SpeedEndurance.com

Research Review: Testosterone, Growth Hormone, Nutrition and Training

Jimson Lee — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Here is a follow up on my case study on How to Track and Improve your Testosterone & Zinc levels Naturally with InsideTracker.

Q – SpeedEndurance.com: After reading Dr. Stone’s interview, it seems that heavy training is important to help hormones for power and recovery. Any special considerations regarding nutrition and training that I should be aware of to maximize my testosterone and growth hormone levels? What can I do naturally to get an edge in speed, power and strength events? I heard brief workouts keep testosterone up and ZMA helps. Any ideas here?

Answer: Unfortunately very little can be done to increase hormone levels, unless you are severely impaired by overtraining or are malnourished. The endocrine system already does a great job regulating itself, but you can ensure optimized training and recovery by getting adequate nutrition. The classic Hakkinen and Komi study on junior weightlifters showed an increase of testosterone and power over time, but hormonal levels proved more difficult to interpret.

Training should challenge the body so that it learns to adapt to the demands of stress and competition. Those that have more power are more resistant to injury and overtraining. Research has found that intense, explosive multi-joint exercises elicit favorable adaptations for speed and power athletes. Sports teams with less training time benefit from maximizing, but throwing events do have the luxury of including more power-based exercises. Acute hormonal response from intense exercise is very difficult to monitor, so it’s best to look at changes over time rather than week to week. Sometimes (hormone) downregulation has had rebound effects in performance, but this hasn’t been proven in the scientific literature without invasive measurements..

Proper nutrition starts with the basics, such as caloric needs and basic micronutrient needs. No legal supplement has been shown to increase testosterone, but current protein and carbohydrate drinks have anabolism benefits without increasing testosterone. Growth hormone is very misunderstood and currently nothing can be done to increase the levels naturally in athletes. ZMA is popular, but research shows it does nothing for normal athletes who aren’t severely deficient. In fact, most athletes have normal levels of zinc and magnesium, although it may still be wise to monitor mineral levels during heavy training periods.

In summary, you should think about preserving your natural anabolic profile by simply getting sufficient sleep, making better food choices, and progressively overloading the body. Baseline screening of testosterone is a great way to create a handy reference to refer to if you see signs of overtraining – although by then it’s usually too late. To successfully avoid overtraining, experts suggest that you should get screened 3-4 times a year. Remember that you don’t need to have high testosterone to be a world-class athlete, but having low testosterone may be a sign of something wrong in either your training or diet.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) for Sprinters & Power Athletes

Jimson Lee — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Every week, ithlete will cover general questions on training and recovery, as well as specific best practices with Heart Rate Variability (HRV).

If you have a general question or a specific question on how to use ithlete you can email ithlete.support@myithlete.com.

Q1 – SpeedEndurance.com: A lot of coaches use the term “stimulate” or “deplete”, what are examples of this type of training and how does one decide what to do. I am a 200m sprinter and sometimes do the 4 x 400m.

Answer: Usually coaches use the term stimulate as a term to create an adaption with the minimal dose of work, while deplete is to challenge the body maximally, usually creating deep fatigue. Ideally one would just do the minimal threshold of training to get results, but eventually everyone will stagnate and hit a plateau. When stimulating, most methods are less risky and very conservative in both method and volume/intensity. Depletion is more of a volume approach at the specific intensity required to elicit a deep rebound effect.

Deciding when to use either approach or combination is more of a philosophical approach rather than something that is concrete in training theory. With any risk, the reward must be carefully weighted against other options, so depletion is not suggested unless one is an elite athlete and the training in the past was sound and well planned. Often plateaus are problems in training design, and improvements can be made without resorting to more aggressive methods.

Most options for stimulating are brief but intense options such as 3 x 150m, but depletion work is closer to 6-8 of the same distance. Running the 4×400 volume via depletion may help with the conditioning needs, depending how important the relay performance is to your team and coach.

Q2 – SpeedEndurance.com: I see there is a lot of research showing that HRV can be an effective training tool for endurance athletes, but does it work for speed & power athletes as well?

