Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

It is generally agreed that sprinters need some low intensity or tempo run days.  Can the same be said for jumpers or is the “tempo” work mostly replaced with technical work and drills?  I ask because in the past I have had sprinters who also jumped so I just trained them almost as pure sprinters.  For the first time now I have several pure jumpers with limited sprint talent.

I’m not sure what you mean with ‘technical work and drills’, but if we’re talking actual jumping, then it’s questionable if that’s to be regarded as low-intensity.

I think it can be a good idea to monitor how they seem to respond to tempo, mixture of tempo & circuit or just circuit. Perhaps it would be a good idea to create something like the following routine:

1… Warmup as a miniature tempo; something like 4-8x 100m on grass with a walk between runs.

2… Low-intensity drills mixed-in with a circuit session.

It’s also possible to end a technical work/drills session with a miniature tempo routine. Can you show the kind of microcycle setup you use, so that it would be easier to see your question in context?

You definitely need to add low intensity days but they don’t necessarily have to be tempo runs. Anything from an extended warm up to the pool could be used as a low intensity or recovery day. I believe in putting technical work such as drills and approach work at the very beginning of a training session, then short or medium approach jumps, followed by sprints or something of the like. This type of training session should always be done when the athlete is fresh. I usually follow this type of session on the next day with some short to medium interval work, along with lower intensity bounding etc. the next day would be the low intensity day or recovery day.

Being a jumper, I’ve come to really like a tempo day and a circuit day as recovery.  I like having the (little and slow) running jumpers come by in practice and think it makes me feel more “in shape”.  If by technical work you mean short approach jumps, I particularly dont like that, my body doesnt take it very well. 

What have you been doing with them this year?