cheers about the Verkoshansky (sp?) info. My coach is where i learned all that stuff initially and he saw former Ukrainian coach who relocated down under very early 70s to escape Communism for his two young children and the oncoming drug revolution within his field of work.
Firstly the mileage thing, yes i am a fan of continuos aerbic development in preparation phases although the second prep phase of SPP requires strength being added to this aerobic condition. This fits nicely with many of the MD coaching greats - Lydiard, Cerutty, Harry Wilson's approach (Ovett), Cram's coaches approach (can't remember his name), what the Kenyan's do naturally (although i think they don't have the same level of strength development generally) and many others. Even Igloi in his original stuff appears to keep the HR up pretty high throughout a session and he was almost strictly an interval man (and legend surely).
Where i can see almost everyone going wrong is in treating long running in all sorts of wrong ways. Just doing LSD will not work although will help for an ultra. Just doing tempo will not work although you will get very good at tempos. Also i see that a lot of athletes tend ot lose their naturalism when forcing the long running for extended periods of time. So when it doesn't meet with success they simply drop it and go in another direction. All from a misunderstanding of the complex nature of the longer running stuff as employed probably best by Lydiard. After all he tested every idea he had on himself and discarded plenty of wrong directions as he went along. A couple of obvious examples were 250 miles a week and 50 miles in a single run.Both too much but how would he have known if he didn't try it out.
The main trick i think with long running is to alternate sessions no matter what. Tues, Thurs and Sat can be the best aerobic paced runs with Mon, Wed and Fri as the recovery runs. Sunday as the long run which is in between those first two runs in intensity. Always recovery after hard i guess.
The other main trick is to have a coach who knows what naturalism is and through that knows natural posture and rhythm and technique - the three arms of mechanics. If he knows this stuff then as the athlete get overloaded with long running the coach can constantly correct the parts that are falling out of their naturally correct positions (posture and technique) and state (rhythm). Posture and Rhythm are the two most important and also the two easiest to correct if one knows what is correct. Most good yoga teachers, Feldenkrais specialists, Alexander Technique practitioners, martial arts teachers etc know correct posture and correct rhythm is definitely observable to just about anyone. Sit Coe next to the average joe and it is apparent. The best thing is the average joe can allow the tension and artificiality to fall out of his incorrect rhythm and gradually return to his natural state. Actually once a free and unimpeded posture is found rhythm mostly returns to this natural state on it's own. Technical factors become a little more complicated if you want to refine them to the levels needed for most of T&F's technical events, but for longer running, as long as the main rules are not being broken, close to optimal performance can be reached.
Just a few other things and this is a bit simplified but simple is always a good place to start for me anyway - GPP is for aerobic, SPP for strength, PCP for power and CP for speed. generally each phase is of equal length but i have found that PCP can easily become 3/4 of the length of the others without detriment. At least so far i've found that - my coach just made them equal so i may be getting ahead of myself here.
So taking your idea (and and essential one it is) that you need to be ready for say power for example, then yes you do need to prepare during the power development. So if power maximisation is during PCP then power development is in the phase prior - SPP. If you are a triple jumper then there is a much higher amount of power training needed and so pre-development work is needed. This fits into the prior stage again - GPP. So i suggested you to do pre-development power training i guess for your base phase.
Just one other idea that is needed to fully explain this and that is all development stages are best done within a aerobic bubble to use an image/metaphor. The bubble means that as you do strength development in GPP, the entire session is as much of not more aerobic in nature than anaerobic. So i use circuit training almost exclusively in the GPP phase for this. Strength within endurance (or aerobic as the terms we have been using). Same with power and same with speed. Speed pre-development in SPP phase is in this aerobic bubble if done for conditioning but i wouldn't do conditioning for speed development, i would develop speed this early in the training year only through mechanical stuff. Fortunately this can be done before or after and definitely during aerobic running if one knows what mechanical factors to keep in mind. Imagine an 8 mile run @ 7min/mile. This hour could well involve taking well over 5000 steps. Now you can have either 5000 steps reinforcing all of ones old bad habits or 5000 steps keeping in mind the new improved way. Repeat for half a year and you are either running the same or running completely differently.
Now i'll try and go through your points
1. yes skipping is almost step one in plyos - nice. When i said 20 mins this is continuous in the aerobic sense ie you would not take breaks longer than 30 seconds between exercises so as to keep the HR high. These exercises should start with something like skipping or maybe light springing up a hill. It could also involve a circuit modified from what triple jumpers use. Make a rectangle 20m/30m to begin with. Start with hopping 20m, then stride bound 30m, then hop other leg 20m, then springy backwards running for 30m. Then skip for a minute and then repeat. Alternatively on set two of the rectangle, double leg jump deep position (frog jump) for 20m, stride bound for 30m, half squat jump for 20m, and running backwards on the toes for 30m. Skip again. There are so many fun combinations to make up and if the hops are done with little vertical effort (although some is essential as plyos are as much training one to extend their posture to maximum as gain power) and the bounds are well within max range and so on 20 mins is not that difficult - probably start with 5 or 10mins and it will quickly rise to 20m. Doing stuff uphill reduces impact and downhill will raise it. If hills a re used i would just easy jog on the downill phase. How is that?
2. the hurdles stuff sounds good when you say it like that - you could also consider it to be light plyo training. Also i love hurdles for just about any athlete.It tends to force one to find a better posture and rhythm and of course it is excellent for mechanics if someone can correct the main errors made. I use a series of hurdle drills with standard modifications for almost any athlete i coach. It teaches multi limb coordination, posture, timing, rhythm as well as developing active flexibility and strength through the hips and torso and ankles. Such good stuff alldone within about 10 mins of exercises.
3. the hills - sorry i didn't mean eliminate hills from GPP. What i believe is that during GPP hills are progressively increased throughout the phase from beginning to end. Also i don't think a dedicated hills session is needed in GPP, however if done inside the aerobic bubble as your session seems to indicate it ain't so bad. I guess if the HR drops too much in the 2 min jog then the main purpose of GPP for MD can be lost - continuous steady state aerobic development. Still i feel it the dedicated hills can wait till SPP for the following reason.
Hills can be well developed during the longer running - in preparation for dedicated sessions in SPP. If the GPP phase is 12 weeks ie 1/4 of a full year periodisation, then week 1 would include none - only flat running. Week 2 could be the same. Week 3 might start to include a couple of hills
in each longer run and by week 12 lots of hills even with one really long continuous hill say for 15-20 mins straight 2-3 miles worth. This covers things quite well in my understanding.
apoligies for the length of the posts but i'm feeling a bit verbose at the moment and also feel the need to try and explain my thoughts to completion - this seems to require a lot of words. I hope to separate the wheat from the chaff as i gain more experience in coaching and explaining stuff.
and haha, yes i was flowlikewater but will saying that cause problems? What posts have you seen? ps i was also sim for a while , especially when i was jousting with Tim Noakes - he kind of won out in the end though, which doesn't really matter as i did learn a lot from him through that process. I changed to Flow because it's easier and quicker to type but also because of the quote that actually inspired the name
Water can crash and water can flow. Be like water my friend - Bruce Lee.
cheers again i am enjoying this thinking out loud
Flow