Specific to weights would you agree with the following measure:
No of singles possible at 90% (session max) with 90s recovery.
This is a rarely discussed but important parameter and may help determine optimum training volume. I would be interested to know of any other measures you may have.
I can´t remember where Charlie described one of Ben´s sprint workouts - in CFTS or in Speedtrap, but it would be too much for many sprinters. High quality and high volume. Pretty wild stuff. But he had a great foundation.
I believe that the workout you’re mentioning is in Speed Trap pg. 183-184. I believe that workout was used as the last maximum scale workout (day 10) in a 10 day taper schedule in period III of Charlie’s triple periodization schedule? Any confirmation would be helpfull.
“I believed it was that work-out —in its timing, volume, and intensity—which had the single greatest impact on a sprinter’s subsequent performance, and I wanted to see how Hille’s plan compared.
Hille methodically filled in the blanks, in the spirit of coaching fraternity—a spirit probably warmed by the fact that I’d given him a bottle of top-shelf Canadian whisky and 20 packs of cigarettes. I wondered at first if he had misunderstood. But there was no mistake—only my silent amazement at the numbers he’d placed on the page. At Motor City Jena, sprinters ran their last full-speed work-outs 10 days before their meets—an unheard-of gap in the West.
There were more surprises. During that last maximum workout, Hille’s women sprinters performed about as much speed work as mine did, but at an even higher intensity—in some casees at world-record paces. Hille’s athletes would run four 30-metre starts, with seven-minute rests between them. They then took a 15-minute break, followed by an 80-metre sprint; then a 20-minute break and a 100-metre sprint; then a 25-minute break and a 120-metre sprint; finally, a 35-minute break and a 150-metre sprint. These were extraordinary rest periods- my own sprinters had never paused longer than 15 minutes between speed runs at those distances, and most coarches allowed for rests of five minutes or less.
These extended recoveries, along with the East Germans’ incomparable massage, physiotherapy, and other support, allowed their sprinters to go at their absolute maximum on that 10th day before the meet. The work was of such high quality that a sprinter’s central nervous system—first drained by the intense speed, then recharged by the ten-day taper period—would rebound like a pogo stick on the day of the competition. (To use the technical term, the sprinter would ‘super-compensate’ to an even higher peak than the last maximum work-out.) In between—usually on the eighth, sixth, fourth, and second days preceding the meet—Hille’s sprinters would perform a single speed drill, eith 80 or 120 metres, at 95 percent of maximum intensity. In these work-outs they were simply keeping their muscles tuned, without deepening fatiuge”
Charlie Francis pg. 107-108 Speed Trap
Did anyone notice that the 10 day taper schedule is basically the exact taper schedule outlined in the ‘Encyclopedia of Weightlifting’ that the Bulgarians and Greeks use?!!!
Anyway, Charlie has mentioned a few times that most of their speed work does not exceed 500 metres. From the workout outlined on pg 183-184, this max-scale (intensity) workout the volume is exceeded by quite a bit depending on the amount of cone-drills they did. But then again you have very little work in the next 10 days so as to super-compensate.
Just a note: Charlie did tailor the 10 day taper but it doesn’t seem like it was by much. A good example of keeping with what works and refining it to suit your athletes but NOT trying to re-invent the wheel!
Maybe Charlie or somebody else who remembers could confirm this but didn’t Charlie say that towards the latter part of Ben’s career (87/88) that he had to cut back on the amount of speed work at 100% that Ben did because Ben’s 100% intensity at the same volume was getting too much for him to recover from.
It was also mentioned that the scheduling of 3 speed days (mon/wed/fri) plus a speed endurance workout on sat during period I (indoor training) had to be altered to speed on mon/fri with se on wed because the volume of speed work was too much.
I think I’ll wrap up with a discussion with Clemson and Charlie regarding recovery of high intensity work that would be in agreeance with the point I’m trying to make. Sorry Charlie and Clemson if I mutilate your discussion but it went along something like if you max squat (100%) is 400lbs your recovery is x. If you increase it to a new max(100%) of 475lbs your recovery is probably more than x although your recovery for your old max 400lbs is less than x.
Questions, comments and arguements are welcome.
I just wanted to say thanks Charlie for putting up a top-shelf Canadian bottle of whisky and 20 packs of cigarettes!!!
i dont undersand how you phrased the question. do you mean no (number) of singles or no and in “no”.
With all respect to everyone, DB Hammer’s articles, are a waste of your time. They are a waste of hard disk space on the elitefts server. I’ve read his articles up and down more than a few times, and he says nothing with 100s of words.
Is he showing off his vocabulary? Who knows. Maybe german people shouldn’t be taught english if this is the result.
