Agreed. Science too often follows rather than leads our most successful coach-athlete partnerships. Perhaps this is good, but one wishes there was more that science could provide of a really useful matter to the athlete and coach on the track. Biomechanics is an area in which science has contributed greatly, but my experience has been that the sports scientists mostly come along and interpret why you succeeded After The Fact. And that’s not what I needed when I was actively working trackside, so often in the dark except for the advice of a rare few experienced and generous minds like CF. The gifted will still dominate with or without the help of science.
It’s being selective and critical of all sources of knowledge; there is no one best means and if you isolate you are asking for trouble. CF has consulted with those in both ‘science’ and the ‘art’ of coaching eg. Bompa, Matueski, Mach, Cywinski, Vermeil. No doubt about it there are those on both sides with their head up their arses praising themselves in their little groups pointing the fingers. “Look how many publications I have.” Yet there are others who put their theories on the line - refine and develop.
Where did those new surfaces and shoes (and pharmacology) came from? 
In engineering it is much more efficient to improve performance by changing something simple and well known(like the track surface) rather than deal with something complex and unknown (training methods). My bickering aside:), …
Honestly i think that the science/coaching interaction is best described as a person standing on a wood block, trying to jump high. Without science (the wooden box) the coach can still reach heights, but not as high as he/she could have with science as a base. However, without the coach moving into territory that science cannot venture yet (by jumping into the unknown), there is little height reached as well (often less than with a good coach without the box). (Also even with great science a poor coach is in trouble).
I think that the root of this problem is that science can only show the coach/engineer “why” when the coach needs to know “how” (interpolation versus extrapolation).Most coaches could care less about “why” as long as everything works and this drives scientists nuts (and me too ) who want to know exactly why a particular method works. This also occurs in the opposite direction (in the case of why). Science often gets bogged down trying to isolate the effects of minute variables which is often useless to the coach.
Science ALWAYS follows because it requires a hypothesis to follow up on. Who creates the hypothesis in the first place?
(hint: Word starts with a C)
So the role of science is to aid, primarily through interpolation, getting the most out of what good coaches already know.
Who confirmed the electronic timimg method in place. An example is the ET used till 1970 had .05sec compensation for hand timing. This was removed in 1971. It is highly unlikely that a 10.3ht would equate to 10.38E. That said, in 1931(?) Ralph Metcalf ran a straightaway 200m in Toronto in a hand time of 19.8 (!) It was considered wind aided so it was likely a big breeze!
For the wind during the LA’1932 Olympic final, it was recorded between 0.2 and 0.4m/s, thus accepted as 0.4m/s, and 30°C weather (from Atheltics Statistic Book Athens 2004 by Mark Butler).
You raise a difficult problem for the statisticians. The electronic timing was often hidden to the public, and official times were not the hand timing ones, but the rounded down electronic; Example : in 1964, Bob Hayes won officially in 10.0 (tied IAAF official WR). The IAAF rule was that if an electric time was taken, it should be used over the manual time. It was the case for Bob Hayes, electronic 9.99, later adjusted to 10.06 after revision of photo-finish and 0.05 compensation for the system used (for the times taken between 1964 and 1971), while hand times gave 9.9, 9.9, 9.8. These manual times were kept secret by IAAF and 10.0 was used as official time. Silly rules. (story as told by Robert Parienté, in La Fabuleuse Histoire de L’Athlétisme).
Concerning the device used in Los Angeles 1932, the best is to quote the late Bob Sparks, who was president of Association of Track & Field Statisticians (ATFS), and who did extensive researches on FAT:
Extract from the introduction of T&F through the years 1929-1936 published in 1986(?):
“Automatic timing has its roots in the period under review, although there have been unsubstantiated reports of “electrical times” from much earlier days. In September 1892, for instance, Harry Jewett was vredited with 21.95 for 220 yards (on a course with a slight curve), while in November 1902 Minoru Fujii is said to have been timed at 10.24 for 100 meters. Very little is known, however, of the means by which such recordings were made. The first attempts to link cine-cameras with the timing equipment appeared in the 1920’s, a Dutch system being demonstrated at the 1926 IAAF congress and used (“hors concours”, as it were) to time sprints events at the 1928 Olympic Games. In 1929 the “Kirby Two-Eyed Camera” was introduced in America, and was used at the 1932 Games and the 1934 European Championships. A similar concept, the “Zielzeitkamera”, was developped in Germany for the 1936 Games. (note : most of the 1936 results are lost including Owens times…)
Although times registered by these various devices were never officially used, or even revealed to the public, much interesting material from the 1932 and 1936 Games has been re-discovered in recent years, and relevant examples are included in the following pages. Unfortunately, it is difficult to assess how comparable these times are with their modern counterparts. Some people view them with suspicion, not least because they reveal smaller discrepancies from the manual times than would normally be expected.
