The above link is an article from American Track and Field, 2005. It goes into some detail on the conceptual basis behind Clyde Hart’s program. I posted this on a another thread a few weeks ago, but I thought it deserved its own thread.
The results of Hart’s system are undeniable - he has produced a remarkable collection of fast 400 meter runners. However some of his ideas seem almost arbitrary, such as his “formula” for deciding how many 200 yard repeats to run - the number of seconds above :20 equals the number of reps run.
But really the whole thing comes down to a belief that quarter milers (and I suppose 200 meter runners) need a certain amount of intermediate training above 70% effort, and most 100% should be kept fairly short. It seems, based on what I have read here and elsewhere, that Hart rarely does long speed endurance repeats of 150-400 meters.
Enjoy. If people like this and it sparks good discussion, I’ll post a longer interview with Hart from sprintic.com.
my high school track coach’s philosophy is very similar to hart’s, the program concentrates around this “intermediate training”. i’d be interested to see the longer interview to see more. my hs coach makes the 55m guys run the intermediate stuff too, which i guess would explain why my school’s long sprinters tend to be much more successful than the short sprinters…
Actually “combing” the forums can prove enlightening. In many cases there can be fine gems (related or not) to be discovered even when the subject search is quite different.
yeah i def agree, ive done my share, just saying i didnt mind that this mightve been the third time this topic has been posted, it was just convenient for me at least
The athlete baylor recruits and Clyde Hart gets to work with are already naturally very fast. Jeremy warnier and MJ were running under 21 seconds for 200 coming out of high school. The real challenge or test of that theory is will the same rules apply for an athlete running 22 seconds for 200 coming out of high school. I don’t think so.
MJ never broke 21.0 in high school. He was actually 21.3 guy who was very lightly trained. Most of the guys who have gone to Baylor are mid-21 sprinters. The general trend is fairly rapid improvement over 400m, followed by a period of stagnation prior to retirement/graduation. There is a also an alarmingly high number of injuries.
I think that it’s down to the change in sprinting posture brought about by constant lactate tolerance training. Too much of this stuff and the athlete tends to sit and shuffle, much more like an 800m runner. It can be subtle, but when the athlete tries to sprint at something approaching full effort, the hamstrings go. I know that this was the experience of many in the college program that I was in.
The other factor, and Kevin Tyler spoke about this as it related to one of his athletes, is the loss of muscle mobility/viscosity brought about be too much work in this middle range. He might say any, but I think that there’s room for it in reasonable doses. Could there be some actually changes in the muscle chemistry? I’m not that scientific.
The other option is to try to sprint in this position. It’s safer, but totally ineffective.
