I think you would be hard pressed to classify most programs even close to this level. Ever seen a sample Bob Kersee week? If you can categorize that kind of stuff in this fashion or Clyde Hart work… then by all means please posts because I think most here have a difficult time seeing any particular structure. I don’t disagree with your position at all, but I don’t know if you can really do that even with top programs. As much as most people like to believe things are clear cut/organized/etc., most are far from it.
The one factor I think we can count on, regardless of the athlete/training camp, is that regardless which way the load is heading, long to short or short to long, it will be heading their smoothly/gradually; thus making the direction evident. I state this because the likelihood of injury would be too high in the case of frequent shifts in the weekly emphasis.
Again–no disagreement from your philosophy at all and it makes sense, but there are lots of injuries in track even with the coaches and therapy (see Angela’s fantastic book or a Pfaff seminar) and Asafa has been injured nearly every season, as has Sherone Simpson and some others. Not sure things work out like this at all.
Regardless of what you are doing the better you get the more you should think about what strategy will allow you to get as much work done at the highest intensity as possible and still recover. For me spreading the load across the year using S2L is the best strategy to achieve this in the 100m but if you can find a better one then please share your insights.
I don’t doubt that it would prove time consuming to categorize the various programs out there. For the program to yield consistent results over time; however, I would suspect a gradual trend one way or the other would have to, by default, become evident.
The alternative would indicate some sort of complex approach to programming the actual speed work which, in and of itself, lends to interesting problems so I’d be curious to know of the actual intentions of some of the coaches out there who do not think in terms of short to long or long to short and, subsequently, do not program the speed work in a way that gradually works towards longer or shorter distances over the course of the year.
No question injuries tend to come with the territory regarding athletes who are capable of generating the forces necessary to compete at the highest levels; however, I’d suspect, which is something I generally avoid, that ‘most’ of the soft tissue injuries we see in T&F have more to do with programming/coaching errors versus the demands of the sprint training itself; regardless if the program is S-L, L-S, or any other variant.
Honestly, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to deem most of these systems as ends-to-middle rather than S2L or L2S. Many programs seem to go short to long with acceleration work and long to short with int. tempo and SE.
I think for the most part, the days of true L2S in terms of no acceleration work whatsoever for the majority of the fall and winter period, are over.
Re. Stephen Francis, has he specified the progression from hills>sled>grass>track with regard to the acceleration portion of his program? Does he view the sled and hill work to be interchangeable or is it a designed progression to flat sprinting?
Yes but I was not making a comment about that with my previous post. I was merely stating that in response to lr1400 post saying its hard to quantify the intensity of the 37sec 300m since they are in flats and on grass. Since we have a reported PR under the same conditions, figuring the relative intensity is straightforward.
It is imposible to attribute the cause of injuries to training methodology. There are other variables that come into play that may have caused the injuries.
Key points:
1 “is s2l passes l2s”
2 “Long term damage from l2s is permanently irreparable in developing athletes”
Certainly it can be a combination of many things but for example doing only grass work in the winter and then jumping into spikes and running an indoor season is an example of a mistake in methodology that will almost certainly lead to injury.
Most injuries are based on training choices though well structured plans of any type should result in a low number of injuries and significant improvement.
Indeed. Most of my injuries can be traced back to faulty workout design (usually too much load at too high of an intensity). Very few total surprises in hindsight.
If all work is performed at or near 100% effort, yet volume doesn’t increase, how does the intensity of a sprinters programme increase??
I could understand how progression may be bought about if volume increased, but if the intensity is already 95-100%, how does this bring about the progressions needed??
You get better so the absolute intensity rises from year to year therefore the training load would rise each year regardless of whether volume rises (load = volume + intensity).
Anyway, volume would rise gradually from year to year up to a point- this is all described in great detail in the Vancouver video series and then again in writing in the Key Concepts Elite Edition - which for my money is one of the greatest pieces of writing on speed ever written.
This assumes that one follows a well thought out and structured training program year to year. If you follow a completely different program every year you don’t have bench marks to surpass because everything would be new, right?
It would be good to separate the notion of ‘effort’ vs. that of ‘intensity’, i.e., 95-100% effort (subjective by feeling) doesn’t necessarily equal 95-100% intensity (objective by timing).