1st 2 Week Block Down, 2 To Go

In my previous post I went into a little detail of my off season program that I put together and started 2 weeks ago.

The program is running for 42 days where I'm doing something everyday. I posted a list of what I'm covering in my previous post too but here's a refresher with a little detail of what I'm doing for each.

Increasing sprinting speed is the focus for this program. I might not increase speed dramatically during this time but more so building a great deal of sprinting work capacity while I get my strength levels back up to off season levels. I would guess that I'll hit "peak" speed just before Christmas.

So for sprinting I'm doing acceleration, max velocity and basic 40 meter sprinting days. Each day is low volume where I'm just doing enough to get a training effect then going home with minimal fatigue because I gotta go back out there the next day. This is the focus of the whole program actually, to do a lot of high quality work rather then a lot of fatigue work. I'm sprinting everyday that I can weather and soreness permitting (I actually sprinted in the rain twice this week!!).

Bounding variations are probably the best sprinting technique exercises you can do so I'm using them as a warm up on each sprinting day alternating low and high volume days with different bounding variations that alternate high and low eccentric stress.

An overlooked part of athletic perfection is the foot and ankle complex which I have gone into detail about here, here and here. I have separated them into foot/ankle complex exercises and stiffness/relaxation exercises which are also done in the warm up during my sprint session. I actually do sprints in the am and then gym in the pm and most days are 2-a-days. These are done everyday regardless of what I'm doing.

In the gym I'm doing 30 day hip thrust program developed by glute specialist Bret Contreras. I have actually neglected glute activation stuff a little bit since last September but I did a short cycle of hip thrusts where I managed to reach 115kgs x 5. I do feel these in my back a fair bit at times though so I've really downsized the load a bit for this and am going strictly on feel for these. The biggest reason though is that if you read enough of his research stuff, hip thrusts have a greater carryover to sprinting then almost any exercise including squats and deadlifts.

I do these first in the gym and follow them up with some basic Olympic stuff for low volume on each squatting day so 5 times a week. I'll keep these in up until Christmas so I'm in no hurry to load them up maximally at the moment. I'll just continue to do what I'm doing and work up slowly. These are used for a combination of rate of force development, upper back and posteriour development, force absorption and even a bit of foot / ankle complex and stiffness / relaxation stuff too.

The squat program is the 40 day program developed by Dan John where you do a lot of sub maximal squat work in a short period of time. Really if want to improve something would you do it once a week or everyday?

For a bit more posteriour chain development which can never have too much of where on every squat day I alternate through romanian deadlifts, swings and nordic hamstring curls. These can cause a little bit of soreness so again volume is low as the hamstrings can get plastered by the max velocity and 40 meter sprint days.

On my off days from lower body gym work I throw in some upper body stuff where I'm doing a high volume, sub maximal bench press cycle. If you're aware of Sheiko then you'll know it can be hell, if not then read here. I'm doing the bench press workouts from that article but only 2/week as it's not really a focus of mine anymore but I'd still like to improve it a little as it waves up and down a bit for me for reasons I don't know.

On these upper body days I'm also alternating through bent rows, chin ups and db chest supported rows matching up with the volume of bench presses on that day.

So that's what I'm doing.

Tomorrow is the last day of block 1 then I've reorganised things a bit for block 2 but it's basically still the same.

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