Training Deeper In The Same Pool

Training deeper in the same pool means incorporating back to back sessions of high neuromuscular
demand with the first being “lighter” and the second being more challenging. (It can also be for low
neuromuscular demand type sessions, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.)

“OH OH But Latif! You can’t do back to back”

STOP. I know what you might be frantic to remind me:

“Hard day Monday. Recovery day Tuesday. Everybody knows it takes 48-72 hours to recover from a
CNS session. You’re going to injure your whole team doing that! What are you some sort of moron?”

Mmmmm. Nah. Your ice cold take is #FakeNews though.

I don’t want to trigger you so early in my article, but here’s why you absolutely should be doing back to
back neuro days…Your sprinters are not good sprinters. What I mean is…

…they’re bad at sprinting.

I didn’t say they don’t run fast. They’re just mostly bad at expressing the skill of sprinting so they’re not
running as fast as they could be. And if you don’t coach freaks you need to build technically proficient
sprinters if you want to overperform from the top of your depth chart to the bottom. In order to reach
a level of skill acquisition where they can actualize (execute accurately in any environment) proper
mechanics in competition, young sprinters need more frequent doses of specific work, but in lower
volumes.

This approach is the most efficient means of helping them develop skill and, therefore, running faster
times. Training deeper in the same pool allows a ‘reset’ between sessions. This maximizes the number
of practice opportunities you can facilitate in a given time period while minimizing the
counterproductive technical deterioration resulting from, among other things, trying to jam too many
activities into single training session. In other words:
If you want them to get faster and express that speed consistently, they need to practice sprinting
related activities as often as possible.

Training deeper in the same pool allows you to use Monday to set up Tuesday. In a ‘kind-of-but-not-
really’ sort of way, you might consider it similar in concept to post activation potentiation. Just over
multiple days. Each individual session contains lower volume than they would following the traditional
‘hard, easy’ format. However, the quality of the work and the power output of each effort becomes
significantly enhanced utilizing this format.

Additionally, it’s much less likely you’ll have to scrap plyos or parts of the weight room as often occurs
on days where the practice runs long and you run out of time. This format makes a great deal of sense
when working with low skill teenagers. But, let’s say you’re a proud dinosaur of the late ’10×400 is a
viable practice option’ era and still setting up your week something like:

M: Neural
T: Tempo
W: General or Tempo
TH: Neural
F: Tempo or General
SA: Neural or Tempo
SU: Off

Well, here’s the fatal flaw in your design and administration: After trying to teach the skill of sprinting
on Monday, they’re not seeing it again for 72 hours. And if you went “acceleration” on Monday and
“Vmax” on Thursday, what are you doing Saturday? Speed endurance? Well, now they’re performing all
efforts under a state of fatigue. So how does that teach *sprinters* how to *sprint*? (It doesn’t.)

Sprinting is a specific and technically demanding SKILL. Sprinting is not fast running. Sprinting is not
running fast. If the foundation of your sprints training program builds on multiple days between
administering specific work in practice, you’re simply not giving your sprinters enough opportunities to
practice and develop sprint specific coordination, otherwise known as *skill*. I mean you can do it, but
you’ll likely arrive at faulty conclusions as to why your sprinters fall apart at the end of their races. Let’s
take a look at how you might set this up within your program and I’ll break it after the example below.

Fundamentally, every unit within Monday’s practice is meant to be compatible with the other
activities within the session. Not only is the goal to build upon the previous unit within the session, but
compliment the ‘deeper’ activity in the equivalent part of Tuesday’s practice. Tuesday activities are
progressions from Monday in terms of volume, intensity, complexity, and specificity. All of this is
explained to my sprinters, continuously. You must constantly remind your sprinters what the objective
of practice is or they are only doing mindless exercise.

Telling a kid that a hex bar deadlift should be executed like the initial movement of a start helps them tie
together how the track work and weight room work assist each other. Hex bar deadlift becomes an
opportunity to practice more starts. And when doing starts, they understand they need to push/pull
with the same intensity as when they have to move all that weight during the deadlift. This is how kids
can learn to transfer strength and power activities directly to the track instead of just being strong in the
weight room without it specifically improving performance on the track. Let’s break down the specific
session units from the above image, but without going neck deep into the weeds. There are other places
for that.

1. The warmup on both days follows an acceleration theme. So we’ll probably do the same thing
both days. But, as I’m cueing, explaining, and correcting different activities, I’ll talk about them
in context of the activities for that day.
2. Ultimately, these are extensions of the warmup. But, both set up the main session.
3. Monday, we’ll use an ‘acceleration complex’ consisting of three different drills (anything that
isn’t the specific activity/whole movement) to teach elements of acceleration and finish with 3
pushes/steps of the whole activity to start to ‘put it together’ and overview the objective of
Tuesday’s practice.
4. Monday: MultiThrow for power and coordination. Tuesday: Horiztontal multijumps/plyos
because the are compatible with the theme of the day.
5. Monday: Partial and foundational activities, similar to the theme of the session. Tuesday:
Olympic lifts are in quotes because we mostly don’t do them (for facility and equipment
limitations, not philosophical). Older kids might deadlift with a staggered stance because it is
similar to their blocks set up.

So those are the fundamentals of training deeper in the same pool. If you're not utilizing this type of
practice set up in your program, consider playing with it. I have gotten great results since I began doing
this 6 or 7 years ago. If you're already doing it, the next level is to get even more specific in terms of
how compatible and complimentary you are with your exercise selection, as well as the clarity in which
you explain to your athletes 'why' they're doing each activity, even the most mundane.
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