very impressive work ESTI!
Thanks!!!
This week, the school was closed, but we had access to a high school indoor facility, which is a small 3 lane track around the basketball court, good enough to get in 30-40m full out efforts.
The s-l is 30+ this week, so it worked well. We worked out to 3 hurdles. I video 60fps some runs and the first hurdle touchdown time is 2.55 from first movement, the same I use during meets (since I can’t always get the smoke in the camera view, I can be consistent with his effort and factor in reaction time later). Last year, his first race indoors at the end of march, he was at 2.55 to H1. So to have him do this in practice at end of December, there is some progress. His state finals from last year, he was at 2.47 to H1 in the finals. I feel in a meet environment, now, he runs low 2.4’s or faster.
30m block starts were run in the 3.8-3.9 range. A few years ago, a runner ran 3.8’s from blocks in our hallways and would later run 7.07. Being on a fairly springy track, he’s not quite there yet. I think he can still run sub 7.00 by the end of February.
The first meet is scheduled (weather permitting among other things) next Thursday. A 60H, a 60open, and possibly a 200. I will try my best to keep meets 10 days apart. The meets closest to us allow this schedule to happen.
He also looks like he can qualify for the New Balance indoor nationals in NYC Armory. If he runs sub 8.00, he qualifies. I think he is in 8.20 shape right now, we will see soon!
Workouts this week looked like this:
Warm-up
Hurdle drills
warm-up accels
3x30m standing
2x30m blocks
3x1 hurdle from blocks
3x2 hurdles from blocks
3x3 hurdles from blocks
All block starts were done with a clap to work on reaction.
Next week, we will do the 1/2 spacing drill working on quickness over hurdles. This was our bread and butter drill last season and really helped him get over hurdles quick.
I am assuming you are training with the hurdles low and pushed in?
We do warm up drills with lowered heights &1/2 spacing drill is at 36" (competition ht is 39".
He has tendency to get jammed in tight towards hurdle 5-7. I plan on changing spacing when we work on those distances.
Ange what would you recommend?
Mon 12/31
Today worked on block starts out to 30m. Electronically timed 4.03-4.07 on 4 runs. He looks to be in low 7 shape right now. I am very pleased.
Speed work was finished with 3 x 30+20 finish drills.
After looking at the video from last week, his arm action needed slight improvements to keep him more balanced on touchdown. This was the focus during warm-up drills.
We did 4 reps of 5 hurdles half spaced at 36" focusing on arm action.
Then finished with 3 runs over 2 hurdles 36" slightly spaced in to work on arm action.
Tomorrow and Wednesday will be Basement style tempo as we have too much snow to do tempo outdoors. Thursday, weather permitting, is a race.
Change nothing right now.
Let’s see how the competition goes on Thursday.
Easy on the tempo on Jan 1 esp. if it’s not normal running. That work can really sneak up on you. I would not change much or anything right now if that is what your athlete ( s) are used to.
I am not sure I would do much the day before a race expect a light and easy warm up with no real effort of any sort.
Where is the meet?
We run at Uni of Michigan Thursday. I will change the basement tempo. One of my rules is don’t change much of what you have been doing, as you said. Today is not the day to add something new. Thanks for the reminder!
This quote was 6 days ago. Today, Jan 3, he ran 60H in 8.14 and a 6.98! Both times look to be top 10 in the country currently.
I didn’t think he’d get to sub 7 so fast in the indoor season. Overall great day, with still a lot of room for hurdle improvement. He got in too close to hurdles 4 and 5, hitting both of them.
The plan is to still race every 10 days or so. Using this, he has 4 more meets before state finals.
He also qualified for the New Balance Indoor Nationals the beginning of march.
Our goal is 7.70 in the hurdles. I’m trying to see where we can drop nearly half second. Ange, any ideas where the time can be improved? I’ll put video link up this weekend. I video 60fps to analyze flight times and touchdown times. Typical flight times are around 0.31 seconds Early last spring, he was around 0.4. At some point, I don’t think we can get to 0.2. So the improvement has to be to the first hurdle, between them, and the finish.
