Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

What do you guys think about sprinting and lifting on thurs. if you are competing on saturday?

For example right now our coach has us doing ..

Monday-Speed or Speed Endurance/Lift
Tues-Ext tempo
Wed-Active recovery circut in pool
Thurs-Special Endurance (3-4 x300)/ Lift
Fri-Pre-meet

He said he wants us to take 2 recovery days before the second workout. He feels this is important unless we are on the verge of qualifying for NCAA'S in an event or up until our conference meet, and nationals. I personally think that we should have an extra day to recover before a competition rather than mid week beofre a workout. What do you guys think? Will this affect my performance or is it right what he is doing?

*We talking about college athletes here running in the high 21 -22 second range in the 200 and sub 50 in the 400.

I wouldn't see why not. I am a high school athlete and my indoor meet was on sunday and friday i ran 2x30 and 3x60 and did weights and on sunday I ended up running a PB in the 60. But then again who knows, maybe if I would of taken friday off or asa light day i could of ran faster? Who knows, but sicne Ohio High Schools do not have a indoor season and we just run in open meets, i don't take indoor meets seriously then i just use htem to chart my progress.

Quik-

this is just what i do as a coach (h.s.) of jumpers….this does depend on the caliber of the meet on a fri. or sat. too, but I often have mon./wed. lift with just one day rest in between heavy days.  Early in the season when we're training through meets, i will definitely only rest one day (fri.) if we have a sat. invite.  That thursday will usually be lifting as well, just much lower intensity (body circuits). 

Looking at the weekly workout you posted above, I would say the only difference in intensities between yours and what i do would be a lower volume of running (SE, Ext. tempo)...since I know you are a sprinter as well as long jumper.

But overall, to try and answer your question, I don't see any problem with that workout plan, especially if the sat. comp. is "less significant."  You might very well find that your times/jumps in this meet will be quality and that you've reacted well to short rest.

As always though…just an opinion.  Good luck to you this week.

Thanks for the reply as always. Ill let you knwo how it goes.

Last week with 1 day rest and 2 practices a day i went 22.75 in the 200 and 21'5 taking off 6 inches before the board only on 3 jumps. (I failed to make finals by 2 spots)

We train through most of the season and it's not unusual for us to even have what many would consider a hard day just prior to competing. Results don't seem to suffer too much and the "big picture" result (NCAA performance) always seems to come out right. If you weren't training for NCAAs then I think the same thing could apply for a conference meet. In your example, however I think things could be organized a little better, especially if the Thursday session was going to be run VERY fast.

What would you suggest to organize it better?

Hey mike,

Do you think you could get away with putting the second SE day on Wednesday and moving the active recovery day to Thursday this way there's two easy days prior to a meet, yet they still get in two hard days of lifting and running during the week?

400-

That's what I was looking at as well, and as a coach, how I would organize it.  Mon./Wed. being the high demand CNS days (both lifting/running)...but in addition, train Thursday as well (lower demands but still working hard) with med balls, gs circuits.  I think in this case the one day of rest on friday is plenty.

And like Mike mentioned, they will sometimes go through weeks with very little rest prior to a competition.  It's interesting to note that some athletes respond differently to various bouts of rest in regards to training.  I've been around athletes who on almost any occasion, require little rest and yet compete at their highest level week in and week out.

Quik,
I don't think the workouts will affect your performance.  I've trained that way throughout college and now.  I just hadn't done 4x300, but I had done intense work.  If I'm not mistaken Wednesday is a pool day, which will be a low impact workout, which will help you to recover.  Just be sure to be hydrated throughout all this, hitting your post workout protocols, and getting plenty of sleep.  You knew all this so I just wasted 5 minutes of my life.  Goodluck this weekend. :tumble:

There you go Quik…those results stack up pretty well with your indoor pb's.  21-5 in LJ and you lost about 14 inches total at takeoff (would have been new pb??).

22.75 200 and it's early yet…keep up the good work.  I would have to say (just a reaction to what i've read) you reacted well to the short rest.

Just to add to what I mentioned in my previous post, we have a meet today and yesterday we did our standard pre-comp / comp Friday workout without an revisions. This had our normal warmup series (dyn. warmup, static & dyn. flex., sprint drills, hurd. mob.), acceleration development, weights, and multi-throws.