Help Convincing Coach

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10

bringing this up again, i have a couple questions actually. I’m a former teammate of 1234asdf so I am still under the coach he is talking about, and believe it or not the program got even stranger (we lift before running, do tons of ladder drills, don’t taper for end of year meets but work harder, little to no accel work unless its after 400 repeats or something of that nature) but i have managed to at least convince my coach to kind of let me do my own thing since im the only sprinter who trains out of season.

here are the reasons he claims when i’ve talked to him:
-if you can do the form while tired, doing it fresh in a race will be easy
-its the effort of running fast that matters, not how fast your actually moving
-working to the point of feeling like your going to vomit is the only way to improve
-reapeat runs that are pretty much vomit sessions, but stuff like flys and tons of blast outs are the easy, low-int stuff meant to be done the days before and after meets

granted, he has groomed a few pretty good 300 runners (35.xx) but he has yet to produce a good 55 runner (i hold the camera SR with 6.92). it’s been tough to convince him the cf way is right bc i actually havent run a good time this year after trying to use cf principles, and though im fairly certain i overtrained, he just thinks im being lazy by sitting out the team repeat 400s and thats why i havent improved, not because i worked too hard in the fall

but enough for the background (just so you have an idea of what i’m dealing with). i’m considering dropping baseball this year to do spring track for the possibility of running track in college so i thought advice from a hs coach who uses cf stuff would be nice:

questions by reason from ur points:
-my coach thinks that by not doing his program i’m preventing myself from shining. any advice how to confront this?
-is SE worth really concentrating on before pure speed devel. for hs athletes, because I feel I have more potential still to improve my accel and peak speed, so is it worth switching my concentration to maintaing what i have longer as opposed to improving the raw stuff for the 100? (i’ve only run 55’s before so i’ve really only concentrated on my start, with some top speed work)
-i like the “play fast, train fast concept”, no questions on this one! :slight_smile:
-my coach belives that it IS always true in reverse, and not necesarrily in the other way (ie. the idea that its the effort which improves the sprinting speed, not actually high intensity) any advice on how to convince him of the contrary?
-what are some tell-tale signs of overload i could point out to my coach when he doesnt believe me that ive probably worked too much? i’ve had past injuries resurface and feel fatigued sometimes, but he just thinks i’m whining. is there any more obvious ways to prove to him?
-about how long do you think athletes need to recover from other seasons? i only have a couple weeks in between winter and spring, and for some reason distance kids get a break and can skip this “hell week” which is all jogging and calisthenics, but the sprinters are suppose to be fine? is this right, or should i push for a longer break in between seasons (since i’m peaking for indoor, hopefully, haha)?
-both my head coach and sprint coach (who was a state champ 300m runner, so its not fun having to disagree with him when he has that behind him) were football players/coaches, and football does involve non “medium” speed running, so they see no reason to train track runners from football players (though i’m not a fan of my school’s football program either). does ur statement apply for football too?

sorry to bolster you with these, but I’m curious and want to reach my potential and learn! :slight_smile: gotta be a 11.05 FAT 100 guy by fall if I want to run track for the next four years!!

11

and do you think that this limits your kids at all? because i know that most of the kids who have gotten very good in my district are either weightroom freaks or were already very strong. as a sprinter who began on the very lean side, i’m curious if you had your thinner sprinters hit the weights, esp if they were to be a 100m guy

12

-my coach thinks that by not doing his program i’m preventing myself from shining. any advice how to confront this?

What happens to his athletes times as the season progresses? Does a guy in the 100m open with say 11.2 then run 11.5 the next week, 11.5, 11.4 etc and spend most of the season working back to the opening time? Or do the times open with 11.2 then get stale and stuck on the same time the rest of the year? Look at big picture, male/female across multiple events to look for trends. The goal would be a progression with times peaking when it matters most, hopefully the last few weeks of the season.

-is SE worth really concentrating on before pure speed devel. for hs athletes

For high school in season, yes. Out of season though it’s all about acceleration, speed, and power development.

In season we still work on acceleration and speed but we also work on speed endurance (and races take care of specific endurance) because when you boil the high school season down its 12-13 weeks but there’s a week of spring break in there and you need to have qualifying times usually before week 9. Really it’s more like an 8 week season and waiting to work on speed endurance (60-150m) leaves no time.

Again, in the off season we’ll work on acceleration, our kids do split runs e.g. 3x(3x30m) [walk back rest reps/ 5 min. rest sets] instead of straight speed endurance to shift the focus closer to acceleration.

-my coach belives that it IS always true in reverse, and not necesarrily in the other way (ie. the idea that its the effort which improves the sprinting speed, not actually high intensity) any advice on how to convince him of the contrary?