Answer: A lot of lab based research has been done on runners & cyclists, primarily for convenience reasons – it’s much easier to line up study participants on treadmills or fixed bikes than it is to go out to the track or weights room with sophisticated equipment. The principles behind using HRV remain entirely valid for the wider athletic population though. HRV measures the body’s response to training & competition, and fatigue of the energy systems shows up just as well with speed & power athletes. A good example is a study performed in 2011 on powerlifters and reported in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research reported that:

After training, weightlifting performance of the subjects decreased below baseline in parallel with suppressed parasympathetic power (high-frequency [HF] HRV), whereas sympathetic power (normalized low-frequency HRV) was slightly elevated at 3 hours of recovery (p , 0.05). Both weightlifting performances and parasympathetic power returned to baseline values in 24 hours and further increased above baseline during 48–72 hours of recovery in a similar fashion (p , 0.05). Circulating DHEA-S level dropped at 24 hours (p , 0.05) and returned to normal values by 48 hours. Muscle pain increased at 3 hours after training and remained higher than baseline values for the 72-hour recovery period (p , 0.05). Our data suggest that parasympathetic power, indicated by HF HRV, is able to reflect the recovery status of weightlifters after training.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Interview with Jimson Lee

Jimson Lee — Mon, 14 May 2012 08:45:00 +0000

This is Part 6 of a multi-part series from my recent trip to Orlando & Clermont, Florida.

Part 1 was with Dennis Mitchell. Part 2 was with Brooks Johnson.

Parts 3 & 5 was Hurdle Touchdown Times with Kellie Wells Training and Part 4 included Håkan Andersson.

Here is a rare interview of myself being interviewed. Usually I am asking the questions, but while I was in Vancouver, Derek Hansen of RunningMechanics.com stopped and asked me about the road to London 2012. There is a Canadian connection as several of my Canadian coaches are working for UK Athletics.

Here is the link to the original article. The video was recorded on May 1, 2012.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Iwan Thomas on the Pressure of the Olympic Trials

Jimson Lee — Sun, 13 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

This is a great five minute video that all athletes should watch before the Olympic Trials.

Yes, the video talks specifically about the pressures of the UK 400 meter Olympic Trials, but the take home messages can be for any country, any event, or any sport.

After 4 or 8 long years of training, and all the sacrifices, it’s time to go hard or go home.

There are several tips on how to perform at the trials, everything from mind games to execution. For example…

Sometimes, the race is won or lost before the starter says, “On Your Marks”.

And then there is “round management”.

There are no friends in Track & Field when the starter says, “On Your Marks”.

Good points. Take note.

Here is the video on YouTube:

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

What is the 250 meter World Record?

Jimson Lee — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Special thanks to Pierre-Jean Vazel for the heads-up and information below.

I talked about obscure world records on this Blog, everything from fastest relay splits to obscure distances like 100 yards, 150+200 meter straightaway, 300 meters as well as the rarely run Swedish Relay. (100-200-300-400m)

What is the (unofficial) 250 meter World record?

Would you believe Joseph Batangdon of Cameroon 26.61 set back in 2008? (link here)

What about 250m splits?

Usain Bolt split 25.4 en route to his 30.97 300m back in 2010.

Michael Johnson split was 25.24 en route to his 30.85 WR for 300 meters.

So we’ll see what Christophe Lemaitre can run for this rarely run distance. (story here in French)

UPDATE: Christophe Lemaitre official time was 26.25.

If you love track trivia and all the obscure world records, see:

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Interview with Henk Kraaijenhof: 5 Questions

Jimson Lee — Fri, 11 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

This is Part 3 of the weekly “Friday Five” series where I ask 5 tough questions to world class elite coaches. Week 1 was with renowned jumps coach Boo Schexnayder. Week 2 had Dr. Mike Stone of the USOC and NBA.

Henk Kraaijenhof coaching credentials include Nelli Cooman, Melene Ottey, Troy Douglas and Tennis star Mary Pierce. His specialty is the physical and mental coaching, in particular stress and stress management. When you consider both Ottey and Douglas ran world class times in their 40’s, something is working.

