We often think of Plan B as something we go to when things go wrong (e.g., when athletes get beat up, weather conditions, injuries). But what about going to Plan B when things go right?Yesterday we had a Sprint-Float-Sprint workout planned with 6-8 mins break. The first run went so well, exceptionally well, that I had to make an important decision. I could:a) adhere to the rest/recovery time on th
Plan B
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What was the preworkout acessment? Any signs that the day was going to go as it did?
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Maybe I’m missing something, but why was it a good thing to lengthen the recovery because things were going great in a SFS session? What are the gains from making that decision?
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DK – training has been going really well. I’m not easliy impressed/blown away. We did 3 SFS Runs — 50-50-50; 40-40-40; and finished with a 30-30-30 as planned. She did SLJ of 3.09m earlier in the week (a PR by 3cm).
Jay – it was a speed/speed endurance workout. The goal was to have high quality and not to let the power output drop. If i has stuck to the 6-8 mins rest the SFS 120 would have been horrendous. As it was 10 mins wasn’t enough btw the SFS 150 and SFS 120 and so I went to 12 mins before the SFS 90.
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Wow – a SLJ of 3.09m (>10′)is huge for a female!
That’s in the >91% of “World Class” athletes (if Chu’s table can be trusted)!
% Rank Females Males
91 -100 2.94 – 3.15 metres 3.40 – 3.75 metres
81 – 90 2.80 – 2.93 metres 3.10 – 3.39 metres
71 – 80 2.65 – 2.79 metres 2.95 – 3.09 metres
61 – 70 2.50 – 2.64 metres 2.80 – 2.94 metres
51 – 60 2.35 – 2.49 metres 2.65 – 2.79 metres
41 – 50 2.20 – 2.34 metres 2.50 – 2.64 metres
31 – 40 2.05 – 2.19 metres 2.35 – 2.49 metres
21 – 30 1.90 – 2.04 metres 2.20 – 2.34 metres
11 – 20 1.75 – 1.89 metres 2.05 – 2.19 metres
1 – 10 1.60 – 1.74 metres 1.90 – 2.04 metresTable reference: D.A. Chu; Explosive Power and Strength; Human Kinetics; 1996
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DK – training has been going really well. I’m not easliy impressed/blown away. We did 3 SFS Runs — 50-50-50; 40-40-40; and finished with a 30-30-30 as planned. She did SLJ of 3.09m earlier in the week (a PR by 3cm).
Jay – it was a speed/speed endurance workout. The goal was to have high quality and not to let the power output drop. If i has stuck to the 6-8 mins rest the SFS 120 would have been horrendous. As it was 10 mins wasn’t enough btw the SFS 150 and SFS 120 and so I went to 12 mins before the SFS 90.
I see. I did not know you were doing 50s, 40s, and 30s. I was thinking more along the lines of 10m, 15m, 20m flys. Your explanation makes sense.
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I have a question concerning a plan B option. Do you think on a meet day, if I were to have my runners do, for example, 4-5 x 15m flys with a 25m run-in during their warmup……would that be a good idea? Would that help them? Hinder them? Or have no effect? Thoughts?
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This is directed at Kebba but can be answered by anyone. I noticed that you are doing SFS in season? and I wondered how your athletes handle the change in speeds in season. I have had a prior conversation with UT about this and since moved away SFS and use them sparingly due to the CNS demand. I typically will do about 3-4 sessions a year now.
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I have a question concerning a plan B option. Do you think on a meet day, if I were to have my runners do, for example, 4-5 x 15m flys with a 25m run-in during their warmup……would that be a good idea? Would that help them? Hinder them? Or have no effect? Thoughts?
It depends on how much effort you are putting into the flys. If you were to have the athletes running these all out, I would say that it is a recipe for disaster. Given that most of the athletes could possibly be warming up more than once, you would be putting in 60-120m of flys + 125m-250m of accel volume. That is a workout in itself let alone have anything left for the race.
We usually go with about two 30m blocks , 1 x 60m blocks @ 80-90% about 15-20 min prior to racing for short sprinters.
