, younger lifters were given goblet squats and rows instead of the first 2 exercises with 10-12 reps.

Review:
First workout of the season, generally pleased. The goals of the first week are establishing the beginnings of drive phase mechanics - ie tall posture = fast and stepping down not out (I refer to it as the 1 step. The drills post warm-up, (wall, partner push, and 3 step sprints) are all focused on creating that awareness, interesting to see the variety of responses, though everyone seemed positive.
The short sprinters did an acceleration pattern for the workout, would’ve liked to alternate more between the hill and flat but didn’t want to disrupt the flow of the workout. Mechanics unsurprisingly were all over the place, and I was basically running triage though guys were generally running these 1 at a time so it wasn’t all bad. Realistically could’ve shortened this to 3x10, 3x20, 3x30, but only one or two kids mentioned soreness by the end, so pretty close to good there.

Long sprints are all returning guys from the winter so they all had a clue of what they were doing, kept it at 30m because I’m more concerned about their max speed rather than there immediate acceleration abilities (and also because I could handle them at the same time).

I used multithrows afterward because I wanted some small non-running plyometric activity, not a lot of throws, but they all enjoy throwing things around (something about high school boys) and happy kids make happy runners.

Lifts were decent, they’re young but a lot of them show that they’ve at least been in a weight room before. Still not entirely happy with the lifts I provide.

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Day 2:
Wall drills x2, x3, x5, x7
Partner push, 4x10m fast walk/run

3-step drills x5

SS/HH/Jumps
12x (half-lap (80m @18-20s +core circuit exercise) - do each of the following twice
Glute bridge
Dynamic plank
Flutter kick
Lunge circle
Dynamic side plank
Bicycle

LS
3x800@10k pace, R= 200m jog
3x300@800 pace, R= 300m jog
3x150@400 pace, R= 50m walk, 200 jog

Hurdle Mobility

Body weight circuit

Review:
The short sprint gents were on a tempo recovery day (under the supervision of my distance coach), general feedback was it was easy (though the coach noted many were huffing and puffing and needing to walk lap between laps to recover…) so they can test Wednesday (20m fly using Freelap).

I took the long sprinters through their workout (borrowing a page from Ron Grigg). Pretty much all of my 400m gents are B types (400/800) and only a couple are in decent shape, so this workout was really about general fitness while at the same time approaching the racing paces they might expect to achieve. They were on the school access road which is a convenient 200m long with a slight downward (1-2%) grade for maybe 75m, wind was extreme. My leaders were a little slow on their 800 splits (goal 2:45-8 actual 2:50-55) but then came back and nailed their 300m and 150m splits. Very blasted afterward but everyone finished the workout, (2 freshman fell off at the end but I let them finish because they still wanted it and they weren’t going fast enough to hurt themselves). 1 scare when of my leaders had a calf cramp.

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Day 3, March 18

Long sprinters had a recovery day, so easy jogging and a lot of stretching.
Short sprinters plan was

3x30m accel
3x20m fly, 10m run up (Freelap)
23 second drill (2x max sprint for 23 seconds, R=8’)

but ended up cutting the 23 second drill as guys started getting sore (was probably pushing it anyways trying to combine max v with speed endurance this early). Amazing how hard they go when they have the Freelap stuff on them. Times weren’t particularly impressive, though the fact that they’re all nearly freshmen and sophomores bodes well for the future:
(Name/Grade/Time)

Raphael 11 2.35
Tim 10 2.35
Devon 11 2.4
Elijah 11 2.44
Eric 9 2.45
Robert 11 2.48
Sam 10 2.51
Jordan 10 2.52
Trevon 9 2.54
Chris 10 2.58
Brendan 9 2.59
Eddie 10 2.6
Dan 10 2.64
Mohammed 9 2.65
Edwin 10 2.75
Nick 9 2.75
Brett 12 2.78
Naef 9 2.8
5

Alright from last week, Thursday was a tempo circuit 150m @ 60-70% (its a square track so its not an easy gauge) with core work and short recovery walk after each. Long sprints did an indoor version of speed endurance with 2x4x30 (ie a 120m), R=8’, 2x30x30 (90m), R= 7’, 2x2x30 (60m), R=6’ though I imagine all the re-accelerating confuses the issue.

Friday brought out the 23-second drill (2x23 second sprint with 8’ recovery between). Ran it on the long, medium grade hill behind the building, very obvious who went for it and ‘also ran’ - one junior tweaked a hip flexor at the very beginning of the workout, not sure where that one came from.

Kids had the weekend off as I was at a track clinic - saw Dwight Phillips and Tonie Campbell amongst others…had drinks with my old high school coach (cue I’m old feelings).

Today was meant to be a speed day followed by some jump intro work. Beginning to think I’m screwing up my intensity/volume numbers as a whole bunch of little injuries popped up today. After warm ups - static stretches to dynamics to 3-step sprints to gradual accelerations out to 35m, we went to do 3x30m with Freelap timing, kids were able to race so times improved but I had two quad issues, 2 hip flexor, 1 back, 1 glute, and 1 calf issue pop up. No one on the ground, all of them able to move but presumably the intensity is breaking them at this point.

Remainder of the group moved onto 2x4x20m, R= walkback/6’ went well, then the guys split into jump groups…bounding was more challenging than expected.