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Did you suffer from any CNS fatigue during the early weeks? I find I am restless during the night, and even feeling "hungover" from too much speedwork or high intensity lifting.

I'll discuss the speed workouts on another thread.

We always do lifting after our speed (or SE1 or SE2 or Special endurance) sessions, which is 3X per week. Usually "2 plus 1" which means 2 primary and 1 ancillary. Plus lots of low intensity abs.

For example:
Mon: bench & squats; ancillary 1 (i.e. lat pull down)
Wed: squats & cleans; ancillary 2
Fri: cleans & bench; ancillary 3

This way, we cover the main 3 power exercises 2X per week.

I know the HSI group (i.e. Maurice Green, Ato Boldon, etc) do their weights at 11am, followed by 1pm track workouts. Most likely they are not doing max weights.

I should emphasize that the above workouts are for the open athletes.

Master athletes in our club do weights 2X per week, since speed is done 2X per week. In that case, they try to do all 3 primary lifts in the same session, and no ancillaries.

Same here, hit the weight room right after a track session. We hardly needed a warm up. 1 set of 8 reps with one plate, then onto the heavier weights.

Of course, a fresh T-shirt always helps!

We do max weights before running without a problem. The issue is the choice of exercise and how you do them. Working to exhaustion in the weightroom is not necessary and is counter productive. If one doesn't work to exhaustion, which means staying alactic in the weightroom, takes sufficient rest between sets (5 min minimum) then running immediately after lifting is not an issue.

Lifting after running is not as productive.

Bench press (or lat pull downs) does not aid in sprinting and squats require too much time under load to allow staying alactic. Cleans do not have much of a positive affect on sprinting since they do not mimic the rate of force delivery required nor its direction. The lift relies on extended ground contact times that are far beyond the few hundreths of a second that occur in sprinting, or any other sport that relies on running.
The deadlift is the better match for sprint training.

Special endurance is a function of strength training rather than on-track training. The sprinter never runs out of gas. Constant eccentric stretching during high speed running causes the muscles, tendons, and ligaments to fatigue. Increasing the density of them (without increasing the oxygen transport system) allows them to work longer with a correspondingly higher level of elastic recoil. In other words, you can run faster longer.

"The deadlift is the better match for sprint training."

Different people do the deadlift differently. Some advice to do a slow,but steady pull. Others advocate a quick lift up. I am a high jumper and a fast lift seem to be more profitable for me than the slow, grinding pull. As a matter of fact I found that the "clean" is forcing me to work more explosively than the deadlift - fully realizing that the second phase of the clean does not help much with high jumping.
What is your opinion on this?
Milan HJ M56

Ah the clean, my all time favorite lift

I was sorry when I told it to go away and not return

I'm a strict advocate of using the weightroom to get strong, as strong as possible, without adding mass. In the high jump your major battle is with gravity, similar to sprinting but with greater affect against you. It's also similar in that you use both elastic recoil and ground reaction force for most of your propulsion.

The amount of elastic energy stored and released during ground contact is dictated by the posterior musculotendinous system (muscles, tendons, etc). Increasing the thickness or density can increase the amount of energy stored. Rapid release of that energy can be improved, to a large extent, by plyometric work.

So how do the 2 main exercises you use in the weightroom affect the storage and release of energy in the form of elastic recoil? Heavy lifting (not less than 85% 1RM) increases muscle density as well as positive effects on tendons and ligaments. This will increase the amount of elastic energy created and stored. As a primarily ballistic exercise, the clean cannot be performed at the same load as the deadlift. In any ballistic lift, the lifter must be strong enough to perform the lift at a greater rate of speed. If you want to move a greater load faster, you must get stronger to do so, which, in a sense, begs the question. Moving heavier loads recruits larger, faster firing motor units. These units create the most tension. Moving lighter loads faster will not recruit as many (or any depending on the load) of the large motor units.

Based on the above, it makes more sense, physiologically, for you to do heavy deadlifts. The speed of the lift will be dictated by the weight. However, is it necessary for you to move it faster to be more explosive in your jumping?

I would say no. Elastic recoils comes from eccentric contractions. They are much more powerful than concentric contractions and develop energy at a significantly greater rate. Increasing release rate is the function of plyometrics, which by definition, is a rapid change from eccentric to concentric contraction. Exercises like box jumps (and many of the plyos jumpers use) can dramatically increase release of stored elastic energy, if done properly. Running short and as fast as possible is also a powerful method of creating storing and rapidly releasing elastic energy. The power clean cannot duplicate the speed of release of most standard plyometrics.

Sooooo, hit the deadlift with heavy weights, do the plyos, jump higher, live longer....etc.