And I usually go with 2 x 30m blocks , 1 x 60m fly and 1 x 120m fly for long sprinters. The 60 and 120 are relaxed and fast and complete 20 minutes prior to racing. I would say that they are about 80% effort for the fly’s.
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I have a question concerning a plan B option. Do you think on a meet day, if I were to have my runners do, for example, 4-5 x 15m flys with a 25m run-in during their warmup……would that be a good idea? Would that help them? Hinder them? Or have no effect? Thoughts?
I agree that is too much, indoors I would go 1-2 flys with a 20-30 acc zone and 10m fly. Outdoors short sprinters 2×30 3pt, 2x over speed starts, 1×60-80 standing sprint. Long sprinters 2×30 3pt, 1×150 85-90%.
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This is directed at Kebba but can be answered by anyone. I noticed that you are doing SFS in season? and I wondered how your athletes handle the change in speeds in season. I have had a prior conversation with UT about this and since moved away SFS and use them sparingly due to the CNS demand. I typically will do about 3-4 sessions a year now.
With my athletes I’ll use it all through indoor. Once outdoor begins I usually scrap it though. This has worked well for me and mine.
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All good points and comments guys. What about this…
What is everyone’s thoughts on having a session (for example, a SE2 session like 4 x 250m at 90% with 8′ recovery) the day before an indoor meet? The thinking would be to simulate a two-day championship meet with rounds and finals.
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if anything why not do something like that the day after the meet? You may also want to consider doing the session two days after the meet.
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All good points and comments guys. What about this…
What is everyone’s thoughts on having a session (for example, a SE2 session like 4 x 250m at 90% with 8′ recovery) the day before an indoor meet? The thinking would be to simulate a two-day championship meet with rounds and finals.
This is tricky. It takes a long time for the CNS to recover from two hard days in a row. In excess of 10 days depending on the training age of the athlete. From a mental standpoint, your athletes might not like running in a meet after working out hard the previous day. That is going to depend on how you set them up though.
IMHO, I tend to stay away from high risk situations like the one you are describing. I think that my normal week somewhat prepares the athlete for back to back efforts. Also, we have a lot of two day meets in college that allow for racing friday and saturday. But I don’t like to push the limits of my athletes too often. I have seen many a good athlete get seasons destroyed because they are used in too many events too often.
For example, we did accels and fly’s on a monday. Then came back on tuesday with this workout.
300-60-60-60 1′,1′,1′
10′
250-60-60 1′,1
10′
200-60 1′
10′
150These two days of hard sprinting back to back made her dip down for about 10 days. I did this workout with at least one month out from conference because of how long it takes to recover from both monday and tuesday. By the following tuesday, she started coming around again, but still didn’t run the pace she was running during the workout. I was foolish though thinking that by saturday she would feel somewhat ok and I had to revert to plan B, plan C and so on.
You are thinking of some good concepts but you can only dip into the well so often and so deep before it runs dry. I like to take a lot of small buckets with a big bucket thrown in there very seldom.
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All good points and comments guys. What about this…
What is everyone’s thoughts on having a session (for example, a SE2 session like 4 x 250m at 90% with 8′ recovery) the day before an indoor meet? The thinking would be to simulate a two-day championship meet with rounds and finals.
Oddly enough I had an athlete do something similar prior to their second meet of the season. This athlete was coming off her third transitional phase of a L-S program with the meet event being a 300 however.
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[quote author="Jay Turner" date="1266933036"]All good points and comments guys. What about this…
What is everyone’s thoughts on having a session (for example, a SE2 session like 4 x 250m at 90% with 8′ recovery) the day before an indoor meet? The thinking would be to simulate a two-day championship meet with rounds and finals.
Oddly enough I had an athlete do something similar prior to their second meet of the season. This athlete was coming off her third transitional phase of a L-S program with the meet event being a 300 however.[/quote]OK, so going by your experiences, lets say, and again these are all examples, the athlete were to do the 4 x 250 session I mentioned above (90% with 8′ recovery). Lets say the meet events the next day were 200m, 400m, 4 x 200m, 4 x 400m. How do you think that would work?
