Ok, I’ll have another chat with him and ask more about his theories.
Not that this represents what is done in England, but someone who was a recent national athletics coach in Scotland said there was resistance(so to speak) to power/strength methods as we know them. There was more of a trend by many of the coaches to view circuits and bodybuilding protocols as the way to train track and field athletes pretty much year round. This was noted for SOME of the personal coaches of several of the top junior and a few of the best senior athletes in Scotland. Maybe someone on this site could provide further insight?
No doubt that relying on such methods for all of an athletes’ “strength” program would lead to some unproductive weight gains(dare I say non-functional?) and a limitation to total strength and power development.
You got it!
No Matter what is done in the weight room, if the proper sprint work isn’t being done, you are going to be slow. I cannot see why such a high emphasis is placed on the aesthetic development of sprinters. I know Charlie has the looks right flys right motto, but hey, I have to distinguish myself from other coaches somehow…lol.
It is a beautiful thing to have an excellent well rounded physique, but in my opinion, it in no way determines performance. Most top sprinters today lack the muscular development we would like to associate with speed. Americans in particular like to think weightlifting is the means to the end, but like Charlie stresses, no ONE aspect of your plan will be the magic elixir.
Powell, Spearman, Wariner, all the top guys right now from 60-400m display much less “outward” physical development than even the top men 5 years ago. Regardless of factors outside of training, you have to believe the training is different and that these guys stress track work in a multitude of varieties.
I have always believed that our physical capabilities with the current amount of LBM is always undershot. I just cannot conceive why any program for sprinting would stress hypertrophy through BB exercises. It’s even more amusing to see “top level” coaches advocate these exercises.
Using BB exercises at times will not necessarily lead to significant hypertrophy if balanced with an adequate volume of Speed and Speed End.
This is a case- like static stretching- where we may limit the possibilities in training.
I had a feeling you would say that:) My only beef with such training is that I see it being used too much at the U.S. highschool levels.
ANd not enough tempo and speed endurance too??
Yet Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay both are developed in the Gluteals area as much as any other sprinter but a bit smaller everywhere else.
With you entirely your end paragraph. A study I can’t find again (Done by people who know about physics, but probably know nothing about Track & Field), suggests we allready have more leg mass than what is needed to run fast. If that is the case, is the xtra mass more to do wih acceleration? I personally don’t even lift weights anymore and my muscle size has not suffered, it’s more to do with nutrition as far as I’m concerned.
at 88kg (195lbs or so) powell is not so small…I’ve seen at 2 meters of distance…pretty amazing body, never seen a man with so broad shoulders and so small stomach girth
While I agree this could be a problem I also find often the opposite to be the case and the only way to train sprinters is through olympic lifts and plyometrics , both of which cannot be utilised properly until the required levels of general strength are in place (some EIS S&C coaches especially train their athletes to peak in a back squat or power clean rather than in thier respective athletic event). I see too many 16-18 year olds attempting the olympic lifts despite the fact that they do not even have the strength or flexability to assume a good start position. It seems more education is required with respect to concurrent strength and power development system (read: CFTS) acrossa broad range of activities that can be used to enhance performance (running, jumping, throwing -medicine balls etc-, pulling and pushing).
So too many heavy weights and not enough speed/sp end will result in size increase?
I completely agree, in some cases coaches are not doing the foundational work with their younger athletes and unfortunately trying to “cut to the chase” employing more advanced methods for those who might not be prepared for such. This type of philosophy would likely, of course, limit the ultimate athletic potential of those athletes. One quote related to such philosophy that I tend to favor is “dont’ look at what champions do now, look at what they did to get there”. Look at what they did in their formative years.
The individual I spoke of(a native of Scotland actually) most definitely acknowledged the importance of such foundational work. This coach’s point was that for some coaches their entire definition of strength/power devlopment revolved around bodybuilding methods/higher reps and circuit training. It is as though those coaches are either unaware that a very different approach exists for max. strength/power development, or are in disagreement as to the best methods for achieving such development. Coaching education was a big focus for communicating these methods to the coaches with, apparently, only limited success. There was said to be resistance to such methods that most of us accept as effective.
Too high a volume and not enough S SE, yes.
Thanks Charlie
What is the reason for this Charlie? Is it hormone secretion? ie GH, Time under tension? The intensity of contraction used in S, SE? High energy use during S, SE?
Prob most or all of the above but I’m basing my comments on decades of observation. Ever hear of the guys at the horse race track who look at the horses and can tell which are the front runners and which will come on later. You can see that with people too. The apparent length of the muscle is the tip-off. Hard to describe beyond that.
Muscular metabolic adaptation (hypertrophy) is the result of the amount of protein degradation (heavier weight=greater protein degradation) and the amount of mechanical work (volume). I’m certainly not an expert in sprinting (although learning tons from this fabulous site) but I do know a little bit about getting strong and powerful. I can’t see where adding size would ever be beneficial for a sprinter only an undesirable side effect of training. Meaning that the objective should be to minimize weight (even LBM) gains and maximize strength and RFD. Fast lifts (speed-strength) are great but training at ~90%/1 RM for say three sets of three attempting to move the weight as fast as possible is even better. It would seem to me that in the vast majority of cases if the athlete can improve relative strength (unless explosive strength deficit is too large, i.e.,at 50% or greater at which point RFD emphasis is much more important) then stride length and frequency would improve as a result.
Bob Tomlinson
what is the correct foundation work for young athletes. i wanna know if what im doing at my athletics club is right.
There are always trade-offs in training. As absolute power goes up, weight tends to creep up, even if only slightly and even though cross-section changes little or not at all, yet the ratio of power to weight improves. There is a very fine balance in all this and the push-pull of demands changes which strength method you might use depending on the current nature of the Speed or SE emphasis.
I guess my point is that if your goal is to maintain your current weight first and you select only training that will accomplish this, you are likely to fail.
Agreed Charlie. If an athlete has little or no resistance training experience even a program emphasizing relative strength will result in some weight gain. I guess my point is bodybuilding methods are hardly optimal for a sprinter or any athlete who wishes to minimize hypertrophy (functional or not). In addition, to those who don’t think training for added strength is necessary for a sprinter I would respectfully disagree. Body weight and body mass provide high resistance during locomotion thus getting stronger should be a priority for all sprinters until a level of strength is reached where such additional ability to produce force does not produce faster competitive results. I would submit that if an athlete with little strength training experience begins a resistance training protocol and is not getting faster or an athlete who has been resistance training, is not comparitively strong relative to their peers (anthropometrics aside), and is not improving sprint performance than their training protocol is flawed not the concept that getting stronger will improve sprint performance (sorry for the mouthful).
cheers charlie