One Month Training Journal
Published on 23 May 2010 in Training Theory | 9 Comments |
My complete program leading into this year's Mt. SAC Relays (with notes) is now online at the training website Elite FTS.
I’ve learned many things from coach Bondarchuk about training, technique, and life. But, as I’ve said before, one of the things I respect the most about him is his openness. In my first few weeks working with him he told me that the more you share, the more you’ll learn. In a local newspaper article last summer, he repeated his mantra, saying “If you don’t share your secrets, your information, you can’t improve … If you don’t learn from each other, there is no progress.” That philosophy is one of the reasons I started to write so often about our training methods on this site.
While I think I do a good job describing how we train, I don’t often go into the specifics of how many reps or sets we do of each exercise. The main reason for this is that the big picture is more important than the details and I’m worried someone would try to replicate my training program without first understanding it. Our training programs are all individualized and knowing the athlete exact demands is essential to getting results through the program. Recently, however, I was asked to do a training journal for the training site EliteFTS. This seemed like it would be a great chance to finally get into the nitty gritty details of my training. My journal, which is online now, lays out every throw I took and exercise I did in the month leading up to Mt. SAC this year.
As any reader to this site knows, my training varies from the ‘typical’ North American hammer thrower’s training program. When first looking at my training journal, three things are obvious: (1) the low insensity lifting; (2) the high number of training sessions; and (3) the monotony. It’s well worth a look. Feel free to post or email me any questions you have about it. For those of you that are new to the site, I’ve collected links to my best posts on training theory on the Technique and Training page.
9 Responses to “One Month Training Journal”
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Last Competition
Name: Swiss Championships
Date: 5 August 2011
Location: Basel, Switzerland
Result: 1st Place - 67.90 meters
I think I can safely say the hammer community has been very grateful for your information you’ve shared. It’s so great that Bondarchuks philosophy is openess.
Awesome article Martin, I hope you post some more in the future. I do have one question…what are “Side cleans”?
It’s like side snatch, if you are familiar with those at all. It’s definitely something I had never done before this year. Here is a video of it: http://www.twitvid.com/32788
Hello Martin–
I was looking at your link to the video of the side clean the other day and now I cannot get it to play–is there another link to it?
thanks,
S.E. Reno
Strange, it is still working for me. I have a demonstration of the slide snatch (similar) in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yph6i1NyHqA It’s not that complex. You just do a clean, but the bar starts perpendicular to how it normally would (so it is parallel to your left or right foot). Then you twist and catch it like you normally would.
Thanks for the link, that was exactly what I was looking for.
–S.E.
[...] we have one workout we’ll do ten times a week or two programs that we alternate during the week (see an example here). Was it the same in the sprints, or is there more variety so that you aren’t doing the same 50 [...]
2 part question:
How can a coach tell from the reaction of an athlete which type of athlete they are? IE setting up a basic program to test to see if they are in need of speed, strength, tech etc…
part 2
what could a program like this look like for say a jav or hammer thrower….
I think you are confusing the individuality of an athlete’s reaction with the individuality of their weaknesses. Finding the athlete’s reaction is fairly easy. You just chart their results throughout the program to see how they react to a set of exercises. After you find this out, you can tailor the length of each program to their individual reaction. No matter what their weaknesses (poor technique, low core strength, etc.), the length of the program will be the same. It is up to the coach to identify those weaknesses and then choose exercises that focus on developing them. Weaknesses can be seen by just observing the athlete and finding common themes in what they do well and what they do poorly.
Concerning your second question, a jav thrower’s program would look very similar. Obviously the javelin uses some different muscles and you would focus more on those in training, but the overall structure is the same.