Hi Folks,
I want to incorporate 7 weeks of speed training and conditioning this off-season. I follow Westside for skinny bastards (part three).
I was wondering now, did anyone in here do this already ? If so, how? How did you organize the weeks?
I remember that in part 2 and 3 there were sample templates, but they both don’t really fit my needs.
So guys, hope you can help me.
matrick
Why doesn’t the strength and speed template in WS4SB III fit your needs? What kind of speed do you want?
[quote]undeadlift wrote:
Why doesn’t the strength and speed template in WS4SB III fit your needs? What kind of speed do you want?[/quote]
One thing is, I want to do Strongman Conditioning instead of the Conditioning Joe laid out. Another thing is, that I don’t want to only be doing one Speed day per week. I would like to incorporate two, as in WS4SB II.
My problem with that is, that I don’t know if one can just incorporate two speed days where you just sprint in a straight line. Joe uses the second day for change of direction speed. How can I solve that?
Plus another thing is what can one do on the Speed days? Joe has laid out one or two examples, but since I want two speed days, I need a somewhat different set-up for the second day. Any ideas?
I’ll bite…
How about a variation of the in season template:
I’m thinking something like this:
A) ME Lower day with RE for the rest of the body
B) ME Upper day with RE for the rest of the body
C) Strongman day
Mix in your speed days in between where they fit best for you.
But, why don’t you want to do some change of direction speed work? Are you a competitive sprinter? If you are a sprinter, why so set on the strongman stuff?
What’s your priority/game/sport???
It just seems to me that you are making this too difficult.
LA
[quote]LA wrote:
I’ll bite…
How about a variation of the in season template:
I’m thinking something like this:
A) ME Lower day with RE for the rest of the body
B) ME Upper day with RE for the rest of the body
C) Strongman day
Mix in your speed days in between where they fit best for you.
But, why don’t you want to do some change of direction speed work? Are you a competitive sprinter? If you are a sprinter, why so set on the strongman stuff?
What’s your priority/game/sport???
It just seems to me that you are making this too difficult.
LA
[/quote]
No I am a basketball player, that wants to increase his vertical jump (top priority) but on the same boat, increase his overall athleticism.
I have 15 weeks this off-season. I want to spend around 8-11 weeks with the “traditional” 4 a week split (as outlined in part 3), using vertical jumps and depth jumps as my main exercises on dynamic days. then I want to spend 4-7 weeks on a Speed/General conditioning template (at the moment I am thinking of only spending 4 weeks in this phase, since it seems to be the most demanding and I have a 2-week camp right after the 15 weeks).
I only planned on doing straight line sprints, since they have the most carry-over to an athletes vertical jump.
I figured this schedule out, what do you think?
Mon - ME Upper
Tue - Speed
Wed - Lower Body Strength
Thu - Rep Upper
Fri - Speed
Sat - Strongman
Sun - Off
What do you guys think? Do you think it might work?
What exercises can one implant on the speed days?
Thanks,
matrick
For basketball, I think it’s a mistake to neglect the change of direction aspect in your speed training.
[quote]LA wrote:
For basketball, I think it’s a mistake to neglect the change of direction aspect in your speed training. [/quote]
So okay, I see. You might be right. The straight line sprints will have a carry-over to the vertical.
So if you would incorporate change of direction, how would you then set up the week? Just as in WS4SB 2?
Or would you take my suggestions? My suggestion would be prolly better for me, since I don’t want have two athletic workouts in one day.
So let me know what you think?
[quote]matrick wrote:
My suggestion would be prolly better for me, since I don’t want have two athletic workouts in one day.
So let me know what you think?
[/quote]
I think that you know what you want to do. Get to it.
LA
[quote]matrick wrote:
Mon - ME Upper
Tue - Speed
Wed - Lower Body Strength
Thu - Rep Upper
Fri - Speed
Sat - Strongman
Sun - Off
What do you guys think? Do you think it might work?
What exercises can one implant on the speed days?
[/quote]
Mon - ME Upper
Tues- DE Lower
Wed - Sprints/Conditioning
Thu - RE Upper
Fri - ME Lower
Sat - Sprints/Conditioning
Sun - Off
I think you should have 2 Sprint/Conditioning Days that are outside the gym and 1 day in the gym where you get better at jumping.
On your DE Lower day you should, like WS4SB calls for, do 8-10 sets of Jumps instead of Dynamic Box Squats. Do Box Jumps, Box-Squat to Box-Jumps, Depth Jumps, Vertical Jumps, Broad Jumps, or maybe get real crazy and do Snatches. Then do some assistance exercises. Trust me, doing Glute-Ham Raises Twice a week is much better than doing them once a week. This exercise transformed the shape of my legs in a very short time and is probably one of the best calf exercises there is.
