I go to temple university, a Civil Engineering student with dreams of excelling in track & field. Problem is, the coaching is horrible. No improvement is seen by the short sprinters. In four years a guy went from 11.2 to 10.99. We do long runs all the time with little rest and when we do speed work its always on the turn with walk back rest, no major recoveries for quality runs. No major concentration on weights. I keep telling the coach that we (short sprinters) should concentrate on Speed endurance runs with full recoveries, but hes hard headed (used to be a football coach). In the begining of pre season i felt faster than i do now. Love track but with such coaching I cant get motivated and my body feels exhausted.
Before it got cold outside our workout looked something like this:
4* 200 @ 28s 1min rest
1* 350 all out
4* 150 all out walk back recoveries
2* 200 all out 1min rest or 1*350 all out
a workout indoors in track about 320m looks like this:
41 lap @ about 51s 3-4min rest
1 2 lap faster than tempo
wednesday this past week i didn’t go to practice but i heard it went like so:
2* 2 lap @100% 8min jog rest
followed by some sprints
My question is would it be wise to quit and find a better coach/train by myself or should I stick it out even though it will lead to no success?
You answered your own question. If you don’t feel you’re going to make progress (or even know you won’t make progress), then why stay if your goal is to just be the best you can be? If you run because you want to do well AND you enjoy the team aspect, then staying is something to consider.
Before you make the decision to quit, just remember that track can be a lonely sport on your own and with competitions so far apart at times (can be well over 6months depending on your season), it can be hard to stay motivated when by yourself. It’s also a lot more difficult to enter a lot of meets when you are on your own. I run on my own right now and I’ve improved a lot and believe it was the best decision I could have made, but it doesn’t change the fact it can be tough!
What are you going to do if you quit? Run by yourself? Do you enjoy being on the team and with your teammates? If you do then I would stay on.
I think this is another example of how the internet can be bad for student athletes. It would be better if you were less aware of different training theories then you wouldn’t have much to complain about.
As long as everyone’s going 11.2 to 10.99 I’d stay. If it was the other way around then maybe…
Before it got cold outside our workout looked something like this:
4* 200 @ 28s 1min rest
1* 350 all out
4* 150 all out walk back recoveries
2* 200 all out 1min rest or 1*350 all out
a workout indoors in track about 320m looks like this:
41 lap @ about 51s 3-4min rest
1 2 lap faster than tempo
wednesday this past week i didn’t go to practice but i heard it went like so:
2* 2 lap @100% 8min jog rest
followed by some sprints
My question is would it be wise to quit and find a better coach/train by myself
Yes.
If you like staying in a team, go play football.
If you want to be a sprinter, start training properly as soon as possible.
Stay with the team. 11.2 to 10.99 isnt bad. Could it be better, maybe depends on the circumstances.
Trust me you will regret it for the rest of the life if you quit. The bounds you build with people and the fun you should be experiencing for competing for a team I feel are much more important than sticking it out on your own.
You’ll have plenty of years to run for yourself, enjoy the time you have now with your teammates.
Often times its going to take more than the amount of time you have in college to figure out what is truly good for training and at that time its not going to be near as rewarding as the time you have with your teammates.
I would take running maybe .1 or so slower with the coach that you have actually running for something that matters, then going out on your own. You can run on your own for the next 50 yrs if you so desire you’ll never get these years back.
I’m not going to disagree with Charlie on his board about his topic, but I’d stay with a team. I see kids (college is kid) every day where they think they can program and train better on their own. There is so much that goes into coaching that’s unseen by the athlete. I think not buying into a program can cause you to perform worse. Buying in is key.
You (may) do better on your own, but who’d you compete against? Are you in an area that you can do that? Train with a club? Unless the olympics are on your real radar, what’s the point in getting better and not racing anyone?
I agree with what you originally posted, i’m just trying to point out a few things that you might not realize until it’s too late.
There’s just NO buying into what’s presented here.
You could join a club and get away from this training if you really think you have a future. If it’s for fun only, then stay but KNOW that you are going nowhere with a program that looks like hell week on 'GI Jane.
IMO, Ring the bell!
You cant go to ncaa on a club team, the kid must believe hes a good enough athlete to respond to any kind of training. Find a way to make things work, do speed work during the summer/fall and when you join the team do the team running and hit the weights hard along with throws and jumps.
Same kid you mentioned at the beginning also dropped his 200 time by .78 and his 110h time by .84 through his time at Temple.
He seems to be one of the few short sprinters on the team. I don’t think those are the worst results. Obviously Philly should have some other options as sure as training, I guess it depends on your reasons. But if one person dropping whatever .23 in the 100 .78 in the 200 and .84 in the 110h, well then I guess its up to you.
I did a college recruiting service in hs. I got letters from every major division one school in the country. A lot of d2, d3 schools. Some big names though: West Virginia, Univ.of Miami, Georgetown, Princeton ect. I looked at over 200 brochures and most of the kids did not PR from HS to college. Take that anyway you want. I was in that situation at my school (and all the runners around 80 ended up quiting before their senior year). I took the early route out and trained with a d1 All-American running unattached. It worked out for me. Don’t worry about what people think, do what you need to do to run fast.
thanks for the opinion guys. I have a meet in about 3 weeks so am thinking I’ll put in some work and see what happens. If I open up with a time worse than 11.2 I might as well quit. running in the summer by myself I felt like I could go 10.6 now my standards are lower. About the guy i mentioned earlier i didn’t mean reducing your time from 11.2 - 10.99 is bad, but doing it in a whole four years while your 60m time stayed above 7s is kind of ridiculous. i’ve seen kids drop their times by .5 in three months. Right now am thinking about doing distances from 120m - 250m with full recoveries leading up to the meet, any workout suggestions would be appreciated
How is it total crap if people are improving? Hell, how much do you want to improve? 11.2 to 10.2 in 4 years?
I went from 11.54 to 11.13 under a very average 100m coach in college (same type of crap this guy is doing) and went from 11.13 to 11.11 in the 6 years after on my own. I might break 11 this year based on my 60m times but I wouldn’t trade my college participation just to improve .1-.2 more. Sometimes a good team environment trumps any good training, money, therapy, diet etc. It did in my case.
The only way I’d leave an NCAA team is if it was causing recurring injury problems.
One guy improved that much- but hey, if everyone wants to stay with this kind of stuff- go ahead. i just wonder why you’re here trying to learn anything.
I wonder if transferring is an option. I don’t think Philly is a hotbed for collegiate sprint coach geniuses. If you’re going to quit, first make sure there actually is a better coach available in the area.
Yea, I know a coach thats a friend of jon drummond (at least he says so) who i kinda trained with for about a month early last year. He warned me that temple coaching sucks, I should have listened.