I was just wondering what most people or coaches recommend for the pre meet practice. The day before a meet for sprinters. I’ve heard just a warmup. Some people do a couple of starts. I can see the starts being a good way to rev the cns up. Thoughts?
injured myself once while doing starts a day before a comp. will never do that again, but a dynamic warm-up is a pretty good idea
I usually do a warmup and sometimes starts. What was the injury adonail?
Short Warmup with a couple short buildups+4-10 mb throws…
How many did u do before the injury and how far?
If i compete on saturday, I usualy do full warm up + 4 block starts on thursday; rest or easy warmup + bench (something like 3×3) on friday. I never do anykind of sprinting a day before meet.
For me it all depends on how the whole week is set-up. If the schedule has that particular week of training taking place between meets it changes what I can do with them. For my athletes the best set-up has been sub-max. speed with a low vol. jumps/mb throws (or none if the next comp. is major) and weights two days out and the day before the meet either total rest or just warm-up. Most prefer a w-u but a few others like total rest the day before.
If they had a meet on Sat. and the next meet starts the following Friday then the pre-meet day becomes very low. vol. of sub-max speed/starts along with a very low volume of mb throws/jumps and maybe an upper body lift only.
There are various options regarding this topic mentioned in CF’s Key Concepts that I found very helpful.
pfaff will do full warm-up and hurdle jumps and starts. Brauman does warm-up starts and accels out 30-60m. I dont like doing that, but it’s working for two top coaches.
I did way too many was doing starts + around 5m
Not to say this protocol can’t work for others, I can easily see It work with dynamic warm-ups and 4-5 starts…
does anyone ever do something else to stimulate the cps that doesn’t involve using the legs? for instance, that is what charlie liked to use the bench press for. he could get the system firing without causing fatigue in the legs…
Yes, I do this. The idea is to hit a large number of motor units without directly fatiguing the muscles used in sprinting. I will use bench/incline for this purpose and at other times on the next pre-meet day use DB Rows or pull-ups or in some cases pulldowns.
I wonder if after a nice warmup, would doing a set or two or pcleans fire the cns up. Keeping the reps low.
Yes, but Charlie did not do it the day before, rather 3 days out.
Doesn’t it depend on the level of the athlete how far out you would use weights? Someone who can’t lift that much can’t stress the system as much, correct?
Yes, along with the entire taper. Most developing athletes do not need the 10 day protocol. In addition, the actual taper should be used sparingly for major meets, and thus by extension nullifies pre-meet cns stim, imo. If you constantly have to do a “special” stimilulation routine, it weekens the effects for future meets that may be more important. Keep in mind, this does contradict some top coaches as I stated in a previous post, however I do believe it is in line with Charlie’s thinking as well. I think a nice warm-up used as more of a “shake-out” is optimal the day before a meet during a season.
CF recommended an easy shakeout in the hotel the morning of a meet - I’m assuming the same could be done the day before - pushups/situps/easy stretching-hip rolls etc…
The morning of the meet is good for afternoon meets and meets u had to travel to. Just to wake the body up. When I used o run at a meet 2 hours away, I would wake up early and do a nice warmup before I hit the road. It makes the race warmup much easier.
What are you doing for weights on the best set-up two days out?
i remember being told at some point that a full, dynamic warm-up is good the day before, and if you need to run pr speed to make it past prelims do something like 3x30m as well, but if you’ll make finals no problem then do less.