How specific should we make the gym?

In episode 14, we talk about the weird and ridiculous side of chasing 'specificity' off-track...but also the benefits of tweaking training to meet certain useful demands.
What should you REALLY be doing outside of track work?

Transcript

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 0:00

Welcome back to episode 14 of SprintLab, SprintLab podcast, where today we're going to be talking about how specific. Should we make the gym for sprinting? Um, to be fair, any sport in general, really, how, how much specificity should we be doing in the gym? Like how targeted should the gym be? When does that become too specific and losing the focus of the point of the gym? Um, so yeah, me and Kieran are going to get into that. Lewandowski's

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 0:33

Yeah. Um, you see a lot, uh, like on a yearly cycle. of like strength and conditioning clips coming out of teams and various athlete camps and whatever. Um, I'm thinking about a specific example from like Barcelona, like the football team, um, where they're doing like, you know, some weird kind of BOSU ball, weightlifting, balance drill involving kicking back a football or something like that. I don't know. They're

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 0:59

in that. I think Lewandowski's in that video. Yeah,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 1:06

I remember I commented on it. Oh, I reshared to my story or commented on it. One of the two. I got a load of people replying to me saying like they're just they're just making sure that the training carries over to They're game more effectively. Like they're just, you know, incorporating the skills that they need for the game in whatever. And, you know, you don't understand the sport. So you, why you, that kind of thing. Like, okay, right. Okay. I'll play out of it. It's not my arena, but I'm going to talk about it on a podcast. Okay. in that situation, right. Just taking that specific example to kick off, uh, the podcast, my thoughts on it are if you're on a Bosu ball, trying to lift weights, if you're trying to kick a football at the same time as you're trying to lift weights, if you're trying to do a complex skill, essentially, at the same time as having some type of like output measure concentrating on. Performing the skill well is always going to limit your output in a certain whether that's strength based, power based, whatever. And like, you're in the gym to improve your outputs. So you're not going to hit a threshold or hit a maximum limit on an output. If you're also trying to concentrate on like three, four, five, six things. If the floor that you're stood under is wobbling because you're on a BOSU ball or something like that, going to limit your performance in it. So it's not going to push you, push your limits at all. sense, it's not you're not going to hit your maximum potential. You might argue that are you hitting your maximum potential in in a balancing? Could it well? When the fuck does the floor move in a game of football or when you're sprinting around the track, you know what I mean?

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 2:38

I'm 100 percent in agreement with you on this. Um, yeah, if you want to get, if you want to try and make the gym so specific to the sport, well, then the sport is going to be the best thing to do rather than gym and doing it under them. Like no matter how specific you make the gym, it's not going to be as specific as the sport itself. And then the more specific you make the gym, the less basically effect from the point of the gym you're going to get. Um, so just like, it's like sprinting under fatigue. Um, you're not hitting anything, you know, it's like, you're not early up in your max speed and you're not improving, um, speed endurance because it's like you can't do two things at once. You can't do two things at once, you've got to prioritize.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 3:24

Yeah. If we look at it on like a continuum of, of thinking, right. So on the one end, you've got completely general, completely unrelated to your sport, but it still offers some type of adaptation, right. And on the other end, you've got completely specific. You are doing your event. Say you're running 100 meters, okay, so on one end you're just getting stronger or you're just getting physically fitter in some way, right? On the other end you're hyper specific, you're in your own arena. Making the gym or any type of strength and conditioning,, exercise more specific to your sport is moving you, moving you about like one percent along that continuum. from the general to it's, you're never going to get anywhere close to of movement, the quality of movement, or anything type of movement that you do in your actual sport, because you're not on a track, you're not in spikes. You're not off a gun. You've not got competitors around you. That kind of thing is, there's so many aspects of it are not simulating your event that there's no point even trying to simulate your event in, in that arena, but yet there's still a point of being in the gym.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 4:29

