Wthout tempo will SE1 and/or SE2 come as easy?
This would apply those athletes who can not do tempo because of shin soreness, knee tendonitis etc. and have to save everything for specific sessions.
Sure tempo can be done in the pool and this would still aid recovery but the aerobic benefits wouldnt cross over great to the track.
Why wouldn’t the aerobic benefits of pool work cross over to the track well??
I know the aerobic benefits of bike cycling are transferring over to my running rather well. My current goals are different to that of a sprinter, but still, i am noticing big good changes to the running.
The aerobic benefit will always transfer well. the rest is muscular/technical.
The Adelaide Crows (AFL) use ergos and bikes for aerobic conditioning. They are very big on it, with Neil Craig the head coach being a former SA Sports institute conditioning coach for the Olympic cycling team and another of the Crows staff Charlie Walsh being a former head coach of the Australian cycling team.
The players will sit on the ergos going in out and out of zones maintaining certain heart rates that vary for up to 45 mins sometimes - done to replicate the heart rates experienced by players through a corresponding amount of time in a footy match. They will sprint to raise the heart rate hold it the drop it to another zone before lifting it again. The charts sit on the ergo handlebars and the players constantly check to ensure they are working in the right zone for the required intensity.
This transfers over to the running sessions, enabling the players to train at a higher intensity for longer, especially in specific training drills, requiring little recovery.
They don’t transfer THAT well though. Case in point, Lance Armstrong. Dominating in Tour de France, not so much in a marathon.
Short of injury and other factors, if you want to develop one’s running aerobic capacity, why not run aerobically?
Aerobic training is said to be highly specific and not to cross over well. I am sure there will be some cardio/respiratory benefit but at the working muscles I presume the circulation and aerobic capacity isnt there. I dont know this personally but the studies seem to point this way and as Desideratus15 said cyclists dont seem transfer performance well to running.
What about when comparing an athlete who does tempo and SE compared to an athlete who only does SE. Regarding SE I am really only concerned with 300m times and below.
REmember Lance is a cyclist, not a runner. His muscles are not used to running.
I am a runner, i have cycled the last 6months.
How much has it helped?
I have been trying to get back into distance running. Could i get into the Aerobic heart rate zone? NO!! I had to slow down that much, that 1- it hurt my legs running that slow and 2 - it was basically a walk. I just was not getting anywhere.
So, after 6months of cycling, no running, i started running 1x per wk. After 1month, i can now travel as fast as i was running over 5k well within my aerobic heart rate zone v’s before i was lactating with a close to max heart rate.
Its so much easier to ride slower, just drop down a gear or two. Keeping a low heart rate on the bike is now so very easy, and has transfered well over to my running. My running legs at start were a bit off, quickly gathered in though.
However, im far from riding times like Lance can - holding 50k HR for an Hr. Insane. I can hold for maybe 1k at max. I just dont have the legs for it. It would take a good 4-6yrs i recon to get good cycling pro legs.
Same with lance, Aerobic enough, i bet his legs just wouldnt hold up.
Also - on top of that
30min aerobic run for me feels like a good hard workout.
30min on the bike is easy as - even at same heart rate zone. Perhaps that will be less of an issue in 6months time?
the difference in Q. should be asked
Not, would a good cyclist make a good runner
but
Would cycling help make a good runner better?
I found that the aerobic bit crossed over well BUT:
1: I wouldn’t use alternate means (pool, cycle) to replicate overall specific sport demands.
2: I would restrict the use to what can be classed as low intensity only.
3: Heart rate may be a poor means of tracking what’s going on with explosive type athletes.
My problem is I can only perform 2-3 running sessions per week because of shin soreness and knee tendonitis which increase above this and I cant rely on getting to the pool because of time and general life!
I intend on 1-2 speed endurance sessions and 1 speed session a week during SPP and 40-60m sprints on sand or grass through GPP to give my joints a rest. Tempo is hard to fit in.
