Tempo???

Now we have your sample weekly breakdown. What volumes of speed work are done in the Speed End and Speed portions, and the total weekly speed volume? Give a sample of the high-vol weight session with actual weights lifted. How many weeks do you maintain this schedule for (what is the annual speed volume)? What results have you had?

Note to all once again. Please read the conditions for membership on this furum. As a condition of membership here, you have all agreed to no discussions of banned drugs. You can see already how the conversation deteriorates and it’s only a matter of time before the discussion moves from one attack to another.
Stick to the training issues. If you have a case to make for doing what Dintiman suggested 35 years ago- speed and specificity only, it will speak for itself. Rather, one might say, if it were true, it would have spoken for itself already after all these years, and the specificity crew would have overshadowed the programs that have produced ALL sub 9:80 performances so far.

Ever heard of the crossover effect? Hell! What am I asking for? Of course, you “know” it doesn’t exist.
It is truly amazing to hear the certainty with which you dismiss what others have seen, time and again, through years of experience with athletes at the top. If you’d look around the forum a bit more in the taper discussions, you’d notice that it is precisely because the bench is not so directly used in the event itself and because of its general CNS stimulation (which you dismiss and non-existant) that it is used in lifting last in the final taper.

[quote=“zap”]

It’s not simple as that. You’re welcome to pick up the GPP DVD where you can see how the sessions are actually divided up within the week according to the demands of the most important elements and how they change moving from the GPP to the SPP to compensate for the rising demands of the sprint sessions. There are a number of discussions on the forum as well about how weights are split moving from GPP to SPP and finally into the taper period.

by doing the speed and weights on the same day(straight after each other) means that you are doing 1 session, dont look at it as 2 seperate session, and you’ll get your head around it. so by doing 1 session of speed and weights its give’s your CNS the time needed to recover until the next high day. you get it???
all you guys that need proof, look at all the WR’s and see if they did tempo and then come back and talk if you need more proof.

[quote=“zap”]

Just a few questions for DJones and zap, first off what type of year over year gains have you generally seen using this method of training assuming you have used it for a fairly long period of time?

DJones it seems like you are just placing a slightly shorter tempo at the end of some workouts, even if you do not believe in all the benefits of tempo or that cns takes less than 48 hours to recover, do you believe the body fully recovers from intense workouts in one day, I would have expected more of a:

MWF intense workout TTH all rest or even
MF intense TTH submaximal

Also any reasoning for placing all three weightroom days together?

Ben Johnson ditching his cf’s tempo program in '84? That’s a load of garbage and completely false. In the current programs they are in, both Felix and Powell do some sort of tempo. The GOAT Mo Greene also did plenty of tempo throughout the season.

I agree with you on every point you made in this discussion and thank you for finally pointing a balance issue out in your GPP vs. SPP observations.

Would you be so kind to find and indicate the precise reference of the above research from Noakes ?

I have been researching what you call “aerobic component” in sprinting for years now,but I had never heard of the research you indicate,which would perfectly fit the picture,but I just had not heard of so far…need a quick update!

Thank you.

As you could see the volume is the key.
You might say its high, medium high easy, medium high rest. However volume and CNS fatigue is also monitored and manipulated by training performance.

This is probably not the best place to argue such a topic becuase no one will accept opposing views no matter how convincing the argument.
The core question is still yet to be answered in regard to CNS faitgue, it is simply brushed over. What evidence was used in developing the high int- tempo- high int- tempo system.
Why not high int, high int then tempo. What is being asked here is was their some form of evidence that suggested that 48 hours should be taken between sessions? Or are we still guessing?

Yes, I am aware why weights and track are used on the same day. Refer to my program.

And for those who will continue to refer to athletes using tempo running under 9.8 wasn’t it mentioned on this site recently that just gatlin did very high int work.

And by the way I can speak for both sides of the argument becuase I have years experiance with tempo programs, I have only recently changed sides, anyway

Can someone please answer the question that has been asked.

[QUOTE=DJones]
This is probably not the best place to argue such a topic becuase no one will accept opposing views no matter how convincing the argument.

QUOTE]

Convince away then. So far you’ve presented … ???

With regards to what kind of evidence many coaches at this forum have to support their own belief, empirical would be a good start.

Why not high int, high int then tempo. What is being asked here is was their some form of evidence that suggested that 48 hours should be taken between sessions? Or are we still guessing?

experience?
sub 9.8 athletes?
what more prove do you need? Studies? Studies with what? The three people that have run sub 9.8?:stuck_out_tongue:

you know, like you have your athlete do some speed work, time him and record the times

then the next day lifts and the day after that you time the speed. If its not as good or better than before he is not recovered.

my guess is that something like that is what the tempo coaches do, you know there are ways to measure performance:p

agreed, that gauging CNS fatigue aint easy, it takes a GREAT eye, and even then its guesswork, the sound of the foot on the tartan, the time between elastic responce in plyos, the look in the eyes, the feel of the muscles. But that is what makes a great coach.

from personal experience, i used to be trained by this coach, that worked more or less the way you propose, we did something like this (line change is day change):

speed
plyos
easy weights
speed endurance
plyos
easy weights.

the result was a stress fracture on my right shin and absolutely horrible times. Same goes for the whole group, naging overuse injuries all the time.

now i train alone with the high-low vertical integration with much much better results, im healthy and im progressing constantly.

what i have found is a problem with the high-low motive is being overzealus with the tempos. Other than that, it simply works.

1 Like

Pakewi,

I found the reference!!! Here are some quotes and finally the refference:

REFERENCE:
Noakes,T.D., St Clair Gibson, A. Logical limitations to the ‘‘catastrophe’’ models of fatigue
during exercise in humans.
Br J Sports Med 2004;38:648–9.

