Maybe someone else can fill this in a little better, but from what I heard Seagrave’s presentation was about:
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.
The hack threshold is 12.50 FAT(according to me) so if you’re faster than that you’re just a master!
did he say if any of the runs were downhill
I can’t say I saw him use it but I was handed a bit of paper by a coach in the know, I was told it was the Seagrave dynamic warm up. From memory it was a 10 minute flat out up and down warm up. I screwed it up and put it in a bin, I never used it.
Thanks Sady. I have somewhere warm ups of Seagraves. Might see if I can fish them out.
I’m not sure of the uphill grade, but I’m hoping for the sake of the athletes that it was mild!
Interesting that a lot of what he says is also a lot of what Charlie said, simplicity, not getting cute with weights, not overanalyzing, stepping down, etc.
Did he mention those things that you noted as bullshit as being fads?
He didn’t call them bullshit, but he actively discouraged overemphasizing the importance of minor issues. Basically, he said to focus on getting people running right mechanically, then start trying to fine tune things.
He claimed that not that many people were doing the low heel recovery thing, and someone said “tons of Jamaicans are doing it,” and his response was, “Let them!”
Again, many were turned off by his old school approach, but they are missing the deeper truth in my opinion.
For the record, I didn’t mean to say that heel recovery etc. is bullshit, just that in the grand scheme isn’t a huge deal and comes down to one’s preferred approach. My coach down south got me doing low heel recovery this summer (without every saying “drag your toe”) and I definitely like it a lot. It helped me keep things on the front side instead of flailing my legs out the back after 50m.
I got you. Well the old school approach, like the Jamaicans do, is kicking the worlds ass and has for awhile.
John Smith’s plan is almost identical to Tellez. He only doesn’t do the long runs at the start of the year opting to break it into 200 and 300 but multiple sets.
Lance Brauman’s plan is setup very similarly to Tellez and Smith.
The Jamaicans training has been described to me by a very highly respected, world renown coach who knows what they do as, “basic and old school”.
I think a huge part of the Jamaican success is the principle of anti-selection. Sound familiar anyone?
How can anyone with any common sense do something so stupid.
You are so “old school”… This is Specific Functional Training.
haha… specific to not being very bright. A PT could make a fortune marketing to those folks, injuries abound.
Specifically for idiots, lol.