I was looking at the thread about coach Steven Francis and how he said he does weighted sled drags for up to 6 months out of the year…
Well, not to jump on the bandwagon but I think this is an excellent idea and I would like to know how to properly incorporate the weighted sled drags into the Long to Short program.
For example, on the L to S graph where the shaded area says acceleration can I just use the weighted sleds for say two weeks then back of on the 3rd week? Should I use the same distance stated on the graph?
I began to do just that this year for my high school team until I realized with my 2 sleds and 20 kids, we’d be doing sled work until 8pm!
I have since added push up starts (chest on ground) for 10 and 20 meters at the end of their warm up. I have seen very nice improvements in form and speed during acceleration over the past 3 weeks.
Would you care to elaborate? I have the belt and the chain and the weight I just need the metal part the weight slides on and I don’t really want to buy one for 100+ bucks…
You can use a tire too. I believe PJ had Olu doing that. you can put 5 or 10 lb plates inside the tire. Go to a junk yard and take your choice, go to home improvement store to get a hook, and a long nylon cord with a belt and you are all set.
YOUR RIGHT!! I forgot about this! I made one out of a simi truck tire about a year ago when I was heavily (still am) into powerlifting and I used it on Sundays to drag up and down the streets in a industrial area.
Tires are easy to find as many people throw them on the side of the road/freeway which is where I found mine.
I went to home depo and bought a chain that was long enough and strong enough for the purpose that I needed.
When you go to home depo they have all different grades/sizes of chains so just use your common sense as to how strong a chain you will need to pull a 30 lbs weight.
They will also have the necessary attachments for only about 1.50 each ( I don’t know what they are called. C clamps?) where you can attach the chain to the tire and to your belt.
As far as the tire just punch a whole in the middle of the tire and fabricate a connection from the tire to your chain.
Chains? Truck tires? What are you guys trying to do? Get faster or enter the World’s Strongest Man contest?
BTW, if you’re training outside, you don’t need to pull anything if you have a decent hill around.
Sleds are needed when you’re stuck inside and don’t have access to a hill. (Big groups are never a problem with hills either)
I made a sled out of a plastic snow sled I bought at walmart for less than 10 dollars tied a rope to it. Then you can get some sand bags from home depot and put it right on the sled. I used a decent nylon rope for a belt and a tow line…
That’s if your not too embarrased to use it…
I used to doubt the hills until this year when I really started to focus on proper technique… I wound up smashing my 30m PRs after the GPP… I’d do the hills if you have them near you.
LOL!! Actually yes I’m into strong man stuff… It’s great restoration on Sundays and for some reason when you step into the gym the following week it makes the gym workouts easy…
As fast as I could with good form. When I got better at it I’d go full blast… After the GPP it took me a few weeks to apply the new power from the hills to the track (Im a little slow on the athletic uptake LOL)
That’s what I’m wondering, and apparently, Franno cuts the short hills out starting in January, to do heavy sled 2X/wk.
Some specific questions for Charlie:
(1) Would you do any of this in s-l, or does the weight emphasis take care of the power development (In all the talk about Asafa’s hip development, there is no comparison to Ben)?
(2) In the Vanc s-l, does replacing the efe, fef (for people already in shape) with Franno’s hills or sleds make sense?
(3) Or, would you do hills/sleds in place of some of the 30m starts?
I can see doing some of what Franno is doing in l-s as the speed emphasis is missing early.
He already stated you could do sleds in place for some 30m block starts etc. Why would you want to drop efe or fef for more hill/sled work, dont make sense.
That was for long to short. In the long to short plan, block starts are done before special endurance. In the short to long plan, block starts are done before 3X4X60 or efe/fef, and adding sleds to what is already high intensity is something I’m not so sure about. I know PJ has used sleds followed by 200s, but I have doubts that doing heavy sleds before efe/fef/finish drills is what you want to do.
