Repeat Speed Training Block

A couple of weeks ago over the Christmas break I decided to do a repeat speed training block. Reason 1 is because I wasn't sure of what gym stuff I would access too and I'd done about a million squats since September so I due for a new stimulus.

I also knew I might be sketchy with my footy training appearances so I thought if I just do this now then I'll have it under my belt and I can build on it a bit more in 4 or so weeks time while maintaining now.

So I had 2 workouts I alternated with and I trained every 2nd day until all 8 sessions were completed. I didn't make this up by the way and I actually don't know where I got it from but I found in my archives so credit to someone for this.

Session 1

40m sprint every 30secs x 5 sets + 20m sprint every 20secs x 10 sets + 10m sprint every 10secs x 10 sets.

The 40m sprints progressed from 5 to 7 to 10 to 12.

The 20m sprints progressed from 10 to 12 to 15 to 17.

The 10m sprints progressed from 10 to 15 to 20 to 20 (same 2 sessions in a row).

Session 2

I wanted to incorporate some agility into this as well so I did a 16 - 17m up and back sprint (I counted steps and it was my foot x 55 up and back).

If your not conditioning your self to sprint stop, change direction and sprint again then rethink your program. Rarely will clubs do this, or do this properly and I know my club hasn't done it since I've been there.

Anyway it started with 2 x 8 x ub with 24secs rest with each sprint taking 7 - 8secs. Even if it took slightly longer I just kept the rest at 24secs. This progressed from 2 x 8 to 2 x 10 to 2 x 12 to 2 x 14.

There was a surprising amount of volume in this when I added this up too:

Session 1 progressed from 500 to 670 to 900 to 1020m. Session 2 progressed from 640 to 800 to 940 to 1200m.

The total volume covered in the 8 sessions totaling 5490m. 6kms of high quality sprints is a great result in 16 days. I'm really not into "slow" sprints (200's anyone?). Bare in mind that elite sprinters can hold max velocity (top end speed) for maybe 2 -3secs before they start to slow down and you can see how the further you make the sprint, the less of a sprint it actually is. They don't have any carryover to a real game of footy and if they do then you should be teaching your players to rotate far more often.

My results were quite pleasing too even though with block training your best results won't come until the same amount of time as the block has come around. This is because block training is used to specifically train a strength or fitness quality so as to over train it somewhat so then you give it a rest and let it super compensate where hopefully it comes back bigger and better then before. So for a 2 week block mine, I'll see the major benefits in a weeks time.

I took a lot of heart rates in between "portions" of workouts as well as after them. Fitness is not a matter of how far you can. It can be, but footy fitness has a great speed element so therefore there must be a time limit or distance limit that's relative to footy. 10kms at a jogging pace is not relative to footy because if you did that on a Saturday without sprinting you would not touch the ball.

With these bursts of speed comes fatigue which is really where you're fitness comes in because it's how fast you can recover to go again at top speed that makes you a fit player.

At the completion of my workout I always finished up in the 174 - 186 heart rate range which is 95 - 100% of my heart rate max so I was working extremely hard each and every session.

Even though the volume increased each session my heart rates still only took 3 - 5mins to return to 60% of my heart rate max which is when I would go again if it was between portions of a session. If you go toonearly when you;re not recovered enough then those 7sec sprints will be 9 or 10sec sprints and you're done. This is a clear example of why possessing speed is also important and again if you're not training it then what's the point of training repeat speed? What are you actually repeating?

Back to heart rate recovery, I also used some diaphragmatic breathing during recovery which got me back to 60% far quicker then just regular breathing. I would strongly suggest that when you finish up an intense activity then do 30 - 60secs of diaphragmatic breathing to get your self back to a parasympathetic state and thus quicken up recovery.

Anyway my current block is now geared back towards to speed with a block on developing stiffness in the lower leg. This block will go for 5 weeks but it's not very demanding as it's a lot of low level jumps and hops so I'll still be able to do some maintenance work for repeat speed and aerobic capacity and go to footy training when work allows.


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