The kids are off to school

Yikes--that's a lot of pressure to live up to, Jay. You know how many kids we graduated this year, right?

Just asking about the speed skaters because I think I almost threw my back out today demonstrating them to our kids! The kids are already making them look a lot easier after only a couple weeks.

Seriously, doing this work after tougher runs (today was our first "long" run of the summer) is gold for HS kids. After a couple of the exercises, they basically forgot that they'd just run their longest run of the summer and were tired. Instead, they were focused on executing the movements correctly!

I'm pumped to see how much more work we can do this fall and stay healthy.

Here's a quick, primary question: Do you consider speed skaters ballistic movements? Did Sara have any problems when she started doing them?

Note: Matt is one of the best HS coaches I've ever meet...and he's by far the best "young coach" I know. I say this because I'll be blunt with answer and I would use a different tone if I didn't know the coach.

Speed Skaters aren't ballistic in my mind, yet there is a chance that if we looked up the word in a track and field manual (USATF Coaching Education book?) it might fit. Before I go into specifics I need share that Wetmore would talk about an athlete making a "ballistic move" in a race and that's the first, more powerful connotation that word has for me. I think athletes should have that ability to make a ballistic move in a race, yet that's not what we're talking about here.

Speed Skaters is one of the exercises in the Aerobic Work WU (video and article below) and I consider everything in that WU something that can be done before a threshold workout, or even the first few aerobic repeat workouts in XC (repeat Miles or repeat 1k's). It's more intense than a single leg squat, but by no means is it a Plyo Accel.

http://www.coachjayjohnson.com/2009/06/aerobic-work-warm-up/

However, I do think that some of the exercises that I ask Sara to do on her speed development day can and should be call ballistic, specifically the straight leg bound to run, but also the G-drill (see below). You can't hear it in the video, but on the track there her feet are loud when she does her G's...and that's good! It wasn't loud in the fall and she didn't have the proprioceptive ability to "stick the G" either. (Note: Great example of being patient...she hated Gs because she couldn't do 'em and after 6-8 months she does them well - she's much better today than in the video below as that video is now 2-3 months old).

http://www.coachjayjohnson.com/2009/05/speed-development-part-3-and-4/

Final point would be that when I wrote "Be careful with ballistic..." I was thinking mostly of plyos, specifically bounding because I think that contributed to her tearing her plantar fascia in spring '08 (thought Amol Saxana, USATF's foot doctor, says a torn plantar is simply an occupational hazard, which was nice to hear). Also, we are doing a lot of Multi Throws (MTs) with hops this time of year, but all double support (i.e. both feet hit the ground) and it's funny you highlighted the ballistic bullet point because in the last 2-3 weeks I keep thinking, "I know she could do this work single support" yet why push it. Plus, we'll do 4-6 sets of 6 reps, for with a 12 .lb shot and then 2 with the 4k (8.8 .lb) - 4 reps with 12 .lb, then 2 reps with 4k - and she's really accelerating the shot well. My point is that when we do that work after practice we're building capacity and while the physiologists will tell you that we're not recruiting big motor units, I would argue that the sprinting we do in practice - with a ton of rest - is great specific power and that the MTs, while power activities, are simply "building a bigger battery.*"

...I'm sure exercise physiologists are going to cringe at that paragraph, but the simple reality of distance running is the person who runs the fastest average velocity wins and sometimes the winner's average velocity is only bigger because of the last 10m or 100m or 1,000m. All I'm trying to do is improve the athlete's average velocity and to me when Sara does lots of MT reps after sprinting we're simply asking her to do something that is power oriented when she's tiered, and this may correlate to being able to accelerate late in a race. That said, the first bullet point is all about getting to that late point in the race less fatigued.


*Boo Schexynayder term that I love - http://www.elitetrack.com/blogs/tag/boo-schexnayder/

I forgot answer the second part.

No problems, but the one thing to remember about all of these videos is that

a) she's a good athlete
b) this is now her job
c) most of the non-running stuff she's done for a minimum of two years, and in the case of the plyo accels, she's been doing it for 3 years...so she better be good.

...but, I will say that her work capacity is higher because 3 years ago she did all of this work and now she can handle volumes of running that would have been inappropriate just 12 months ago. So all of the bullet points are connected, though I wanted/needed that sheet to keep me focused because most of us are incapable of seeing and comprehending the big picture in the middle of practice.