I was in the library today and I went looking for a copy of Speed Trap. They didn’t have it so I settled for this book, “Track, Championship Running” by Mel Rosen.
This book is hilarious! The concepts are just rediculous compared to Charlie’s training principles, plus the pictures from the early 80’s just top it off. Here are a few of my favorite lines in the book:
-We don’t do squats because they are dangerous and can lead to back strain. The gains from this exercise are offset by the loss of training do to injury.
-Weight tests on our athletes are conducted at 4 and 8 week intervals. These tests consist of maximum lifts for bench press, military press and curls.
-If you do leg extensions to strengthen the quads, then you have to do hamstring curls to avoid muscular imbalance.
-Speed work is done with short rest periods to work the anerobic system
…and, in the strength section there are only upper body exercises with the exception of leg extensions/curls. No deadlifts, squats or clean & jerks.
Anyways it was a good read! You guys should go check it out and work on your 1 rep max arm curls…
Well, lets not get too excited here. Rosen was the coach at Auburn for years and he had some terrific sprinters, including Stan Floyd and Harvey Glance. I havn’t read the book but both did squats- Harvey used to be able to jump over a Volkswagon Beetle and Stan squatted 670! So I don’t know what the squat bit is about. Rosen did coin the expression " Survival of the Laziest" Meaning that Auburn competed right through from indoors to outdoors without a break as so the workouts between were pretty easy and the meets constituted all the Special Endurance from the point they started competing.
I had a chance to meet Mel Rosen in Edmonton in 2001 (at World Championships). Very nice man, with some great stories about managing personalities for relays at major meets (Olympics and World Championships). Mel also had some great things to say about Charlie.
Mel’s program was designed for athletes who have high amounts of competition volume during the competition phase. I believe that he is in the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame.
I shouldn’t poke fun at his methods. I just found it amusing that there were so many pictures of guys doing dumbell curls in a sprinting book. I doubt his athletes need to incorporate squats into their routines anways if they’re already jumping over vw beetles.