Relentless Ambition

Now I’m not here to say “I told you so”, but you can now see why every progression must be smooth. A more appropriate starting point for ploys would be two foot hops, one set of 10 hops, and work your way up from there IF they don’t bother you!

Tuck jumps are way too high on the stress scale to just throw in a couple of sets out of the blue. This is why Charlie stresses in his material that every transition must be very smooth- there should be no obvious change moving from one phase to the next, all changes must be smooth and gradual. Not only will you not get hurt, you will have far less adaptation stiffness and soreness.

Friday 17 August

Acceleration

My knee problem went away from one day to another, so I went to the track and everything went fine.

6x30m

3.96 - 3.91 - 3.78 - 3.78 - 3.92 - 4.06

that’s all for today, and the times are pretty good for a comeback

Monday 20 August

Acceleration/Blocks

during the warm up i could feel my left hip pinch so i knew the session would be over fast

40m: good drive phase but once upright my hip starts pinching and then i can’t run anymore. time 5.34

tried one more but same thing happened

Wednesday 22 August

5x60m strides around 75%

no hip pain, went relatively good but my knees aren’t going up…

Friday 24 August

ive got a meet tomorrow, i’ll run the 100m. (heats and hopefully finals)

when i ran 11.08 i did 3x20m the day prior to the race, so today same thing.

2.63 - 2.59 - 2.52

i felt really good on them, they are self timed by the way.

Saturday 25 August

Meet

100m heats: 11.32 and final 11.20 (+1.8)

well i didn’t expect a better time than 11.20 but i’m really disappointed with my sprint technique. my drive phase is good, you can tell the hills in africa helped me. but once i get upright… my knees aren’t going up… my strides are short (possibly shorter than before the vacations) for a 6’1 guy. different people said my strides are short, coach said i run ‘seated’ so i know my sprint technique got worse than before. is this a flexibility issue? i don’t feel good while running, something seems to prevent my stride from lengthening.

anyway it’s time to work on every aspect, a sub 11 is waiting for me before the end of season !

Sunday 26 Agust

Hip mobility w/ hurdles

6x5 hurdle jumps

2x6x150m in 25 sec with 25 sec rest. aerobic/post race workout

cool down and stretching afterwards

Monday 27 August

Sleds / Special Endurance

3x60m sleds (16.5 lbs) + 3x60m without

60m with sled - walk back and wait 5 mins. then sprint a 60m with 3pt start.

times for the 60’s w/o sled: 6.80 - 6.78 - 6.77

12 min recovery

300m: 37.70

Today was a great session, felt good on the 60’s and times are pretty good (6.76 PB in training) however still short strides and my hips aren’t high enough.

Wednesday 29 August

Relay training

150m at end of workout: 16.84

Great to see my speed endurance is still at the same level, despite the vacations and the injuries.

Friday 31 August

Meet

Our track was closed because of the memorial van damme in a week so my coach advised me to run a 100m.

11.47 (+1.2) … I don’t even know what happened, good first 30m and at the end i get passed by 23+ runners on the 200m. I have to say though that the day before the race I stretched my hamstrings alot and they were quite loose. Same thing happened last year… after lots of stretching and getting more flexible in all areas my times increased significantly. I’m not going to do static stretching anymore, dynamic is the way to go.

I agree entirely…

I agree entirely…

How do you time your practice runs like the 150m? First step?

On the coach’s go signal. When we’re ready he shouts “set… go” !

Sunday 02 September

Meet

belgian junior championships relay, 4x100: we won in 43.51. ill post a video later

Wednesday 05 September

Taking it easy before big meet (sunday)

90-95% with more than enough recovery, focusing on technique and execution

4x40m

2x80m

1x150m

We captured some videos, side view and front view. I’ll upload them soon

I would be very wary of entirely dumping static type stretching from a warmup or cooldown. Dynamic stretching can be very aggressive and especially inappropriate for the early part of the warmup. I’ve seen a lot of stupid dynamic stretching in people’s warmups lately since it’s become the new flavour du jour, so be careful and make sure there is a gradual progression in your warmup.

Stretching for a great deal of time the day before a race shouldn’t be needed, so don’t blame static stretches- blame the timing.

My bad, I shouldn’t blame it on the static stretching, was pretty pissed with my time and blamed it on that. I now realize that I barely do static stretching and saved it for the day before the meet, I did the same thing last year and my times weren’t as good anymore, perhaps a change in stride or something due to the new flexibility.

here is a video of the 4x100 relay. I run the second leg in blue

http://tinyurl.com/9e9s47z

Sunday 9 September

Belgian Junior Championships

100m heat: 11.20 (w+2,0)
100m final : 11.03 (w+3,4)
200m final : 22.38 (w+2,3)

The times are okay, would have been cool to run a sub 11 though, legal wind or not. My first 60m are good as usual and then can’t seem to speed up anymore. That’s it for the season… next week relay championships and the week after a sweet decathlon just for fun

Congrats on your season. You ran a few PB’s which is always great.

You put together a really nice journal here, and it was nice to follow along and see what kind of workouts your coach assigned throughout the season and how it affected the final results. I know you complained about all the lactic workouts early on, and from your results with about two seconds coming off your 400, it seems the focus was on a lot of lactic work and probably not as much speed development as would be suitable for a big strong guy like yourself.

I know you have mentioned you might like to leave your coach. Have you had a chance to think more about that? I’m curious to hear your mindset now that your season is complete.