Does anyone have any experiences with these Programs/Facilities? I did a 12 week course when I was in high school and didn’t get any faster or jump any higher (imagine that).
They also like taking credit for the success of any athlete who trained there. Even crediting themselves for their coach’s athletic accomplishments.
I watched some of this high speed treadmill training at a soccer facility that had limited space for winter training. ( ummm, what a great business model… you dont’ have space which requires much more money to operate so you come up with a machine that can leverage your time/ space, energy and make everyone believe it’s better or just as good as good old fashion sprinting )
Each boy had a tough time keeping their shoulders down and relaxing because the speed was so high. First problem.
The other thing I noticed was while the boys thought it was pretty exciting and fun to " try " to keep up with the speed it was stupid dangerous. Second unnecessary problem. Why do some thing that appears unsafe? ( when you don’t have to?)
One of the most important aspects of teaching someone something about sprinting is to set them up to succeed with the correct drills or runs and make sure they are able to do so and stay relaxed. No one was relaxed doing the high speed treadmill. Worse still … these " coaches " where teaching kids all the wrong things to feel when running fast.
I heard stories from some of my athletes trying it out at the Athletic Republic (and other places) here in Michigan. And yes they all said the same thing, they all almost fell. 1 guy (who was a intern at the time) ended up tearing his meniscus using these “wonder toys”.
We have one nearby and it’s a nice facility but high speed running and skating treadmills are a waste of time. The volume driven nature that exists there doesn’t help either.
If you want to have some fun, take the treadmill numbers (“X” miles per hour for “X” seconds) and convert them to track numbers (“X” meters per second for “X” meters) and see what you come up with. Talk about a false sense of accomplishment.
I recently had a conversation with Ivan Vukomanovic. He played professional football ( soccer in NA) for 18 years since he was 17 years old. He has only been coaching since July 2012. Hey played for Serbian International, Red Star Belgrade, Bordeaux, Cska Moscow, Sprorting Lokeren, and Hopal Tel Aviv. I had the privilege to watch some of his coaching for a few 1.5 hour sessions. He had energy and excitement and it was interesting to see some drills he used and how similar they are to the drills we have used. I spoke to him about his recent job as a coach and what had to happen for him to qualify as a coach. As far as I know Canada does not give experience credits to coaches . In other words you might not meet the national " coaching " criteria in Canada just because you are coaching 50 percent of the national team who are improving and accomplishing routine personal bests. As a former player , Ivan ( say Eevon) was given credit for playing at a certain level for " x " number of years. He was accelerated for some of the coaching criteria but he still had to write a series of tests over a few months time. Almost anyone can take up the cause to coach. It seems not everyone is motivated to get results or maybe it’s just some people interpret their results differently.
How do you score athletes from team sports? Who does the scoring?
I remember Al Vermeil telling us their reverse standard for white males in the NFL that ran fast. Generally speaking if the clock spoke a fast time the coaches simply disregarded it. Sure this might be different now but NA is blinded by their own experience. In Europe white male sprinters as well as female white sprinters and hurdlers are very common.
We need more education for coaches, we need criteria to coaching associations and we need to get more organized at the highest levels in order to fund and keep track of this process.
Unfortunately business has saturated training methodology in North America so it’s up to the individual coaches to create their own standards and push for results and individual accomplishments.
I will continue to work towards making this site put forth information that supports ideas that have had an entire lifetime of results with countless success stories.
I had a very difficult time not telling this York University produced " trainer" that training youth on a high speed treadmill is a really bad idea. Where do I start and who might I be to say this to some random person trying to make a living? THen you always have the person on the side line saying… ahhh daaaa, it might work for some people … you don’t know everything…
I know this one is old, but I unfortuantely had the luck of having to use a high speed treadmill for two years in a national team program, it completely ruined me in many capacities and the issues I could list would be countless! but even two years later my neural pattern still will occasional misfire and go completely wonk for no reason!
It is a primarily training tool for a number of skeleton programs in the world. For whatever reason there speed or starts or strength coaches seem to think it teaches one to run on ice better. They also do a fair amount of bent over running on it as we’ll. We know that running net over inherently causes back injuries. I know quite a few athletes who have used the treadmill or still use it that have had surges and various cortisone shots. I myself got considerably slower and my cortisol was through the roof due to over training, if I actually listed a typical week you would all be shocked! I feel even worse cause I knew better! I had been to a few of Charlie’s seminars myself! But when your on a national team and they want you to “be a team player” it’s a tough situation. After those two years I willing left the “system” and am now with a really good coach who I would say prescribed to Charlie’s model quite well. But it took until this summer for me to finally be “normal” again and I am just now beating 7-8 year old speed and strength bests! I find it quite amusing this perception in sport that stuff needs to be different or special for no particular reason!
Traditional modalities ( RT , sprint running , plyometrics) are sufficient for a training stimulus.
I’ve used a high speed treadmill over a 12 week interval and did find some gains however had ongoing issues with hamstrings, which I didn’t have with other modalities. I thought that maybe I had a strength deficit in the hamstring group however I was able to deadlift 500 pounds for 5 reps. Another hypothesis that was viable was that I hadn’t adapted to the stress of high speed treadmill training.
I ended up dropping the use HST because I had ongoing tightness at the hamstring insertion points near the back of the knee.
For me I found it totally de activated my glutes, this this was likely more related to running bent over as well. It also changed all my running and any sort of sled pull or prowler push, into a completely passive movement. This year when we started GPP with some prowler work 1.5 years since I had used the treadmill I completely reverted to over striding and pulling the ground, took several weeks for me to correct this issue.
Also a number of athletes I know with prolong used have numerous physical problems that I fear will cause problems in the future. Since my switch all injury issues have virtually disappeared.
Treadmill requires more activation of the quads to stabilize you and Less activation of the glutes and hammies as the moving belt is doing nearly all the work the hammies would normally do.
As such your mechanics are displaced, since running fast is largely mechanics related, the idea of using a fast treadmill to learn to run fast is calling disaster.
However
I believe the odd use for Tempo should be fine.
Running at 20km hr isn’t exactly fast.
So 10 reps at 30sec at 20km hr with 1.5min at 10km hr is more about fitness than about speed.
I think using treadmill with safety harness is both better and safer then traditional over-speed using pulling machines.
You have to remember that this only makes you better at running at full speed, not accelerating. And that running at 110% of you max speed itself comes with a high risk of injury.
When you do over-speed training you should not run for more then two-three seconds. If you go any longer, your mechanics will definitely change to the worse.
boldwarrior: Do you have any any data, like EMG, for ground vs treadmill? I did a quick article search and did not find any differences.