Youngy,
Do you have any idea how Neil Craig and Charlie Walsh train the ruby team? Do they use block training? What percetages are being used for weights? Really fascinated with using the bikes as part of their training.
Jurgen Grobler had the British rowers (Redgrave, Pinsent, and company) cycling somewhat seriously at out-of-season training camps, according to Pinsent’s book.
For what it’s worth, Grobler coached Gold Medal crews at every Olympics from 1976 through 2008, except for 1984, which the Easties boycotted (he coached the Easties through 1988 and started with the Brits in 1992).
G’day Everett,
The Adelaide Crows are an Australian Rules Football team. The work/rest ratio’s that are used for the bikes/ergos are based on scientific evidence from GPS tracking of energy & intensity through a game of top level football.
Because the players spend a lot of time on their feet for a myriad of other training efficiencies, in particular skills and set plays, the bikes are used to help the players develop an ‘engine’ for the demands of the game. Some of the midfield players will often cover 20 kms through the course of a game, so the aerobic energy requirements are quite important.
I am not overly familiar with the way it is all structured but they have their weights programs - probably twice per week, in conjunction with other sessions such as recovery & injury prevention and those previously mentioned.
I’m only a sprint coaching consultant with the Crows and see a few players once per week for technique work; assisting them to improve their efficiency off the mark. So I don’t really see how it’s all put together on a daily basis, but it does change during the week depending on what day the match is on and whether they have to travel interstate.
The bikes are used regularly during the off season and then for maintenance and rehab during ther season.
While Charlie Walsh obviously oversees the bikes & ergos area; the head of the fitness dept is Steve Schwerdt, considered one of the leaders in the field of AFL conditioning.
Thanks Youngy!
Do you feel that some of the training could be applied to American Football? Any more informationon their training would greatly be appreciated!
Shouldn’t there be a consideration for the speed vol you do and the weights when determining how much of what type of work is required mixed with the tempo? Why must they duplicate what a game entails with a long season ahead and behind them?
It would be interested to see how they structure every thing? Maybe some one can get a program from Steve Schwerdt or maybe even contact him.
As has been stated already, any bioenergetic benefit, from the use of conventional cardiovascular exercise devices, for the specific biodynamic nature of American football is at the general level.
We use the bike, elliptical, stepper, and underwater treadmill for this general purpose of bioenergetic maintenance for our players who get sidelined with various injuries that keep them out of SPP for a period of days; however, the benefits, again, are non-specific at the biodynamic level.
Not only must the active skeletal muscle fibers directly involved in the sport act be specifically trained via the appropriate bioenergetic stress- but also- they must be trained via the means that satisfy the biodynamic nature of the sport act.
In short, its one thing to develop, for instance, aerobic capacity and it’s another thing altogether, for instance, to develop the aerobic capacity of the skeletal muscle fibers of the legs as they function, for different positional demands, during an American football contest.
In the context of the sprints, tempo runs conveniently satisfy the biodynamic nature of sprinting while concurrently developing the aerobic capacity of the skeletal muscle fibers of the legs as they function during the sport act.
This is why, as I indicated in one of my training manuals, that the ‘tempo’ activity can and should be adjusted for various sport requirements.
Just as the contents of GPP will differ for varying sports so must the means of developing the bioenergetic mechanisms.
I would argue that the specific movement benefits move downwards from the highest velocity/intensity work to cover the spectrum and need not be stressed at every possible velocity - pretty much an impossibility, given limited off-season opportunities anyway.
The benefits of Aerobic capacity can be incorporated into this more specific stress regardless of how it is obtained.
The real question becomes: Is non-specifically obtained aerobic capacity incorporated as efficiently as more specifically obtained aerobic capacity?
The answer to that is, of course, No.
I seriously wonder how much of this aerobic capacity (at the skeletal muscle) a 100/200 sprinter needs if cardiorespiratory capacity can be sufficiently reached by intervals of speed endurance and SE.