Who is super fresh for each day of training?
Are you doing any contrast baths or showers which can be done for free at home?
Is your nutrition rock solid? For example = are you both taking some kind of additional protein, regenerating drink thru the day, before or during practice so you max out on what there is to take at every session?
Working full time and trying to train full time is tough no doubt about it but you have time to get off your feet for a bit before you train ( unless you have kids?)
These are just a few things that come to mind.
Id like to be fresh but im beat down by the 3rd day. Nutrition is on point. Lets not even get into supplements. Creatin, Bcaa’s Nootropics, carbohydrates, zma, vitamins, fish oil, progylgcosin… the list goes on. I take all my stuff religiously. I do epsolm salt baths, sauna, steam when I can, and contrast. I work in a inner city school so being off my feet is not a option with rowdy students. I just figured that a day extra off from speed will do my body good so that I can get a quality workout each time.
I like your alternate setup. That’s pretty much what I do and is what I would recommend to my athletes if they weren’t such prisoners to the structure of a week.
I too like the alternate you listed. Over 14 days it gives you 5 speed days versus the 6 you currently do, plus 72 hours of recovery between speed.
Another thought is the weights may be overloading the speed days, you could play with splitting weights into lower body on speed days and upper on tempo days with no weights on the Tuesday speed session.
What is the volume like for the speed and weights and plyo’s that you do? It could be that your volumes for the individual sessions are to high. What distances are you running at at the moment and what type of lifts are you doing?
What phase of training are you in? And what are you training for?
One thing that strikes me is that you do speed, Med ball or plyos and weight room on the same day. That must be at least a 3+ hour session to do all of that.
I find that combining plyo/med ball and weights and speed in one session is too hard for non elite athletes i.e. athletes with loads of training experience who training 2 or more times a day. The CNS can not perform that much at a time and will not recover.
If you are close to the season and want (like you are doing) loads of explosive work (plyo+medball) the volume must be very low. If you are in GPP and the general volume is high I’d ease off on the explosive stuff a little and not do it every single speed session.
Sorry about all the questions I’d just like to put things into persepective.
I’m Chris’ training partner. To be specific, we’re in week six of Charlie’s GPP. We have just transitioned from the hills and are focused on acceleration development specifically on the track (we had to cut out the last two hill sessions due to the fact that the angles were aggravating a minor knee injury of mine). Our accels are mainly 20m at a time, stretching as far as 60m. The total meters per session ranges from 600-680 as per Charlie’s direction.
The thing is, our Sunday workouts are a joke. We easily handle speed, medball throws, and weights well below threshold. By the next speed day we’re a little beat up, which is not a problem (we may or may not finish ALL weights it depends). The final speed day absolutely kills our energy…sometimes we have to drop the weights all together. The thought that we’re doing too much creeps in and may not be reaping all the benefits of supercompensation. And yes Atletiek, with all the rest, our workouts do last over 3 hrs. But isn’t everybody’s?
How many hours of sleep per night? I’ve always noticed that I suck out at practice when I’ve lost a bit of sleep.
Being a teacher must also be stressful on the CNS.
Your set up looks good, why don’t you guys try it out and see how it goes. If you guys are still wiped during the week, maybe it has to do with the sleep and job more that is affecting recovery.
One other thought that others have mentioned is the weights/med ball and plyo work. You might consider cutting some of it. Preserve the track volumes and maybe you guys can handle that fine but it may be the plyos and the medball and weights that are finishing off the CNS. If you guys are willing to experiment, just do the track stuff for one week and see if you feel the same. If that works, then consider adding a little bit of supplemental work back in to see what you guys can handle.
I go to sleep at 930 and get up at 530 everyday.
Weekends i may get a lil more sleep.
maybe your tempo is a bit too hard. I would not add a light jog into your routine, if anything just add more tempo. I think somebody of your size would draw more detrimental effects from slow jogging.
Everyone is missing the excessive tempo work, I think these guys should never go above 1500m. If you don’t have excess to therapy you are best to keep training to 4-5 days per week and all tempo work in the 600-1500m range.
I have mention this to Chris before, I think there overall training volume is too high esp for two athletes who have full time jobs etc.
The two setups I recommend for part time athletes:
Setup 1:
Mon/Thur: Speed/Weights
Tue/Fri: Tempo
OR
Setup 2: Each session would last about 90mins, I really like this one.
