Darren A Coaching

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  I had a great weekend, ate too much food and was spoilt with presents. My last blog was about a peaking strategy that I was using with one of my athletes.  Overall his performance was solid.  He run a 0.40 seconds seasons best in the 400m and an average 100m.  The athletes comments showed that the athlete is improving in what we are trying to achieve. In the 100m he gave most of his competitors a metre or so in the first 10m, but he run a brilliant 10 to 40m.  His lack of top end speed and endurance showed the last 30 metres. In the 400m he run the first 200 metres, around 0.50 seconds slower than we had planned. Most athletes have gone back into a short 2 weeks GPP (general preparation phase) over the Christmas and New Year period.  The running squad have to get 100 points every week, with points ranging from 5 to 25 points.  Below is the schedule, they have 16 options and how many times a week they are allowed to do each session.

The Saturday just finished was one of the biggest events the Athletics community in Hobart has prior to Christmas, the meet is important as it is the meet to allow the athletic fraternity to celebrate and remember our past greats.  As a person I believe it is important that we remember them. After an athlete had followed a 10 day peaking cycle he came out and run 0.40 seconds faster in the 400m.  His comment was he didn't run fast enough in the first 200m, so he could have run faster.  Unfortuately I missed the meet, as I had another function to attend. The question I need to ask as a coach, did the peaking cycle work? What do we need to improve on? As a coach, it is a learning experience with every athlete as they are all slightly individual. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

This weekend is the first weekend where my athletes are going in with a peaking phase.  The last 2 weeks the volume of running has decreased by over 50% with a small drop in intensity. The plan is a consistent structure and is based on the my blog post http://darrenacoaching.blogspot.com/2011/08/peaking.html .  This phase there have been some changes in the reps and distance, but only minor. This  is the last meet prior to Christmas and 3 months to the State Championships.  Do they need to peak?  Probably not, I look at doing a peak at this time for a number of reasons, as follows; 1. Chance to see if the the peaking works for the athlete(s).  By doing this, it gives us an opportunity to get the peaking structure right when we need it. 2. Go into Christmas, happy and ready to for the new year, with a good performance - hopefully a Seasons Best of Personal Best.  I found as an athlete, if I had a good performance pre Christmas I enjoyed my Christmas/New Year training much more.