while still waiting for the speed seminar notes, I wonder how much he has been really involved in the training of an athlete he has always cited in the last 7 years, canadian bobsledder great Pierre Leuders…(so we can see at work his methods for speed, strength and mass, all important in developing a great bobsledder…)
I would love to expand this thread to include EliteFTS (westside?) metohds…
search for it! there is a very large thread about westside training…
Agreed.
Also one other point is alot of athletes have worked with him directly, but for only very short periods.
Why?
There are also a great deal other questions about CP.
Also his main speciality is again strength, which for most athletes is only a small aspect of their performance.
Now hold on a bit. With pro sports, you often only have a short period to work with them. Also strength may be a key when you only have a short period. If the emphasis on the season training is tothe right of the strength to endurance continuum, you need to work more to the left to compensate. It’s not the same as if you have the athlete all year round.
For NumberTwo and no23, I’m curious to know how much time either of you have actually spent with the man.
so do you think CP or someone familar with his training would help a sprinter using your (CF)training module’s???
None - I’m an instructor for Strength and Conditioning and Recovery/Regeneration for the Canadian National Coaching Institute. Poliquin did the same work years ago. I still have coaches coming to me telling me how little they learned from him, how they were turned off by his arrogance and were even insulted by him during the course.
Rather than provide a curriculum for learning, he would simply sit in front of the students and ask, “So what questions do you have for me?” If he posed a question to the students and someone gave an answer he didn’t like, he’d make them feel like an idiot. Not very professional in my mind.
It’s nice to boast about how many elite athletes you’ve helped, but there is something to be said about modesty and simply allowing your results to speak on your behalf.
This is different from the short term off-season approach used in team sports. Weights here are integral with and continue throughout the overall annual program, are subservient to the speed componant, and, in my opinion, should not be in anyone else’s hands.
A lot of the program I’ve seen by Poliquin (from seminars and his books, etc…) are much more like bodybuilding programs than athletic enhancement programs. If you’re training a body part only once every 4th, 5th, or 6th day (depending on what element you are: earth, fire, water, dirt???), how are you supposed to know when you are recovered enough to sprint?
As far as I’m concerned sprinting is a full-body activity and it makes sense to train the body as a whole and then REST it as a whole. After several courses in the field of Motor Control I’ve come to believe that the entire notion of muscle isolation is next to useless and doesn’t really exist anyway. Any thoughts?
I’d probably say that his $350/hour price tag has something to do with it. I know he says that most athletes spend 1 week with him, and then 5-6 weeks training on their own, and then they repeat it.
Keep in mind that most of Poliquin’s articles and books are specifically targeted to the bodybuilding market and do not necessarily represent how he trains performance athletes. Same with Ian King. If you read Ian’s T-mag articles they’re very different from what he covers in his video seminars.
I’ll try to write a summary of my notes tonight. Sorry about the delay.
True for footballers I guess you don’t have much time and strength may be the key as you say (I’m not very familiar with American Football specifically).
And of course for football it is more to the left of the curve anyway.
As far as his training philosopies - you can’t take his information in isolation, nor can you pick and mix it (as it is very strength-focused, therefore very demanding on the CNS) with other systems.
Also I think strength is only part of any athletic training system and over emphasis on it is to the detriment of the overall program and athletes health/performance.
Of course who am I to question him though, no more than you or Bear, he’s had more success than I
I have spent ‘limited’ time with him.
Don’t get me wrong, he is a smart guy, and has contributed alot to the strength industry.
This is a summary of my notes from a March 2000 seminar that Charles Poliquin gave on speed development. I’m going to concentrate on the big picture of how everything is supposed to fit together.
I. Basic concepts that apply to all training phases:
a) Train twice a day, but no more than 18 days a month;
b) Priority factor is trained first in the day;
c) 4-5 hours between workouts on the same day;
d) Each workout should last no longer than one hour after the warmup
e) Generally, 5 days recovery per body part
II. Relationship between GPP and SPP
a) GPP should constitute the first 2 years of training
b) 50:50 ratio between GPP and SPP, even at Olympic level (the greater the base, the higher the peak)
c) Alternating cycles at higher development levels (e.g., 2-3 wks GPP alternated with 2-3 wks SPP)
III. GPP
a) Strength:
- Primary goal is balance, focus on weak links
- Functional hypertrophy
- Single-leg exercises
- After 2 years of GPP anything over 6 reps is a waste
- Time under tension should be 30 sec. or less
- End all workouts with some explosive training (e.g., one set of med ball throws); he got this idea from a German-speaking Italian scientist. I didn’t get the guy’s name
b) Speed:
- Drills to strengthen weak links (e.g., ankle runs)
- Strength endurance drills (e.g., A runs/skips for distance)
- Sled work: do not go below 95%, max load should not exceed 50% of bodyweight
IV. SPP
a) Strength:
- Max strength and explosive power
- Bilateral exercises; sprinting itself takes care of specificity
- Emphasize olympic lifts, jumps and throws
- Sets should not exceed duration of event, e.g, <10 sec for 100m sprinter, <20 sec for 200 sprinter
- Eccentric training, cluster training, etc.
