Working on cadence

If you read my GSAfter40) blog and posts on IGx in 2008 you could see that I was not a big fan of long timed sets at that stage of my GS training. In December 2008 I tried 10 minute double jerks with two 16-s pretty much for the first time and got 65 reps. The focus of my training leading to this test was building the session volume, and had I never done a set longer than 5 minutes before. My question at the time was: now that I can last whole 10 minutes how do I increase the cadence? I asked it on Rybinsk GS forum.

One of the posters, Valentin, who was the Master of Sport at the time, suggested the following: to do multiple sets at high 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. Valentin said that his normal tempo with 32-s was about 8-9 per minute, and he did 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 recommended doing control sets – 7, 8 or 9 minutes (in different sessions) and doing 3-4 sets of 3-4 minutes at higher tempo.

In the last year my attitude to long sets somewhat changed, I and believe - just like my coach Sergej Rudnev does - they should be done with low weight every training session. Still, the approach outlined by Valentin is valid and is useful for improving results.