Mon/Thur Speed
Tue/Fri: Weights
Wed/Sat: Tempo
I believe you might be doing too much volume and too much intensity. Remember I asked on your log about the intensity of your hills? I found it to be a massive amount of sprinting.
Perhaps if you cut volume in half and raise the intensity to 95%, and do 8 x 40m hills could recover much quickly and still have an excellent training stimulus.
The alternating could keep you fresh… if you start to feel like you need another day of speed work You could just do a low vol tempo day with some mb throws 10x100m + mb throws/wieghted drills or even a mb circut. In other words some fitness w/a touch of cns work instead of a full on speed day…
so the week could look like:
day 1 speed
day 2 easy runs
day 3 power speed or ball work
day 4 easy runs
day 5 speed
or
day 1 speed
day 2 easy runs
day 3 power speed or ball work or easy starts
day 4 easy runs
day 5 off
day 6 spec. endurance
sorry its raining here i have nothing better to do 
As a masters age athlete (36), with a full time job that has me on my feet quite a bit, I’ve used a few of the variations listed in this thread with success.
The first variation listed was this:
Day 1: Speed, plyos, weights (Hi day)
Day 2: Tempo + other general fitness work (Low Day)
Day 3: Off
Day 4: Repeat Day 1
This worked well for me as long as I did not work too hard on the tempo day. I think I started at ~1000m and worked up to something like 1500m. If you start to feel a bit worn down, take an extra off day.
If you find yourself frequently needing extra off days, then try this:
Day 1: Speed, plyos, weights (Hi day)
Day 2: Tempo + other general fitness work (Low Day)
Day 3: Off
Day 4: Speed, plyos, weights (Hi day)
Day 5: Tempo + other general fitness work (Low Day)
Day 6: Off
Day 7: Off
With this plan, you can vary the volume on your tempo days. Make the volume of tempo on Day 2 lower and the volume on Day 5 higher. With the extra day off on Day 7, you’ll still start your training week fresh. I actually did some pretty hard tempo workouts on Day 5 of this setup (stuff like 10 x 200m with fairly short recoveries) and still felt fresh two days later.
I’m currently emphasizing weights and doing the following:
Day 1: Speed + Lower body weights
Day 2: Tempo + Upper body weights
Day 3: Off
Day 4: Speed + Lower body weights
Day 5: Tempo + Upper body weights
Day 6: Off
Day 7: Off
If you do this, you’ll want to cut the volume of tempo you are doing to accomodate the weight work done after.
Also, one other quick note. When doing the above, I used speed workouts similar to what was on the GPP DVD, but I have never even tried to do the full volume of speedwork. This may be because I am an older athlete, but I was never able to do more than maybe 1/2 or 2/3 of what was prescribed. I was always under the impression that those workouts were designed for a fairly high level athlete and should be adjusted to accomodate your own needs.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I know our tempo has been high with 2000m per session. Also they way we were doing it it started to feel like a job. So I think the extra day off will keep us fresh and the practices a lil more fun instead of a chore with a sore body. JMT We are doing the speed work from the gpp dvd. We have been able to complete it I just think we had built up a tolerance to complete them. They would sometime take us 5 hours to finish. Not something a working athlete should try. It caught up with us.
Pmoax19 the slow jogging kills me. I hate doing it. I was just doing it to build up some kind of stamina. I think I will split the tempo days up to 1000 each time.
10 minute run, no more no less. tempo and quantity to suit how you want to look.
ben, used to work at sydney olympic park NSW, concord railway to athletic centre 2 x per work x days worked, time 10 minutes both ways, no more no less. i have no idea how many days he had to walk to and from work to stop loosing too much bulk. used to work at the ais as a general hand, he now has a soccer academy at the central coast. when it started to happen he said this is bullshit, now he says it worked for him.
Hey guys, just wanted to thank you for starting this thread…as I am currently doing my student teaching assignment and experiencing similar issues.
Have you considered maybe doing the speed/med ball and weights as two separate sessions? As in an either or scenario. That may keep you a little bit fresher and more ready to put in “quality” on your high intensity days.
Best of luck to you guys and I’ll be following this thread to see what answers everyone comes up with.
Naw we can handle doing it all in one day we just couldnt recover enough from it by the time the next session came around. We will be starting the new schedule saturday. I have a feeling that we will be able to handle it much better now.
Keep us posted
I wonder if you did some of your tempo load in the pool or on the bike if it would help?
I do think that the tempo was affecting us. Im gonna see how this new plan goes. I think that the lighter workouts during the week after work will serve some good.