Charlie surely doesn’t need me to defend him, but I can’t help but say something in his support. I would think that if you could develop a sprinter to break world records you can help someone in the NFL improve their speed. Also, he did produce more that one world class sprinter(Ben,Desai,Angela,Mark,…)
When you have guys like Al Vermeil (sp?) and Ian King singing your praise how much more do you need? Maybe he needs other gurus using his ideas under a different name.
Judging by the response, you were watching Pee Wee Herman videos while you were in the cave.
hahaha, if you want to dodge the ?, it’s cool. Just say I’m not comfortable naming names.
From the limited knowledge I have gained so far that is correct. However remember that set 1 may be either reps or time, e.g. you may get 100 x 10 in 10 seconds. Based upon what you are working on you then do either 100 x 8, 80 x 10 or 100 x 8 seconds you stop when you fall outside that ie only get 100 x 7.
I agree Charlie needs no one to stand up for him, he is truely an elite, innovative coach who produces champions. However if memory serves me right much of the CFTS was ground breaking and revolutionised the way sprinters trained.
Correct me if I am wrong (and I sure you will) but Charlie was a Canadian champion sprinter but not truley world class. The same can be said of David Ledbetter who is widely recognised as in the top handful of golf coaches, he was at best an average pro who revolutionised the golf swing through his work with Nick Faldo. Prior to then (for 20-25 years) almost everyone copied the style of Jack Nicklaus, which is very different. There is an opinion (which I agree with) that Nicklaus’ success regressed golf swing mechanics 50 years. :eek: IMHO you would not have the talented golfers who hit the ball miles of today without Ledbetter and his radical ideas.
The same applies to tennis, 10 years ago everyone said Richard Williams was a nutcase (well they may be right 
) as he claimed his daughters Serena and Venus would dominate the womens tour. Heck, they weren’t playing tournaments and he was a nobody.
My point (yes there is one) is that often when things change, the ideas and approach are met with scorn because they are vastly different from the norm and may be presented by an ‘unknown’ and in some cases a real arrogant S.O.B.
It depends on whether you are working prime or pinnacle work capacity. For pinnacle, you would work at 100% (of your RM) but drop the number of reps (time). For prime you would work at 94% but keep the reps the same.
Football is a lot different than sprinting. There are far more injuries, politics, and technical mastery involved in creating a successful football team and player. You can’t judge a performance coach based on a certain athlete’s performance or lack thereof on the field in football. The best quarterback in the world can’t be successful if his wide receivers aren’t fast enough or his offensive line can’t hold back the other team. In sprinting a guy simply has to run as fast as humanly possible in a straight line. This makes sprinting, throwing, and other simpler sports (don’t mean to offend anyone) much better benchmarks of a coach. In fact… these are often used as benchmarks for players to be tested by in complex sports. Charlie is the coach of arguably the fastest person ever to sprint the 100m. That kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident or in spite of someone’s training. If there has been so much innovation in sport why has this been true for nearly 15 years? Charlie readily admits things he did in the training of Ben Johnson that he would do different now and is constantly trying to discuss new concepts. I’m much more interested in training based on the ideas of someone who has backed up his system with elite-level performance and is constantly striving to improve.
I chose the name so there is no confusion. Sorry about the misunderstanding. I can assure you that the biggest thing about charlie’s work that makes me believe he’s a great, great coach is that his training principles and philosophies all make perfect sense in an imperfect world. As Michael Jones has stated, “Exercise is an artwork based in science.” Charlie demonstrates this perfectly.
Oh, I know football and track are completely separate. I was just curious who specifically since he would mention “NFL team” or “college program” but never specify.
I’m interested in what Charlie has to say also, but his focus is track not strength training. If someone has something that is new or different to me, I’m not going to ignore it or attack the source just because I don’t know who he’s trained.
Anyway, enough about that. Hopefully some more people will speak up in the next few months who actually try these methods whether you find them interesting or not.
It’s clear what is going on with who…I know who the elite are (watch tv) and who is behind it. It’s not like football players are flying to europe to train…it’s all in the open.
That’s great that you’re in the know. I guess I’m blind because I don’t know which football players are training with whom other than those w/ DeFranco, Verstegen, Poliquin, and Schroeder.
It all sounds interesting, but I have one question. Are there any SPRINTERS that are using this system?
Using a culinary example to illustrate complexity, making big gains in the weight room v big gains on the track WHEN IT COUNTS is like the difference between giving someone a scoop of icecream and cooking a souflee.
All I have heard is that people are saying I lifted x more over y months. For a sprint coach, this is one of the easiest areas to manage.
We’re on a sprint forum. Let’s hear from people that sprint or coach sprinters and let us know what gains have been made.
Dell Dell,
The world is not full of secret training facilities in Nevada…the NFL, MLB, and NBA are very obvious. Based on season schedules, team locations, and athletes offseason living area it is not a mystery. All of it is public …we are dealing with 6 weeks of training with the pros so don’t look for too much! All of the private people are great but let’s get real.
Actually, this is the “strength training” forum.
i think he meant generally things discussed on this website relate to sprinting, so the real question is how does DB’s training relate/correspond w/ the sprint training, as from what Ive seen the methods are good, but how do they go with the other aspect/more important one as far as sprinting goes…?
Thanks for clearing that up.
Here’s some more food for thought. Science is not an absolute discipline like math. I think we sometimes forget that the human body is an extremely complex thing which we barely understand. Everything in science is based on theory. We don’t even know why muscles get sore… much less having come close to understanding the whole recovery/supercompensation process. We know that people who can squat triple their body weight can generally jump pretty damn high or do so with a bit of training. What we don’t know is why. That is why all these “systems” are nothing more than shots in the dark. What we are ultimately concerned with is what works and what doesn’t. Who cares if your athlete can jump 50" or squat 800 pounds if he/she can’t play his/her sport for shit? The end all of all performance tests is competition. DB claims to have coached gold medalists, improved advanced people’s squat poundages by insane margins at each session, and to be in such demand that no one can train with him. He never says who. No athlete ever mentions his name. The whole point of the “ideas” is to improve performance. What we want to see is some improvements in performance on the field of competition… not simply in the weight room. The ideas are worthless unless they work. And since DB is such an accomplished coach he should be able to save us the trouble of testing them by giving us some proof.
This subject has been discussed and the decision is yours. He does not give you names and that my friend is what you have to satisfy for. Dismiss him or don’t. It is up to you. Why do I feel like I’m stuttering the same yadda yadda all over again?
he is not saying anymore about giving up names, he saying if the results hes had with his athletes has been so generous and attributed to their performance, why not give him credit? why hold back on who helped them get there?
I’ll admit this for sure.
DB Hammer’s website is the best website out of all the strength coaches’ pages. It even has a basketball flash game 
So that’s what makes a good coach webpage: video games!!
Charlie, you’re going about this all wrong!! We need video games! Now!!
I think this topic is done.