Optimizing Weekly Power Training Part II

In part I of this series, we discussed the fact that:

Not all CNS fatigue is the same. Coaches can design programs that shuffle the subtle fatigue effects of various strength and speed exercises in a way that leads athletes down a path to far greater results than if they were to utilize a program that let the same fatigue pile up on them week after week.

And yet this piling up of fatigue happens all the time in the majority of training programs! Athletes go to “war” against their opponents in their own training time, yet much of their ferocity is wasted by the wall of chronic overloading syndrome.

What if there was a simple way to help coaches and athletes determine the best way to go about designing their training program to help manage fatigue, and progress training effects, not just over the course of a few months, but the whole training year, and the years to come? There is a way to arrange training that will help minimize the devastating effects of specific CNS fatigue that causes athletes to peak months earlier than they should, and lower their athletic ceiling.

The problem is that typically, maximal strength is the ultimate outcome goal of many training programs. Having maximal strength shaded glasses typically weeds out any other “speed/plyo” training effects, and they are often thrown in as an after effect to the “barbell machine” by many a strength-coach.

The balance must be brought back to build the right program that delivers maximal athletic results… and those results are based around the #1 factor in athletic success: speed.

That’s what this article is all about: It is to teach you the best concepts in shuffling speed and strength work in the weekly format, and how to vary these different training setups to build long term plans that will take athletes to their greatest potential.

Let’s kick it all off by going over the pro’s and con’s of wrapping speed and strength into one session. This is the typical format of most Western coaches, as they group all exercise types that deliver a powerful general CNS stimulus to the body.

Pro’s and Con’s of Strength and Speed Combined

Training strength and speed in similar sessions is by far the most popular type of training setup, at least in the USA and in Western training philosophy. Strength and speed are grouped together to consolidate general CNS stressors, and allow for total CNS recovery on lighter training days (such as Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, if athletes are training hard on Monday, Wednesday, Friday).

A reason for the consolidation of CNS stressors into one training day has been given the following analogy by coaching legend, Charlie Francis: Athlete’s nervous systems can be compared to the lights at a football stadium. These lights take some serious energy to get fully turned on, but once they are on, they are good to go, so take advantage. In the same way, using lots of energy to “turn on the lights” 4-5 times a week for training is tough. This setup makes it easy to quantify hard work days and rest days, as it is very cut and dried. It is very simple to use, and it does get great results for many athletes. It is also the setup that I used to reach my high jump personal best of 2.14m.

“These lights take some serious energy to get fully turned on, but once they are on, they are good to go, so take advantage.”

With this in mind, here is a list of upsides of training speed and strength in the same session:

It is the simplest way to train. As most coaches and athletes know, simpler is usually better.
It generally offers more chances a week for athletes to train general strength, movement and fitness, as non-lift/speed days are going to be dedicated to building these qualities in athletes.
It is a great way to train A-Type, motivated, explosive athletes in a 3x, or even 2x(in the case of extremely strong and explosive athletes), as the recovery time is longer and more definitive between sessions. Athletes who have a hard time holding themselves back and training “stoically” will often do better training hard 2x a week than more often.
It is a historically great way to train sprinters, where the lower “magnitude” of sprinting is going to allow for slightly shorter recovery periods than the heavy jumping and plyometrics that vertical athletes demand. It also ensures that sprint coaches don’t try to pull intense (or even semi-intense) training days back to back, which is the bane of many hamstrings worldwide.

Of course, every rose has its thorn.

There are a few downsides to this type of training setup, although I wouldn’t say that there are many. The biggest negatives of this type of system are really for those athletes whose sport revolves around magnitude of neural effort (aka. Jumpers/powerlifters), or those who might be looking for a more well-rounded athletic development of strength, speed and power.

On the flip-side, here are the downsides of training speed and strength in the same session:

Since high force, and high speed are trained in the same session, the ability of the nervous system to truly “tune in” on either strength, or more importantly, speed, may suffer unless strength sessions are kept in check (or at least low volume).
Training strength and speed on the same day creates a slightly less stable training effect (since you can’t train quite as often), and lower specific work capacity than only working the CNS 2-3x a week.
Training strength and speed on the same day doesn’t allow for keeping the CNS fire “hot”, which allows for efficient flow of training on back to back days, as well as the ability for one day to potentiate another.
Training speed and strength in the same session doesn’t allow for very “symmetrical” training setups, as one of the three weekly sessions generally needs to be a bit lower on the intensity end of things to keep athletes from blowing up.

Pro’s and Con’s of Strength and Speed on Unique Days

Training “hard” 4x a week is heresy in some training circles, but can be easily managed if the coach and athlete have enough common sense to know how to evenly distribute effort levels, progressions and rest periods. In the hands of an experienced coach, this unique approach to training strength and speed is solid gold.

The one-factor supercompensation theory was my elementary school. Train hard, then rest until you feel pretty good, then train again. I did this with the “Science of Jumping” program when I was 16 for some great results (and I combined those plyometric workouts in with deadlifts in the same day), but they faded once I hit basketball season and was unable to maintain the training. My work capacity from only training my CNS hard once a week also wasn’t that sustainable through a long grueling season!

