Correct. Well it’s been quite some time since he’s done anything in track, because of injuries, that I started to forget his name. Another british sprinter that’s got a lot of gym muscle mass, but did’t get faster.
As a side note; what happened to Dwain Chambers anybody? He opened up this year with a blistering 6.42 indoor 60 meters. What happened to ‘project Bolt’?
What comes to mind here is Charlie talking about ramping DOWN the training (volume) as an athlete gets more developed (and can handle less CNS volume)–with respect to Olu maybe not going over 3X3X60 and also Ben having shorter SPP cycles (re: The SPP Download) and starting with less volume as his speed developed.
I find it fascinating the link between the development of SPP and GPP and how an athlete progresses. I’ve heard so many stories of how certain athletes have had a good base of different events prior to starting their main event.
I’ve heard that Gary Reed was a 7m long jumper and 14m triple jumper coming out of high school. He carried that success to the 400m, and then eventually to a world silver medal in the 800m with a pb of 1.43.
Interesting how a base of skills forms the foundation of future success.
The GDR had their young athletes perform 5 different events for versatility. Sprinters would do long jump, high jump, hurdles and javelin. I believe this helped build a solid base of skill and physical attributes for future success.
Specific work varies through volume and intensity, but General work varies in type.
When an athlete stalls in progress at a young age, is it a function of special work or general? Is it a symptom of too much specific work not enough general?
I just found lots of high speed (300fps) lemaitre’s videos on youtube:
stride lenth drill:
Start:
He even has an user.
sweet vids man, great find!
one thing I find remarkable is how smooth his triple extension is.
I’m not familiar with cone drills. What is the idea behind them? Sprinting at a set stride length? Sprinting at a stride length further than usual?
Does anybody know what this guy’s height and weight are?
The idea is that you find a gifted beast then make him do dumb shit so he thinks he’s doing scientific training… but I think the idea is to create/develop the “correct” stride pattern(length).
According to http://www.european-athletics.org/event_files/novisad/bio/athletebio.php?bib=137&event=0010032 he is just under 6’2.5", and 163lbs.
They appear (the angle is pretty bad) to be similar to Vince Anderson’s wicket drills. The idea behind those is to get the athlete to step down and not reach/over stride and to enforce proper posture. Done properly I’ve actually found them to be effective.
Wickets are one thing. Plastic domes are another. Will he break 10sec or his ankle ligaments stepping on one of those things?
I said similar, at least in intent. The plastic bubbles seems like a bad idea waiting to happen. Even with the mini-hurdles there is a learning process to mitigate the chance of injury.
Alotta pronation… I wonder if his shins hurt…
Any science to these drills? I can’t imagine trying to forcefully make stride length happen.
Has anybody had success with this method?
It would be difficult to step on the bubbles/Cones if your goal is step between them. I would imagine that bubbles aren’t solid.
As described earlier it’s a rudimentary drill that can be very helpful in teaching posture as well as getting the accel the thigh back down to the ground.
RG
Those drills are common use in France. I’m just surprised you are surprise because in our country they are used in every club training.
Regarding the bubble drill, I find it counter intuitive similar to ladders/speed sticks, etcetera.
We know that stride length is a function of force generated during GCT and the requisite dynamic mobility in the active structures.
Speed work, weights, throws, jumps takes care of both in most cases and, assuming the proper measures are taken from the standpoint of hands on therapy, general preparatory exercises, and so on, I would argue against the idea of attempting to develop the latter with obstacles at high speeds.
The more of an ‘obstacle’ an implement becomes, that has the potential to disrupt terrestrial movement, the more potential it has to create anxiety, tightness, and in my opinion- impair the kinematics at speed beyond the level of the specific objective of the drill in question.
As a result, despite any effectiveness seen with its use, I couldn’t rationalize its use in my program unless it were performed at slower horizontal speeds such as a power speed drill in which negotiating the obstacle would feel more natural/manageable.
While the reduction in horizontal speed diminishes it’s direct transfer to the real thing I might argue that the dynamic mobility and postural benefits would see their way through to sprinting at high speed. That’s theoretical on my behalf, however.
I would have to agree with James.
Although it appears an effective means of dynamic mobility training. I believe there are equally as effective mobility exercises that can be trained in a less forceful way. Allowing mechanics to evolve much more naturally.
PJ, is this the influence of Piasenta and all that he has done in the past with these drills?
All told now (as of the 100m final at the Berlin World Championships in 2009), 70 men in history have run the 100m in less than 10.00 seconds. And all, excepting Australia’s Patrick Johnson (Australian Aborigine and Irish mix), have one thing in common…an African heritage.
Caucasians, asians or men of other ethnic background it would seem, need not apply.
Last night I witnessed what can only be described as the greatest moment in the history of 100m sprinting. Usain Bolt of Jamaica led Tyson Gay (9.71sec) and his countryman Asafa Powell (9.72sec life-timebest) through the line in 9.58sec. The significance of 10.00sec as a marker of any real significance in modern sprinting is long gone. Yet…there remain plenty to whom the mark remains a wall, one that still stands as solid and imposing as the wall that used to ring the city of Berlin, the stage Bolt used to break some more barriers.
In 1979 (30 years ago) the Italian Pietro Mennea ran the 100m in an altitude assisted 10.01seconds. At the time, Mennea’s performance left him some 0.06 seconds short of the 100m record (Jim Hines altitude assisted 9.95 sec from Mexico in 1968). After last nights performance in Berlin’s Olympiastadion, the world record in the 100m had progressed by 0.37 seconds in the 30 years since Mennea, while the performance of white men had improved by a mere 0.01 seconds (Marion Woronin of Poland, 10.00 sec in 1984).
With Japan’s Koji Ito adding a similar 10.00 sec performance in 1998, the rest of humanity (Patrick Johnson aside) remains stuck at 10.00, now a full 0.42 seconds back of the best performers.
Where it might be plausible for some people to imagine a “genetic performance advantage” in sprinting, I can’t see how anyone could argue for a genetic improvement advantage. And if you can’t make an argument for a genetic improvement advantage, then it should have been as likely that Usain Bolt would have been followed across the line last night not by Tyson Gay’s superlative 9.71 sec, but by a Caucasian or Asian sprinter at 9.64 sec.
Implausible? Certainly if it is never imagined. Resetting the goals usually results in a change in the outcome. If that seems hard to imagine, I guess no one got the point about last nights performance; 9.58 sec was really, previously unimaginable. But someone did.
Bringing this back to the title of this thread, I was intrigued to watch Lemaitre run. Though I was disappointed that his Round 2 false start didn’t allow me to see more of him, I got the distinct impression that this kid likes to win (and his top end speed is very real). More than anything else, it will be a focus on something other than time that will see him through a perceived barrier like time. He or any physically gifted men of any background that want to take a crack at this sprinting thing.