Henk is currently the technical director of Nemesis BV, a company that develops and sells Hi-Tech training and measuring systems for sports in the Netherlands.

He has published work in performance, training systems and protocols for elite athletes and has also conducted research in the development and application of scientific training systems. Henk is also involved in scientific research projects in human sports performance in Norway, Estonia, Italy and the Netherlands.

Friday Five is sponsored by Freelap Track and Field, a leader in electronic timing.

Interview with Henk Kraaijenhof

Q1 – SpeedEndurance.com: You have a very holistic approach to coaching and have spent many years doing lab like research on your athletes. What insight can you share on explosive athletes and the range of volumes to sufficiently prepare one for the 100m and 200m events? Can you share how much range of speed work happens with different types of athletes. With age, muscle fiber composition, and mechanics, I am sure that each training week can vary with athletes.

Henk Kraaijenhof: A main issue in my work is not the output of the training, but rather the outcome! Many athletes and coaches talk about the training loads they/their athletes can handle. I really do not care about that, but only go by results. My simple creed (even mentioned in the book by Timothy Ferris: The 4-Hour Body ) is: “train as much as necessary (to improve, and to win), not as much as possible!”

The rationale is simple: look at injuries: how many athletes were limited by undertraining injuries or by undertraining. Anyhow that is easy and quick to solve. Most athletes not reaching their full potential were limited by overload injuries and/or by overtraining, my estimation is about 80% of all athletes suffer from this during their career: submaximal performance, injuries, overtraining.

Every athlete is different, not only in body structure and composition or biomechanics but also at the inside, muscle fiber composition, biochemistry, neurobiology. I consider each athlete as an unique individual on many levels, (and probably take this to the extreme), and I design their training programs accordingly. Some athlete’s food is another athlete’s poison and that applies to many levels: training load, biomechanics, exercises, psychological approach, nutrition, etc.

Q2 – SpeedEndurance.com: You have seen relationships between psychology and neurochemistry, how can coaches monitor this without equipment or invasive methods? How can we work with men and women athletes better as you have shared some fascinating differences here.

Henk Kraaijenhof: Indeed I have the latest tools in these fields to my disposition and experimented a lot, in order to just understand the underlying mechanisms myself, to practice science or to publish, since I am not a scientist. Most of it boils down to 2 simple issues: your gift as a coach of being able to mentalize (to know what the athlete thinks-rationally) and the other gift is your empathy (to know what the athletes feels-emotionally).The big mistake you can make as a coach is to put this information into your own frame of reference, like: “You’re nervous? Why are you nervous before a big game, I was never nervous, when I played….”

Yes, of course, but you as a coach are not him or her …..

The main thing to learn here is let go of you own frame of reference and have a deep understanding of the athletes mental mechanisms. Observe and listen. A simple tool is a well-designed training log, of course digital nowadays with relevant parameters, dependent on the sports. In which you ask the athlete to judge or describe their mental status related to the daily training load and competitions, in numbers or colors

I worked a lot (and learned a lot) with a brilliant young man called Fergus Connolly, he was responsible for the diagnostics of the players of the Welsh Rugby Union.

Also a simple HRV-test can give you some more insight in this into the autonomic nervous system which is at the interface between body and mind. Not every coach has the luxury of being able to work with the Omegawave.

Note: For those looking for a practical way to get HRV testing, www.myithlete.com provides an excellent way to get HRV scores daily from a smartphone! The ithlete app and dongle takes 60 seconds to do and the information is vital to reduce overtraining.

Q3 – SpeedEndurance.com: Tempo running is popular in the islands (Jamaica and other Caribbean islands) and much of it is on grass surfaces. How does one explain the high volumes of lower intensity runs not interfering with power production. I know you and Charlie Francis had opposing views on the value of tempo running from a angiogenesis perspective. What are your thoughts on slower running with different talents?

