Sport Specific Strength

This is the third phase and also one of my two favorite phases in the process. Why? because in this phase I got to be creative with strength lifting and I got to design around movements that I feel really help with running.

The last phase was focused on doing two things building my general strength back up and adding miles. This phase will be focusing on two different things. One will be still adding miles each week but instead of adding to the intervals total miles or the tempo total miles I will just maintain there mileage and add to the long runs instead. During this phase I will get to truly see how well I have conditioned myself with running. The reason I say this is my past program the longest run I was ever able to complete was a 7 mile run, during which I started to notice while running on the last mile things started to give me trouble. My hamstrings started to get tight, feet really started hurt an actually went numb, and my knees started to hurt.

The longest runs I will do during this stage is 9 miles and actually have two runs that will reach or exceed 7 miles. So basically if I'm doing something right then I should be able to exceed my prevous longest run with no problems, but if I can't I'm doing something wrong. My total mileage for this week will start at week 1 with 10 total miles and end week 6 with 15 total miles.

The second big focus is on sport specfic strength(movements that focus more on using the muscles used in running) opposed to general strength (overall strength that doesn't focus on specfic muscles). The movements I chose were Lunges, Sled Drags, and Step Ups. I also added some more movements to keep muscles as balanced as possible. The movements are Dips, Chin Ups, Russian Twists, Bent Rows, Good Mornings, Knees To Elbows, Handstand Push Ups,and Bench Press.

As far as the reps and sets I choose a different method called strength endurance. Basically I will be doing more sets with less reps and shorter rest periods between the sets. My thought is that I want to do more work over a longer period of time to add more endurance my strength training. The weights this time will be about 65% of my 1 rep max and the rest will be 30 sec in between sets.With every week trying to add 10 to 5 pounds each week until this is not possible then add more rest between sets. I also have two different workouts that I will use each week it looks like this.

workout a
sets reps. exercise
15x2 lunge
5x70 second forward sled drag 60 sec rest
5x70 sec backward sled drag 60 sec rest
15x2 bent row
15x2 good morning
12x2 handstand push up
4x15 knees to elbows

workout b
15x2 step up onto 18 inch box
10x1 bench press
20x1 deadlift
12x3 dip
15x2 chin up
4x15 russian twists
Also I forgot to mention sled drags will be different than other excercises. Instead of going lighter Ill go heavier with a longer rest and take the rest down by 10 seconds each week.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.6