Loughborough Training

It’s been a fair while since our last update on our decathlon plans. Things have moved on, so its time to bring you all up to date.

Our attempts to get in touch with the best coaches that we could find have paid off. We had replies from a number of UK athletics coaches and they put us in touch with a decathlete and coach, Adrian Hemery who is based in Loughborough.
We talked with him and arranged to see him for an initial coaching session in November, but had to cancel it at the last minute.

The plan is to go to work with Adrian at Loughborough on Sunday mornings every few weeks, and he’ll take us through a complete programme of decathlon training. His advice has been that we need to concentrate on the very technical events like Pole Vault and Hurdles initially. Here the biggest gains stand to be made and where technique is everything.

While we waited for that first Loughborough session we got on with training on our own. This has been based around British Military Fitness classes, which I’ve now joined after much persuading by Ed. It’s been really good fun and the work we do is a good variety of cardio and resistance training. Doing a lot more situps does seem to be helping with my nagging back ache so its been a step in the right direction for me. Ed is obsessed/addicted (delete as appropriate) and just completed 30 sessions without missing a single one.

I’ve also been trying to sign up more famous athletes to give us advice and coaching, and again this paid off. So we now have three well known athletes who are going to help us over the next few months. We will reveal who they are soon, so keep watching for future updates.

I nearly forgot to mention the fact that we went to Burton Athletics Club after they said we could train with their multi event group. So, on a wet November evening we travelled to Burton only to end up very disappointed. The coaching wasn’t what we were led to believe at all. We hung around and did the track session that was on offer and then called it a day. We did sneak in a timed 400m run so we could log our points total though. Let’s just say there’s a lot of improving to be done here. When we checked the scoring tables, I’d notched up a magnificent 5 points, and Ed scored 5 less than I did !!! Yes, you did just read that correctly! Just wait til we get some spikes though eh?!

To bring you right up to date, this Sunday 13th December we did manage to get to Loughborough for our first session with Adrian our coach. It was an early start, and I really didn’t enjoy having to be up at 7am on a Sunday morning, but its always better with a coffee inside me and once I was out of the door I was fine. The facilities at Loughborough are great, its a multi floor indoor centre overlooking a 400m track on the university campus. We met Adrian at the Hi-Performance Athletics Centre, as we are of course high performing athletes!!! The centre’s indoor facilities include nets for throwing events and multiple Pole Vault beds and practice sand pits, indoor running lanes and a full gym. Pretty much everything you could ever need. Our fan club (Nicky and Lynette) came along and fortunately the photos and videos they took were from quite a distance away. I will post what we have though the next time someone makes a donation

Adrian took us through a series of warm-up exercises and stretches then we started with hurdles practice drills. The full height of the hurdles is scary and fortunately we’re working our way up to that so aim to reduce the number of times we nose dive into the track as much as possible. This time we got away without either of us doing that, although I did tweak a gluteus muscle (bum to be blunt) so had to cut the hurdles short. Ed ploughed on (not through) and over the hurdles while I practiced skipping like a girl!

After that we got onto the best bit of the day, Pole Vault coaching!

Adrian took us through the technique step by step, starting off with just getting used to the motion of planting the pole and moving with it from a still position. We gradually moved our grip up the pole so we moved further each time. Then we started practicing into to the indoor sandpit, where we kicked sand in each others faces and built a giant castle.

When we realised we’d left our little flags at home we decided to practice planting the pole in the sand then swinging past it into the pit. Again we slowly moved our grip positions so we travelled further into the pit before landing each time. At this stage we were moving about 3 steps and only walking with the pole and the pole certainly doesn’t flex at this stage. Oh, I should mention Ed and his Pole weight problems at this point. It would be cruel not to. Up until a couple of days before our visit to Loughborough, he had me believing that a pole weighed about 60-80kg. We wondered how the hell we were going to lift them and to be honest this bothered me more than anything else about the event. Then, Mr Saunders decides to look again and finds out that he actually looked at the weight of the person each one is recommended for, and that the actual pole weighs somewhere between 6 and 10 pounds! I hope you’ll join me in not letting him forget that in a hurry!

Anyway, back to the training and now the good bit. We moved down to the other end of the room and practiced planting the pole properly, at first from a walk then from a very slow and short jog. Using the technique we’d been taught we both were able to plant the pole in the box (its probably got a better name than that) and get up onto the landing pad quite well. Before the end of the session Adrian strung a practice bar up and we both cleared about 1.5m landing in a sitting position on the mat. Adrian was very happy with this as a result, and to say it was good fun would be a massive understatement.

We have to thank Adrian for his help on this session, there’s just no way anyone could pole vault without having gone through the process he took us through, and we both really appreciated the help.

So thats about it for now. We will be going back to Loughborough in about 5 weeks time, in mid January. We’re also planning to go to Northwood for at least one practice session over Christmas, and you’re more than welcome to join us if you fancy it. Just let us know.

I ask this every time, but please comment, if only to take the p*ss out of Ed and his Pole Vault weight mistake. Feel free to donate some hard cash as well

Until the next time,

Marko