I think this discussion lends itself to some important ideas. How do we draw upon the supposed workouts others do? Without a proper explanation from the coach itself I think its a little presumptuous to draw relations where they may not exist. A good example of this is with lifting. Athlete A can squat 300lbs, runs a 10.2. Athlete B can squat 400lbs runs a 11.5. Its all over the map, and theres no correlation between these two variables that is clear. Some athlete don’t lift at all and run fast times. Same thing with Olympic lifting, next to no correlation with specific performances, yet you’ll hear of certain athletes with decent numbers and it convinces others that its the magic bullet. My argument is that its difficult to say, what contributes to performance and what doesnt when people do such drastically different things. If you include Olympic lifting into the program of an athlete able to run 10 low, they will be great at it, because they are amazing athletes. Just as they would be great at squatting, because they are fast twitch and great athletes. So does the potential to be great at something mean that it contributes to the performance? There appears to be no correlation. The one constant is that there is specific speed work, in every successful program. I would compare this to the work of throwers. They throw. Is there any doubt that throwing doesnt make you a better thrower? They also lift, and these lifts have slightly higher correlations to their performance, and this has been well established. They do no tempo work as such, and yet you couldnt argue that they don’t do enough high intensity work to merit the recovery. Yet somehow throwers recover and improve on throwing distances, despite the lack of low intensity work. Its just that historically throwers havent come from a low intensity, cardio/work capacity sort of background. And this is an example of how I think tradition tends to influence our own practices. I’m sure someone could throw together an ad hoc hypothesis as to why tempo doesnt work for throwers, just as many training paradigms are forced into square pegs to fit the current mold.There are universal constants in training, even between event groups. Don’t get me wrong, I do think low intensity, active recovery type workouts are beneficial. But there are many forms of such activities, and tempo, especially hard tempo, doesnt necessarily need to be included, and i’m convinced it contributes relatively small amounts to recovery. What I’d like to hear about is how have you used certain concepts to influence the activities of your own athletes? What tends to work the best? From the athletes I’ve coached, tempo is low priority (another debate is whether tempo is even the best form of aerobic progression) and weights are low priority and progress is made. When weight room numbers are being chased this usually impedes the progression of speed.