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that is, that is. Yeah, it's 100 percent true. Like, even training, um, is not 100 percent competing. Like, people will say they'll be flying in training and wonder why they're not in race, but it's like, it's not the exact same settings, you know, you're not,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 4:47

no, that's a good point as well. I hadn't even thought of that, that training isn't, isn't always like hyper specific to what you're, what you're trying to

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 4:55

Yeah, yeah. And just even further from that, especially anything on the load, um, or limited, limited range of motion, if you're scoring with a barbell or even worse, not to say worse, that has its place, but on a machine, which is that's dictating how you're moving. Um, as is completely against what you're doing when you actually doing a sport or sprinting,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 5:19

I'm, I'm going to make a post about this, um, sort of start this week. So this podcast is going to probably follow that post where to talk about the fact that muscles, they don't understand, in isolation, like what you're actually doing externally. They don't know what you're doing. Your muscles, they're just being told to contract or relax, right? So they understand leverage and force and impulse and whatever. They understand that. They don't understand actually sprinting where being specific comes in is when you tell a certain group of muscles to contract at certain times. And that coordinates Motion in a very like complicated sense. Your brain does all of that for you subconsciously, right? the timing of contractions and and the timing of of like co contractions as well, that kind of thing that all happens subconsciously in a sprint. And the way you practice and refine that is by sprinting, uh, but you're in the gym to, to refine and, and to improve your muscles ability to contract with higher force at higher velocities that undergo certain conditions that they need to be able to do when they are being told to contract at certain times so that, so the timing aspect is very, very separate from the actual physical capability aspect. why, that's why you're in the gym in the first place. And then you go out on the track bring it all together like a

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 6:40

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like in general terms, the gym increases your capacity for muscles to produce force or express like strength, I guess you could call it. But actually being able to use it at the right times. And I mean, biomechanically speaking, sequential action is this. The term used for, what I'm about to describe, what I'm about to describe. And that's just basically because your muscles can't contract quick enough to produce force on the floor. And to move a limb forward, it's actually like the eccentric slowing down of muscles proximal. So like your bigger, more powerful muscles closer to the body, which is slowing down, causing a quicker rotation of more distal, um, elements of the, like the foot and the ankle. Um,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 7:30

Right.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 7:30

that speed is just, you can't train it in isolation in a gym. You've got to do the sport for that. But by training your strong, strengthening proximal muscles in the gym, they're going to be able to move more forcefully, um, when you're sprinting, but you have to do both. You can't get better from one or the other.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 7:51

Yeah. Um, now proponents of, uh, like making things more specific may then say to you, right. Okay. Well, why don't we just go in the gym and just do loads of isolation exercises? So the isolation quote unquote, right? Because you can't truly isolate one specific muscle and just contract that one muscle. But why don't we just do leg extensions, leg curls, calf raises, uh, tricep extent. Why don't we just do everything individually? in sequence. And so that improves every single muscle's ability to contract in isolation. Then we can go out on the track and bring it all together. Right. What? That's not a good idea because do you want to answer this or shall I? Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 8:30

is just that you'll never, you'll never train in, first of all, it's impossible, but you'll never train in, like, there's no movement. Maybe darts is the only movement where there's going to be a single rotation of the joint,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 8:42

Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 8:44

in isolation. And then it's way more complicated than if everything gets better. Then everything gets better, uh, equally and at the right times, it's just a way more, your body's does all these subconscious patterns and things, which is probably best not to think about and just let it do it. But if you're taken away from that, it's always going to take you ages to get through a gym session. If you think,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 9:11

