When competing weekly during the indoor season (shorter distances) can the addition of a 400 in a relay constitute as a special endurance workout? This will allow for a third “workout” for the preparation of a major meet at the end of the season. Am I correct in my thinking? Can this be followed up on Sunday night with a weightlifting session if Monday is a tempo day? Example:
Monday - Tempo
Tuesday - Speed, plyos/med ball, weights
Wednesday - Tempo
Thursday - Speed, plyos/med ball, weights
Friday - short tempo or pre-meet
Saturday - meet (55/60, 200, 4x4)
Sunday - weights
During the outdoor season would this Special Endurance “workout” be more speed endurance when competing in 100s, 4x1s, 200s, etc, jumps/hurdles? In which case would I want to plan a special endurance day during the week and have only 1 speed day early in the week and kill the Sunday lift?
Also, when starting special endurance runs in the off-season would you do more reps of shorter distances (150s) and then build the distance over the following weeks or start at 300s and stay at 2 for the year or build in reps?
Yes, running a 400m relay would constitute special endurance workout.
No, running shorter distances at meets does not constitute speed work, b/c it is still special endurance.
I would highly recommend NOT following a meet up by a weights session the next day as your CNS will be gone b/c of the fatigue of the meet and your performances in the weightroom will suffer leading to inadequate development and possibly injury.
Unless you are going long-to-short, you should start off with shorter reps and build your way up to longer reps. Going short-to-long, as I assume you’re doing, you are going to start off with shorter runs of just about everything and build your way into longer runs as that is the basic definition of the short-to-long method. The opposite is true for the long-to-short method, however.
I cannot think of any time when a meet would not count as a special endurance day, and if anyone can please let me know. The volume of running, and the type of running does not fit into any other kind of workout. If you’re training for a meet, then the meet is most definitely SE, and if you’re training through the meet, it is still SE, but you can probably get away with doing another SE session during the week since the meet will be used to help train for later meets and is, in essence, treated like another training day.
Hope this helped clarify a little bit. Anyone else wanna throw in some thoughts?