It sounds like a good measure of work capacity for a weightlifter, as it gives an indication of how much high-intensity work a lifter can do before quality (in this case indicated by load) suffers. For sprinters, perhaps a better indicator of work capacity can be found on the track?
I agree with Donm, what would be the purpose of such a test?
David, I think you have got an interesting problem or question. One thought I have, however, is if you are working quality singles (90%), why would you want to have such short rests? I wonder if this is a test for the sake of having a test or a parameter to measure. It may be more practical to have such a test with longer rests? Thoughts?
Carson - yes perhaps a more qualitative test would be more appropriate. I feel monitoring tolerance over time is important because it could help prevent premature increases in workload that lead to overtraining.
THe rest periods are arbitrary - shorter rests just reduce the length of the test.
david,
could you elaborate on the test?
how often, and what the would mean (whats good, whats bad?)
David, I agree that tolerance to training is very important and when one can measure it or get a good feel for it, overtraining may be avoided.
I am trying to figure out auto-regulatory training, there is a bit about it in the Supertraining book. This is one strategy that I don´t understand completely.
DB Hammer is a writer on the Elite Fitness Systems website who has addressed this but I can´t figure his stuff out.
Anyone else read his stuff in this area?
I’ve read DB hammer but his stuff is a tough read. Haven’t quite solved it yet
Marshall, I have to say that I feel a bit better after reading you post. The guy probably has good things to say, but cannot get a point across. I am sorry to say that I have this feeling alot with German articles. I have thought it is due to my German reading knowledge, but my wife, whose mother tongue is German has often tried to help me with sport science article and has said that the guys are writing shit.
I have looked at my last post, and I think that I should soften my appraoch a bit. There are obviously alot of good German (and German speaking) sport scientists and coaches out there. I shouldn´t throw out blanket statements. But I have often had problems trying to make sense of their writing.
Yeah, me too, I don’t really think that, I just really can’t stand this DB Hammer fella.
With my very rudimentary knowledge of german, it doesn’t seem that the german language is his obstacle anyway. The word order doesn’t really adhere to german in any way, it’s just really convoluted english.
If you want an example of autoregulatory training Chris Thibadeau wrote an article on “russian training secrets.” I think it was called behind the iron curtain.
Good luck!
[quote]Originally posted by David W
Carson - yes perhaps a more qualitative test would be more appropriate. I feel monitoring tolerance over time is important because it could help prevent premature increases in workload that lead to overtraining.
I would forget about reducing the amount of time between sets. Also, I’m curious to know what exactly you mean by monitoring tolerance? Just something taken by Charlie and applied (if applicable?) is that does training at 90% intensity and increasing the amount of volume at 90% have an influence on one’s ability for 1RM? I personally find that the higher my 1RM, the volume of work goes down at a given intensity!
It seems that most weightlifting coaches feel that lifters should increase their volume of lifts over time, and that this will result in strength increases. Is there any research to support this?
Donm,
Louie Simmons says: if a man that reads more will be smarter, then surely a man who trains more will be stronger (if you can recover from it).
Who can argue with his results.
He is talking about powerlifting (and therefore will apply to weightlifting). Additional volume in a sprinters weight programme may be hazardous as he has other variables to consider.
[quote]Originally posted by OorWullie
Donm,
Louie Simmons says: if a man that reads more will be smarter, then surely a man who trains more will be stronger (if you can recover from it).
I’m not sure that this would be true b/c as you said, you need to recover from it. You can have the greatest program out there but if you can’t recover from it then who gives a sh*t. I’ll take Charlie’s basic principle and go with that. Quality over Quantity.
I’m not try to pick on you today but…a couple of questions. Does this in fact apply to weightlifting? I think that additoinal volume is not necessarily going to help either. Also, for Louis’ people, does there weight keep going up or do they try to limit it and stay within a weight category? I’ve seen a couple of his videos and the boys from Ohio are NOT SMALL MEN!
Louie,
Louie has trained alot of different sized guys, and generally, they appear to stay in the same weight category, or may just move between 2.
Most of the guys in their video’s are large, but, he has trained smaller guys.
The last time I heard Louie and Dave Tate were training 13 times per week.
Obviously, they have their 4 main workouts, and their other workouts are to raise the GPP, restoration, etc.
Christian T. gave a brief example of a bulgarian weightlifters program on his forum at t-mag, and they were training alot.
Yes, they were training more frequently but what about the volume? From what I’ve seen, they stick to the classic lifts being clean and jerks, snatches, front squats and back squats. There intensity is high but I don’t think that it is great volume.
I guess the bottom line that I’m trying to say is that you can’t just keep trying to increase the volume to get better. Do you think that Charlie would just keep increasing the amount (quantity) of work for Ben continuously from year to year??? I rather get this answer from Charlie than have everyone speculate. I think that this is where the art of coaching lies in high intensity training!