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[quote author="W.E. Price" date="1266997336"][quote author="Jay Turner" date="1266933036"]All good points and comments guys. What about this…
What is everyone’s thoughts on having a session (for example, a SE2 session like 4 x 250m at 90% with 8′ recovery) the day before an indoor meet? The thinking would be to simulate a two-day championship meet with rounds and finals.
Oddly enough I had an athlete do something similar prior to their second meet of the season. This athlete was coming off her third transitional phase of a L-S program with the meet event being a 300 however.[/quote]OK, so going by your experiences, lets say, and again these are all examples, the athlete were to do the 4 x 250 session I mentioned above (90% with 8′ recovery). Lets say the meet events the next day were 200m, 400m, 4 x 200m, 4 x 400m. How do you think that would work?[/quote]
That’s a shit load of work.
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[quote author="Jay Turner" date="1267078383"][quote author="W.E. Price" date="1266997336"][quote author="Jay Turner" date="1266933036"]All good points and comments guys. What about this…
What is everyone’s thoughts on having a session (for example, a SE2 session like 4 x 250m at 90% with 8′ recovery) the day before an indoor meet? The thinking would be to simulate a two-day championship meet with rounds and finals.
Oddly enough I had an athlete do something similar prior to their second meet of the season. This athlete was coming off her third transitional phase of a L-S program with the meet event being a 300 however.[/quote]OK, so going by your experiences, lets say, and again these are all examples, the athlete were to do the 4 x 250 session I mentioned above (90% with 8′ recovery). Lets say the meet events the next day were 200m, 400m, 4 x 200m, 4 x 400m. How do you think that would work?[/quote]
That’s a shit load of work.[/quote]Even though W.E. said his athlete only did a 300, that was kinda what I was getting at.
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Wow! That is a lot of work – on both days. My athlete (female) was coming off 7-9 mile micro loading before she opened the indoor season. I had her do something like 3×360+ a day prior to the meet. She ran a personal best in the event and came back less than 15 minutes later for a fairly decent 4x200r split.
Regarding your example Jay I would have to consider both the front and back end, particularly what was to follow (300’s throughout the month was my example). For this athlete I knew she could handle the event distance. And since my time with her ended a week prior to the meet I wanted to make sure that she was “protected” and confident. The 360’s were full gaited runs, relaxed and slightly less than maximal race velocity (with 10/15 min recoveries).
My followup recommendation for this athlete (100/200 sprinter) was to shorten that session with split runs and increase the incidence of acceleration and EFE-10/5/10 runs three days out from scheduled comp. And since she seemed better prepared from her initial race I didn’t see the need for anything but relaxed albeit focused tempo the day before.
Unfortunately her handlers fell asleep at the wheel. C’est la vie.
Though getting back to your example Jay, unless there was something I was working on that wasn’t in place or I feared I wouldn’t see in a meet, I probably wouldn’t go too often with your suggested work session. And I certainly would have a relative foundation in place with subsequent possibilities for “plan B’s”! If that athlete was working from a S-L training year program and given the events you mentioned I would opt for progressive step-up splits the day before. Just saying…
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DK – training has been going really well. I’m not easliy impressed/blown away. We did 3 SFS Runs — 50-50-50; 40-40-40; and finished with a 30-30-30 as planned. She did SLJ of 3.09m earlier in the week (a PR by 3cm).
Jay – it was a speed/speed endurance workout. The goal was to have high quality and not to let the power output drop. If i has stuck to the 6-8 mins rest the SFS 120 would have been horrendous. As it was 10 mins wasn’t enough btw the SFS 150 and SFS 120 and so I went to 12 mins before the SFS 90.
Well what if the session was a straight 150, 120, 90 (no SFS)? Would it have still been beneficial to lengthen the rest as this would have been a complete speed endurance session (not a hybrid speed speed endurance)?
Also, how were you able to tell from the first run that this athlete was running this well?
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