Part 4-How to Create a Conjugate (Concurrent) Training System (Method) for Track and Field Athletes

Sorry for the late blog post this week. I hope you are all having a great holiday week and enjoying some time away from school with your families.

In this week's blog and video, I look at three more scientific principles of strength as explained by Chad Wesley Smith and Dr. Mike Israetel in their video, Critique of Westside on the Juggernaut Training Systems YouTube channel.

The first is the principle of overload. Basically, is the athlete lifting enough weight to gain strength? Second is the principle of fatigue management. In other words, is the athlete doing enough training to see a result but not too much training where they are overtraining or going to get hurt? Third is the principle of S.R.A. S.R.A. is the idea that the athlete is training with the right stimuli to gain strength and size, that the athlete has enough time to recover and adapt to the training to produce the desired result.

Check out the video below where I briefly explain these three principles, go through the good and bad as explained by Chad and Dr. Mike, and then give advice on how to keep the good, adjust the bad, and implement them into a conjugate style training method.

Here is the Cliffs Notes version of the video for a recap:

1. Westside does a great job with all three of these, but according to Chad and Dr. Mike they could be better.

2. Regarding overload, the heavier, more stressful work still needs to happen during the main movement on max effort lower body and max effort upper body days. This is all relative to the experience and strength levels of your athletes.

3. With overload, we need to add volume in our secondary and assistance movements if the volume is not there in the main movements on max effort days.

4. For fatigue management, keeping two heavy days (ME Lower and ME Upper) during the week with two lighter, more explosive days during the week to aid in recovery is the best way to go.

5. These two lighter more explosive days should be done outside using methods like plyometrics and medicine ball work.

6. To prevent neural fatigue and any joint/tendon/ligament pain, we should never go to 100% or over 100% using accommodating resistance on max effort days.

7. Regarding S.R.A., the track and field season already takes care of this for us. We can't (shouldn't) be in the weight room 4-5 days per week because we are outside at practice, at track meets, and have meets on the weekends. Two days in the weight room are all we need.

8. During the off-season we can take a look at our athletes and see if they have the capacity to add another somewhat heavy lower body and upper body day to their weekly training because the athletes will have the time. However during the competitive season this would not be a good idea.

So here is the plan moving forward trying to stick to the same schedule that I outlined last week:

• The next video will go over the last 3 scientific principles of strength that Chad, Dr. Mike, and Dr. James Hoffman wrote about in their book. .

• The last video (or 2 videos) will then go into how to use a conjugate system for your athletes at your school, how to use it for your in-season training, and how to use it for your athletes as an off-season training method as well.

Thanks for reading the blog and checking out the video. If you have any questions, please let me know. Stay tuned for video 5 next week covering the principles of variation, phase potentiation, and individual differences.

-Coach Matt Ellis