If your maximum bench press was 200 pounds and you wanted to increase it to 300 pounds would doing reps with just the bar or even 100 pounds until your arms gave out (full effort mind you) help you reach your goal?

-what are some tell-tale signs of overload i could point out to my coach when he doesnt believe me that ive probably worked too much? i’ve had past injuries resurface and feel fatigued sometimes, but he just thinks i’m whining. is there any more obvious ways to prove to him?

How heavy are your or your teammates foot strikes? Is anyone able to be light on their feet or is everyone plodding? Does this deteriorate over time?

Another way is to measure power by tracking your vertical or standing broad jump every day. You’ll see normal fluctuations day to day but if you see a constant downward trend you’ll know your power is decreasing.

-about how long do you think athletes need to recover from other seasons?

Just one school week is good.

Keeping our program towards the lower volume end lets kids “recover” from the fall and winter sports. It’s the end of the year and they can be feeling the effects of 7 months of training and competing in other sports so my goal during track is to stimulate and not annihilate.

-both my head coach and sprint coach (who was a state champ 300m runner, so its not fun having to disagree with him when he has that behind him) were football players/coaches, and football does involve non “medium” speed running, so they see no reason to train track runners from football players (though i’m not a fan of my school’s football program either). does ur statement apply for football too?

Not as much as soccer and basketball. The football guys tend understand full effort/rest better than those other sports but they are also dealing with a 48+ minute game so they have conditioning considerations. Whereas high school track competition is 11-65 seconds of all out effort then 20 or more minutes of recovery.

The big thing I find though is lots of football coaches still run gassers for conditioning so the athletes run those only fast enough to not get yelled at. When they get to track they revert back to the mentality of running gassers, I have to teach them that they can can give it full effort because I’m giving them plenty of rest to recover.

13

No. I’ve tried implementing an in season weight program and besides the logistical nightmare what I found in most of our kids couldn’t even control their body weight very well (this is a group of 50 or sprinters, jumpers, hurdlers, vaulters). It was pointless trying to teach a loaded squat or bench when most kids couldn’t do a good body weight squat or pushup.

We develop body control, coordination, strength and power through general strength type activities. This includes: partner medicine ball passes, bodyweight exercises (pushups, dips, lunges, squats, etc.), explosive med ball throws and jumps, various skips and jumps and hops, ab exercises, planks ,etc.

That said, there are some athletes I have/had that were much further along so in addition to the general strength stuff listed above they’ve done weight training in the off season. Even that though was very basic in nature.

14

question/comment by bullet again:

-this trend with the times does happen (except for me this and last year bc i trained the fall on my own and sat team workouts) as the times towards the middle of the season are certainly slower than the beginning, but if the end of the year time is .1 faster than at the beginning, my coach believes thats how its suppose to work because hes never seen anyone really see bigger improvements. sadly i think he has that mentality (ironic for a coach to have) that speed is incredibly difficult to develop so a .1 improvement is great

-i like your benching analogy. i may bring that up if he questions my sitting of a workout, though even in the weight room almost all the lifts we get assigned are in the 15 rep range, and we share a weight program with the distance kids, hmm… i forgot to mention this in my other post, but also the other reason he sites running repeat long runs is because “by the third heat of the 55m at championship meets you’ll be tired and this will help you get your knees up in that final heat”. though it seems to me that this isnt taking into account the difference between handling larger volumes, speed endurance, and the special endurances. what do you think?

-during this year i have felt heavy on my feet sometimes, though ive always tended to being a “heavy” stepper. i think i’m really the only one who gets overtrained though because i actually do high intensity training outside of meets :confused: i do believe that my vertical has slightly deteriorated in this season, maybe i can sight this, though he might say that if id been running the team workouts it wouldnt have (though i fail to see how ladder drills or repeat 4’s would help a vertical)

-and yeah, most of the stuff we do is like football training thats more like conditioning. if its not repeat 400s (which the football team wouldnt do, but track does) then its like repeat 50 yd dashes from a standing position with the rest being the time it takes for the other athletes to do the run and clear the track. and with the way our football players have been mentally conditioned, at leats the better track ones actually do run as hard as they can on each one, so since we dont do pure speed training we don’t run into that problem you brought up

thanks a ton for your time!

15

i see where you are coming from. but this leads me to a few more q’s, if you wouldnt mind enlightening me:

-i assume your use of bodyweight exercises isnt too much because a high volume of them (if not performed explosively) would develop slow twitch muscle which is essentially useless for any of these power/speed events?

-i bet you have football players who participate on your track team, and i know at least the football players at my school love lifting. do they see significant strength loses if they dont really lift for the 13 weeks of season, or is the running, bw and plyo stuff enough to maintain what they have (generally speaking)?

thanks again!

