2 A DAYS?

[straightup]

hey ive been practicing in the morning before school and then with the team afterwards. i come beofre school about 3 times a week. my morning workout consists of staium stairs/ bleacher runs with either ankle weights and/ or wrist weights. typically is a half hour long. then my afternoon workout is sometimes speed oriented and or lifting. i never do this on full run vault days. my question is how effective is this and should i continue?

[CoachEric]

Two-a-days are fine, but you're doing it wrong! Clearly you are a hard worker, and you are trying to put in the effort you need to be a better pole vaulter. Your effort is misdirected though.

You have to balance the variability in your workouts with specificity for your event. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that as pole vaulters, our event is only a short sprint, a jump, and a swing. The best way to improve your ability to executing those motor skills is to maintain a laser focus on those skills, while simultaneously varying the training stimulus so that your body doesn't adapt to it.

From your description involving ankly weights, it sounds like you're doing generic "conditioning" type workouts, and I would stop these immediately. You're spending your time running slowly, using a stride pattern that is in no way similar to what you do in the vault. Instead, you should be focused on exercises that are highly specific to your vault.

In fact, it's probably a little late in the season for you to be doing any kind of sprint loading or resisted sprint. But, for future reference, when doing a workout like this, you want to sprint on a very low grade incline (like 2-5% if you can find an incline like that). Any more than that drasticaly changes your sprint mechanics, and then you're getting away from training the motor ability that you want to be training. And don't use ankle weights!

More generally speaking, two-a-day workouts are ok. The higher frequency allows you to put in more total work without overtraining. If you want something to do for about 30 minutes in the morning, 3 times a week, I would suggest you incorporate these: Olympic lifts (low volume), weights (limited at this point in the season), gymnastics, pilates, yoga. Avoid sprinting and plyometrics in the morning. Leave that for the afternoon when your nervous system is ready to go.

[straightup]

wow ok, so im gonna try and see what i can do. i figured doing two semi hard workouts is better than one very intense one where there is a higher possibility of getting injured. im gonna see whats open at 6:00 am haha. thanks agin!!

[bel142]

I sort of half disagree, your generic fitness is good for specific times of the year, that type and volume of training is good for your first part of the year, but not during competition time. During competition time you don't need to be doing that much. You need to be fit to be a pole vaulter. During championship time you will not be as fit as you are during the first part of the year.