Stephen Francis
He started by mentioning that there are 2 ways to prepare a sprinter:
1: Long to Short…Get them fit with an autumn of volume/mileage/over-distance.
Proceed to more specific work…more intense. Sprinting added at the end.
2: Short to Long…Develop speed from day 1. As the winter season involves 60m competition, prepare for this in Oct and Nov
After March, introduce speed endurance.
General Preparation is 4 months. Some start in September but the pros in late October or even November. This phase will go till March and will involve
Hill sprints: Twice a week.
Weights: 4 times a week.
He mentioned that he doesn’t perform traditional lifts, apart from Bench presses and Cleans. He rarely does squats as they can be dangerous. Lots of years experience required. Instead, he prefers the 1 leg squat, which is more sprint specific. If he is gonna involve a squat, it’ll be a front squat, so the weight can be thrown forward in case of emergency. He likes jump squats and split jumps. Weights will be done before a sprint session.
Drills are performed to specifically strengthen, rather than to improve form. He will use high knees and straight leg bounds for specific strength. High knees for 100 or even 150m to develop hip flexors. He emphasised trying to understand what the body does in sprinting and then develop those muscles.
He wants attention paid to the back body: from the lumbar back to the heel, these being the most involved in sprinting. He’ll perform hamstring work 4-5 times a week as this area works 3 times more than the front. His guys hardly get injured there due to the extra effort spent on this area.
Sprinting, he mentioned, is not natural, so hams get stressed. Important to do hip extension exercises: e.g. straight leg pulley hip extension. Not much focus needed on quads
Running will be done in sneakers on grass till Feb.
8x300m with 5 min rest.
12x200m with 3 min rest.
These slow endurance style workouts will be performed twice a week. His 300’s are his staple workout and should be done every week. They develop resistance to pain.
There will also be 2 sprint sessions a week. These will include mechanics from blocks, sled work from blocks, 20’s, 30’s etc.
One day a week, there’ll be Circuit training work. He mentioned Burpees as a typical circuit station, but wasn’t too keen on demonstrating!!! Circuits will go on till Dec.
Also, he’ll never change a program to accomodate indoor season
He also won’t peak for e.g. a Commonwealths. Sherone Simpson ran 11.11 in January and 11.03 in August. As long as one keeps the specifics in the program they’ll perform well. He mentioned a need to be at best against the Americans. If it’s a less important period, don’t change preparation. Some periods will obviously get sacrificed when targeting specific times of the year.
He also performs testing on his athletes. He has a 3 week training cycle followed by 1 week of testing. Tests will go on till April, examples of which are: Vertical jump, Long jump, throw for distance, 1RM in gym. He has a repetoire of 15-18 tests and will perform 3 a day on test week.
Core work is performed 3 times a week. Large amount of abs work is done with a medicine ball.
He mentioned a disliking to sand runs as they stress the quads too much
He also doesn’t use overspeed training for fear of getting hurt. It’s easy for athlete to lose control during overspeed. The important thing is to stay healthy and not do anything stupid. Normal sprints to 60m are also largely avoided for fear of injury, 50-60m being prime stage for athlete to pull up.
Glen Mills
His main emphasis was on developing a philosophy. We all read the same books, study the same courses, get the same internet research info, but the important thing is ‘how we use this knowledge in the circumstances we’re in’. The coach is measured by results, not by knowledge.
The info must be adjusted to get the results, as it is important to be specific to the athlete’s needs. Athletes have various deficiencies, so treat them differently.
He was keen on getting sprinters to develop technical skills from early age. Work on e.g. arm drive movement 6 times a week. Because sprinting is a precision event, every movement is crucial. If one area is negative, it will have a serious overall impact. If ground time over one stride is improved, over 46 strides its huge.
He’s a believer in starting speed from day 1. If you don’t need it, it won’t help, so he doesn’t perform volume and mileage for months at the beginning. It will have a negative effect. If a muscle runs slow for months, and suddenly you want it to change gear, it doesn’t work. From day 1, he’ll also include mechanical drills, starting drills and games involving response.
He’s an advocate of training the body and the mind. Feel everything you do in your workouts, every drill, every stretch. No music or other interruption, just focus. Stay un-interrupted in the mind and you’ll exert more force.
Talking about the 100m, if a final time is slow, don’t attack the wrong area. Look at all components: from start to drive to acceleration to top speed, maintenance and deceleration. Analyse each stage, and you’ll find weaknesses. You may start giving speed endurance work when the problem lies in the max speed phase.
He touched on how some sprinters run well one day and like a snail the other. These aren’t genuine sprinters. They’re not genuinely fast.
He mentioned how Kim Collins does no weights because he doesn’t like them. His strength work comes from plyometrics and resistance work without weights. To get to the level he has, he obviously has an abundance of fast twitch muscle fibres. However, these will age. This, along with general wear and tear will force him to do more weights in the future. Half measure weights, though, will not produce results. He’ll have to commit.
He performs tests on his athletes every 8 weeks as opposed to Stephen’s 4.
His only overspeed work is with a gentle slope. He also hates parachutes as they fly all over the place.
It was an awesome day, with the Masterclass lasting 2 hours, followed by an amazing Crystal Palace meet in the evening.
I was positioned on the back straight, so saw history in the making with woman’s first 5m Vault. It was also a perfect place to watch Gatlin scream away from the bunch with 10m to go. Wariner also looked great, leaning and charging into the first bend, even though he lost this one.
any link?