The basic “Train, rest and workout again when you feel fresh” method works well for beginners, and some intermediate athletes.

As I progressed through college, I then “discovered” multiple consolidated strength and speed sessions for 3 weeks on, and 1 off, which was my “middle school”. This system was also based on the “Hi-Low” principle of consolidating speed and strength into the same day (although I really only did “strength” once a week, and my fast jump days on the track were almost always accompanied by Olympic lift only days in the weightroom, making it a hybrid of sorts). My results on this type of programming were actually…. awesome; and I set my track and field PR high and triple jumps through its use. It was only until I got to graduate school in Wisconsin, and lost my training partners, that I found this style of work was starting to fade in regards to my adaptation rate to it, as well as my athletic performance gains.

The “Standard Edition” 3-1 System uses repeated bouts of 3 weeks of work to provoke a small performance increase in intermediate (and some advanced) level athletes.

Finally, my high school was unique speed and strength days. This “unique day” method of training athletes is like a double-neck guitar in the hands of Michael Angelo Batio, as there are many more options and variables that can get an athlete into their best training groove, you just have to know what you are doing!

The biggest piece with the unique strength/speed equation is stoic training, especially when it comes to lifting weights. The weightlifting in this type of “unique” setup is largely being the assist-dishing point guard of the weekly workload;

Its job is to make the jumping/sprinting days look good.

This doesn’t mean that athletes can’t go hard in the weightroom, but it does mean that they always leave a few lifts “in the tank” and don’t cash out their CNS for the following (and likely more important) speed day, which carries a much greater significance.

Finally, I have found it important, in this type of setup, to perform assisting movement based work on the “strength” days. This could be anything from low volume intensive tempo sprints, to low-intensity plyometrics, such as skips, hops and rudiment jumps. Playing team sports is also a great way to keep movement up to par on the early strength days in the training season. A setup such as 30 minutes of basketball, ultimate Frisbee, soccer or volleyball prior to walking in the weightroom is one of the most efficient (and fun) ways to accomplish this feat. Really, one can think of the “strength” day as a heavy neural coordination day; as that is the purpose of strength work as far as many track coaches are concerned.

So on the “unique” setup, we really have:

General strength/coordination and movement days (with around 24-36 hours of recovery)
Speed and specific power days (with around 48-72 hours of recovery)

Obviously, it is the 36/72 hour recovery sessions that eventually demand a de-load, so this type of training work will often be that of the “2/1” variety, with two hard weeks of training, and then one week off. It is this setup that led me to my highest levels of overall athleticism, as well as consistency in the high jump event, as I cleared no less than 6’8” in high jump in around 5 competitions in my competitive push when I was deep into that method. The only thing that held me back from jumping higher was a lack of specific practice and competition driven speed training; but my increased power made me more consistent (and I was a better practice jumper then). I was also much bigger and stronger… more of a football player than a skinny high jumper.

Here are some pro’s of performing strength and speed workouts on unique days:

Automatically (to a degree) distributes subtle specific fatigue from different strength and speed sessions throughout the week (72-96hrs between similar sessions, compared to 48 in a common MWF setup).
The nervous system can focus on adapting to only one velocity stimulus per session, rather than multiple types.
Athletes can get a greater amount of specific work accomplished in the course of one week, and those gains are often more stable than working speed/strength every 48-72 hours. Within variability is stability, and the frequency of alternating speed and strength each day resonates serious and stable gains(z)!
It is a great training method for athletes who tend to work in lower adrenaline states, or with the absence of training partners (this is why it was a much more potent method for me later on in my athletic career).
Properly administered strength days can heat up the CNS for subsequent speed days without inducing a great amount of specific subtle fatigue onto the speed session. Once an athlete accommodates to doing speed the days after strength work, they will find they can easily hit training speed/power PR’s the day after lifting work.
This type of setup is the best that I have used to get intermediate/advanced athletes very powerful, very fast.

Everything has its downside; here are the negatives strength and speed workouts on unique days:

If athletes are serious A-types, have trouble controlling their emotion level in the weightroom, or just have low tolerance for training frequency (aka mega fast-twitch), they may struggle in this system.
This type of work can produce speed and power gains extremely quickly, but this can produce instability in results if the total program isn’t carefully monitored by a good coach.
This type of training can be tough to track and alter optimally over the course of a long season due to the high CNS requirement.
Athletes may struggle with this type of work at first if they have psychological issues with doing speed work the day after lifting.

“The optimal arrangement of strength and speed will bring an athlete to their highest performance”

Conclusion:

In conclusion, there are plenty of ways to skin a cat, and hopefully this article brings you a bit closer to honing in on that optimal training setup. Remember though, training styles and setups will change throughout an athlete’s career as they move from novice, to intermediate to advanced. Ultimately, regardless of the setup, it is the management of general and subtle fatigue that leads to the best programming, and one’s highest performances.

Good luck, and my best wishes in your future training.

“All life is an experiment, the more experiments you make, the better”

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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