Baton Rouge, LA- Today was our first real day of training. Because I want to get a really clear picture of Smoot’s abilities we will be continuing with more diagnostic and assessment tests throughout the course of the week. However unlike previous sessions, the testing sessions from this point on will be integrated in to the training session. I’ve also decided to have Smoot do split sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday so as to help him recover and better handle the work load. We’ll be doing quite a bit of intense work, most of which will be completely new to Smoot and I don’t want him to get so sore or drained that he can’t train well for the duration of his stay. Here is our AM session:
- Warmup: 200m skip + 600m jog
- Dynamic Flexibility: Graham (10x)
- Test:
- Power Clean
- Squat
- Cooldown: 400m skip/jog
- Static Stretch: Partner
In most cases, I’d usually place the weight session after the day’s speed session but because I wanted to test Smoot’s lower body strength / power indicators while he was in an unfatigued state I decided to place the weight workout as the first session in the split routine. Smoot power cleaned a respectable 214 lbs. This isn’t bad considering he’s new to the lift and hasn’t ever done power cleans with a heavy load. His technique needs some cleaning up but I wanted him to keep his intensity high for the session and not have him focus on changing his technique so I bit my lip on providing technical cues. He ended up hitting 285 lbs in the squat…a nice starting point.
After lunch and a 3 hour break we hit the track again for our PM session:
- Short Warmup A
- Dynamic Flexibility: Merrill (10x)
- Sprint Development: Bill (2 x 30m)
- Hurdle Mobility: Dynamic (2 x 8)
- Acceleration Development:
- 4 x 10m
- 4 x 15m
- 4 x 20m
- Multi-Jumps: Tony (4x)
- Cooldown: 400m choice (skip/jog/walk)
- Assisted stretching and spinal manipulation
We really got a lot done in this session. Smoot tends to have poor sprinting posture and doesn’t do a good job of pushing himself upright but I changed his starting position and had him concentrate on pushing himself into a more upright position with each step and it really cleaned things up nicely. In the multi-jumps, Smoot has some spring in his step but his posture is again a limiting factor. The jump series I chose was a series of short jumps and he tends to lunge in to most of the jumps rather than really projecting his hips. As with the acceleration development though, I saw some huge improvements as he progressed through the series. I tried to emphasize vertical pushes, flat foot landings and a more upright posture and Smoot seemed to get better on command. We concluded the workout with some assisted stretching and spinal manipulation. Amazingly, much of his functional leg length discrepancy that I spoke of earlier appears to be gone. His gait patterns are still quite asymmetrical but I suspect much of this is residual artifact from his previously locked up sacroiliac. I will continue to work on this issue as the week progresses and hopefully we’ll see the same rate of progress as I have over the past two days
.