[…] Before rejecting the results from the Kirby and “Zieltzeit” systems, it would be appropriate to conduct a trial comparing them directly with a modern camera - assuming, of course, that any models still exist after all these years.”
At ATFS, we still recognise the 10.38s.
Anyway, these electronic times are more accurate than hand times, Sacramento’68 semis is the best example of it :
- Jim Hines 9.9 h (WR), FAT was 10.03
- R.R. Smith 9.9 h (=WR, but 10.14 FAT !)
- Mel Pender 10.0 h (10.15 FAT !)
The most chocking difference between hand time and FAT i know happened in AAU’75 with Steve Williams 9.8 h which turned out to be 10.19 FAT (+0.39 !)
Metcalfe’s 19.8 was done after 1932 Games in Toronto, it was a 220 yards handicaped straight race (worth 19.7 for 200 meters). He ran virtually alone since the second placer wasn’t under 21sec. Not bad without scientific preparation…
The most remarquable performance in this pre-War was by Charles Paddock in 1921, who ran a 110 yards (100.58m) in 10.1/5. This is worth 10.1 for the 100m. The performance would have been the WR until 1956 but it was ratified as a US record at 110y, and not World or even US record at 100m, which should be done only at 100m distance. again, silly rules…
To sum-up, performances around 10.40 and clearly under 21sec were possible before the WW2 if electric timing had been available (and of course the 8m jumps by Owens). This underlines that human beeing is not that much better nowadays in spite of so-called scientific preparation.
I agree with the humility part. Why are we arguing over FAT times wind etc… the point still holds true. Considering how much we think we know times have not improved very significantly since 1932.
I’m sure the difference in time can easily be accounted for by considering poor track conditions and the fact that in 1932 the athletes had real jobs too. Tough to allow/worry about CNS recovery if you are working in a coal mine all day.
Not that any of the runners that were noted worked in a coal mine because I have no idea what they did.
Damn boys y’all need to chill on the attacks.
And while I’m posting here’s what I think about Bears ideas…
First we need to look at similarities rather than differences.
Some things I see
CF: his athletes were very strong relative to their bodyweight
Bear: Reccomends improving strength relative to bodyweight
CF: Minimalistic strength program. ie., very few exercises
Bear: Minimalistic strength program
CF: Compound exercses
Bear: Compound exercises
CF: Trained at high intensities
Bear: Trained at high intensities
From what I know of what bear reccomends in his strength program those 4 keys is how I’d summarize his thoughts.
Lo and behold much of what he has to say is readily applicable to CFTS
There are some disagreements (hypertrophy - lets not forget ben wasn’t that “big”, and plyo’s) but the basic principles of his program do seem to be in agreement with basic principles in CFTS
In the 1960th the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm did some pioneering work on human biology. Groundbreaking work on blood and aerobic performance that wasn’t really targeting athletic performance, but still athletes and coaches from all around the world benefited from their findings.
Professor PO Åstand (Texbook of Work Physiology), who was a leading figure at Karolinska in those days, said in a recent interview that for him as a scientists it was very valuable to work with top-level athletes. Åstrand is a very humble man stating that the cooperation with some of the world’s best athletes at the time, probably meant more to him than them.
Coaches are sometimes asking for more adapted sports-science. If we in that sentence are asking for more training studies we are facing many obstacles. One is that many of today’s top athletes hesitate participating in anything that doesn’t directly improve their performance; they have little interest in brooding our general knowledge.
