Thanks my man! Makes sense!
I was also really surprised by some of the things Anthony McCleary and Desai Williams were saying at the conference.
They stated they had their group doing 2 1/2 mile runs early on, that they run a lot of 600’s early on (I already knew this from following Justyn Warner on Twitter, I remember him talking about sets of 600-400-600). They stated they aren’t “exactly” doing accels at least in the first block, but I asked about the cone and they would accel out to 20m say, and hold through 600m. I found their whole presentation very surprising.
Obviously they have a pretty damn good athlete, but I really wonder if she’s doing 2 1/2 mile runs at this stage in her career when she’s already extremely fit, and if she is, what the point is.
I also got into a pretty detailed discussion with Dr. Tim Taha (one of the presenters from CSCO) out in the hall on Sunday morning. I missed his presentation and had no idea who he was, but I asked why they were so big on the clean and single leg stuff and the whole “functional” approach, and he said “sprinting is a single leg activity” at which point I said “I think it’s more of a whole body activity” and things got more interesting from there.
I asked Dr. Taha why they were “getting away from the traditional Bompa ideal of reps and sets at a percentage of max” (a direct quote from another CSCO lecture) approach to lifting when it’s something that is part of the coaching culture here, and something many coaches know and understand.
I asked why they would move toward the clean and a much less general sounding approach, and he stated, and this is a direct quote, “Research shows that Charlie’s weight program was good for certain parts of the stride, but not all of it.”
Now that strikes me as a bit strange. I don’t know what’s wrong with a stride that runs 9.8x or less, but I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I will follow up with him to attain clarification because I’m just an elementary school track coach with an interest in training theory, and he has a PhD.
Now in Dr. Taha’s defence, in the Q&A panel after our hallway discussion, he stated that sprinting was the primary goal, and that’s what you should put most of the energy into, and just talked about keeping things general and not getting nuts with younger athletes, and only getting more specific as you get higher in training age and faster.
Well as a masters hack, send me to one of these guys who can get me from 12.5 to 10.9! Sounds great to me! 
What is the reasoning behind their high lactic and aerobic loads? It just plain doesnt make sense to me.
Its tough to argue with Ph D’s because they are so sure of themselves and are more trained to defend their ideas. But they are also the furthest from the actual track in terms of training experience.
I wonder what research shows that Charlie’s weights were only good for a certain portion of the stride. Perhaps it is the research that shows that heavy weight training improves early acceleration, whereas more explosive activities can have effects further on. This fails to consider the already present volume of proper sprint training already being carried out.
I fail to see how single leg activity can require the same neural drive as heavy squatting. This is the real key to Charlie’s lifting program which is years beyond what these scientists will ever read in their research. How heavy lifting can compliment sprint training as a stressor, help maintain strength qualities, and extend the need for variation in a sprint training program.
When did they decide to do a backflip on what they once believed. Sounds to me like part of the Pluto theory.
I was asked to do post graduate research, but was told my paper for my degree would good to do but my conclusion would not sit well with the thinking on the topic. I read 150 research papers for this paper, of the 150, 90 of them used research from the same 6 people. Of the other papers, 60 of them, the reference where from disciples of those 6 people.
None of them have worked in the real world a day in their lives.
My understanding of theory is there is basically two types. What people are doing and what people should do. One is based on history the other is based on theory developed by academics. Both useful but little relevance to the real world of the present.
The next speed conference will preach:
- 1 legged cleans on a bosu ball
- 1km repeats to build work capacity
- functional movement screen perfection prior to any form of physical activity, or else your body will break
- an emphasis that perfect mechanics builds an athlete
- no mention of programming or periodization
- Cite the gifted athletes these coaches have trained as proof, or some obscure study
double post
This guy Taha is a freakin’ idiot. Stick to what you know Taha – burying your freakin head in a book.
This guy Taha is a freakin’ idiot. Stick to what you know Dr. Taha – burying your freakin head in a book. His replies are a testament to his ignorance:
- “sprinting is a single leg activity”
- “Research shows that Charlie’s weight program was good for certain parts of the stride, but not all of it.”
