He worked with Louie in 93 I think.
The interesting thing here is the switch in roles relative to the normal purpose of weights. This is often done with rowers etc but I haven’t seen it with 400m or shorter and I wouldn’t advocate it personally. That said, Butch trained in Ohio and Philly so weather conditions might have affected the choice of work.
By “switch in roles” do you mean doing lactic tolerance/muscular endurance in the weight workouts rather than in the actual sport being trained for (on the track for track athletes, etc.)?
Until relatively recently, at least in the US, rowers did weights almost exclusively for lactic tolerance/muscular endurance/aerobic base.
Very few programs lifted for strength (the standard refrain was “it’s a 6-minute sport, not a 5-rep sport”; of course, I always wondered why they were OK with 90 minutes of steady state, if it’s a 6-minute sport).
Now that the college women’s teams are Division I varsity programs, because of Title IX, the teams are using the college strength coaches, rather than the rowing coaches, to put together off-the-water strength and conditioning programs. Of course, the head rowing coaches have a say in all of it, and have to approve everything, but the influence of the strength coaches is resulting in a lot more lifting for strength.
Thanks. So my next question would be, who cares what Louie did if Butch was running below his best with him?
Hey, can anyone tell me what world record holder Ben Johnson did with Loren Seagrave? [I’m so interested to hear the great work he did to get him from 9.79 to 10.3]
Has the introduction of the new strength programs resulted in any performance improvements on the water?
[QUOTE=David W]
If you want someone to regurgitate Russian texts, he’s your man. QUOTE]
Usually he misinterprets or misquotes the texts. Saying that he has few innovative ideas for max strength development.
I know Tudor Bompa used high rep number training with rowers when he was in Romania.
I could see a general bodybuilding phase in the early stages of development of a rower to get the musculature in place, but, after that phase, the extreme rep numbers may be warranted.
Current speeds are much, much faster on the women’s side than 10 or 15 years ago, but most of the improvement is probably due to the massive increase in the number of scholarships.
A lot of soccer/basketball/volleyball athletes that just miss scholarships in those sports end up rowing in college now. That didn’t happen nearly as much before.
The national teams have been doing the strength training since the 80s or so, mostly due to the influence of European coaches being hired for the national team programs (the US Women’s 8+ just won Gold, by the way).
That being said, I think the strength training is a big help. I also think the aerobic base component is massively overrated. It may be important, but listening to some coaches, you wouldn’t know there is anything else that matters.
You think three SE runs rather than two in a workout is a big deal, try doing 90-120 minutes steady state four to six times a week. As a result, almost all injuries in rowing are overuse injuries – lower back, hip flexors, shoulders, etc.
I do wonder a lot about the extent to which weights follow rowing, and the extent to which rowing follows the weights (the same issue Charlie has referenced for track many times).
There is also a huge technical component to rowing. I don’t have much of a track background, but I don’t think technical work takes time away from physiological work in track nearly as much as it does in rowing (I’m not making a value judgement – that’s just what it looks like to me).
Of course, if you throw out most or all of the steady state, you have a lot of time left that can be put to good use – whether for other training or for rest.
By the way, I think most teams that lift for strength start out the year that way, and then shift to high rep. work. I know some that have had great results doing maybe two strength workouts and one high rep. workout per week, throughout the season.
That shifting of emphasis is result of the academic year, and the fact that people think in calendar years, and not based on how much time you need for strength and how much time you need for muscular endurance and such. Charlie said some things in a video relating to that sort of thing that really made an impression on me.
Racing involves stroke rates of about 34-42 strokes/minute, by the way. A lot of teams do Olympic Lifting now. Even those speeds, which fall far short of track stride frequencies, make me wonder if speed lifts are better than slower lifts (Olympic vs. non-Olympic). I didn’t wonder about that until Charlie mentioned it in the context of track.
Do you mean the high reps may not be warranted?
The bench pull test in the 80s, which was a small part of selection to the US national team camp, involved 6’ with 90 pounds, I believe.
Top guys were well over 200 reps.
I laugh when I see the track guys worrying about CNS fatigue and such – not at the track guys, but at what the rowers have to endure.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing. I am not sure if it helps speed, or if it just makes everyone excuse-proof if they lose.
It’s one reason I find the discussions here so interesting.
Yes. See MSO’s post on the topic.
I don’t know when Louie started working him. But he worked with him prior to the 1996 olympics and trials where he ran 43.91 at 32 years old.
Thanks, but this wasnt the reason why butch went 43.91 at 32yrs old.
little off topic, but are the tractioning of the back and rotating of the sacrum that the RH sold by Louie provides far superior to a manually resisted one? If you had the unit would you always use weight or cycle in manual resistence?
I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, but then what was the reason he went sub 44 at 32 years old?
Certainly weights played a part, right?
His track workouts and fish oil/enzymes supp.
32? big deal. Michael Johnson went WR 43.18 weeks before turning 32.
I didn’t realize that. Well, the more you know…
Well, it certainly wasn’t the reason that he DIDN’T go 43.91, so, at the minimum, it didn’t limit him.