The past 3 weeks have been long!
The runner had a few days where tightness led to stopped workouts. There was a small spasm and his muscles were slightly “tight” for him. He’s never been fully loose/ideally toned as Charlie and Waldemar might say. So I made time for him to get treatment from me, for free. Unfortunately, a week was wasted due to the parents.
After a few days wasted, I finally had to tell him to go see someone and pay them. Everyone go my point and he then made the next 4 times I had available, and the issue was resolved, but 3 weeks went by with minimal training.
In the process, he was invited to a national race, the Brooks PR Invitational in Seattle at the end of February. This certainly had him more motivated to get better.
Today, Jan 25, we started up training again. The plan for now has shifted away from the S-L progression and will work more on focusing through 30m of speed while getting quality hurdle work in. The focus is still increasing frequency between hurdles.
I took Ange’s advice and used a progression I feel went well, but time will tell. We start with 3 hurdles half spaced (5 yards) at 36" (39" is comp ht). We work on first touchdown to last touchdown times. Every few reps, I move the hurdles out 1 foot. We eventually got to 8 yards apart (10 yards is comp distance for those who don’t know). This moving of the hurdles out gradually looked to naturally put him into a nice shuffling stride needed to run sub 8.
We ended with 2 standing 30m (first at 85% effort, and second at 95% effort in a new workout best time). Then finished with 2x 60 30+m, again both records for that given distance and accel zone. Those 4 days I was able to really get his tone optimal and he know sees what it feels like.
The massage work was not easy. One thing I learned from Waldemar, and observed in watching Charlie work, was sometimes you might only work one muscle for an hour if it’s that tight. The first 2 sessions were 1 hour on each hamstring where I would started using techniques seen in the Taper video by Charlie. Sessions 3 was more a waldemar technique/shaking to loosen up hamstring, and then began to work on the quads, which were also tight, but no issues with them. Session 4 I finished one small spot on the hamstring and finishing the quads. He was obviously much too tight, and considering he ran 6.99 this way, says he has much, much more in him, but that isn’t the goal right now.
He is currently ranked #8 in the US for HS 60H times.
I’ve found time after time,
Free advise (or offers such as training or massage) are pointless
They don’t feel it’s worthy if it’s free.
They don’t feel guilty if they miss it
They don’t appreciate it, unless they pay for it.
There are loopholes in this, and require careful marketing or sales technique to individual persons.
An example (if you want to offer free massage to clients you already train)
Is, the cost of training already covers a weekly, or monthly massage, if you don’t show, you’ll miss out and will have to pay normal top dollar)
I normally offer massage as part of training, and say, sometimes we might start a session with 5 min massage, or end with 5 min massage, or, if you’re really bad, we’ll end up doing the entire session as massage. This can be challenging in groups…
Wow…you both should be proud, those Golden tickets are very very hard to come by! Congradulations!
I find your threads/posts very intersting and full of great information.
Bold,
I typically find time for my top runners each year. In 5 years, I’ve never had anyone do what happened in the past few weeks. I spend a considerable amount of time with my runners, and those married with kids, as you are, understand the tension that could result at home. Having been at this school in my 3rd year, most kids appear to feel what I do is “normal” for schools, in fact, it’s quite rare. Sometimes kids (and parents) may need a reminder of how fortunate they are to have me doing the things I do.
Esti
You are a dedicated coach.
I think you are doing a great job for these kids.
It’s pretty cool to follow your work.
Thanks for sharing with others so they might
learn as well.
Boldwarrior
I agree with you also but business is different than coaching in its purest form. Don’t you think?
Not everyone is cut out for some types of coaching . And not everyone
is cut out for what I feel might be compromises when money or business
might interfere with the performance aspect of sport. I have boarded many people
into my house , fed them , helped train them and at the end
of the day what satisfaction is there if I am not trying my absolute hardest
for the sake of performance? I’m less motivated by
money now than before but I enjoy seeing how information changes
people’s lives. I totally agree however with your comments as I think business organizes relationships within sport that really help the process of learning.
