I would flip the Special End to Wed and put thew Speed End on Fri. This way , the fastest work is Mon, second fastest Fri and third fastest wed, allowing for a better spread of the work demand.
Athleticscoach- thanks for keeping me in check. So what percentage of effort you suggest for my tempo days. I will be lifting wieghts at 6am & practicing at 4pm
Cool, so how do this setup look with the weights included:
Mon - Speed w/ some Hurdling(93%) - [Upper body wts]
Tues - Extensive Tempo(80%) - [Lower body wts]
Wed - Spec. Endurancesplit runs - [Lower body wts]
Thu - Hurdle Tech & Intensive Tempo(80%)
Fri - Speed Endurance(91%) - [Upper body wts]
Sat - Hills(?) or Tempo(?)
On my tempo days in GPP I was able to reach a 3500m on avg. Will I back down on this volume as the shift to intensive tempo comes into play or remain at 70-79% with the same volume?
Ext. Tempo is by definition 79% or below, down to, in my mind 65% of max. pace for distance. As a 400 hurdler, you want to keep an aerobic component in the schedule year around. I wouldn’t drop the volume below 2400 meters.
Why break the weight up? You are doing H.I. work on M, W, and F, just do a combined session on each of these days, and then do the supplementary type circuits on the L.I. days. That should really be plenty of strength training for your event. Assuming for a moment that you are going long-to-short as Charlie outline at the start of the thread, I would think that for a month or so the W session would be Int. Tempo as you transition to SE. I would definately keep the Ext. Tempo and even an occasional distance/fartlek day on Tu, Th, Sa. If you want to put hills in, try substituting them for the Int. Tempo/SE day.
Hope that this helps.
Great point! However can you elaborate on your coment about the combined session? As for T, Th, Sa workouts … I’ll start at 75% and work up to 79% over the 3 wk cycle. Lastly, I like hills so are saying its best to do them on Thurs(Int. Tempo) or fri(SE=speed end)?
Don’t work up on intensity for Ext. Tempo. Keep the pace pretty constant. It’s not a real workout, so don’t treat it like that. It’s contrast and recovery, not a true workout as there is no benefit, really. So, keep the pace constant and play around with volumes.
As for hills, I’d say put them on Wed. and put SE on Friday to spread out CNS demand as Charlie has mentioned. Or, put speed Monday, Hills Wed. and Int. Tempo Fri.
Either way, you’re not going to get 4 hard days in during the week b/c the body will not have enough time to recover properly and everything will suffer.
Ext tempo can be a real workout if you shorten the breaks enough!
That makes it a HARD workout, not a real workout. What I’m referring to, and I may not have stated this clearly, is that Ext. Tempo should not be used as a developmental component to help sprinters get faster. It’s more a recovery module, and that’s about it. I see no real speed development work running at 70%.
That’s true. Tempo aids in recovery and the ability to stay warm between reps and sets. It can have an indirect role in speed development by increasing the muscles’ ability to generate more heat. (see forum review for an extended discussion on this).
So even with my healthy goals you guys are saying yes its a good tool and to stay with my 70-79% plan on t, th, & Sa? I like taking short rest in between reps so I’m kinda worried about turning a recovery day into a hard workout day.
The muscles won’t have any problem handling the tempo work even though you may be winded when you do it and feel tired immediately after, and the CNS won’t be drained at all.
Yeah…what Charlie said.
That being said I attemped an Ext. tempo day and used the bottom of the percent range(70%) for 2 sets of 5x350’s. From my understanding, the recovery I shortened the recovery between reps to 90sec w/ a 3 min break between sets. Based on my best 300m PB the pace of the workout was 42.9(70%). Well, I only hit that once[41.88] … on the 1st one! :eek: All the others were between 45s & 47s. On the second set I raised the recovery to 2 min and avg’d 47s(still a far cry away from the plan). Very discouraging since the GPP went well.
What this tells me is;
- Obviously, my condition level is not at that level yet, based on my 300PB and I should adjust my PB time to something a little more recent?
- Maybe I interpreted the definition of Ext tempo incorrectly and did something else?
- Maybe 3500m was too much if i wanted to keep the 90sec recovery time
- Maybe I need to do something a little shorter for now and increase the distance gradually?
Any thoughts before I do the split runs? :o
I think the volume was too high and rests were WAY too short. Try 2 min b/t reps and 5min b/t sets and only do like 8 of them.
I think you need longer rests as well. Extend it out to 3 minutes between reps, 5-7 minutes between sets and adjust it to 65% of PB. (It is also good to run a test time to see what your actual current PB is 
Cheers
Chris
What is the “length of the run” for Extensive Tempo and moreover, what are the Recovery times for it. Also can you please elaborate on what is a short to long plan and vice versa?
Length of Run: 200m+ for aerobic capacity, 100m+ for aerobic power. Capacity is -70% of projected best time for the distance, while power is 70-79%. Many athletes seem to start producing significant blood lactate when they go over 75%, these are more often the short sprint/hurdle types. Long sprinters/hurdlers should have little difficulty with the higher range.
Recovery Times: -45sec. for reps and -2min for sets in aerobic cap., 30-90sec. for reps, and 2-3min for sets in aerobic power.
Short to Long: Has been covered infinitum on this board. Essentially building endurance from speed up to the event distance as opposed to the more conventional apporach of starting at race distance (or longer) and working speed into the program late. For a 400m hurdler I would say that the long to short still seems the better way to go, but I would hope that such an athlete would have already developed speed at shorter distances before trying this event.
Hope that this helps.
Charlie,
Why would you only use bounds in IT for a short to long program? Couldn’t you do it in the weeks prior to beginning IT sessions if the distance of the bounds were shorter?
400Stud,
You said in post #55 that IT is not to be done during the unloading week of that 3-1 meso. Why not? Can’t you still do IT workouts as long as volume drops during this time similar to any other unloading phase?
Some do Int. Tempo during unloading cycles, I choose instead to up intensity, while dropping the volume and do a SE session in which I test in something like the 300m or whatnot depending on phase.
Usually, most people like to increase intensity while decreasing volume, but if you keep Int. Tempo during the unloading week, you’ll be doing low volume AND intensity which could negate the supercompensation.
I thought only volume decreases. I thought that intensity stays the same? Please clarify.
No, because if you train at the same intensity consistently, you’ll never make gains. That’s why most will increase volume’s within a mesocycle by doing something like 90-92-95-100% and during the 4th, unloading week, it’s all testing so obviously intensity would go up, but volume would go down to allow for best testing results. Hope that cleared it up for ya.