Why Blog?

It makes perfect sense when you're leading up to an event but keeping a training diary is nothing new to athletes. I like to go back and see what my training looked like during a good phase, or how I got out of a bad phase. Most of the time I look back it is to see what pole/run combination I was using for a particular meet or even how long did it take from an injury to being able to vault again. Even though I have always done it, the concept all came together for me in 1994 when I met Sergey Bubka's coach, Vitaly Petrov and he told me that he and Sergey could tell you what he did for training on this day, what he ate, what the weather was etc., all the way back to when he was 11 years old. If it's worth doing it's worth recording. Sometimes you just need someone to talk to in order to make reason out of scrambled thoughts - even if you're just talking to yourself.

Today was a perfect reminder of why we cycle training. You get out of shape training for a big meet. Consider that your hardest day is about nine days out and then you take a week or so off afterward, you basically haven't trained for nearly three weeks. Today wasn't as bad as day one last year but I do feel somewhat missing on the conditioning side. But that's fine as I enjoy the process of recycling my programs.

Why? Last year after Nationals in Spokane I came back and vaulted the next Saturday with no other training during the week. I cleared 13' 6" twice (the American Record is 13' 6 1/2") and then promptly strained my hamstring attempting 14'. All of that momentum was now lost as I was back to square one with rehab. It's taken me all year to get back up to a high level because I kept rushing to get back and getting little injuries. My lead up to Sydney was fun and productive with little chance of injury and that's why I recycled and started my ramp up again at a low level yesterday rather than pushing when I have no reason to be doing so. After all, I did not jump in a meet between outdoor nationals in Spokane and Sydney - over two months and had no problems. So what's the rush? Do it right and don't get hurt.

I'm learning new lifts and I suck at many of them. Try the overhead squat where you go all of the way down but your arms are fully extended overhead from the start. I'm switching to all free weights this year so there will be some adjustments and that's OK too. One lift yesterday I started to go down and lost my balance and threw the weight bar (45 lbs) forward and it landed back square on the pegs of the rack. That will never happen again. I'm sure the neighbors think I'm nuts but at least I'm not building a spaceship - we have NASA in town for that.

So let's have some fun. Speaking of fun. I run with a sled all of the time but yesterday was my first time to do repeat 100ms with one. NOT so fun but I can tell it will be effective. Why a sled? Stride frequency is somewhat set in your genes but your ability to cover ground can only be done by increased strength and flexibility. The challenge is that you can't reach forward to cover more ground so the sled teaches me to run rhythmically and more powerfully.

That's it for today. Hope you have a great day. Bubba