Yeah. Yeah. The time

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 9:12

um,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 9:13

Logistic.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 9:14

but yeah, trying to bring that all together, it's just going to be a mess.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 9:17

yeah. Uh, and my thinking as well is like, There is definitely a point behind hitting like a compound movement that does loads of stuff at the same time. Take a squat for example, right? You've got the obvious aspect of right, it's lower limb strengthening, whatever. You've also got the bracing aspect where it's hitting your core quite heavy. You've got the fact that a compound movement, um, because it's the summation of like multiple limbs, multiple joints, everything like that, there's a much, much higher, um, like raw force output that you're having to do. There's a much higher demand on the nervous system that is going to provide a training as well as the muscular adaptation and whatever else you want it, mobility, everything else you want to get it for. Um, There is a point behind coordinated movement in the gym in to produce certain exercises and there's Olympic lifts as well that they can be good. Um, I mean, there's over whether they do offer a lot for, um, sprint performance, but like. You know, people do them still, there's a, there is a point to doing it. Yeah, it's, it's not as simple as just applying leverage to every single muscle in your body that you want to get better. There's a time and a place for doing that in accessory movements to, to specifically target things, but there's also a point behind, um, going in and just lifting a lot of weight. As, as an athlete and trying to improve your power to weight ratio or strength to weight ratio or anything like that, because they are all characteristics that are massively beneficial for sprinters that's been proved time and

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 10:48

Mm hmm. Yeah, and it's, it's like this idea of if you improve your maximum force output, then by default you're going to improve your sub max force output. And Your sub max is going to be more attainable. You need a force velocity curve. So when we're trying to,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 11:08

Yeah. Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 11:11

muscles quickly or contract muscle quickly that we are in sprinting, overall force is going to be less because muscles can't produce force as much force when they're moving quickly. But then shifting that curve by the appropriate SNC, that's exactly what the point of an SNC program is basically for athletes is shifting that so that you'll get in more force for faster velocities and.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 11:32

It's not simply like your standard, just going in, um, performing conventional lifts, performing what you you've got to have a certain, plan for it as well. Like for example, muscles. can endure or experience a lot more force eccentrically than concentrically. That's something we can consider and program for in, in the gym. and there's some movements that may require you to do that in isolation. Like, I really like is a seated, seated leg curl, where, you know, you up with two legs. eccentrically lower with one to really, really isolate the hamstring in a, in a lengthening position. That's, that's a nice variation that I've used, but at the same time, you know, if someone's going in and hitting heavy RDLs and they're going down, up, down, that's still going to be hitting the muscle pretty hard. It's still, There's just different variations, clever, different, um, tactics that you can use to really, really, um, condition the muscles, condition the body to, to withstand certain, certain types of force that not going to do if you're really overly concerned with making a movement highly specific and, and bringing in a really complex skill element to it.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 12:43

Yeah. I don't think because of how many varieties of exercise there are, which aren't super specific to the sport. I don't think

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 12:52

Hmm.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 12:53

people need to be worried about making a training that specific anyway, until you like, like, there's so much more you can do. More generalized, like you said,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 13:03

Hmm.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 13:04

RDLs and Nordic curls and hamstring curls,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 13:09

Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 13:09

prioritizing the eccentric of all of these. So like, there's just way more you can do with stuff you've probably not mastered yet, um,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 13:20

Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 13:21

that you can explore as well before, before getting specific. Um, yeah, it's interesting as well when you touched on Olympic lifting, because,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 13:31

Hmm.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 13:32

There's definitely correlation between elite sprinters and their ability to do it, um, for the most part. But if you ever watch an elite sprinter run, like they never do hit triple extension or true triple extension, like they've always

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 13:49

not not

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 13:50

bent knees, so like they'll extend hip and toe or an ankle. The knee is already starting to flex, um, which is quite interesting. But that's, that's, yeah.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 14:03

Yes. And learning the Olympic list is such a massive skill curve. Uh, learning curve. Sorry. Um, a lot of elite sprinters that are absolutely terrible Olympic lifting as well that try and do it still in their program because maybe their coach believes in it or their team does it or it's something like that. Um, And that's another great example of like, bringing in a massive skill element to your, to your lifting when you don't really need to, because at the end of the day, you can accomplish the same goal with something

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 14:31

Yeah.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 14:31

Just some people, some people enjoy Olympic lifting and learning it and whatever, and they can get the training stimulus from it because they're good enough at it. Fine, whatever, you know, I like Olympic lifting. I've done it in my programming and that kind of thing, but I don't do it anymore. I do it very infrequently now, um, because I can't really be bothered. I can do, I can do other stuff, you

