Not picking on you, Number Two, but trying to get a more substantive discussion going…
What I see in Francis’ seminar notes is “I read in a book a while back that to run longer than 20 mins continuous will affect your speed”. I take it they do some continuous runs in GPP not over 20 minutes. Does anyone here suggest more than this for a pure sprinter? The MVP plan implies that they do tempo on Saturday, but after Mike Rogers work with 8X800 in GPP last fall, I’m interested to know if there’s an advantage in doing 20 min continuous runs in the fall or 800’s (Clyde Hart has things like 6X800 in his plan for 400) for pure sprinters. The Duffield and Dawson paper on energy systems (IAAF, New Studies On Athletics, 4:3) implies 20% aerobic energy component for even 100 meters, and I wonder if even the tempo is enough to fully develop this.
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“I read in a book…” - Well, at least he didn’t read it in Men’s Health.
Response follows the same comment but the 20 minutes may also be more about 400 training or may be a response to the old school Bud Winter training which went up to 10 miles of jogging in the fall
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“The women do 20% less volume than the men” - Charlie’s work with Marion and Tim confirmed that women need more volume than men, due to the differences in output and performance (i.e. world class men have significantly higher intensity in their runs, thus need lower volume and more recovery.
Francis has stated in interviews that MVP does not do MaxV work. Short power work is maintained, some IT overdistance work (37 second 300s) is maintained, and SE is added in January, but they apparently don’t do all-out 50s or 60s, or flys. Thus the emphasis is more on work capacity than CNS stimulus.
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“I believe you can work hard on successive days…” - Maybe for developing athletes who do not have the speed in their SE work to create a problem. But in an athlete that runs sub-10 sec in 100m?
There is a philosophy that’s been around for many years that you can do back-back hard days if you train different systems. Bob Kersee does this. long-short-off-long-short…something like that.
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“…this is more important than any theory about CNS and its recovery” - Again, for elite sprinters… bullshit.
Once again, work capacity vs CNS stimulus. There was some mention of this in the Dan Pfaff video that someone linked here recently. Pfaff was talking about why he was doing 18 accelerations (that Donavan complained about), and he also mentioned that sprinters with higher work capacity may be able to maintain hard efforts (don’t know if he really meant to imply acceleration that long, but not doing maintenance) out to 8-9 seconds.
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“…it is not what the theories agrees with but that’s just how we do it.” - Chalk it up to arrogance…
Charlie says to key quickness in the blocks. John Smith emphasizes power (pushing). Steve Francis emphasizes long strides from the beginning, and Bolt has mentioned keying “drive” (and I decided to copy him). Now, whom are running 6.31-6.32?
If someone posted this on the forum and we didn’t know who they coached, we would all think this person was an idiot. Powell’s results (not the coaching approach) have brought the spotlight on Francis. It is easy to detect the arrogance in his responses. I would rather have had him say that “experience with my athletes has shown” or “my coaching mentors have passed on these theories” rather than “I read it in a book” or “that’s just how we do it”.
When I visited John Smith, back when Mo Greene was finishing his career, John was very careful to say that, “We need to heed the science behind everything we do. As coaches, we can make adjustments day-to-day based on the needs of our athletes. There is a feel component to coaching, but we must not forget the science that guides our decision making.” Charlie agreed that John has done a good job in preparing athletes for the big meets, when they need to perform. Stephen Francis could do well in paying a visit to John Smith and just listening to what an experienced coach has to say.
Steve Francis has credited some things coming from John Smith. But HSI really has one athlete in Deagu. MVP has how many? I think I’d really like to understand what the guys running 9.58-9.72 are doing and why, and not to believe nothing has changed since 1986-1988.