12/9/2012
Last Week
Our first week went well for the most part. We are searching for an identity right now. We lost a very large group of seniors last year that were out spiritual leaders, and right now it feels like the team is looking around to see who is going to fill that void. Luckily, we seem to have a good group of kids that are willing to work. With sprinters we’ve mostly been concentrating on the little things such as warm-up and drills, but so far they have shown a willingness to concentrate and work hard, and I was really happy with the progress our newcomers made this week. The weather was good, and we were able to get in everything we had planned. It looks like the coming week may not be so cooperative, though.
Distance-wise, it was a rust-busting week after their post-season break from cross country: no goal times on the tempo work, and the other workouts were not what we will eventually consider full workouts. I was a little disappointed in turnout for morning runs the last half of the week. We had a good group on Monday and Tuesday but dwindled after that. Hopefully, they will understand that consistency is key and that the strength they will gain from getting out of bed for some doubles now will pay big dividends down the road.
This Week
This week’s schedule for sprinters and distance runners is nearly identical to last week, but we are forming a third group to focus on the middle ground of the 400/800. This group will, over the course of the season, participate in workouts (or parts of workouts) from both sprint and distance groups or have their own workout depending on what those other groups are doing that week. I left the morning runs on the schedule for this group, but likely only the distance runners dropping down will do them. The sprinters coming up to the 400/800 group likely aren't ready for doubles.
I want to focus on the strength workouts on the schedule this week: circuit training and hill repeats.
Circuit Training
Circuits are simply a way of working your strength training into a running workout. There are as many variations of this workout as your imagination will allow using various exercises and distances. We do them a little differently for sprinters and distance runners, though.
For sprinters, we do all the exercises for a timed interval back-to-back, and then do one sprint at the end rather than running between stations. This is more similar to the single explosive effort that will be required of them in races. A sample sprint circuit might be 20-30 seconds each of jump for height, knee-up jumps, push-ups, crunches, shuffle steps, and mountain climbers, followed by a 200-300m sprint. We do 2-3 circuits in a workout.
While the sprinters usually groan when it’s circuit day, the distance runners for some reason (usually) love this workout. I suppose it’s a nice break from all the long aerobic stuff we do. My favorite circuit is a 6-station, 1600m circuit on the track. We do 20 each of crunches, pushups, body squats, calf raises, lunges, and step-ups with 200m between stations and a 400m after the last station. We do 2-3 circuits in a workout.
The best thing about circuit training is that it can be easily adapted to do inside when the weather is nasty outside. During the winter, I can tell which day will be circuit day simply by looking at the weather forecast for the week. This is my default workout when we have to stay inside.
Hill Repeats
I’ve always been a big believer in hill work, but last year we got really serious about it, and it paid big dividends. We did hills every Saturday that we didn’t have a meet from the beginning of December through the weekend after Mason-Dixon Games (10 sessions). The indoor meets give us a few breaks from the hills. Sprinters did a 200m hill and distance runners did a 400m hill. We started with 5 and worked up over a few weeks to doing 10 in sets of 6 and 4. The rest is jog/walk down.
Form and power is emphasized over getting up the hill as fast as you can. I want to see them lifting their knees and powering with their arms, approaching the old-fashioned Lydiard hill bounding drill for those of you familiar with those. It’s very difficult to keep the knees up going uphill for a long distance, so you generate a lot of stress and power to thrust it up.
I was happy with the sprinters hill workout last year, so we’ll likely leave that as is, but I don’t know that the distance runners got everything I wanted out of it. The 400m hill seemed too long for them to hold good form. They got very strong from them, but they didn’t quite get the speed component I was looking for, so we’re going to tweak the workout some this year and mix up the longer and shorter hills to try to address both. This first week, we did four long (400m) hills and four short (200m) hills, alternating between the two. We will try other variations to see how they go.
We do the hills on Saturday because the hills I want to use aren’t near campus, so it’s difficult to get everybody there after school. If you don’t have access to a hill, you can translate this to a stair workout either inside (if you have more than one floor in your school) or use bleachers or stadium stairs. I prefer to bound the stairs (usually two at a time) rather than run up them to work on lifting the knee and powering up.
Track Workout Schedule for December 10-16, 2012
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Sprint |
400/800 |
Distance |
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Monday, December 10 |
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 20:00-30:00 Run Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 4 x 1200m Tempo w/ 1:00 rest 1 x 300m Sprint Stretching /Core strength |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 3 x 2000m Tempo w/ 1:00 rest 1 x 300m Sprint Stretching /Core strength |
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Tuesday, December 11 |
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 20:00-30:00 Run Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 8 x (600 easy-200 sprint) Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 7-5-3-1 min hard, 5-3-1 min jog 1 x 300m Sprint Stretching /Core strength |
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Wednesday, December 12 |
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up Circuit Training Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 35:00-40:00 Run Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 50:00 Aerobic progression run 6 x 100m Strides Stretching/Core strength |
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Thursday, December 13
PARENT MEETING 6:30pm OCHS CAFETERIA |
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 20:00-30:00 Run Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up/Stretching Circuit Training Stretching
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6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up Circuit Training Stretching
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Friday, December 14 |
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 20:00-30:00 run Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 60:00 Run Stretching |
6:15am @ YMCA: 30:00-40:00 Aerobic run
3:50pm @ Coach G’s Room: Warm-up 50:00 Aerobic progression run 6 x 100m Strides Stretching/Core strength |
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Saturday, December 15 |
8:00am @ Spring Hill Clubhouse: Hill Repeats |
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Sunday, December 16 |
Rest |
Rest |
3:30pm @ South Oldham HS: Warm-up/Stretching 70:00-80:00 Long Run 6 x 100m Strides Stretching |