On your Sprint/Conditioning days you should work on running fast. Running is something you gotta do outside the gym. Most treadmills only go up to 12mph. That’s not fast enough.
Instead of Having a strongman day, you can just incorporate Strongman events into your 4 days at the gym. Do Log Presses for your RE Upper Days. Do Tire Flips for your ME Lower Days. On your DE Lower days you shouldn’t be too tired from Jumps so you can do Atlas Stones instead of Glute-Ham Raises. For your Unilateral Movements you can do sled pushes or farmers walks instead of split squats.
That’s great advice from FightingScott.
[quote]Mon - ME Upper
Tues- DE Lower
Wed - Sprints/Conditioning
Thu - RE Upper
Fri - ME Lower
Sat - Sprints/Conditioning
Sun - Off
I think you should have 2 Sprint/Conditioning Days that are outside the gym and 1 day in the gym where you get better at jumping.
On your DE Lower day you should, like WS4SB calls for, do 8-10 sets of Jumps instead of Dynamic Box Squats. Do Box Jumps, Box-Squat to Box-Jumps, Depth Jumps, Vertical Jumps, Broad Jumps, or maybe get real crazy and do Snatches. Then do some assistance exercises. Trust me, doing Glute-Ham Raises Twice a week is much better than doing them once a week. This exercise transformed the shape of my legs in a very short time and is probably one of the best calf exercises there is.
On your Sprint/Conditioning days you should work on running fast. Running is something you gotta do outside the gym. Most treadmills only go up to 12mph. That’s not fast enough.
Instead of Having a strongman day, you can just incorporate Strongman events into your 4 days at the gym. Do Log Presses for your RE Upper Days. Do Tire Flips for your ME Lower Days. On your DE Lower days you shouldn’t be too tired from Jumps so you can do Atlas Stones instead of Glute-Ham Raises. For your Unilateral Movements you can do sled pushes or farmers walks instead of split squats.
[/quote]
Yeah this looks very good. In this way I would work on every aspect that is important for me. How long do you think this phase should be? As I said I have 15 week total and I wanted to spend about 8 weeks doing only the traditional 4 week split without any sprinting/conditioning. What do you think?
Regarding the strongman training, I do not have access to strongman equipment that you mentioned. So i would have to replace them with “normal” weight exercises. For this, you would have to explain to me what ie atlas stones are?
Thanks for your help!
[quote]matrick wrote:
Yeah this looks very good. In this way I would work on every aspect that is important for me. How long do you think this phase should be? As I said I have 15 week total and I wanted to spend about 8 weeks doing only the traditional 4 week split without any sprinting/conditioning. What do you think?
Regarding the strongman training, I do not have access to strongman equipment that you mentioned. So i would have to replace them with “normal” weight exercises. For this, you would have to explain to me what ie atlas stones are?
Thanks for your help![/quote]
You should just follow this split the entire time. For the first 4 weeks you can creep into your sprint training and conditioning and not make it very demanding. Start by just doing 40-yard dash and walking. That’s pretty easy to recover from.
If you don’t have access to strongman equipment, then just follow the WS4SB3 template and choose normal barbell dumbbell exercises. If you’ve got your heart set on strongman training and you want substitutes for the events, then I’ll give you some substitutes. Just YouTube Atlas Stones and you should find something.
Atlas Stone = Zercher Deadlift
Log Press = Push Press
Tire Flip = Deadlift
Farmers Walk = Hi-Rep Dumbbell Shrugs
Keg Toss = Medicine Ball Toss
Plus another thing:
What exercises can I implent for my speed days? Since I do not have access to any kind of equipment a la boxes or anything, it makes it hard for me. Any ideas?
[quote]matrick wrote:
Plus another thing:
What exercises can I implent for my speed days? Since I do not have access to any kind of equipment a la boxes or anything, it makes it hard for me. Any ideas?[/quote]
You have NOTHING at your gym for speed days? No Box? Not even any Reebok aerobics boxes? If you go to a normal commercial gym they surely have a studio for aerobics classes. You should be able to to box jumps onto the Reebok plastic step-up boxes they have. You can stack those pretty high.
If you’re at your high-school gym you should have at least 1 box somewhere that’s around 24 inches. TO add height you can stack plates on top of it.
Worst-case-scenario is that you will not be able to do any box jumps for your Dynamic Effort days (this is only 1 day a week). In that case you can still do.
You could also jump up staircases instead of box jumps and measure your progress by how many stairs you can jump. I’ve done this for fun and it’s not really that safe but I suppose it could help.