We are instantly facing major problem if we tries to draw conclusions from studies conducted on very general populations; Homo Olympicus is totally different bread than most of us.
Training contains of many different qualities that interacts, most sprinter are jumping or joy if they beat their PB with 10 hundreds of a second in one year. What exactly leads to that particular improvement is sometimes the topic of wild speculations; still if we are totally honest it is impossible to give a straight answer to that question.
Most training studies implies a rather strong stimuli over a period of time; the outcome can sometimes be pretty impressive. High quality training studies, tries to eliminate everything that might disturb the study in any possible way; good examples are bed rest studies. It is difficult to say how a particular stimulus would affect athletics performance in a normal training environment even if it seems very potent in a study.
The problem with science today is; if you work with sports science solely, you will have problems attracting the most talented researchers and will have a constant struggle with fundings.
Sports scientists seem to be dying bread though, getting less and less funding in most countries. There are some lights in the tunnel though. I’m very impressed with some of the work done by the Saltin group at the August Krogh Institute in Copenhagen (how on earth could Sweden let Bengt Saltin go to Denmark:-), much of their work can be applied into sprinting and there are definitely some more isolated little ilands in the sea as well.
Have a nice X-mas
Håkan Andersson
Sundsvall Sweden
Ander, Funding problems will always limit our researching abilities. Even in medicine funding is hard to recieve unless the investor seems to gain some financial profit from immediate results of the study. Our funding here in the states gets swallowed by pharmaceutical companies.
Big props to 101pro and pierrejean for calming the board down. I am impressed with the people that contribute here. Great research on the timing systems. I don’t know about a lot of you guys on here, but I still havent run a 9.8-9.9 100m hand-timed and I train hard for it.
My opinion is that with the shoes, surface, and timing systems of the 1930-60s, those times are still very impressive. If running a 19.8 on a cinder track for 220y doesnt deserve respect then I don’t know what performance does. Lets not forget that cinder tracks dampen our myostatic reflex, thus increasing GCT.
How many track athletes could run low 10s and low 20s on a football turf surface or grass for that matter? How many could do it on cinder? Come on fellas, some of you guys need to give props where its due. Dont discount the results just because they were done before most of our parents were born…lol.
Cinders weren’t always poor to run on, depending on their preparation. I ran 10.2 on that stuff and 10.1 on other, better surfaces. some of the old clay tracks had very deep cinder beds under them to provide the spring with the hard clay providing the grip, such as Sacremento, where so many fast times were recorded in 1968.
I would have liked to see exactly what the surfaces were like. It’s hard to say, because we weren’t there. Charlie, you were a fast guy, but do you still think you would have ran faster if those same races were on a basic rubberized track? You are probably one of the few of us hear to actually run on a cinder track (please don’t take offense to that).
Some of the photos I see of Jesse Owens seem to look like he is running in loose or semi-packed dirt. Actually, some of the tracks look as if they would be almost injury inducing to run on. Guess the first heats to go off really had a good advantage:)
Back in my day, I (and the other Cro-Magnons) had to contend with a variety of surfaces, some were ok, as in the one cinder track I ran 10.2 on, though most were a horror show as you noted. One tricky thing was the selection of spike length. If you chose a longer spike to deal with the start area than might have been torn up, you could end up with a spike that wouldn’t penetrate all the way in towards the end of the race, where the track was in good shape. This someties led to breaking off all the spikes in the shoe plate. this happened to me several times. It is interesting to note that before tartan tracks, tendon injuries were virtually unknown.
A couple of things about cinders: each season the venue admin would have to pour sump oil all around the track and then roll it into the cinders (to stop the ash blowing away I assume) using ride-on heavy-roller vehicles.
The black track used to soak up the oil ok, but it also soaked up the sunshine. During hot summer days the pain of the burning feeling on your fingers and knee felt in the starting process would be retained for a fair deal of the actual race. Maybe this is why some of us ran fast on cinders - because the pain of the burning hot track on skin was greater than the burn of the activity . And the smell was really ordinary - oil vapours evaporating on a hot day. Aah, brings back memories. I feel like passing out all over again.
