Thought this would be interesting, especially since everyone is always so curious about Borzov.
What attract my attention is the recovery times mentioned. 60 to 90 sec rest between repetitions over the distance of 60m to develop maximum speed and only 45sec rest between repetions to develop speed endurance.
For maximum speed training I used the norm of a 1 min rest for every 10m, and for endurance training a 90sec to 2min rest.
Can maximum speed training be more effective with such a short rest between repetitions.
Your inputs will be appreciated
I have other literature that suggests that he took longer recoveries for max speed and speed endurance respectively. To be honest that particular info is in line with others like Minnea who used 60m reps extensively to develop max speed and speed endurance.
there is a lot of mis-information out there- breaks were longer.
Borzov was supposedly the author of this article.
So beyond the short breaks, is it pretty accurate from what you know of how he trained?
I found it interesting that in that article it said he bounded up steps to failure, than ran 400s or 800s because “the muscles had no choice but to move in the most economical way possible”. Is there any truth to this, or is it a good idea?
Well he did have great success so there must be some truth to it. Sure, it doesn’t sound right but you can make almost anything work in the right context.
It’s a very good idea if you’re masochistic and looking for some painful injury…
I’ve red Borzovs book “10 seconds-All my life”. The article seems to give fair summary of what he has said in it. Of course it doesn’t seem logical to have such short breaks but in other russian material about his training there are many other things illogical. Was it misinformation on purpose or they were just making mistakes. Who knows! Don’t forget all the means he had available in his preparations which generously allowed some mistakes. And not to forget to mention that these materials were only in russian and it’s purpose was strictly to educate Soviet coaches. But in other way Borzovs coach Valentin Vasiljevic Petrovski was pretty much opposing Soviet official system of training. Maybe he didn’t want to share his secrets with others!
On one occasion Ukrainian coach Ogorodnjik told me the story how Borzov months after Olympics in Munich 1972 gained 8 kilos and showed up on USSR championship seemingly out of shape. Other Soviet sprinters were pretty sure to humiliate national hero on that day. But they were so wrong. Borzov blasted all of them away. Even overweight and out of proper training he managed to defeat other top Soviet sprinters.
Ogorodnjik said that his talent and mental strength were monumental. Something amazing you really don’t see often among even great athletes. Afterwards they were sending all talented sprinters in USSR to Petrovski but he didn’t managed to create another sprinter of Borzovs caliber! Unlike Charlie who created not only Ben Johnson but many other top sprinters.