Here is my report of what was asked from the floor and answered by Stephen Francis (SF)…
Q. What does your GPP look like; take us through a weekly set up?
SF. Well, firstly, it’s a 5am start. I do this to control the night time activities of my athletes. If they have to get up early for training then they don’t want to be in bed too late…anyway, we do 7 day cycles, 3 weeks hard and 1 week easy. The 4th week is no reps but we do testing here instead.
So a typical week looks like
Mon
5am
Hill sprints to 40m
Stretch
Ab work
3pm
Weights
Plyos
Tues
5am
Long speed endurance
400’s, 350’s or 300’s
(or 800’s, 600’s, 500’s for 400m athletes). No more than 6 reps done here.
Ab work
Med Ball
3pm
Technique work (mainly drills and some form runs)
Wed
5am
Long hills
250m, 200m or 150m
(300m for 400m athletes). No more than 8 reps done here.
3pm
Weights
Thur
5am
Circuit training (bodyweight exercises - burpees, press ups etc)
Drills for endurance
Med Ball
3pm
Technique work (mainly drills and some form runs)
Friday
5am
Sled work
Stretching
Ab work
3pm
Weights
Plyos
Saturday
5am
Weights
Slow speed endurance (is that possible??), anyway, 200’s
p.m Rest
Sunday
Rest
The weights done are free weights mainly with cleans etc, very little machines.
Q. Is it a long to short program?
SF. Yes it is really. High volume, short recovery leading on to low volume, long recovery. We don’t do much low intensity work either. I read in a book a while back that to run longer than 20 mins continuous will affect your speed so the longest run we do is 20 mins.
The women tend to do 20% less volume than the men.
I believe you can work hard on successive days if you are working different energy systems, e.g sprints to 30m one day and then speed endurance the next day.
The athlete needs to do a certain amount of work and this is more important than any theory about CNS and its recovery. I think you need to do 15 distinct sessions per week and so sometimes it is not what the theories agrees with but that’s just how we do it.
Q. What is done in the 4th week or the light/rest week?
SF. Testing is done. 2 tests/day with 4 exercises/day, 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon). So, for example, we might do a 12 min run on Monday morning and SLJ or VJ in the afternoon. Or we will test the 1000m one day and then the next day we will test the 800m. Over time these distances get less and less, so we might be doing a 400m on one day and a 300m on the next.
We also test med ball throws - overhead backward and forward, or jump, jump throw etc. We believe over time we have built up some good correlations or measures for what is needed to be a world class sprinter.
The testing is normally won by the slow twitch aerobic guys, but that makes them feel good because when it gets to the important part of the season they are not winning anymore.
From Jan 1 the weekly set up changes a bit.
Mon becomes speed endurance
Tue becomes sled work
Thursday becomes sled work
Saturday is long hills if they are not competing