Moving forward since Charlie is gone, I strongly suggest that the community act as a watchdog to his work. We all know Charlie was ripped off in the past, but my fear is that no organized way of protecting his valuable insights. Derek has helped foster great charts and graphs to make the Francis concepts come alive through great visuals. My concern is that his work that is not organized in a product will be ripped off in the future from the internet gurus.
Ian King is still living, imagine the swarm of people looking to capitalize on Charlie’s material?
If we want to make an impact in creating a history I think a documentary of some sort will help preserve Coach Francis for others to learn from. Also anyone under his mentorship should show how his ideas expand and are extrapolated now with the new generation of coaches.
On the topic of hypocrisy, one thing that has always amused and infuriated me at the same time is that on the one hand Charlie was officially a pariah in the coaching world, and yet on the other hand I can’t think of another coach in history who has had so many people falsely attempt to take credit for his work. How many “coaches” has Ben allegedly had?
Not many of you may know this, but Charlie told me stories of how he had to sit down with coaches in the 1980’s to show them how he structured workouts for his athletes who went to NCAA schools. The coaches were not having success and Charlie had to articulate the progressions. This also occurred with one of the coaches who took over Ben’s training post 1988. Of course, none of these coaches would ever admit Charlie’s help and influence.
Dan Pfaff
Gary Winkler
Loren Seagrave
You heard it here. Fat chance any of these guys would give Charlie credit. This information was passed to me privately. Charlie had too much class to public air this information for his own personal gain or gratification. However, I feel that all of you should know the truth.
I would think it smart on their part to get a tutorial on what athletes they may be inheriting had been doing.
Some of those guys are much classier than others make them out to be and would definitely give credit where credit is due. At least one of them tutored under Tellez who is arguably just as influential and successful as Charlie.
In reality there is not much chance of Charlie’s mark not being heard, noticed, or seen. He is just too successful, well known and in reality well respected to have it shake out otherwise.
Wasn’t it Stephen Francis who had Charlie’s book in hand at an interview and said something to the affect of “this is pretty much what I follow”?
Any stories about Trevor or Stephen Francis, Glen Mills, John Smith giving Charlie a ring?
It was not like that in any of these cases. The athletes were not responding to the new training programs under these coaches. Charlie was asked to help straighten out the training and fix the problems. He did. Success ensued.
I can vividly remember Charlie saying things like, “How the hell did this athlete get so messed up? When they left me, they were running perfectly well.”
There are more details, but I do not think it is appropriate to dig up skeletons.
This is absolutely true. I know for a fact that Al makes every effort in his seminars, workshops and presentations to give Charlie credit for the knowledge he has passed on to Al. In my most recent conference, Al was referencing Charlie and imploring people to study Charlie’s materials. I know in the past, Al was adamant in telling people that they needed to pay the money and go visit Charlie in Toronto. Only a handful of people actually took Al’s advice. Very sad.
Al Vermeil, himself, should be recognized as being a true leader in the field of strength and conditioning. He is never too big to admit that he is the product of those he surrounded himself with. I am fortunate to have had Al provide me with video footage of him meeting with people such as Charlie Francis, Mel Siff, Carmelo Bosco, Zatsiorsky, Dragomir Cirosalin and many more. At the age of 65, he continues to be an enthusiastic student of the field of strength and conditioning. I wish I had half the energy and enthusiasm he has.
I actually worked at a track camp in New York State about 8-9 years ago with Loren Seagrave and during one of his lectures to the athletes he did acknowledge some of Charlie’s influence on his own program. Granted that is not exactly a wide-spread public forum but he did mention Charlie. It was mostly high school athletes, a few college athletes and various coaches.
In particular he mentioned Charlie’s set-up of a of tempo session as being one he used.
I was leaving a collegiate spring football game in which 2 of my athletes were playing and I recieved a call from him. I totally forgot I sent a email. Needless to say we talked about 15 min on his experience in the nfl, how bad alot of strength and conditioning coaches are today, how having a track background puts you (which alot of us have) light years ahead of the game (S&C), how track deserves more credit than its getting especially learning from guys like charlie francis, Tom tellez. He called certain S&C coaches (college and pro) F%$@%ing idiots! I wont say the names but alot of us know who they are.