Henk Kraaijenhof: Here we see two important concepts clashing: one is the concept of “specificity of training”, only what you train will improve. The other one is the concept of “transfer of exercises” in which we sometimes hope and sometimes know, that improvement in one exercise may “flow over” into improvements in related exercises, like only performing squats will also improve your leg press. Now this subject demands a lot more time and space, since it is fundamental for our daily training!

The major questions are however: what is your definition of specific and when do we call an exercise specific or when do we decide it is not.

Like always it is a matter of balance: the same amount of low intensity training (but then again: what is low intensity?) may be a performance booster in one athlete, while being detrimental for explosive qualities for another athlete! So my approach is based on the individual’s qualities: what do we gain by low intensity work and what might we loose. And can this decline be balanced out by doing enough high-intensity work.

Tempo running on the grass can be used for various purposes: improving speed endurance, preventing injuries that otherwise might happen on the synthetic track when performing it there, overall metabolic improvement, improvement recovery processes, but also: creating that “special” feeling when running on the harder synthetic track. Done in excess it might lead to

decline in explosiveness specially when not enough explosive work is done to counteract that. Yes, for example with Nelli Cooman I stayed away from low intensity runs, with Merlene Ottey however, we did a lot more.

Q4 – SpeedEndurance.com: You have done extensive testing with various jumps to get insight to the resistance training you were doing. Could you share some simple ways to track the specific power production of athletes over a season and a career?

Henk Kraaijenhof: I found for instance that specific jumps are related to specific phases of the 100 meter, more than others. Squat jump is more related to start action, countermovement jump to acceleration and reactive jumps (short contact time) more to the maximum speed phase, whereas 15- and 30- seconds jump are related to the phases where endurance becomes important. It is the genius of the late Prof. Carmelo Bosco, who paved the road to the understanding of explosive strength qualities. Jumping and bounding are powerful exercises, but they carry a lot of potential for injuries as well. Jumping and bounding are better exercises for cats than for cows.

With a simple electronic timing device and a simple jump mat you have basically everything a coach needs for monitoring and improving explosive strength.

In June I am introducing new equipment in Europe called the Exentrix with which it is possible to apply almost all existing forms of resistance training, necessary for increasing explosiveness, lie eccentric training, superimposed vibration, flywheel training, isokinetic training, random perturbation, “shock training (Dobrowolski), etc. With this equipment it is possible to replace a lot of jumping by safer and probably even more effective exercises.

Q5 – SpeedEndurance.com: In your presentation you talked about strengths of different athletes with different phases of the 100m. Could you share what sprint testings methods you do in the fall to prepare for the summer. I am sure you have some practical tests that can be done in the fall, but those surely would require extrapolation. What do you think is a good set of tests to see development?

Henk Kraaijenhof: Here is the reason for coaches to study the science or adaptation and methodology, since e.g. explosive strength test like jumping show the best results in fall, because the nervous system is “fresh” and the muscles not fatigued. The moment the athletes start training, at first the results in jumping decrease. Not very handy for extrapolation nor for motivation if you are preparing for the explosive events. Now the development of explosiveness, always lags behind the training for it. Yuri Verkhoshansky wrote a few books about this (see Supertraining and Special Strength Training: Manual for Coaches), and his concept of “block organization” of training is based on this phenomenon.

At least it shows that chronic fatigue and overload by training or travelling and competing decrease explosiveness. Compare this to being in the swimming pool and pushing a plastic ball under the water surface, the deeper you push it down, the higher it will pop up, but the longer it will take to pop up too. And if you push it too deep, it will implode. Keep this in mind an you will understand the dynamic of explosiveness.

We always use a test battery to keep an eye on all aspects of conditioning. Some parameters might go up while other might go down and may surprise you in spring, when you do not test them all year round. I used 30 m standing start, 30 m flying start, 150m and the Bosco jump test battery: SJ, CMJ, reactive jumps (5-secs) and 15 secs jump. These are the basic ones. We also measure power output in relevant exercises like squat or leg press, in my case with the Smartcoach system, so to see the development of the force-velocity and the force-power curves of each athlete.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

InsideTracker: How to Track and Improve your Testosterone & Zinc levels, Naturally

Jimson Lee — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:00:26 +0000

This is Part 4 of a multi-part series. Part 1 discussed Testosterone Creams & Gels: Victor Conte Revisited.

