Training For Speed

I’m in a phase of training for speed/explosiveness, as you might guess from the PAP workout I posted last week. Along with my training I’ve been reading some old literature on the subject that’s both fun and compelling. The best of these is a book called Speed Trap, by Charlie Francis. Francis was the coach of sprinter Ben Johnson (among others) who was most famous for testing positive for steroids after setting the world 100m record in the Seoul Olympics. Speed Trap is an honest account of the drug protocol used in those days but, more interestingly, he straightforwardly tells how his group of athletes got so fast. Francis, a former sprinter himself, taps the mind of the most successful coaches in the world (including many of the notorious eastern block) and uses his own experience as a runner to improve upon what they’d done. He had spectacular success and is still regarded as one of the greatest minds in the history of sport.

Along with Speed Trap Francis wrote other—more technical books—that can be found on his web site that still appears to be working even though he passed away in 2010. For anyone interested in training for speed this is required reading/viewing. Also found a cool interview over at T-Nation. It’s more fun than practical but has a few gems and worth a few minutes of your time. The first half covers drugs and hypocrisy in sport and, in my mind, is less interesting although you’ll get a good idea of Francis’ direct nature with quotes like, You wouldn't let a plumber loose in your house without him having trained under supervision. Yet we have coaches who sent away for a mail order course or get classified as a level four or whatever just because they passed an exam. There's a program in Canada that says, "Doesn't your child deserve a certified coach?" Then you see the work that these idiots do! I think the word is certifiable, not "certified." They take a good concept and turn it into crap.

The second half gets into some training protocol, from the importance of not overtraining and recovery: If an athlete hits a personal best, you usually stop the workout, regardless of what's left on the paper. Why is that? Well, it's dangerous. The time people get hurt is the next session after they've had a tremendous performance. Not just because they're psyched up and trying to beat their PR, but because their bodies haven't recovered from it. With very heavy weights it can take ten to twelve days to get over a maximal lift, same thing in sprinting. There's a huge difference between 95 and 100% performance. To the dangers of single rep exercises: The reason for that is once an athlete gets to a certain level of strength, you'd almost never be working at singles because it's too dangerous. Ben never worked with singles, certainly not in the lower body. Why take the risk? To stretching protocol: This used to be frowned on in the US, I know, but ballistic stretching has it's place provided the athlete is loose. Static stretching and when you're trying to increase the range should be at the end of the workout. Not only is this the safest time to do that type of stretching, but it also speeds up recovery. You can shorten your recovery by up to four hours by stretching everything out at the end of the session. That's the time to go for increased range. To supplements: There’s a lot of things out there that are very good, the problem is in how much and when. Creatine can be very helpful and very harmful. For example, jetlag can cause an athlete to lose fluid out of the muscles and into the tissue surrounding it. By taking creatine you can bring the fluid back to its normal levels inside the muscle cells and allow the proper transfer of nutrients across the cell membranes to speed recovery. You'll also have more fuel available for the activity. The downside is if you pump too much fluid in there you decrease the ability of the muscle to move over itself because it's too pumped up. Then you're at risk of injury. So there's a very fine balance, as in all things. He even discussed PAP, though not be name, and says he didn’t use it as it was yet to be perfected so it made sense. Took Marcus and P3 to do that.

Speed Month

The World Championships is a short race and I’ve spent most of the last decade doing ultra events. I need to be faster, so July is going to target power and explosiveness, which equal speed. Hello postactivation potention.

Pure speed is one of the harder elements to improve because it takes more than simply getting into shape. You need to train both your musculature and your nervous system to respond differently to stimulus. Getting fit is a natural extension of exercising but getting fast takes targeted training, which is not always as much fun.

But I recently did a short mountain bike race, our state championships, to qualify for nationals and got my ass handed to me in spectacular fashion. I qualified but lost nearly a minute per mile to the winner. Ouch! Speed has always been an allies (I was a sprinter in high school) but the last decade of going long and slow has retrained my body so it no longer knows how to be fast. In order to be competitive in Spain some major reprogramming is in order.

summer transformation goal

I do actually find this training fun. The downside is less time playing with my friends. Now instead of going out for a ride, run, or climb being a focal point of my training it’s what I do on rest days. Training consists of drills, intervals, and PAP.

The latter is the key. If you follow TSD you know what this is, and why it comprises the third phase of P90X2. If not read this. And this. And if you’re very curious dig though all of these posts.

Essentially my schedule looks like the third training bock of P90X2, with some sports specific stuff added. This form of PAP—that the general public is about to get a taste of—is the epitome of applied science for athletes. And though I’ve already done some experiments with PAP complexing I’ve never been focused on improving my speed. Basically I’m headed back into the lab and it’ll be interesting to see how the experiments shake out.

Power & Aging

Power is the strength athlete’s Holy Grail. Power (absolute strength) training is our crack. It’s addicting, and I’ve know many athletes over the years who eschew everything, even their sport’s performance, in pursuit of numbers that indicate absolute strength. 100% efficiency is the goal. At 101% you’re injured. It’s the one thing in sport that truly is extreme. It’s dangerous. It’s fun. And it’s vital if you want to achieve your body’s potential.

Yesterday I had one of the best training sessions I’ve had in years. I did all the moves on my project simulation with a 10lb weight vest. I increased my performance on every set of my hangboard workout. I did a few moves on the campus board that I’ve been too scared to even attempt this decade. When it was over I felt as though I was just warming up. I iced my fingers as a precaution. I’ve been down this road many times and had an idea of what was in store.

This morning my heart rate was high, the first indicator of breakdown. My morning yoga practice was then very difficult. I’m much stiffer than normal; a reaction to the microtrauma incurred from trying to recruit high threshold muscle cell motor units. Over the coming weeks I’m going to have to be very careful. I’ve not completed a power training phase without injury or overtraining in at least a decade.

Aging sharpens the edge the strength athlete teeters on. Our fast-twitch muscle fiber decreases, as does the amount of various hormones that allow us to access it. The fast-twitch muscle we have recovers even slower than it did when we were young. And those inevitable 101% attempts set us back even further. It’s no surprise that there are hoards of aging endurance athletes. There are very few power athletes.

I try and explore the boundaries of both power and endurance. My challenges appear endurance oriented on the surface, mainly because anything that may be remotely impressive to an onlooker is their volume. But the thing of interest, for me, is the limit of human performance and this includes absolute strength. For this reason there is always a power element involved. Boulder problems, onsighting climbs, reacting to single track during the night, etc, all require engaging fast-twitch muscle fibers.

We don’t make power workouts for Beachbody. We have power elements within our workouts. Both P90X and Insanity have a lot of plyometric work, which is the essence of power training. But it’s tempered so that you can do a lot of reps. Absolute strength training is about maximal recruitment and, ultimately, the one rep max. But this like training under the Sword of Damocles. At some point it’s going to fall. To train for health and fitness it isn’t necessary. Only athletes play beneath it.

The quandary is that power training is healthy. High recruitment leads to hormonal release which is effectively anti-aging. The closer to 100% you can safely train the more effective your workout program will be. And that’s why I’m here, playing the lab rat so that you don’t have to. My goal is to find what that safe range is, and then how to increase it. This time, damnit, I’m going to get it right!

pic: photos of yore: phil campusing at the castle.