I have a question about day before a meet and using potentiation.
Take for example a guy has 3 rounds of 60m on a saturday and this athlete with the level of competition is nearly guarenteed a spot in the final.
Would you use a normal pre meet potentiation the day before? Ie: warm up and few blocks
Or does one use the 1st 2 rounds as the cns stimulation with just a warmup done the day before?
Any info would be greatly appreciated!
IMO what is important to consider is not just what you would ideally like to use as potentiation the day before the meet but rather what took place on each day during the week leading up the competition. So if the training schedule permits one to set up the pre-meet that way it can be useful but it just largely depends upon the schedule and what was done each day so each session sets up another one the next day or two days later and so on.
Totally agree and what you are looking for is how the athlete is doing now, how they have been doing all week, what their confidence is like ( would a tiny bit more help that athlete the day before or not) and always less is more but you do not want to get into any situation where the athlete is flat and you have any risk making a mistake you never imagined. Unless it’s a meet where you don’t care but even then that’s not how you need to operate anyway.
So this is an example of how you have the science but you need to use the art and science to best judge the situation and what will suit the athlete in question.
[b]I was also taught to be conservative and don’t take un necessary chances. A warm up and a few starts the day before is hardly over doing it. And there is nothing you can do the day before anyway to make changes so this is information for you as much as anyone. Remember this is really an ongoing study for you as the coach to see how things go and how the athletes reacts.
This summer I learned so much more about this athlete I began coaching as a grade schooler. For example he does very well on his own at meets. He needs clear instructions and some guidelines and comments about make sure you do this and not do that etc. But working day to day the athlete was not so aware of how he was doing until the end of the summer and you could see this became a new skill. And I might argue that is a very important skill.
I’ve said this before that one of the things I have learned about Ben Johnson is he had a very strong sense of what he could and could not do and there were no inside voices with him saying “I should do one more rep”. He felt good he did what he was told. He felt tired he stopped".[/b]