[quote author="Aaron Springer" date="1245116637"]Star:
About the 3 days of max strength with 2 days of power/explosive strength.Wouldn’t this almost be an overload on the CNS if the athlete was also doing sprint work on the explosive days?
I was under the impression that max strength work is nearly as taxing as explosive work.
[/quote]I believe this to be true. If you are truly pushing yourself on the track and/or in the weight room, you will need recovery between high cns days. Back-to-back high intensity days, on a regular basis, will hinder your progress, which is why I suggested combining the max strength and explosive power into one workout, i.e. complex/contrast training. I think it is great to mix max strength and explosive strength together in the workouts, and actually think it should be fine to combine hypertrophy (which differs from max strength only in load and rep scheme) with power as well. For most athletes who have the time, I think doing accel/max v in the mornings and max strength/power/hypertrophy in the gym that afternoon is manageable IF you follow up that day with a very low intensity recovery day, i.e. intensive tempo. If one wanted to keep circuit training in the plan on those days, I would recommend keeping it very low intensity and low volume. This may be what Mike was suggesting when he mentioned being in the weight room up to six days per week.
Further more, in off-season and early gpp, the time to really work on strength and hypertrophy, most of your sprint work would be accel. And, if an athlete still did not feel they had the CNS reserves, or time, for such a split, they could simply periodize their training using mini-blocks of two to three weeks. Alternating blocks could be used to shift the focus on High CNS days from sprinting to weight room and vice versa. For example, during a ‘sprint block’ you could increase the intensity/volume of accel and max v work while decreasing the intensity and volume in the weight room. During the ‘strength block’, you would do just the opposite. How much you back off of one or the other is strictly a function of the individual’s ability to cope with, and recover from, the stress load. For most sub-elite athletes, I think you can sprint hard in the a.m. and lift hard in the p.m. and not have too many issues. If your body tells you different, decrease the volume/intensity of whichever is not the primary focus at that point in time.
As far as the running goes, I’m wondering could you do extensive tempo/recovery work on the track and work power in the weight room on the same day?
I know that many people do this, and I’m not aware that there is a major problem with it. Just do the higher intensity work first. I do know that respected sprint coaches like Charlie Francis who are big on CNS management stress the Hi-Lo training thing, preferring to keep high intensity days distinct from low intensity/recovery days.