Working on speed

If you read my blog and posts on IGx you probably know that I am not a big fan of long timed sets, at least at this stage of my GS training. I recently tried 10 minute double jerks with two 16-s and got 65 reps. If you check previous posts, you will see that the focus of my training was building the session volume and had I never done a set longer than 5 minutes before. Now that I can last whole 10 minutes, the question is how to increase the cadence. OTWers generally recommend to re-start from 3 minute sets at higher cadence and work up to 10 minutes or even longer. While this approach is valid, I was curious about other methods and posted the appropriate question on Rybinsk GS forum.

One of the posters (he is MS) suggested the following. The basis is to do multiple sets at high(er) cadence, in one of the two ways.

1. Lift at maximal cadence trying to keep the tempo constant. As the tempo starts decreasing - stop the set and take liberal rest. Repeat. Build up the number of sets in a workout. This particular guy, Valentin, says that his normal tempo with 32-s is about 8-9 per minute, so he does speed sets at about 15 per minute and manages to do about six sets in a workout.

2. Set the tempo of the set slightly higher than your usual and try to keep it constant. When the tempo starts falling - stop. Next set - increase the tempo more, and so on. This type of training is ideally suitable for training with a partner: it becomes more competitive and you can keep the score for each other.

Valentin also recommends doing control sets – 7, 8 or 9 minutes (in different sessions) and doing 3-4 sets of 3-4 minutes at higher tempo.

This is fully in keeping with what I believe works: volume (I guess Pavel must have subliminal influence on me!)