Dwain Chambers Q & A

[martn76]

@robin1

Dwain Chambers gave a Q & A session at my university today, and while most of the questions were about a topic that can’t be discussed here, I thought I’d post some points from what he said in regards to his training methodology.

He said that he is hoping to run both the 100m and the 200m at the World Championships this year and is thus doing more endurance based work than usual. I asked him whether he follows a short to long or long to short approach, and his answer was “definitely long to short”. He said he recently ran 400m in 48.5s in training. He did, however, mention that he is trying to hit certain split times in training using infrared speed gates, and the one split time he mentioned was 6.3s for 60m. This is in contrast to another statement he made, which is that he’s only running at 75% in training. I assume that this is referring to perceived effort rather than time, but it still seems to me to be an understatement. He also mentioned that quality is more important to him than quantity, especially as he is getting older. I asked him if, from the time he spent with Glen Mills in Jamaica, he can explain to me why the Jamaicans are so dominant in the sprints. He couldn’t really, but mentioned good funding and a great talent pool. He also mentioned that his fitness improved greatly from football and rugby training, and that he still uses some of the training modalities from these sports in his sprint training. The examples he gave were repeated accelerations and fast changes in direction.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone who’s actually observed his training, so we can get a better idea of the programme he follows.

He was asked about his previous statement that he thinks he will be able to challenge Usain Bolt, and his explanation was that he has analysed Usain’s runs and concluded that Usain has a larger stride length but lower stride frequency than himself, and that Usain gets into his running stride 20m into the race as opposed to his own 30m. Over the last five months, he said, he has thus worked hard on improving his stride length in order to be able to get to Bolt’s level. He stated that his 6.5 over 60m equates to 9.84 over the 100m and that he will be able to run 9.7 if he can get his 60m time down to 6.4 (I didn’t have the audacity to ask him how he has come to these conclusions).

I hope this is of interest to some of you.

His training is best described as ad hoc a mix of many influences. He doesn’t have a coach, but someone who oversees his runs. I have watched their sessions and I can’t for the life of me figure out the method or pattern, I do know that it looks awesome…shock and awe describes the feelings. The first 30m is out of this world (3.4 sec hand time). You can feel the his movements as he passes you, a bit like a fast car displacing air. But to be fair I am not there everyday. I get the feeling that the 400m training is influenced by their belief that Bolt is running fast over the 100m because of his 200 and 400m training background. We saw him attempt a 200m indoors in a training session in October 08. He could only manage 24 sec or there abouts. He lay on the rack for about 5 minutes catching his breath and that was the end of it. In training he has been timed going through the 60m in 6.4 sec with timing gates. What is interesting to see is the after effects, it looks like he is hurting after each 60m run possibly due to the immense power he is generating. It makes me wonder if he really needs run further than 150m? I reckon 150m in 14+ secs would be more than enough. Basically they are speculating and inferring as to what makes Bolt so fast. Is it opinion or hard fact based on concrete analysis?
He has a book launch on the way www.nuffinlong.com/sports DWAIN CHAMBERS - “RACE AGAINST ME” - BOOK LAUNCH 2ND MARCH 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtO7bYPhx_c

He is very helpful to younger athletes, seems to have become very humble due to his experiences.