Esti , for sure I would hold hot and cold sessions administered
by me, enforcing each person do one to qualify for my messages. I’m certain Charlie
did not operate like this but he sure didn’t
like it when I didn’t do my bit to make his work
a bit easier.
Ultimately , I feel a long term successful coach athlete relationship must have some
mutual understanding of how the coach athlete relationship works successfully.
Esti, I think you get a great deal of satisfaction out of what you are doing. I don’t think it hurts
to be mindful of what motivates you to work so hard and ask yourself if you are getting what you need as a coach
out of your athletes.
Thanks Ange!
Having a higher level talent certainly has brought up issues I have never faced prior. Only if it was as simple as program design, timing runs in practice, and running fast in meets!
Thur jan 31
We had a solid week of training and ran just the 60H tonight. He ran a new PB in 8.07. Although he hasn’t done much in 3 weeks, was still hoping he’d run sub 8, but training suggested 8.10. I still have to look at the video for analysis. Overall happy. He came away healthy and we continue the training tomorrow with bike tempo. He also got to meet our state record holder in the hurdles (7.79, 13.65, 35.90), Kenneth Ferguson. He ran at South Carolina and then trained with Kersee for several years. He’s back home finishing up school. It was very cool to meet him.
Feb 16, 2013
After the 8.07 on 1/31/13, we had a solid few weeks of practice. With him, I have always kept things simple in training. We do few drills, usually 1 drill for a given aspect we are focusing on. Right now, it’s been speed between hurdles. We did a lot of work with hurdles at 36" and 9 yard spacing (vs 39" and 10 yd spacing). Practice runs in hallways in running shoes have been around the 1.00-1.10 split range per hurdle. I’m trying to create training environment where he is put into goal racing rhthym (approx. 1.00 splits or faster) . We did one day about 4 reps of a 10 step run up to H1 to help increase speed throughout the run. This did work well for him.
On Feb 13, he raced again running 8.06 and I felt ran technically really poor. This came after 5 days off due to a college recruiting visit weekend going longer than expected. He then ran a 60 in a 7.14 and again, technically ran very poor from reaction to finish. Mentally, it was good for him. He had “been on top of the world” and finally ran poorly and got beat bad in the 60m.
A race on Feb 16 had 2 rounds, and I felt after such a poor showing Wednesday, that meet would help him prepare for his trip out to Seattle next weekend on Feb 24. I did not go with him to the race today (feb 16). I wanted to see how things would go without me and used this as a preparation for Seattle, when I will not be there again, and potentially NYC March 2-3.
He ran a prelim of 8.15. Later on I received a text he ran 7.76, which would put him #1 in the US right now. I had a few other messages and phone calls. It was eventually finalized that was indeed his time. After speaking to him on the phone, he said he felt good during warm-up and jogged his 8.15 prelim. I have felt he needed a prelim to run fast and most meets we do not get that luxury, nor room for a proper warm-up on the hurdles. My instructions to him last night was to attack H1 with more speed. I felt he was jogging it in the 8.0x races after analyzing the races on video. I’m hoping to get video from this race so have some idea what he did.
Overall, this nearly completes our goal of running 7.70 indoors. Technically we just finished SPP and now entering comp phase of 2-3 weeks. The plan is to race on weekends and do 1-2 easy technical sessions and some accel SE work out to 60m with limited accel zones. Hopefully he can arrange time with me for 1-2 massages weekly as well.
This week we focused on staying technically crisp without doing too much. We had solid workouts and he felt great as of last night. He flew out today (Friday morning) and races Sunday. I posted a link in the race reports threads. He has 2 rounds and the competition appears to be solid from top to bottom of list. He will race 2 times in 90 minutes. We have done this all indoor so I am confident he will run fine and run well this weekend.