Part 2 discussed How To Increase Natural Testosterone, Naturally. Part 3 covered Sleep Deprivation and Testosterone Levels.

In all the years I’ve coached, it’s amazing to see how many people are willing to put stuff INTO their bodies to improve performance, but never take stuff OUT for proper analysis.

Moreover, people are conditioned to take supplements to raise or decrease their serum levels for optimum performance, instead of looking for natural, holistic methods. The answer isn’t always pills. (see articles on natural remedies and smarter food choices).

I am a firm believer that injuries and illness are the primary reasons why athletes retire from a lack of motivation. Thus knowing what’s going on inside your body is equally important as what you are doing outside at the track.

As I am approaching 50 years old, it’s normal that I go for routine medical tests to detect anything that is less than optimal. As an athlete, I like to track Testosterone, Zinc and Magnesium levels, for example. Other biomarkers include Vitamin D, Iron, and Creatine Kinase.

InsideTracker

I started using a service called InsideTracker and I highly recommend it for athletes and everyday people. If you live in the USA, you are probably familiar with LabCorp for blood and urine testing. There are over 1500 labs nationwide.

Here are some of the things I look for:

track key vitamins, minerals and other blood serum levels that may affect or identify performance issues.
repeat visits to show progress or decline
solutions with natural foods, as well as supplements (sometimes you may have to take supplements or you will overeat just to get sufficient levels, and that’s bad)
reputable testing lab

Getting a single blood test is one thing, but making dietary and lifestyle changes based on the results, and then re-testing is where the magic comes in. Why go through the trouble of improving yourself if you can’t test to see if it works?

I visit USA at least twice a year so visiting a LabCorp is not an issue. But if you have your blood results from another service or country, you can input them and get historical data. Canadian results are a bit trickier because we use the SI units of measure.

You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

InsideTracker, My Case Study

I know there’s a lot of concern over the privacy act, and particularly medical results, but I feel this service is worth sharing. Let’s take a closer look. Your mileage may vary, because InsideTracker customizes your recommended zones based on your age and other factors on your user profile.

Testosterone

Since the title of this article is How to Track and Improve your Testosterone levels, naturally we’ll start here.

Note my results are in conventional units (ng/dL), and not SI Units (nmol/L)

Normal total testosterone levels range from 300 – 1000 ng/dL, with 500 – 700 ng/dL considered normal for young, healthy men from 20 to 40 years of age. Men should monitor this carefully by the age of 50.

Also note Insidetracker’s recommended levels of 496 – 1197 mg/dL based on my user profile. So my results don’t qualify for external testosterone!

But they do give great suggestions on increasing my testosterone levels naturally, and not through pills, creams and injections.

Here is a screen shot or “dashboard” of their recommendations. As you can see, there is a biology snippet to show the importance of testosterone, as well as tips & suggestions to improve it.

Click on Image to Enlarge

You can’t see this on the screenshot, but you can click on the text (which are hyperlinked) for more information.

And finally, you have food choices to increase or decrease depending on your results. In your profile, you can choose food recommendations, or both food AND supplement recommendations.

Vitamin D

One of the mistakes I did on my month long road trip was forgetting my multi-vitamins, and that includes Omega3-6-9. Also, I currently do NOT take Vitamin D supplements.

Here are my results (conventional units, not SI units)

According to MedlinePlus, the normal range of calcidiol is 30.0 to 74.0 ng/mL. The normal range varies widely depending on several factors, including age and geographic location. Insidetracker’s recommended levels of 40 – 60 ng/mL based on my user profile.