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 14:53

Yeah,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 14:53

So, um, yeah, it's horses, of course, it's whatever. But, um, general, when you complicate something with a skill, you're going to reduce the output that you could potentially

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 15:05

yeah, that's the, that's the key point, that line there.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 15:10

Um, so sometimes though, I wanted to actually, you know, not, not completely shit on the idea of, um, bringing in skills to, to a gym based environment. There are some situations where you can actually get a benefit from making a movement pattern more similar to what you might experience in an event or whatever, and that is your form of conditioning. Uh, that you want to actually do. I'm thinking like a step up, for example, that's a, that's a movement that compared to a barbell back squat is going to be more specific in inverted commas than, than that one. Right. because you're in a certain movement plane, because it's unilateral or whatever, it's makes it slightly more specific. You can, you can expose your body to like a higher force demand in a similar position that you might step out in the tracking experience, and therefore that might have some carry over. But we're talking about like. minute differences in the specificity of a, of a certain movement here. So got to really consider like, is it worth, you know, going all in on a step up over, uh, over a back squat, when you're going to lift less weight, it's going to be a more complex skill that may be more risky to perform with a, with a higher injury risk, sorry. Um, and is it going to return the same benefit in the longterm? Who knows? You got to weigh that up for yourself and your situation.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 16:28

Yeah, great points. I mean, I definitely don't want to be like, telling people, all you need to do is deadlift and squat.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 16:36

No,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 16:36

Because definitely,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 16:37

squat bench,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 16:38

yeah.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 16:39

just be a powerlifter,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 16:40

it's definitely not the case of that. But, um,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 16:42

No. Yeah,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 16:44

I still don't consider. Like that as a specific to, I mean, like people who literally will grab a BOSU ball and stand in a running position with weights and then start doing tiniest sort of knee flexion.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 17:00

yeah,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 17:00

Uh, it's a bit extreme. Like BOSU ball have their place. They have, they have some great benefits of training. You can get out of them.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 17:08

Yeah, I'm sure, I'm

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 17:09

You don't really need to be adding load to it. It's just dangerous. And then,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 17:14

Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 17:14

um, yeah,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 17:19

Throwing a botu ball on their hands.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 17:24

yeah, yeah. I

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 17:26

is.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 17:27

talking to, um, my, actually my line manager at work. He's big in the SNC and he was saying, cause we've got some at the end of the year. When everyone, students go home, we got super bike testing. So a couple of athletes in like the motorbikes, um, and the parents, so he was doing some research when I'd see what they would do. Um, but then he, he walked into some S and C room and one guy was like in a motorbike riding position on a, on a big Bosu ball, fitness ball, um, holding a barbell or, you know, those like curved W barbells

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 18:02

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 18:04

with two bands.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 18:06

Easy comeback.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 18:07

that's the one. There were two bands, like, wrapped around, like, his fingers or something. And then his coach was stood behind, like, all the bands, and he was, like, turning, and he had to, like, pull the br Well, he pulled a band where he'd have to push the brake or something. It's just so, so specific and it's like, what, what are you just, just, did you just ride a bike? It's not even like, you can't,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 18:33

yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 18:34

you can, okay, you can get some of the movement down, but then how are you going to respond to, Actual cues that you would use in a race or in a cycle, like a race that you can't use,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 18:45

Yeah,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 18:46

it's not the same. Listen to your coach to tell you to pull it down is, Oh shit. Someone's just drifting off that you

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 18:53

there's a

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 18:53

go, yeah, I was falling off. Like, I don't know. Like, there's too many missing links.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 19:00

