I am a high school coach, and for the last 4 years The day before a meet I have done 150 meter floats, which is basically a stride for 100 meters and then you pick up into a hard stride or sprint the last 50 meters. Doing this the last 4 years i have gotten a little bored of this routine, anyone got any suggestions about what to do the day before a meet??
Thanks
Work on things like starts (30-60m), relay handoffs, and things of that nature.
Agreed with governor. I personally either do nothing but jog 800m then stretch or do that in addition to massage.
Depends on what your schedule is like. If you’re having two meets a week this could be problematic.
i basically just do about 6 15-20m starts.
In my opinion 30-60 meters is WAY too far for start the day before a meet. 15-20 sounds about right, with 30 being a maximum. However I personally just do nothing, or do a 15 minute warmup+stretch, or contrast shower+ stretch
15-20 meters could work as well.
We generally have our first meet of the week(sometimes meets on Sat also) on Wednesday so in order to recover/regenerate from Monday speed we do a full tempo and core med ball session on Tuesday with lots of stretching post workout. I was initially hesitant to do a lot of work, even low intensity work, just a day before a meet but it has worked out pretty well with the kids looking pretty fresh on Wednesday. We’ll only taper that stuff late into the season as per CF.
I agree Pioneer. If you have two meets a week, it is too disruptive to take complete days of rest off between all of them, assuming they are unimportant meets.
You probably do more harm than good by doing anything the day before. In other words, taking the day off may be best, but if you need to do something, I’d suggest a warmup that includes some jogging, easy strides, a few stride drills (running As, etc.) and light stretching. Nothing of high intensity or duration.
I agree with doing nothing of a high intensity but what you do the day before a meet is largely dictated by what you did the day before that and so on. In our situation we have to do some active recovery on the Tuesday(today actually) before our meet tomorrow-we did speed yesterday. So taking the day off today between speed and meet is a not really an option in order to accelerate recovery or we will obviously not enter tomorrow’s competition as fresh. In that case a decent volume of low intensity activity is preferred over little work and much preferred over no work. I agree that any fast pick-ups etc. the day before a meet is not ideal.
If you treat the meet like another workout – a speed day – then a tempo day would be in order. Maybe a little less volume than a normal tempo day. Perhaps 10x100 at 65% with less than 2 minutes recovery would be appropriate.
I find doing nothing the day before a meet is problematic with me as I get tight. Even just stretching keeps me tight. Here’s my routine:
800m Jog
Static Stretching
Dynamic Stretches/Form Work
3x100m accels (start slow and build up to a 20m full out sprint at the end)
3x20m pop outs
400m Cool Down Jog
More Static Stretching
I have gone both ways- one being very similar to 400’s method, maybe doing a few starts or handoffs if necessary.
I have also tried doing a low-intensity warmup followed by easy strides on grass- I had one of my best meets after doing 15x100m then moderate stretching.
I have mostly used the former, my only complaint being that it doesn’t always leave me feeling loose enough. I need to do a small volume of hard and fast or lots of long and slow to make the stretch feel good.
Yeah we treat meets like a speed/special endurance day. We go tempo on Tues and Thurs. though I personally think with any decent volume of sprint training and special endurance runs or races we would need at least a little more volume than 10x100 but we all respond differently and need varying degrees and volumes of work to ensure complete recovery.
Riddle me this anyone…
Just a very quick question. I am at a high school with meets on Thursdays and some invites on Saturdays. We have SEVERAL mulit event athletes that are involved in jumps and relays. My question is, when should they practice hand offs and how many. As it stands now they do them anywhere from 1-3 days a week, usually mon tues and wed and on some days, the second runner who also is a 37’ female triple jumper and 5’4 high jumper is doing anywhere from 4-10 handoffs a day with a total volume pushing 10-15 per week. Needless to say she and they are getting beat down and experiencing some overuse type stuff I was hoping to not see. I would like to suggest a better plan.
I was proposing a limit of 4-6 total a week and only on Mondays as that would mesh with her runway work and the sprinters short speed work .
Thoughts…
I would do them on your speed/maxV days since they are really flying 30s and I would limit these to no more than 6, which would be an entire workout by itself. If they are doing other speed work – starts, accelerations, etc. – I’d cut the number down accordingly.
Another good time to work these is on meet days after their events but while they are still warm. Meets are speed work days, but since the volume is low, you can usually fit in some more work on those days. It also gives them something constructive to do when their races/jumps are done.
I think you should not give up your tempo/recovery/rest days for this work.