My results are a shocking low 10.6 ng/mL

Gee, you think I should start taking Vitamin D? We know the correlation between Vitamin D and testosterone (see the importance of Vitamin D in section 2 of the article). As explained in the dashboard, it’s hard to increase Vitamin D levels with natural food, cod liver oil excluded, so I think I’ll be making a trip to the Farmacia.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Zinc and Magnesium

Now, just to show you I am NOT in desperate ill health and soliciting donations (even though Mark Hancock thinks otherwise), here are screen shots of my Zinc and Magnesium levels. According to the charts, I am in the optimized zone for these two important minerals. You think this has to do with me being a regular advocate of ZMA?

Click on Image to Enlarge

Conclusions

Like a graph with a single data point, this is just a baseline. But this is something that can be measured and improved upon. I will take these recommendations this summer and retest again in the fall. Then we’ll see how I improve based on InsideTracker’s recommendations.

For more information, visit http://www.insidetracker.com/

Ben Johnson’s 10 Day Taper Before a Major Competition

Jimson Lee — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:45:46 +0000

When was the last time you crammed for an exam?

Why didn’t you keep up all year long, studied a bit every day, so you would just have to review your notes as a refresher the night before?

Would you run a marathon the night before a marathon?

This sounds ludicrous, but I see a lot of athletes do too much leading up to the final week of the last big race. The reason? For sprinters, they fear they will lose speed! For distance runners, it’s conditioning they fear losing.

For sprinters, the key is to maintain CNS stimulus.

Roger Banister, the first man to run the mile under 4 minutes, took 6 days off before his WR attempt. Imagine, 6 Days off!

Do the work, let everything fall in place.

Another problem or challenge is trying to peak at the right time. You or your athletes may be on a double or triple peridization schedule where you peaked indoors in February/March, then the national Trials in June/July and finally the Olympics or World Championships in August/September.

Ben Johnson’s 10 Day Taper

Here is a sample 10 day taper of Ben Johnson 1987 leading up to the National Championships under the coach of Charlie Francis (where Ben ran 10.40, 10.14, 9.98 for the 3 rounds of the 100 meters, and a 20.80 for 200 meters)

Day 10 -

4 x 30m blocks,
15 min recovery
80m, (7.21 sec)
20 min recovery
100m, (9.19 sec)
25 min recovery
120m, (11.11 sec)
35 min recovery
150m (14.0 sec)

Day 9 – 10×200 tempo, flush out residual fatigue
Day 8 – 4 x 30 blocks, 1 x 120m sub-max
Day 7 – 2 x 10 x 100m tempo
Day 6 – 4 x 30m, 1 x 80m sub max
Day 5 – rest / travel
Day 4 – 1 x 10 x 100m tempo
Day 3 – 4 x 30
Day 2 – (depends on race strategy through the rounds)
Day 1 – same as day 2

Like the cliche from the butcher shop, “Fresher is always Better“.

Why?

By shifting the graph to the left or right (overtrain vs. undertrain), you can see how an over-trained athlete (i.e. hard training on the recovery day) won’t have a chance at the supercompensation effect, whereas an untrained athlete will.

Photo credits: Wikipedia.org

Another consideration is to adjust the taper to the athlete on how easily he or she will go through the rounds. For example, there used to be 2 rounds in the 100m on Day 1 (separated by at least 6 hours), and 2 rounds on Day 2 (separated by 90 minutes). The first round can be a warm up for an elite sprinter, but don’t run too easy; you have to make sure you advance!

Masters athletes in M45, M50 and M55 are used to 4 rounds when you have over 81 athletes show up at Worlds!

In a 400m, you can run 3 or 4 races in 4 days (heats, quarter-final, semi-final, and final) depending on the Championships.

Peaking and “running the rounds” is an art, and it’s only through experience where you can master the art form.

If you want to see a real live example and application of the Charlie Francis 10 day Taper, an excellent video is Perfecting the 10 Day Taper by Derek Hansen.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Kellie Wells Training and Hurdle Touchdown Times

Jimson Lee — Tue, 08 May 2012 08:45:00 +0000

This is Part 5 of a multi-part series. Part 1 was with Dennis Mitchell and Part 2 was with Brooks Johnson.

Part 3 was Hurdle Touchdown Times and Part 4 included Håkan Andersson.

