The Toronto 2020 World Masters Athletics Championships has to be the pinnacle for any Masters Athlete, my first WMA competition was back in Perth, Australia in 2016. I’ve had some mixed look at Masters championships both at world and regional levels. The old accolade of being injured at the wrong time as I have inevitably pushed too hard.

This hopefully will form a serious of blogs to become my training diary, Part 1 The Conception is HERE

As pointed out, after the last world champs in Malaga (my only victory to date at any level!!!) I suffered a back injury during the following Christmas, which effectively put me out the whole of 2019 (some minor racing).

Now to last year, 2019 was a strange year, personally I was out of action, I still managed to train but was just frankly awful.  But as a coach, it was extremely fulfilling. The squad had numerous personal bests throughout with some breaking their records from years before even as they may have gone past that “golden age window”.  I have coached athletes who had gone on to bigger success as I played a part in their development and age group athletics, but that’s history.

But as a coach I was extremely pleased and honoured to play the part with my athletes, as 2019 saw some good breakthroughs, Yasmin Liverpool (Just turned 21) 400m runner, went onto run 52.49, represented GB at the European Team champs, won the English 400m title and was also BUCS Indoor and Outdoor Champion over the distance. I also had Morgan Amed although he didn’t get to represent GB etc, he ran a huge PB of 21.15 in the 200, I’ve coached Morgan since he was 14, he is just about to turn 21.

 

 

The above image is a breakdown of my annual plan in basic form, Added a more view-able image of the top section below.

The training programme I follow is in essence a plan for my athletes, the 2 mentioned above and the many others who I love to see improve no matter what level they are.  The benefit of still training myself and competing is that we all want to be better and push each other, I get to know how they are reacting to the session in and out.  Before anyone asks no the 100/200 runners don’t follow the same programme, and the 400 Group will have slight differences depending on what they need as individuals, They may have about 95% similarities or as low as 50% , and so I post in these blogs/diary the exact training that I am doing.

 

If you know me, you’ll know I love my planning, reading, reviewing anything I can grab. and so I always plan backwards from events. You will see on the training week (week 19) that is the countdown to the British senior outdoor champs, the countdown I am clocking for my Athletes specifically, though this would be 4 weeks Pre-Toronto and so does actually give me a target for the timeline I myself need to be ready for (incidentally, same time as Olympics -1 week).

And so, the training diary part 🙂

Ignore the Large Blue box above Sunday for this week, as the session was amended from that planned, i am fully aware 5x250s is not Alactic!

I haven’t included any weight training in the above image, as I keep that separate, but will going forward post that too, I’m happy to mention still but at present it seriously is the most generic general standard programme on earth, working solely on just building up some Organism strength. And yes I know the week may look dense, but trust me I know what I’m doing, I haven’t included intensities so feel free to tax yourselves in working that out 🙂 Just be aware you will see some repetitiveness week to week (like to consider Bondarchuk tendencies occasionally).

Current BW – 79.2kg

Each warm up includes drills and some Plyometric work, Rudiment Jumps, scissors, Bounds and Hops as standard

I don’t time the acceleration work, but these are done with good recovery and max intent

• Sunday – 5×250 4Min rec (this day was extremely windy) 35,34,34,35,36
• Monday – Gym 3×8, Deadlift 100kg, Bench 70kg, Squat 80kg (this exact session is repeated on Wed and will be the same for the next couple of weeks depending on how I feel i am adapting)
• Tuesday – 3×120 / 2×60 – 14.1, 14.3, 14.4 No times for the 60 but ran flat out
• Wednesday – Gym
• Thursday – 3x4x60m 1min rec between reps and 6 between sets, No times of course. Fast stride 200, 24.4 (this was ran fairly decent, felt good strangely and slowed about 15m before the line, just fro reference)
• Friday – 2x3x300 (Not done yet, they will be done this evening and so will update this blog then, I am aiming to just keep around 44/45 as I build the volume up)

Update to friday session: 43-44-43 / 43-43-44 (some solid lactic on that last rep)

 

All in all so far (lol its week 1!!!!) Body feels really good can handle this plan fairly well.

 

Stew