I dont want to speak for KK, but I believe he said he liked to stay in the same speed band for 4 weeks so that the athlete can adapt properly.
Thats what I was thinking Nik… Just was curious since someone had mentioned burnout and I did not want that especially now… Need to adapt anyways
I agree with Nik and Mekstrand.
I just find it hard to take any single session in isolation and say, this will work or, alternatively, this cannot work. Or that it will cause “burn-out”. The work that burns you out from my obvs is the max velocity stuff when it’s repeated too often without adequate recovery, regen. If you don’t burn out, you’ll soon enough blow-out with an injury.
Everything in programming is contextual.
So the work you do must be determined by the goals you set. Establish your target, work back down a timeline and insert the reps/sets which theoretically should deliver the outcome you want.
I think a set like 6x200 is really harsh on unfit sprinters. It may be a doddle for a miler. But the 6x200 is not going to fry anyone’s CNS and that’s what really causes burnout.
I think you need to work in the same speed band for a month to concrete into place specific adaptation to that work which will stay with you for the whole season (assuming of course that when you move away from 5 or 6x200m you stay in touch with the work by doing the occasional 200+200 set or something similar - “use it or lose it” and all of that) .kk
KK, by ommision can we then assume that performing the 6 x 200 session or variants (3 x 2 x 200, 2 x 3 x 200, 5 x 200, etc.) is fine to perform weekly over say, a 6 week mesocycle?
thanks everyone, very much appreciated for all your help.
Hi Luca,
In principle yes. I would prefer not do 5x200 every week - but I wouldn’t hesitate to do it 3 weeks straight, just once a week. And four weeks would be fine.
After that I’d be wanting to shake it up, replace it for a couple of weeks with something similar but with the opportunity to vary the stimulus a bit.
So for example chuck in your 2x3x200 in week 5 and then 3x2x200 in week 6. I’d be thinking to maintain the recovery time (2mins or less) between reps at all times of the year.
But longer recovery between the sets permits you to go a bit faster in the reps of the shortened sets as per weeks 5 and 6, just for example.
The important consideration is that you need to exert a discipline over the type of work you do because it must fit into your plan (inc time-line) for the phase/season.
If you’re talking a pretty simple series of phases in a single periodised year and the first phase of six weeks is GPP and your peak is 11 months away, then sure you could comfortably hit 5x200 once a week for six weeks.
But I don’t work quite that way. My ideas are in the lactate threshold thread and, trying not to bore, but my construction is more like a series of little pyramids or arrowheads stacked one upon the other.
In GPP I tended to go for two-and-a-half weeks of what could loosely be described as “strength and endurance” followed by another 2-1/2wks of “speed-&-power” and then continue to repeat the cycle always moving towards speed.
And all the while of course maintaining a disciplined approach to meeting competition commitments and national team selection criteria, which also meant of course running fast enough to better world or Olympic qualifying times at home as well as o/s.