Kellie Wells is the current USA hurdles champion for both indoor 60mH (7.79) and outdoor 100mH (12.50).

On this windy April day at the National Training Center in Clermont, Coach Dennis Mitchell set up 8 hurdles at the exact marks. No pulling in or out for adjustments, no missing hurdle(s) for zone training. Athletes will have to learn to adjust for the wind. After all, it’s the athletes who will be running with the wind!

The difference is the penultimate hurdle (in this case, the 7th hurdle) with a shorter scissor hurdle.

As you can see from the article on hurdle touchdown times, 1.0 seconds between hurdles is the goal for an elite female sprinter. But hand times are so passé and so inaccurate. 1.0 could mean 0.9 or 1.1 on any given stopwatch.

So in this workout, we placed a Freelap TX Junior Transmitter 6 shoe steps after each hurdle, for all 8 hurdles. No fancy tripods to setup. No need for 3 lanes for other timing systems. Just measure with your feet and put the transmitter on the ground.

Kellie lands about 4 shoe steps in front of the hurdle, and she wears the watch at her waist level with a strap. If we placed the transmitter at the hurdle, we could miss a reading being too high off the ground. If she wore the watch at her wrist, it’s a bit more predictable as compared to a true sprinter and arm swing and position.

The beauty today is the Freelap’s minimum time between intervals is now 0.78 seconds, and not 1.0 seconds.

Watch the workout below, and try to time it by hand. Then watch the second video below, hear her read off the electronic times, and note the last split with the short hurlde. Would you be happy with those splits? I would be, but maybe her coach Dennis Mitchell may have other thoughts!

You can use whatever timing system you desire, but the point is, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Accurately.

The Results with Freelap:

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video

Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) for Speed, Rugby

Jimson Lee — Mon, 07 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

This is Part 5 of the series on Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS).

Part 1 was Electrical Muscle Stimulation Benefits with Derek Hansen writing Part 2 with a Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) Research Review.

Part 3 is How to Use Electrical Muscle Stimulation (EMS) with Training with uncut, unedited “reality TV” videos and Part 4 was guest posted by James Smith titled Other Uses of the Globus SpeedCoach EMS

Part of what makes this blog popular are the real time examples of what athletes are using to improve themselves. There are a lot (and I mean a lot) of websites that come from a purely theoretical standpoint, and not enough “in the trenches” stories. We need to see testing labs. Real people. Real results.

I like to write and share results, based on scientific research, and sometimes a little bit of art for a personal touch. You cannot teach the latter.

I’ve endorsed the Globus SpeedCoach EMS units because of the flexibility and reliability of the product. The training programs were tested on real athletes before it went to market. The fact that I live in Rome and Globus is an Italian company is purely a coincidence.

EMS for Rugby and Sprinters

I had a chance to sit down with Cedric Unholz, an Australian-born Rugby player who played professional rugby in Scotland. He currently continues to do sprint workouts and weight training with Olympic lifts. Part 3 of this series goes more into detail on how he uses the EMS device with his training.

So here is my one-on-one Q&A with Cedric and I tried to ask all the questions I received by private email over the past 4 months. One day we’ll do a live webinar, but for now, you’ll find this 10 minute interview quite helpful. We referred to the training plan on the whiteboard, so I added the image below in case it isn’t clear.

In this interview, I focused a lot on training, and lightly touched the recovery and rehabilitation portions of EMS since most people outside of Eastern Europe and Italy think EMS is only for rehab and pain relief.

Most Popular articles for 2011:

400 meter Training and Racing:

800 meter Training: Training 800 meter runners

Sprint Starts: Usain Bolt training regimen video: The Start

Football 40 Yard Dash: 40 yard dash times for Usain Bolt & Ben Johnson

Baseball 60 Yard Dash: Baseball 60 yard dash: What’s a good time?

Recovery: Ice Baths for Workout Recovery

Supplements: Nutrition for recovery: The Post-workout drink controversy

Analysis: Usain Bolt’s 100m 10-meter splits and speed endurance

Strength Endurance: Matt’s 60-second pull up World Record Video