As featured in UK magazine Athletics Weekly, this week:
"Olympic and world champion sprinter gives this advice to budding speed merchants:
Do stadium steps. I didn’t do any weights during my career, but running up steps develops strength in the legs. Plyometrics are good, too, and for long jumpers do box drills and bounding.
Vary the tempo. Run 400’s in practice. Slow down and develop all muscle groups. Sometimes to run faster you have to run a little slower.
Rest. During my career I trained from Monday to Friday and had Saturday and Sunday off.
Don’t bother stretching (!). I always said its over-rated. I never believed in it. Todays stats are proving me right. It can actually cause injuries.
Dont take drugs and even meat and dairy products aren’t neccesary. The best sprinters are never big, and if they are something’s wrong"
Do stadium steps. I didn’t do any weights during my career, but running up steps develops strength in the legs. Plyometrics are good, too, and for long jumpers do box drills and bounding.
Who Cares? He had natural talent, he never knows how much wieght could have helped him, he could have improved, maybe even go sub 9.8…
. Rest. During my career I trained from Monday to Friday and had Saturday and Sunday off.
Tru tru, rest is good.
Don’t bother stretching (!). I always said its over-rated. I never believed in it. Todays stats are proving me right. It can actually cause injuries.
Stretching wrong can cause injuries, stretching right can prevent them…
Dont take drugs and even meat and dairy products aren’t neccesary. The best sprinters are never big, and if they are something’s wrong"
I thought u couldnt speak about that here? Or is it right if its a quote from somebody outside?? Charlie/Moderators, Please clarify. Can I comment on that statement?
If your masseur and your physio are doing their job right every day then stretching for elite athletes is almost unnecessary, except a little here and there, now and then.
Over-stretching is an arbitrary thing, but it does seem to lead to a weakened performance and of course can lead to injury.
The issue for most athletes is that if you are stiff, some stretching as a component of warmup-warmdown may be essential because unless you are part of an elite program you are probably not going to have the services of a brilliant masseur and/or physio.
Of course if you have a really tight spot somewhere along the muscle chain, then the whole chain becomes shortened. If you stretch against that condition, you’re invited injury. That’s why massage, including self-massage, is a precursor to stretching if you are already stiff or sore.
Michael Johnson has also said that he didn’t really follow a diet. Now, if you put Carl, Linford, and MJ together, and they’re all saying the same thing, I think you might want to listen to what they’re telling you.
Misinformation my friend. A very very close relative of mine who trained with Linford, always talked about his diet regime. Yes he did not count calories but he was very aware of his diet.
as one of the guys said above take this advice with a grain of salt…i could go into great detail about his training etc but its old news which we have all decussed before.
Carl Lewis was an 9time olympic medal winner, his sister was an olympian his mom was an olympian and his dad was capitan of his collage football team and both his parents coached track and his collage/pro coach was Tom Tellez(prolfic sprints and jumps coach) so in short he was destined for greatness and was given the tools along the way to acomplish this, was he a bit concited, of course but he was the face of american and world track and field for many years, so his advice needs to be looked at discerningly. His lack of strength/weights work is a thought but not a didactic on sprint training. One thing that may have led to this is the fact that the long jump is a jumping event so bodyweight plays a greater factor so he and his coach felt that an increase in his bodyweight would have hurt his long jumping, while this board is sprint(100m) focused Carl Lewis won medels in the long jump and the 100m.
If I recall correctly Carl’s daily yoga trained his flexibility. And Carl did lift weights, but really seriously for only one or two seasons, especially in his 1996 Olympic year.
I should be clear here - I’m not accusing Lewis of lying. It’s true that weight lifting was never a huge part of his program. Indeed it was all but absent from his program for most of his career.
I’ve been told the same thing, and I have seen it in action. The most God-gifted athletes in the world sometimes have only the vaguest idea how they do it, because it just comes. Suffice to say I amnot one of those athletes.
guys…the whole thing about this event is all different shapes and sizes can and have proven that sub10 times are attainable.also different training techniques can and have been used to produce such results.
an example of the SMTC guys…carl=lanky lean,leroy=massive and powerful,mike marsh=ave height,sam jefferson=small as you can see are differnt shapes and sizes from the 1 group.