I find it interesting that someone did research specifically on Charlie’s wt. program. This must be very recent material as I feel that someone on this site surely would have made the rest of us aware of such “research”. Is it actually Dr. Haha? Who is this guy and as Charlie might say, what rock did he crawl out from under?
They need to do research on Charlie’s entire program.
Ok from the sounds of it, Im glad I didnt bother to go much less shell out I think it was $75 for the dvd. I think I would have shared it with pioneer, speedcoach, and esti and they all would have said WHAT THE HECK!
Well - Hack masters will have to settle for slightly slower times
Now 35 - that means i’m now officially a Hack Master too
LOL
You can add a presentation on bashing the coaches who’ve been producing over and over and are not there to defend themselves.
Can anybody share what were Seagrave presentiions about?
I’m mostly interesting in what Larry Bell said.
Maybe someone else can fill this in a little better, but from what I heard Seagrave’s presentation was about:
- Faster athletes needing a higher projection angle from the blocks (???)
- Projection angles are parallel to the block face (ie. 55 degree block face, 45 degree projection)
- His warm up is super long (45 mins)
- Top speed focused on negative foot speed
I’ve got 2 friends that went and took notes, maybe I’ll borrow them and type them up for the forum.
I went to Dr. Bell’s presentation, I didn’t take as many notes as I should have, but he has a very good reputation as someone who knows how to get to the bottom of things. I’ll see if I can get some notes off my coach for PierreJean. He went into a lot of detail about the foot, and how limited range of motion in certain areas of the foot can negatively impact things up the chain.
For the record, I followed up with Dr. Taha by email the day after the conference and requested that he substantiate his claims by pointing me to the relevant studies so I could take them into proper consideration. As of right now, I haven’t received a reply.
To be honest, I think I enjoyed Tom Tellez’s presentations the most, even though he is decidedly old-school. He is not the world’s greatest presenter (someone needs to give Tom a copy of Dartfish), but as my coach put it, he is a very intuitive guy who emphasized getting the big things right and not wasting too much time on bullshit (current top “bullshit” includes low heel recovery, fancy weight programs, overemphasis on acceleration phase, overemphasis on dorsiflexion). Get in the blocks, run out, and run your race.
He kept things simple, but again, he is all about keeping sprinting simple. What I noticed is that the things Tellez said washed over me over the following few days, and it made me think that you’d want to get Tellez on the track with you and watch him operate there, not in a room full of coaches. The man obviously has an “eye for motion” as he put it.
I don’t agree with Seagrave’s mechanics, so I didn’t bother getting riled up about his dorsiflex off the ground philosophy. I used to do it naturally, and it was a disaster. Clearly some top athletes use something approximating it, so I’m not saying it’s invalid, but I wouldn’t coach it myself.
The thing I remember most about Seagrave is when he did a quick review of a weekly training block in the workout planning seminar. He had a hill day that looked like this:
3x30m, 3x60m, 3x90m, 3x120m
Holy shit!
i can speak for tom as i have been coached by him many years ago. he knows alot if you want detail but he gives the athlete exactly what he needs to know…no BS or highly technical speech- just gives 1 or 2 cues and let it happen.
tom is old school but look at the athletes he mentored! there is success in his methods fact and is L-S. he is very technical and has a great eye BUT eventhough you think he may not be watching you he knows what your doing. he gives you praise when you do it right and advice when you do it wrong but a great coach and a very very kind man who id love to meet again someday!
I find it interesting Seagrave has gone from the dynamic warm up to a “super long”. There would be less fibre damage with the longer warm up but both seem to be aimed at lactic.
I have never seen Seagraves use a short warm up.
People consider 45 minutes long. I would consider more normal than anything else. My competition warm up took 45 minutes at its shortest to 70 minutes at its longest. The difference relates more to how I was feeling on the day and the weather as the initial general (low intensity) warm up was to ensure the body aches and pains reduced before moving forward.