Pakewi if you can’t find the paper (altought is free for download at Br J Sports Med site) PM me your new e-mail and I will send it to ya. Did you read my homoeostasis performance model? I tryed to fit in Noakes ideas…
I must say I am lucky to correspond to Noakes himself and I find him very great scientist and man!!!

Regarding this discussion,
Maybe this post is way out the topic, but I think that it may have purpose in it…
And once again I must warn you that this discussion is going into “specificity only” way! As stated before, the ratios, interconnections and interrelations and support between GPP and SPP means is most important to consider here. Zap and DJones (altought I appreciate their opinions and new ideas) are trying to pick only SPP and to neglect/disregard GPP! Altought this approcah will have some success at the beggining, I am interested how would they progress to new levels, and most importantly how would they TRAIN KIDS with this approach… And here is where “Early Western Specialization” is born :mad: !

:slight_smile:

If i was to train kids, which i dont, the sessions would be different. Lighter with days in between, purely for the fact that they will be improving very rapidly naturally. Sessions would be more focused on technique, starts, and having a good time to keep them interested.

in terms of the sub 9.8 runners, besides johnson, because cf obviously knows what he did. I agree and accept that they would have done some type of tempo work…what I want to know is whether it is imperative that tempo is incorporated every second day after high intensity…did all the top guys do this??? or did they just do the odd tempo session?

For bud mike… i know there one session, and i sometimes lift heavy weights in low volumes immediately before doing starts and accelerations, simply to maximise the benefits of the higher muscle recruitment from the weights.

CF… am currently looking for info on the cross over effect…if any one has any… or are there posts on this already???

whose gone sub 9.8… powell, gatlin, greene, johnson, montgomery… i wouldnt think they would all do tempo sessions every day after high intensity…

The real question to be answered here and once for all is : WHAT IS CNS FATIGUE really?

Only from there one can argue and debate Tempo,Hi/Low,Volumes etc…

Charlie identified the concept of CNS Fatigue years ago and gained evidence of its existance through the construction of such a successful training approach ,but can’t we just help each other define the whole thing better ?

Is CNS fatigue a single factor phenomenon linked to a single system in the body (the Central nervous system)? Does our organism allow for such an isolated phenomenon really?
Or maybe by CNS Fatigue we identify a much more comprehensive concept,which links a number of bodily systems and functions together?

Not correct to answer questions with questions,but maybe only appropriate at times…

WHAT IS CNS FATIGUE really?

depletion of neurotransmiters is my guess. The neurotransmiter that is responcible for the motor neuron signaling is achetylcholin, which up to a point would become depleted.

obviously, its not that easy to pin point one thing, given the fact the the brain works with so many neurotransmiters acting on so many types of receptors that is nigh imposible to have an absolute definition. But in the end, neurotransmiter depletion and/or receptor descentization and quite likely reuptake receptors upregulation would contribute to CNS fatigue.

basicaly you might want to excecute a certain task but cant. Mind you the CNS fatigue is there among other things to prevent total PNS failure which would be well…death i guess?

whose gone sub 9.8… powell, gatlin, greene, johnson, montgomery… i wouldnt think they would all do tempo sessions every day after high intensity…

charlie worked with motgomery also, and as far as i know john smiths training program is heavily influenced by CF (if im not mistaken john smith studied with francis at some point? perhaps he can clarify on that, i think i saw it somewhere on the boards alongside a tempo-GPP program john smith uses)

I don’t think this is the best thread to get into that; a new thread dedicated to that would be better. I agree that the issue of what we call CNS fatigue should be examined with as much rigorous analysis as possible.

I have seen a lot of john smiths program.
The program was back in 1996/1997, so the period when greene and boldon started to dominate.
A collague of mine spent several months studying under him.
There was a very very strong emphasis on starting and acceleration.
He was also very big on the technical aspects of training. There was tempo in the programme but different to the CF system. It was more like speed end/tempo, for example if they were doing 300 reps they would start at quite a slow pace say 42 second where technique was a focus. In his notes it often mentioned that Smith would use a cue for JD and Greene during these slower paced runs to pretend they “were running over long grass” The speed of these reps got progressively faster in the session with the last being at 100%. I recall one session where boldon was doing 150’s where his first one was in 17 from a stand, and by the last he did 14.9 if i recall correctly from a stand which is very quick.

You are right. I apologize for possibly deflecting the topic of this thread,but I really feel everybody’s out there in the wilderness,around here so far…

Here we go:

http://www.charliefrancis.com/community/showthread.php?p=123632#post123632

I still would recommend some basic rethinking and open discussion of what we’re really talking about here to move this thread constructively on.

Mo, Ato and Jon have 300m PBs around 31sec. 42sec is 74%, which falls into CF’s tempo category (sub 75%).

As for Gatlin and Shawn Crawford, i’ve seen him doing 100m strides on the grass, Asafa Powell does 12 x 200m, 8 x 300m during GPP, that’s tempo as well. Pfaff had Bailey 9.84 Surin 9.84 and Thompson 9.87 and they did Tempo as well, though it should be called as intensive tempo by usual classifications. Carl Lewis 9.86 and Leroy Burrell 9.85 falls into the same category. Christie 9.87 and Fredericks 9.86 used distances ranging from 500m going down to 100m and that’s tempo as well. Obikwelu 9.86 does low intensity runs over the same range of distances. Fasuba 9.85 is a fan of tempo :slight_smile: . Hum who else ran under 9.9??

I believe it’s not possible to run under 10sec in doing high intensity everyday. Ask the guys and what they are doing. Coaches can’t be passive and look for scientific explanations. They work on human beeings and have to find solutions.

OUCH. Call emergency services, at least to wash away the blood. There’s been a massacre here.