Great post. Its always the 90% similarity that get ignored (the foundation work) and the 10% differences (the stuff that more open to interpretation) that get focused on. Human nature.
I think that 10% has to do with personality differences, past experiences, methodology, and a host of other things. But, its true, intensity reins supreme!
This is very interesting. One eastern european coach from the 1960s I spoke to told me the exact same thing. He said that during his days his athletes almost never developed hamstring injury (it was unheard of). He put the massive hamstring injuries we have now down to 1. not training enough on grass and 2. not keeping the muscles warm and keeping moving between runs - e.g. sitting down.
I can now see why KitKat wants to know about the release characteristics of the track.
Just going back to Bear and the Weyand study and the very engaging debate of many pages earlier, wouldn’t a lot of the dispute have been resolved by adhering to the simple idea of “specificity”?
Maybe I’m being naive, but when you see the all of top 100m men down through history vigorously pumping their arms, you might figure that was a specific requirement for top 100m performance.
You would also assume that any contraption, treadmill or otherwise, used to measure 100m performance parametres would need to take into consideration that the contraption would allow a 100m performer to specifically replicate his real track performances during the testing process otherwise the findings and applications might therefore be irrelevant to real track performance and real track performers.
Velocegatto notes Intensity reigns supreme and surely it does, but Specificity must be King because intensity in itself means nothing unless it is applied in training specific to the event requirements. No offence meant to anyone.
Kitkat,
What you say in the second part of your post must logically follow.
However with regard to your point about drawing inferences from observations of the top 100m runners I guess that Barry Ross would say that what you see is not always what you get. The high knee lift of many champion sprinters for example rather than being a cause of faster running and therefore an attribute to be trained is, he would assert, simply an effect of MSF.
Peter,
In the broader sense I would say that what we see always needs correct interpretation and no doubt science comes into its own there but, as we’ve seen, some very educated people can still come up with some flawed conclusions in any area of life.
In sprinting too many bad conclusions have been inherited from those who came before us and even from some people of science.
Many coaches and athletes did the right training for the wrong reasons. In the era of cinders tracks (up to the end of the 1960s) my own coach had me do endless high knee knee-lift runthroughs “to enable” me to “lift my knees high enough and long enough to win a sprint race by taking long steps fast”.
He had no concept of the reactive mechanism, nor of the importance of impulse and force application. So I got great at running high knee-lift runthroughs slowly, but never broke 11sec in a 100m race.
I started coaching the same way and even managed to get one young woman to the Moscow Olympics (11.3sec 100m handtimed on a grass track, 11.1 windy), but after coming into contact with wiser men (CF and others who corroborated his advice) I was educated in a practical sense about the implications and applications of good science. [and it’s been a downhill run ever since 
]
“I know that mass is the key component to high level competition, ask any elite gymnast if they want to gain weight. It is well known that the body’s ability to acheive a higher relative strength or whatever term you want to call it, decreases as mass increases. You can argue the fact to the grave and beyond, but I train gymnasts, track athletes and breakdancers. I see what the extremely gifted athletes posses outside of the track world, and if the tasks at hand requires speed, mass is NOT an asset.”
Not to beat a very dead horse but… the statement above is not so much wrong as incomplete. An event that requires strength to generate speed will require an optimum muscle mass to produce that strength. It would be nice if your male gymnast could exhibit the prerequisite power he need at 110 pounds, but he may need to be 145 pounds to do his job. Thats why there are weight classes in weightlifting, powerlifting, etc. Your 125 pound female sprinter may make great strength gains for a while, but eventually she will have to add mass to keep from flattening out. Sorry, this is not debatable, to argue about it is silly. This is not some machine that has 25 horsepower, and if you pull some mass from it you will still have 25 HP. Whether or not the weight gain is worth it will vary athlete to athlete, but my guess is in almost all lean sprinters a small weight gain to allow strength gain will be helpful.
Adding some mass will sometimes be an advantage depending on whether you can apply your additional strength to your particular event. Gymnasts might not want to gain additional weight, but they all are carrying around quite a bit of “extra” muscle mass.