- 10 days recovery between max lift in any exercise (alternate exercises every 5 days)
b) Speed:
- Specific energy system training, e.g., AAP for 100m, AAC for 200m
- 7% rule for ending a workout (based on best time that day)
- 10 days between max velocity sprints at world class level
V. Energy System Training
a) No need for an aerobic base; I specifically asked him about tempo running and he saw no need for it (maybe during GPP)
b) Anaerobic alactate power (AAP):
- 0-10 sec
- Acceleration and max speed
- work:rest ratio is 1:20-30
c) Anaerobic alactate capacity (AAC): - 11-20 sec
- Speed endurance
- work:rest ratio is 1:12-18
VI. Long Term Cycles
a) Only one strength base per year (no more than 8 weeks)
b) Alternate strength and speed phases (1-3 weeks each phase) (I don’t quite know how to reconcile this with the previous recommendation)
c) Reverse periodization for energy systems: power first, capacity second
d) Sample progression (I believe this was for a hockey player):
Strength base: 6-8 weeks
AAP training: 3 weeks
AAC training: 3 weeks
ALP training: 3 weeks
ALC training: 3 weeks
Regarding Poliquin’s personality, I found him to be pretty cocky, but I think he has a pretty boisterous personality in general, and you just have to take him with a grain of salt.
I will say this much for him, he answered every question I asked him, which was pretty good considering it seemed like I asked about 25% of the questions in a seminar attended by 30 or 40 people. So I’m sure I was getting on his nerves but he addressed every issue I brought up and he usually began his responses by saying, “That’s a good question.” In fact, if you read his Question of Strength column in T-mag from April and May of 2000, several of the questions were exactly ones that I asked him at the seminar, so I think he genuinely thought my questions were relevant (even if he probably wished someone else had asked them for a change).
The only thing he said to me that pissed me off was when I was trying to ask him about the best way to balance concurrent speed and plyo training, and I prefaced my question by stating “If you’re doing some type of speed work year round…” and he cut me off and said “Eh! Wrong! Where did you come up with that?” When I replied “Charlie Francis” there was a pause and then some song and dance about being careful about misinterpreting advanced training methods.
In retrospect, I think his response (though rude in tone) does make sense within the context of concentrated off-season strength blocks for team sports, as alluded to by Charlie in one of his previous posts.
wow…I don’t know where to start…the first thing that makes me wonder.is the…2 year gpp period??but who was reffering to?high school athletes?5 days body part…how can it fit with speed development trainign?maybe different movements?squat.dl?sled work, half bodyweight, 95% speed???how can it be?I know it’s surface dependend, but 10 15 kilos for a 10% reduction on 20 meters seems feasible on average…many other questions, just to start
I think your summary of his lecture raises some interesting questions but I’m not sure how to respond.
CP says that GPP is 50% of training, even at the Olympic level. I’d say it’s 15% at that level, but, then, I’m referring to my principle componant, which is the speed itself, whereas he may be talking more about the weights, in which case, I might come up with something similar. In my plan, Max Strength and Maintenance Phases combined in the yearly plan might fill around 50% of the time depending on the individual.
Another apparent difference is in the work to rest ratios for speed work, which he limits at 1:30, while I’d go to 1:175! The difference there might be a concentration on shorter distances on his part.
As well, CP speaks of acceptable training session drop-off percentages, whereas I find NO drop-off acceptable, and our differences re Tempo work.
Those with the Vancouver 2004 DVD can look at the annual plan found there to see how I set things up.
Unfortunately, I can’t offer any clarification. CP’s presentation was rather vague on the specifics of the speed training itself, which was my principle frustration. I think 90% of the time was devoted to discussing strength training methods (e.g., cluster training, complex training, etc.).
I think it would be more accurate to describe the seminar as strength training for speed development rather than speed development proper.
One method that I found interesting was his recommendation to establish split times over each 5 meters of the sprint distance and determine where the weakest points in the acceleration curve were so they could be addressed. Of course the problem is he never really explained how you would train to improve say the 5-10m split versus the 15-20m split. Although the charts from Charlie’s Vancouver seminars might give you an indication of which training methods effect different parts of the acceleration curve.
Needless to say, if I’m seeking advice on how to run faster/speed training, Poliquin would not be my first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, etc. choice.