Go PJ Go! Vidcap of his 9.88w

LOL It’s the personal remarks you make about him away from the board i’m referring to.

There was an interesting article in the Daily Telegraph today about Pat’s training.

His coach attributes his current times to his work on a hip machine the last 5 years! Basicly doing his speed endurance work there, stating that Pat can’t handle high volumes of sprint work because he didn’t do a lot of sprinting as a teenager or something. Some sets are done pushing up (hip flexors) and the other sets downwards (hams etc)

Basicly he’s chasing a sub 20sec 200m time at the moment.

Esa Peltola’s training could be described as extremely unorthodox and even heretical.

Originally posted by Neospeed
Esa Peltola’s training could be described as extremely unorthodox and even heretical.

In the Daily Telegraph this morning (Sydney)

(((I wouldn’t describe Esa as a heretic. He’s pretty smart with qualifications in coaching, physiology, physiotherapy and heaven knows what else.)))

By MIKE HURST

THE quest to find a sprinter who can run the 100m under 10sec is an obsession but our inability to break 20sec for 200m is an obscenity according to our greatest male sprinter Peter Norman.

He ran the Australian 200m record of 20.06sec to win the Mexico Olympic Games silver medal in splitting two of history’s greatest talents in Tommie Smith and John Carlos.

``That record is an indictment on the sport in Australia. It’s 35 years old come this October,’’ Norman said yesterday.

But in Patrick Johnson, the man of the moment in Australian athletics, Norman hopes his summers of discontent will soon be at an end.

Johnson ran wind-assisted 100m times of 9.90sec and 9.88sec at the Telstra A-series in Perth last weekend and he will compete over arguably his best distance of 200m at the A-series in Campbelltown tomorrow afternoon.

Norman ran nowhere near as fast as Johnson over 100m. He does not figure among Australia’s top 20 on times.

``I was so slow out of the blocks that by the time I was coming off the bend I was just reaching full velocity and that’s why I came off the bend tall,’’ Norman explained.

``And I had to concentrate like all get-out on staying close to the line. That’s one of the big factors.

``Patrick could well break both the Australian 100m and 200m records. I’d say to him don’t make mistakes and you’ll run the time alright.’’

Johnson has run four 200m races in 20.65sec or better at his Australian Institute of Sport base in Canberra this summer. The fastest of them was 20.59sec into a stiff 2.4m/sec headwind.

``We’ve certainly done more 200m work than ever before,’’ said Johnson’s career-long coach Esa Peltola.

``For us, the 200m is as important as the 100m.’’

Peltola, a brilliant technician from Finland who guided Arto Bryggare to world championship and Olympic medals in the 1980s, has developed a high level of specific speed and power endurance in Johnson.

``Because of his lack of running background as a teenager Patrick has not been able to tolerate a large volume of track sprinting so we simulate the running in the gym using the hip machine,’’ Peltola revealed.

Johnson does up to 30 reps on each leg raising his thigh rapidly against the loaded bar, then puts his thigh over the bar and forces it down 30 times on each leg. He would do three sets of this before taking a 60sec rest, then three more sets before a longer break and then repeat the whole routine.

He'd be struggling to walk after the session,'' Peltola said. But what Patrick ran in Perth is not a result of three months’ training. It’s as a result of doing this for five years.’’

The track sessions have also been simple but brutally effective.

``He can do 100m in 10.2sec three or four times with 20min recoveries.

``Now he’s looking forward to being challenged over 200m. He wants to be challenged.’’

And at Campbelltown he will be.
Alvin Harrison, the US 400m champion and Sydney Olympic silver medallist, has returned to the Cambelltown track where he clocked 20.54sec (headwind 2.1m/sec) last year to crush Sydney’s young national 200m champion David Geddes (21.03sec) and Johnson, whose 200m victory in 2001 remains his only national title.

Harrison, who is coached now by Remi Korchemny _ one of the coaches of the Munich Olympic sprint double winner Valeriy Borzov _ is said to be in shape to run 200m in 20.2sec.

Geddes is lining up again tomorrow, as is powerful Nigerian Ambrose Ezenwa who won the sprint double at the Adelaide A-series and clocked 10.13sec behind a fresh Johnson two days later in Perth.

Matt Shirvington has a slight hamstring muscle strain and has withdrawn from tomorrow’s meet. He expects to race in the A-series meet in Canberra next Saturday.

I would say that all those reps on that hip machine is very unorthodox for a sprinter.
Although Peltola coached that hurdler all those years ago, he has very little experience coaching 100m and 200m sprinters at an elite level. Intersting that Van der Kuyp, Basil and Hewitt all went backwards while training under Peltola.
Patrick Johnson has also suffered a lot of unnecessary injuries over the past 5 years.

I’m glad to see that race, what an acceleration!

I have a question: from this video we see that they run in the opposite direction, i mean the start is done from the finish line (in order to have the wind assistance). This was done from the top of my head at TAC in 1989 and 1991. Since then, i though it was forbidden by IAAF?


Telstra A series Canberra Day One Results
22 February 2003 - 7.31pm

Telstra A-Series Canberra - 22/02/2003 to 23/02/2003
AIS, Canberra

Men 100 metre
Heat 1: (w: -0.3) 1, Di Bella, Paul, QAS, 10.43Q. 2, Donaldson, Chris, NZL, 10.56Q. 3, Hollands, Shem, NSW, 10.66. 4, Williams, Tim, VIS, 10.69. 4, Sconce, Craig, ACTAS, 10.69. 6, Wells, Scott, ACT, 10.72. 7, Burden, Nathan, NSW, 10.97. 8, Hopper, Andrew, NSW, 11.26.

Heat 2: (w: 0.5) 1, Shirvington, Matthew, NSWIS, 10.27Q. 2, Ezenwa, Ambrose, NGR, 10.33Q. 3, Miller, Adam, NSWIS, 10.62q. 4, Anau, Wagui, QLD, 10.64q. 5, Smith, Ross, NSW, 10.78. 6, Neofytou, Kristopher, NSWIS, 10.90. 7, Blanton, James, NSW, 10.94. 8, Harrison, Lane, VIC, 10.98.

Heat 3: (w: -1.3) 1, Johnson, Patrick, AIS, 10.16Q. 2, Noonan, Keiran, NSW, 10.66Q. 3, Geddes, David, NSWIS, 10.69. 4, Budlender, Michael, VIC, 10.71. 5, Watson, Kane, WAIS, 10.76. 6, Mansfield, Luke, QLD, 10.84. 7, Pateman, Gene, NZL, 10.89. 8, Galic, Brandan, ACTAS, 11.13.

Yeah you mentioned that.

However, he did run a 10.26 with a .5m tail wind on the weekend.
He had hammie troubles in Perth.

Wow! I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. :o

PJ was on fire in 03, 9.88, 9.9 wind assisted, 10.13 into -1.3, 9.93 legit in Japan, plenty of
other peformances inside 10.1.

Unfortunately PJ didnt repeat these type of performances in major comps.