I remember uw-lacrosse bought in a s2l guy from texas years ago after Mark went to Wisconsin and the kids got worst… I think most of the failures were from the athletes not believing in the new training.
I know the feeling. A youth girl I coached the past three years was making steady but consistent progress on an S-L program. 13.3…12.9…12.6… Then I got a job offer I had to take this year. This season under her new program it’s classical, high volume, overtraining L-S with an extreme taper at the end of the year. She only ran 12.4 at the championship, but earlier in the year she was consistently under 12.5, ran a legal 12.2 and an illegal 12.1. …Almost half a second faster.
I’ve seen such phenomena before, but I think that switching an athlete (who is still early in development) from a program that is very low in volume to one that is high in volume can be sort-of an “early cash-in”. Since the athlete is still early in development, and has never done high volume training, it seems they can see massive improvements from such work because they’ll still improve from just about anything. And, L-S will improve the right-side endurance end of things - which we know will get them bigger chunks early on. However, I see it as cashing in their check too soon before they could have built it up even more. Keeping long term development in mind, the left-side of the curve might seem like meager gains at first, but once the beginner on short-to-long becomes an advanced athlete on a short-to-longer over the years, I think that those athletes will continue to improve even more down the road.
Just like there is a very sharp but short peak in classical L-S, I think their macro results are similar over an individual’s career. Whereas even in the micro, the S-L can have an extended and more sustainable peak. Just my two cents at the moment.
For long term and sustainable results over time it makes sense that a coach finds what best works for the athlete. Cater first to the individual.
A lot of programs would not have the time, will or energy to do so would be my guess. It’s based on ease of how to admin the training. It’s quickest and easiest to have one program, get everyone to do it and the US has so many athletes it tends to work.
I get so many notes from so many athletes who talk about how they crashed as athletes and had they only known about training the way I was taught. Lots of parents who write me and talk about this and now they coach their kids or a team and have been grateful for the ideas and guidance.
Charlie used to always say he could have made me faster in a shorter period of time but it would comprise the longer term span of my potential. Remember, his drive to coach in part stemmed from being forced to quit training due to so many debilitating injuries.