Yesterday: 4 km walk for active recovery, quite sore in my upper hammies from squats the previous day.

Today: Intervals, 2 X 400m @ 85%, 1 X 200m @ 90% and 1 X 60m @ 100%. Still progressing from session to session, it's a wonderful feeling, I'm carrying more speed through the sprints and recovery times are getting shorter too. I haven't done a true all-out sprint over a short distance in a while, mainly because I shifted to my training to cater for this damned 2.4 km timed run. In any case, I floored it, settled into my stride and realized that I actually had more gas in the tank, so I cranked it up that little bit more.....felt like I was kicking holes in the ground (probably an indication of lousy technique, lol). Takes its toll though, I knew as soon as I came to a stop after that the session was over and I walked back.

I have a wicked Crossfit style dumbell swing and burpee combo I plan to try tomorrow.

Cheers, Wilko

Experimented with some Full Contact Twists on Friday, what a revelation they were. Along with barbell rollouts they're going to complete my abdominal training, no more swiss ball crunches....ever.

Ran my usual intervals yesterday and I'm really happy with the protocol I've developed. Building the intensity and reducing the distance with each interval serves as something of an in built warm up and I think it's proving critical to avoiding injury, even though I'm only doing one all out 60m sprint at the end, I can feel just how stressful it is on the joints and connective tissues, thank god for the SAID principle eh!

I'm chuffed at the moment because I've been able to incorporate Olympic Lifts back into my program in a way that's a lot safer. I got the idea today after doing Full Contact Twists with the barbell wedged in the corner. Facing into the corner with the loaded bar oriented perpendicularly to your hips and resting between your feet, squat down, clean the bar to one shoulder, drop down to a full squat, press back up to standing, settle and then push-overhead press to complete the lift. Ok, so it doesn't require you to stabilize quite as much as the normal lift, but it's definitely safer and it's every bit as explosive. One word of caution, lowering the bar can be a bit awkward, in that regard though I think this variation might have even better real-world carryover. Oh and you'd better chuck an old towel in the corner to stop the barbell scuffing.

I hope some of you guys and girls try the lift, I'm claiming naming rights however!

Cheers, Wilko