Yeah. If we could genuinely get that we needed to out of specific training and there was a real benefit of, um, like making as much of our training outside of track and field running, like if, sorry, let me rephrase that. If there was, if there was as much of a benefit making training as specific as possible to our event, right. not, and compared with just improving our outputs and whatever, in a very general sense, and then refining that on the track, if there was equal benefit to both, we could get everything that we needed to just from training on the track. And no one would ever do anything outside of that. Right. But we can't because there are limits that our body puts in place to minimize risk, to keep us safe, to not push limits that may. You know, leaders to experience like perceived danger. I'm thinking, you know, in a block start, you're in a very, very sort of low position where you, you know, your body at first exposure may feel like it's going to fall over that kind of thing. We can't or, um, put out the forces that we need to on first go and just practice and practice and practice that and to get the adaptation we need. In that specific arena, right? We need to remove ourselves from that to some extent and do other stuff to then grow back into that. perform better. Um, and you know, I'm not a proponent of doing all of your training on the track or nothing. You know, it's just not what you should do. Um, and there's so obviously, you know, reasons for, for not doing that. So, um, that's my two pence on

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 20:35

No, yeah, nice. I mean, you've summed it up well, so,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 20:38

there are, there are times where you might want to straddle the curve a little bit where, you know, you might do like sled pools or hills or something like that, where it's not, you know, it's less specific, right? You're changing joint angles, you're changing the stimulus slightly. Um, you might not run in spikes some days. You might, you know, you might run alone. You might run with other people, that kind of thing. There are, there are halfway houses that you, that you might explore in your training. Um, but once again, the dosage of those is, is relatively like tiny compared to what you should be experiencing of, you know, the purely specific stuff, i. e. sprinting similarly to your event or just the general stuff where you're trying to improve your outputs, So,

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 21:20

A couple, a couple more things we wanted to talk on before wrapping up this podcast. Um, yeah, the first is sort of the ratio between how much gym or gym strength training you're doing. Um, and how much of your sport you're doing, because if we're thinking the sport itself is going to be the specific part. I'm in the camp of, you need to be doing quite a lot more of the specific stuff, like the actual sport or the actual sprinting than you do for the gym. Um, but that's not to say the gym doesn't have its place. Definitely, definitely does. Like you just said,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 21:56

yeah, I'd, I'd, like to get as close to putting like a concrete number on it as possible just to be helpful to people. Um, but it's really like, within a kind of range. it's say you're operating on a weekly basis, right? I don't think everyone should operate on just a purely weekly basis. I think people could, a lot of people could use, you know, expanding the definition of a micro cycle to be like 10, 14 days sometimes. But if we're talking a week, you're on the track twice or three, three times, let's say, then you can probably afford to be in the gym too, between one and sort of three times, maybe. Right. So anything up to 50, 50 is probably all right.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 22:38

it becomes tricky, right? Because the amount of time you're spending on a track doing reps is number of seconds, really, isn't it? Versus in a gym doing reps. It's going to be quite a lot more. So it's like,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 22:51

Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 22:52

um, it just becomes quite hard to label. I think it comes hard to like put a ratio and like numbers.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 22:58

It does. Yeah. It depends on the person a lot. And it also depends. On quite how general you've been, because there's some skills that you could do in a

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 23:06

Yeah,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 23:07

that have zero interference effect whatsoever on your skill that you're trying to perform on the track. And that's fine. You know, as long as recovery wise, it doesn't impede your track work, then you're going to be good for whatever, you know, can run slow enough. That it doesn't affect your sprinting whatsoever because it's just not a specific skill to the other. So they're not, they're not related enough. So yeah, it depends how specific you're being. Depends what the recovery demand is and what you're actually doing in either

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 23:36

kind of changes. Yeah, it changes as well. Um, getting into like periodization and stuff now, but it's what's about before and a pod, but yeah, like early winter phase is going to be very different to peak competition phase of how much time you spend in doing each, um, So this is depending on where the athletes are as well. It's not going to be a one number sort of fit, but yeah.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 24:03

