Training the day before racing

What do you think? Rest the day before or a light session? I’m not talking about for a majopr event.

From a paper I got sent.

[i]The coaches I visited were all experts in sprints or hurdles, they have coached World record holders, Olympic champions, World champions etc, but that doesn’t make them good!

  1. Dan Pfaff (Texas, USA)
  2. Victor Lopez (Houston, USA)
  3. Gary Winkler (Illinois, USA)
  4. Amy Deem (Miami, USA)
  5. Valentin Maslakov (Russia)
  6. Uwe Hakus (Germany)
  7. Henk Kraaijenhof (Holland)
  8. Hakan Andersson (Sweden)

Pre-race blow-out advocated. E.g., 60m at 100% 30 mins before comp, or 6 hurdles for 400m H 50 mins before race. Also day before doing a session as neural wake up or even a “tone” day, to make sure the muscle tone is ready to run the next day. So, e.g., if racing Saturday, then rest Thursday, 3-4 starts at 90% on Friday, rather than traditional rest Friday and train on Thursday. Maybe this is not used as much if the warm up is flat out? Some also used weights as a pre-race tone stimulus.[/i]

Charlie mentioned this related topic in Vancouver DVD. Use the prelims to increase tone for finals.

Consider how many days before the “final” race??

not every race is in that situation. I meant more for regular races, eg interclub every Saturday

I had always found a 1-2 short 100% runs about 5 minutes before the sprint helped.