16

What happens to his athletes times as the season progresses? Does a guy in the 100m open with say 11.2 then run 11.5 the next week, 11.5, 11.4 etc and spend most of the season working back to the opening time? Or do the times open with 11.2 then get stale and stuck on the same time the rest of the year? Look at big picture, male/female across multiple events to look for trends. The goal would be a progression with times peaking when it matters most, hopefully the last few weeks of the season.

the trend i remember is no one improves. except for people that run the 300 and come into the season out of shape, therefore anything will help. with the 55, improvements for people always came between season never in season, and its not like those people trained they just came to the next season running faster times. for ex, the current coach that won the 300m, he ran 6.8s his jr year, consistently never running anyfaster, from the first meet until the last, and then senoir year he ran 6.6s consistently, with the same trend.

i hardly notice anyone ever improving from what they give us to do inseason

17

Either do what the coach says or find an alternative, why buy a Hyundai and try and turn it into a Mazda. :confused:

18

i know what your saying, but its not like i have any other options. i need to have a team to run for, and the hs team is my only doable option, but im positive that the program is not right for me (honestly, repeat 4’s to improve a 55??)

so really “changing a hyundai into a mazda” is really my only option

19

and while in college (after four years of the supposedly advanced college training he got and is bringing back to us) still never ran faster than 6.74…

and yeh, your point is more accurate, i was just tracing what happened to my times during freshman and soph years when i just did what they said(7.2 to 7.4 then 7.0, 7.1 to 7.3 to 6.8)

20

If you work on improving your speed then the qualifying rounds become easier because you’re running sub max. If a 22.6 guy needs a 22.8 to qualify for finals he’s running all out and will be much more tired for the final than a 22.1 guy who cruised through prelims.

And to be honest butting your head with the coach isn’t going to help anyone. If your coach is open to suggestions that’s great and by all means bring up some things for him to think about. A coach needs to believe in what he’s doing and the athletes need to also believe in it. If either party doesn’t believe in what they’re doing it’s a no win situation.

21

We’ll do the bodyweight/general strength stuff 2-3 times per week. It’s low intensity so we’ll go high for overall reps, but reps per exercise aren’t too high (<15). Remember that Charlie had his athletes doing low intensity med ball and abs well into the 100’s for total volume, if I remember correctly there were days over 1,000.

Regarding football players, the kids who are in love with the weight room never seem to turn out for track anyway. Our football/track kids understand we actually want to help improve their power and speed and help them get better at football. Some of those guys may continue to lift on the side, mostly the linemen/thrower types, and even there our throws coach was a big lifter so it works well together. The skill guys generally take a break from lifting but do notice when they go to spring ball camp after track they feel good and are fast.

22

yeah, i agree with you. because im actually the top sprinter this year and not a captain, hes actually let me do pretty much what ive wanted, just i need good reasoning so that he doesnt think im being lazy which is really the only thing that would make him mad (or having other kids try to do what im doing, but i just tell them to do the team program)

23

ok, cool, thanks for the info

i do see the value of a good volume of low int corework and maybe upperbody (for work capacity purposes and the fact that the devel. of slow twicth wouldn’t interfere with the leg muscles) but essentially the program you run is plyos and running only for the legs?

sorry if im being intrusive at all, but i added a lot of strength and have bulked up to where i look the same size as the other 55 sprinters (i used to be very small and thin) and while my vertical and weights have siginificantly improved for me, my sprinting hasnt yet. so maybe the heavy lower lifting isnt for me (ran a 6.98 FAT before ever lifting or speed training, 6.93 now after two years :/)

24

In season, yes. It’s hills, sleds, med ball throws and jumps, simple plyos and jumps, and a few bodyweight exercises.

Off/pre season they do a simple (3-5 exercises, 3x5-10) lower/upper split four days a week (Well, maybe some of them, I’m not there off season so I don’t know who’s doing the work). That’s in addition to hills, sleds, stairs, and acceleration work. Don’t forget this is the Seattle area where if you don’t mind the wet you can be outside most of the winter. If it was really cold or snowy here we’d have to do more inside stuff i.e. weights but the way it stands right now the athletes get most of their leg development from hills/sleds/stairs.

25

Stikki - hahaha, where do you find a hill in Seattle winter that isn’t too muddy and slippery to be useful?

26

We just do them on pavement, there’s a couple of good ones on and near campus. I figure if Asafa and MVP can do them on pavement so can we. Only the strongest guys (usually with worn out shoes) will slip on on paved wet hills, if you give them something to push off for the first step that usually solves it.

27

ok, cool. if i end up doing outdoor track im thinking about really taking the emphasis off weights because they havent seemed to help me a huge amount (though the winters in NE kind of limit me to needing to use what i have available indoors)

28

Is there a track club you could join near by? Maybe if you were a member of the club, your HS coach would let you train with them and still compete for HS.

29

you don’t think your weights helped you in the 55m? you sure?