No, I think if you're doing more eccentrically dominated training, then you're going to be able to do less of that, in a, in a small little micro cycle, then you would be able to do like shorter range of movement, higher neural drive. compound lifts where you're just, you know, you're throwing weight around through a tiny range of motion, because the recovery demand for that's going to be quite low. It's going to be literally as, as long as your nervous system takes to recharge off the back of that. whereas like, you know, you can walk out of the gym, having done a load of time and attention which may be then valuable in the longterm. But in the short term, you can't really reach max outputs on the track for a few days. Um, so that there's a cost to that where you might want to weigh up how much of it you're

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 24:47

Yeah, this is sort of phasing nicely into the last thing I want to touch on actually. So, and that was the different sort of recovery times you're going to need from types of gym session, I guess. So obviously like when you're hitting a hard strength session and it's quite muscle damaging. That's going to affect, of course, your ability to produce maximum speed, um, to express max speed. And so, therefore, you're going to have to consider when you can next, what your next session will be, programming it properly, basically, because, yeah, it gets quite tricky, I guess.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 25:23

Yeah. And it, and it kind of comes down to trial and error as well as to how long you have to leave it because there's a, there's a ballpark figure that you can get from research. You know, you can, muscular soreness would only really last, you know, two to three days max. Um, in terms of it's like textbook effect, but some people might be feeling the effects for a lot longer than that, um, within a cycle of training. So they wouldn't be able to hit max speed until maybe the next week. Um, but

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 25:47

yeah,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 25:48

it's a, it's a

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 25:49

it's, it's, the, like, the key to remember is, like, If you're breaking down muscle, which you are, then it's going to take like the effect of the, the benefit of going to the gym comes from the rest after when they grow back stronger, essentially, um, and then there's this little overcompensation, um, which is what you aim for. If you, if you give enough rest, you get that overcompensation. So your base layers, your baseline is now a little bit higher. If then you go too far the other way and you rest too long, then. that overcompensation effect sort of like decreases again. Um, and then you

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 26:28

Yeah.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 26:28

start to get de trained and then you've like given it too long a rest. So it's like finding that fine balance, which is like you say, it's gonna be trial and error for every athlete. You depend on like their ability as an athlete and how well they're recovering, eating. How hard they're actually hitting the gym in the first place. Because you can do

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 26:45

in general. Oh

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 26:46

I was just going to say, like, you could do, like, theoretically, you could train every day. And then just hit, like, if you're only doing, like, one set on something on the legs. Exactly.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 26:58

stuff all the

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 26:59

So you're never going to really get the same effect as someone who's, I don't know, hitting everything on one day. Then they're going to need a big rest.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 27:08

Yeah. And that's different styles that suit different people. I know people that want to empty the tank on everything on one day and then rest for four or five days and then do it all again and that, that works. Um, but some people really can't, I personally can't do that because my last exercise, my last set of something on, on a day like that would be terrible. I'm not worth doing kind of thing. And, but I can repeat. a lot more frequently than so, so it just depends. But if you think about how to organize a training week around this, this type of stuff, you need to put your skill based things first and that includes sprinting. Even though it's also a very, very output driven thing. Like you want to be hitting max outputs. is a, is a skill and it requires a lot of coordination and nervous system recruitment. And so if you do, for example, like really heavy lifting or really like metabolically demanding session where you're exhausting your body systems and you try and sprint later in the week, um, you're not going to be as proficiently learning those movement patterns or you're going to be expressing worse movement patterns in that session. Sprint session that compared to what you could do. Um, so it's probably not going to be as worthwhile doing in the long term as if you'd have swapped those things around, for example.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 28:26

Yeah, 100 percent agree. Sprinting should come first and we should just be doing stuff to supplement that.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 28:32

Yeah. I think that's a good place to

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 28:35

yeah, let's wrap it up there. So this has been episode 14, Sprint Lab. Um,

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 28:40

Okay. And

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 28:40

for listening. Thanks for continuing to support and tune in for episode 15.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 28:46

keep sharing, keep sharing.

alex_1_11-24-2024_170010 28:47

Peace out.

squadcaster-2362_1_11-24-2024_170011 28:48

See you later.