Castres is on 5 August 
He was supposed to be in the relay pool in Beijing. On the last relay training camp (actually a day training in south of france) a couple of weeks before the Games, his coach called the relay staff to explain that Christophe had an adductor problems, and to put him in 2nd or 4th leg but no bend at all cost. The relay coach said ok and put him in the first leg. Guess what happened. He tored his muscle and missed the Games (it was just one of the many feats accomplished by the French relay coach last year).
PJ
have you any idea what his lifts are like eg: Squat Clean or other training numbers like SLJ etc
Mostly body weight training, he doesn’t go under heavy bars as he started going to the gym this year, the tests you mention are not done by sprinters in France.
His long jump is shockingly low for someone that fast. 5.51m the same year as 10.53 is astounding. I had a kid jump 5.57m the same meet as 12.31.
:eek:
I bet he has some coordination issues or he was jogging because it’s impossible to jump 5.51 if you have 10.53 speed. With that kind of speed and no height at all, just by running off the board you have to get 6m.
Definitely, I see someone run 11.9-12.1 and jump over 6m consistently and doesnt do much jump training and no plyos/weights.
clean 50 kg
Not sure how much to read into his jumps… at that age a lot of it is filling in for points, so he may have been just jogging up and jumping for the team when they were low on numbers… I do wonder how on earth an 10.5 sprinter can’t jump 7m… unless he’s just an outstanding SE guy.
However, it never fails to amaze me how specific sprint/jump talent is… or ‘talent at specific contraction times’… I know an 11.4 sprinter who jumps 7.65m. Chris Tomlinson’s 100m pr is 10.85… yet this guy (who looks more like a long jumper than sprinter) can’t jump 6m ?!
he is has little emphasis on weights judging by his clean so this may explain the poor jumping and throws …but you can run 10.04 your strong but with his long levers he is probably not best suited to demonstrating this in the weightroom
The jumps and throws are tests he’s forced to do in National testing and he probably couldn’t care less about them. It’s also an excellent example of a reliance on tests that are clearly not relavent unless they are part of your normal training routine.
i tried running a whole season with no weights and got slower, maybe it could be that if sprinters start to improve with the addition of weights they have to keep it up to improve performance.
Different athletes, different needs for best results. For the coach, getting this sorted out is the hard part. I’ve had athletes who needed to lift to be fast and others who went backwards with all but the most limited lifting. Two, one male and one female, in the latter group could do jumps work every day and be happy (though I would never allow this). Others had to avoid jumps as they were injured with anything other than the rudimentary session.
I’d say that to a degree this is based upon build, but not entirely, which makes the job of the coach more difficult.
When it comes to the subject of jumps training and sprinting, I think that PJ has an outstanding perspective.
What has this kid been doing on his 4 day a week cycle?
How long with no weights did it before your performance began to drop?
Hi Pierre Jean,
I am intrigued both by the fantastic performance of LeMaitre on the weekend, (10.04 at 19 makes him one of the fastest juniors of all time) but also by the way he achieved it running only 42 steps, an enormous display of elastic power for a kid of that age.
Anyway, whilst I am aware that you don’t coach LeMaitre I was fascinated by the stuff you posted several years ago on the French training methods and in particular the work of Jacques Piasenta whereby an active approach was taken to maximising stride length with bounding, footing on the polish bench, limited traditional strength training (45deg leg press, Snatch and quarter squats were mentioned) and foot strengthening work. 10 bounds for distance was a test that the used and the athletes (including Arron and Perec) seemed to excel in it and also had enormous stride lengths (44.7 strides for Arron over 100m and 42.8 for Perec). Are you aware if Lemaitre is training with the same methods and what sort of performances he is capable of with his bounding?
Also interested in this kid’s general planning … This dude has a beautiful stride.
Christophe’s stride length has slightly increased since last year, 2.70 vs 2.67. Many factors outside specific training can be envolved, especially at such young age, it seems he is 1cm taller, and he is still taking benefits of general work over all the aspects of his performance, since he has not much training years and density behind him.
Bounding performances can be deceptive even for those long striders. Christine Arron and Marie-Jo Pérec both had 2.50-2.52 stride length at max speed (even though total of number of steps was different), but Christine’s height was slightly shorter and i believe Marie-Jo had longer leg length. I don’t know for Christophe (however his early performances at LJ and HJ done at interclub don’t indicate that the guy knows how to jump, but who cares anyway), but Christine is not a good jumper. Even with a 10.73 speed, her former coach Piasenta used to say that she would barely long jump 6m but would break her back while landing. She has a long and flat foot, she likes very soft spike shoes so that she can use every articulation of her foot and ankle. Even now, after a hip arthoscopy, she has no problem to sprint using strides over 2.50m interval cones (i really mean it’s sprinting, not bounding strides), but producing a jump on a board with conversion of horizontal into vertical velocity is an other story, and landing is the most dangerous.
Are their any videos of this type of work being performed by the French sprint groups PJ? Is it mostly done on the track or on grass? With double leg bounds are landings done is sand? What are some 3 and 5 bound numbers?
Charlie assuming he has only had one year of formal sprint training what could he do with a good coach with good facilities after a few years judging by his physiological markers for the sprints etc?
you can’t speculate beyond the obvious faxct that he has the potential to improve to under 10.00