Baton Rouge, LA- Today was a hot one even by Baton Rouge standards. The temp was about 98 degrees with 102% humidity (that’s not a joke….the humidity in Baton Rouge can somehow exceed 100%). The trademark combination of Louisiana heat and humidity brought the heat index well over 115 degrees with it being about 5-10 degrees hotter on the track. Unfortunately for Smoot, we had two sessions planned for the day.
This is what Smoot did in the first session:
- Short Warmup B
- Dynamic Flexibility: Cole
- Sprint Development: Bride (2 x 30m)
- Hurdle Mobility: Skill (2 x 8)
- Speed Development: Stadium Stairs (12x)
- Multi-Throws: Morpheus (3x)
The Short Warmup B is a little more dynamic than Short Warmup A and I like to do it on speed development days to prepare the body for big force production and big ranges of motion. The hurdle skill series is great for regulating stride patterns, teaching rhythm, continuing the warmup process, and increasing dynamic flexibility and hip mobility. Stadium stairs are a favorite training modality of mine at this point of the training cycle. Unlike most however, I use them more as a teaching tool for maximum velocity mechanics than as a means to enhance fitness. For Smoot I thought they’d be particularly valuable. Smoot has difficulty with his postural alignment at top end speed and I’ve found that having athletes run stadium stairs with an emphasis on posture and vertical force application is a great tool for teaching top-end speed mechanics in a simple setting away from the track. Most athlete’s are surprised to find that I don’t use stadium stairs as a puke-inducing workout as most coaches do. This is a prime example where working smarter is more important than working harder. One pitfall I find many fall in to is that they confuse effort with effectiveness. This is most often not the case. We finished the workout with the Morpheus multi-throw series. The first two throwing exercises in this series are between-the-legs-forward (BLF) and overhead-back (OHB) so I used this opportunity to test Smoot on these two indicators of low end power output. Smoot hit 10.40m for the OHB throw and 11.03 for the BLF throw. The numbers themselves weren’t great but I know Smoot is going to make big improvements as he gets more familiar with performing multi-throws and as he gets stronger and more powerful. After lunch and a nap, we headed back out to the track for our second session. This session was primarily a strength development session:
- Warmup: 200m skip + 600m jog
- Dynamic Flexibility: Graham
- Weight Lift:
- Power Clean: 6 x 2
- Lunges: 6 x 5 + 5
- Pullups: 4 x 8
- DB Incline Press: 4 x 5
- OH Medball situp throw: 2 x 8
- Cooldown: 400m choice (skip/jog/walk)
I had Smoot go up to 80% of his max for his last 3 sets of power cleans. I actually wasn’t expecting to go quite so high because I primarily wanted to teach him proper power clean technique but he caught on so quick that I thought it would be safe to bump up the load a little bit. For the lunges and dumbbell incline presses I held Smoot back a little bit and had him use a moderate weight. Smoot finished with OH medball situp throws on the glute-ham machine. These are really tough but Smoot toughed it out.