The situation for Andre doesn’t look to be getting better. It looks to be getting worse. As a point of comparison, in the Pac-12 Conference championships last year (last weekend), Andre ran 9.97 and 20.05 at UCLA. And in the NCAA Championships on June 12 last year he ran 9.75(+2.7) and 19.58 (+2.4).
When Asafa is in form, his mechanics are, in my view, the absolute model of excellence. As for Andre, time will tell.
hes way behind
Perhaps you could describe what you saw at Altis? What is going on there? I’ve been watching their Instagram page for a while and from the looks of it, their training is dog shit. But of course that is one part of the program. And maybe they are just trying to show the fanciest exercises to impress the Instagram audience.
Do they really understand how all of the pieces to the puzzle work and fit together. This was in my opinion, Charlie’s greatest quality - he could see all of the training components and understand how they are to be organized and structured, and was able to weed out the unnecessary. Literally half the Instagram page is partial rep squats, single leg bar in the air walks, eccentric trap bar drops…(what is their obsession with the trap bar anyways)…I mean one of the videos is andre holding a barbell over his head then doing high knees or what they called “quick step”…I honestly feel bad for the kid if he is being told that this is training. This is very hard for me to talk about a program when I have no other knowledge of what the program consists of, but I just don’t think they get it over there.
The fact that they won 5 medals at the last world champs suggests otherwise.
Perhaps, and as I said, I don’t know nearly any of what they are doing. I was a little “in the moment” if you will as I had just watched the race, so my tone was definitely harsh, but its already posted. With that said, there is definitely some ridiculousness with at least some of the exercises they have posted on Instagram, but it is quite possible to make good progress so long as the rest of the training is well structured. I hope it all works it for him and the rest of the group, and maybe he just needs a few more races to get going.
Does anyone know if elite athletes pay Altis a fee for their training at the facility - or maybe some form of prize money sharing or funding from their sponsor ?
I have nothing against this, everyone/organisation has to make a living.
However elite participants will soon leave if their performances decline after making a move and they are paying. I am aware of at least 1 elite level sprinter who has declined national funding and gone to Altis this year (at their own cost ?).
Its looking like andre shouldve stayed with carol or gone to the bolt camp.
To be fair, most are not doing too well compared to last year at this time. Webb (Altis) and Collins (Wind?) are two exceptions with Blake being another.
DeGrasse ran 20.16 into a strong headwind (-1.5) in Birmingham, destroying Webb in the process. He seems to be rounding into shape now. Unlike last season, he doesn’t have to peak until the Olympics, so maybe they are taking their time with him at Altis.
Brommel is not looking too good right now, and may struggle to make the team if he doesn’t improve fairly soon.
As Robin pointed out, Olympics aren’t until August. Andre would have had Conference and NCAA West Regionals over the last 3-4 weeks? He would be headed into NCAA Champs this weekend. Different calendar. We will have our answers in August.
The exercises on Instagram smell of Bosch.
My question about dorsiflexion at GCT is do we “coach” it? Doesn’t this go down the road of the hindbrain discussion? Just coach it in practice?
Interesting that Bromell appears to have pulled out of Birmingham with an Achilles issue. Agree with Robin, No point in Degrasse being a June champion. Moving coaches may have been a mistake heading into an Olympic year, but this can only truly be evaluated in the fullness of time.
9.99 to win Canadian Champs
With the 2+1 loading does Dan still perform testing on week 4 or is he bumping up to week 3? I’m assuming each block is 3 weeks long instead of 4.
The quick step/bar overhead is from Franz Bosch, who hasn’t really ever trained a top sprinter. The idea stems from using environmental constraints to make the body do something. In this case, its to promote a tall posture. By pressing the bar up as high as you can, you’ll likely get into as tall of a position as possible. Does this transfer to sprinting? Nope. Would it help a high school athlete have better context of what it feels like to run tall? Probably would help. Bosch writes a lot, has interesting ideas, and makes you think, but at the end of the day hasn’t (as far as I know) coached & developed any world level talents.
I think you are right in that instagram for them is a marketing tool, and therefore to impress the masses it helps to have novel ideas. Novel ideas aren’t always effective ideas.
At the end of the day, training doesn’t need to be fancy to be effective. Like you said, Charlie did a great job of balancing all factors of training toward a successful end result. When you have too many variables in there, how can you really be aware of what is doing what?
Plus, you can never predict whether something will lead to a good adaptation or not. We hope for the best, but just because you think something will have a positive effect doesn’t mean thats going to happen. Even worse, it could lead to a negative adaptation, or do nothing but drain the system of much needed energy. Everything has a cost…
As far as the sprints training goes a bulk of the work I saw was accelerations, flying sprints, end of the turn runs, some varied tempo runs, hurdle hops, shot tosses, and wicket/mini hurdle runs. In the weight room it was single leg cleans ending with a foot on a box, a lot of GHR/GHD exercises, staggered or single leg squats, staggered RDLs with the hex bar, heavy eccentric squats, push press with kettlebells hanging by bands, “foundational poses”, ELDOA stretches.
I was there in the winter so that may play a role in the focus being on acceleration and speed. I think there is risk in intensification happening early and the highly CNS taxing work being very dense in winter, especially when coaches claim to not care about indoor.
Maybe the reason they use a lot of trap/hex bar is because peak power is higher and time to peak power is shorter compared to a straight bar. The flip side of this is that the straight bar is much more targeted at the hips while the trap bar has been shown to be more knee dominant.
There’s a fine line between being creative and being experimental. Seems like tried and true methods would be a safer approach when there is money & big medals on the line.
I heard an interview recently where Pfaff said, when asked about any possible Bosch influence on him, stated that he did not use any of his concepts but that other coaches at Altis did. To me there is far too much dilution of output from Bosch’s methods when trying to apply such a large degree of specificity (as CF would often tell us) to most aspects of a comprehensive training program.
I have seen people frequently trying to create weight training exercises that “look like” some other gross motor activity and in the end, in my opinion, they simply lessen the quality of the output that they could achieve through more basic, high force/high power movements.
Yeah I agree. From what I saw, Dan kept things pretty simple. His unique ability to see and hear what is going on in movement is what sets him apart from other elite coaches.
What might Charlie have thought of wickets? Throw them in the same heap as stick drills?
With so much going on in the course of a week it’s hard to calculate how much esoteric exercises help or hurt.
There’s nothing magical about wicketts, or any other movement, as it’s all a matter of method of execution.
The pertinent thing to recognize is the objective of wickett drills which is, in principle, to neutralize pelvic alignment and promote front side actions.
The same, again in principle, is achievable with a running A variant with or without a sled, hills, isorobic…
[QUOTE=ollie;255639]What might Charlie have thought of wickets? Throw them in the same heap as stick drills?
Guess?