I would rather do a Barbell Snatch than a Clean for a DE movement because you use more weight with a clean and they’re harder to recover from and you don’t need to move as fast in a power clean as you do in a snatch or power snatch. A good power snatch is easier to do that a good power clean. Sure you see people power cleaning all the time, but they don’t get their elbows nearly high enough when they catch the bar. With a power snatch you either do it right or you don’t make the lift.
[quote]FightingScott wrote:
matrick wrote:
Plus another thing:
What exercises can I implent for my speed days? Since I do not have access to any kind of equipment a la boxes or anything, it makes it hard for me. Any ideas?
You have NOTHING at your gym for speed days? No Box? Not even any Reebok aerobics boxes? If you go to a normal commercial gym they surely have a studio for aerobics classes. You should be able to to box jumps onto the Reebok plastic step-up boxes they have. You can stack those pretty high.
If you’re at your high-school gym you should have at least 1 box somewhere that’s around 24 inches. TO add height you can stack plates on top of it.
Worst-case-scenario is that you will not be able to do any box jumps for your Dynamic Effort days (this is only 1 day a week). In that case you can still do.
You could also jump up staircases instead of box jumps and measure your progress by how many stairs you can jump. I’ve done this for fun and it’s not really that safe but I suppose it could help.
I would rather do a Barbell Snatch than a Clean for a DE movement because you use more weight with a clean and they’re harder to recover from and you don’t need to move as fast in a power clean as you do in a snatch or power snatch. A good power snatch is easier to do that a good power clean. Sure you see people power cleaning all the time, but they don’t get their elbows nearly high enough when they catch the bar. With a power snatch you either do it right or you don’t make the lift. [/quote]
No that thing was already clear to me. On Dynamic days I will switch between Vertical Jumps and depth jumps, maybe some weighted squat jumps.
What I meant were the real speed days, when I focus on running. DeFranco outlined one day in his article, but I don’t know how to set up a second day, since I do not think its good to do the same workout twice a week for 7 weeks.
So any ideas here?
BTW my gym does not have a aerobic class so, no there aren’t ANY boxes or something similiar at my gym.
Are you only going to focus on linear speed, as you indicated earlier?
If not, Joe D has some change of direction drills recommended in the WS4SBIII manual.
If you insists on only linear work in this period, there are still many options:
Just a few:
regular old sprints
suicides (more conditioning effect than speed IMO)
hill sprints
sled sprints (push or pull)
overspeed work (slight downhill grade or drag chute)
weighted vest sprints (just a few each week)
I’m oversimplifying this but, there are 2 basic ways to run faster… stride length and stride rate. Work both. Maybe work one on your first speed day, and the other on speed day 2.
I still think as a basketball player, you should work linear on one day and change of direction / start-stop on the other day, as the template indicates.
In basketball (and most other sports), it really doesn’t matter if you can run a 4.3 40 if you can’t start/stop/change directions etc effectively.
EDIT: do some searching for info by Charlie Francis and Kelly Baggett. There are other speed experts out there, but those are the names that come to mind right now.
LA
[quote]LA wrote:
Are you only going to focus on linear speed, as you indicated earlier?
If not, Joe D has some change of direction drills recommended in the WS4SBIII manual.
If you insists on only linear work in this period, there are still many options:
Just a few:
regular old sprints
suicides (more conditioning effect than speed IMO)
hill sprints
sled sprints (push or pull)
overspeed work (slight downhill grade or drag chute)
weighted vest sprints (just a few each week)
I’m oversimplifying this but, there are 2 basic ways to run faster… stride length and stride rate. Work both. Maybe work one on your first speed day, and the other on speed day 2.
I still think as a basketball player, you should work linear on one day and change of direction / start-stop on the other day, as the template indicates.
In basketball (and most other sports), it really doesn’t matter if you can run a 4.3 40 if you can’t start/stop/change directions etc effectively.
EDIT: do some searching for info by Charlie Francis and Kelly Baggett. There are other speed experts out there, but those are the names that come to mind right now.
LA[/quote]
Yeah you’re right, I should contact Kelly Baggett about this. Thanks for your help everyone!
Another thing that came to my mind is reagrding the vertical jumping on dynamic days.
How do you perform the vertical jumps? Just like you would when performing a “test” a la vertec? Or would you perform them without the arm swing?
Thanks
I disagree with both of the training programs that have been outlined (not WS4SB). They both are too intense for the CNS. Go to Kelly Baggett’s site and read a few of his articles, especially The Ultimate Split and Speed Training for Dummies (or at least something close to that). Those should help you in designing and implementing your own program.
[quote]matrick wrote:
Another thing that came to my mind is reagrding the vertical jumping on dynamic days.
How do you perform the vertical jumps? Just like you would when performing a “test” a la vertec? Or would you perform them without the arm swing?
Thanks[/quote]
Just jump as high as you can. Do whatever you have to do.