After the strained hip flexor incident down south, it was obviously time to pick up the Batphone and call the master of recovery and regeneration, Waldemar. We had a quick discussion about timing, and he was kind enough to book us in over the May 21st weekend. Saturday evening was an initial assessment. I took as many notes as possible on my Blackberry. He always complains about my constant typing during his sessions. I tell him I’m that I’m only trying to write down everything he says- he still finds it irritating, but we’ve developed a bit of a rapport over the past few years so he lets it slide. (There are no great Polish bakeries in Ottawa and I happen to work in the Polish neighborhood in Toronto, so I make sure to pick up some of his favorites before I leave!)
Here’s the play-by-play of the opening few minutes:
Waldemar started with a full body check standing in front of the mirror. He immediately found the two spots on the athlete’s back that bother him.
“How fast did you grow?”
My athlete stated that he grew 5 or 6 inches in just a few months. Waldemar narrowed the problem to a disc in the upper spinal column.
“Are you left or right handed?”, as he examined his spine. The lower back displayed an imbalance in muscle development with the left side noticeably less developed in the erector spinae. Waldemar displayed a simple method of addressing this by modifying reverse hypers to target the weakened side. I will try to post a picture with brief explanation of how this is done.
-He must strengthen the right foot as the muscles and tendons are weak. Left foot is OK. He will continue to injure the right foot (especially on grass) if left untreated. This was very interesting, as the athlete always complains about feeling unstable on grass, but I thought he was just complaining excessively. I never mentioned anything to Waldemar about it previously. This is the reason I make a 460km drive to see this man! His 42 years experience at the world-class level means he knows things before you say a word.
-In addition, his hip flexors are too tight, causing low back tightness, Waldemar suggested that there is too much rotation in his running; keep in mind that Waldemar had never seen him run, but was totally accurate.
Going through the rest of the athlete’s physical ailments both great and small, I had never seen Waldemar scratch his head so often. He finally blurted out, “You’ve got a lotta problems, man!” All in all, the initial assessment took two hours. The next day was set aside for therapy, but of course with the litany of issues, we had to narrow it down to a couple. I noticed that after Waldemar had worked on the upper back problem, there was far less complaining about it for the rest of the season, even though it was only one treatment.
We had began the Transition phase slightly late due to the hip flexor strain, and saw Waldemar about 10 days into the 4 week transition phase. There were only about five and a half to six weeks until Olympic Trials, so even though KitKat counsels against taking the risk of racing during the transition phase, it was going to have to happen. He hadn’t run an outdoor 400m race since high school five years ago- clearly, developing a race model was an urgent requirement. His first race occurred in a town about 4 hours away, not too far from ESTI’s neck of the woods. I was unable to make it to the race, and unfortunately didn’t get to see it as nobody was able to record it.
I got the general idea from eyewitness accounts, as the result was NOT subtle, but nothing about this athlete is subtle. He had told me beforehand that he was going to take it out hard and see what happens. Well, he took it out HARD, even causing the veteran announcer to get a little excited when he hit the 300m split in a hand-timed PB of 33.8- unfortunately he was introduced to the 400m rudely when a bear jumped on his back at the 320m mark. He dragged his ass across the line in 48.63 seconds for a crudely run but very educational PB. He is a fast learner, and after this race he understood instantly that his race model was not the most effective use of his energy. I’m glad I shut up and let him learn this experientially- it truly is the best teacher, and we had enough races before nationals to attempt to qualify and refine a bit of a decent race model. He was going to have to run under 48.30 to qualify.
The next race was in approximately 10 days. We followed up with 40-20-20 EFE work the next week, and his rocking back and forth looked like a complex problem that would take time to solve. I asked my coach to take a look at his technique, and he cued him to “stop moving your head, keep your head still.” BAM! Instantly 90% of the rocking disappeared. This reiterated to me how psychologically sound Charlie’s cues are. When you watch his technical cues, on the surface they seem absurdly simple, but they allow the athlete to focus on ONE thing, which they are then able to improve. The difference was not subtle between the first and subsequent reps.
As an aside, there were really only three major mechanical cues used all season;
-“maintain a neutral spine” during the acceleration phase, as his head was excessively hunched forward
-the above mentioned “keep your head still” at maximum velocity
-turn mechanics cues from the “Turn Mechanics” download- GET THIS PRODUCT! I used Charlie’s approach, and it made an enormous difference. His cues again, are deceptively simple- an absolute clinic in artful minimalist coaching. They WORK!
As mentioned a little bit earlier, due to the shortened prep period there was a fear that he would lack fitness, so we tried 5x200 during the first week of Transition- don’t do this, it’s too much for the athlete. He was dead. We switched to the workout prescribed by KitKat, 2x(2x200) and that worked much better (no surprises there!).
The next race was the polar opposite. Lots of people entered with fantastical seed times, and he was stuck in Lane 2. I stood at the 200m split and he took it out in a pedestrian 23 flat. When he hit 250, he looked so slow that I thought he might be hurt- but alas he was simply fearing the reaper that attacked him at 320m in the first race. He had a strong final 120m and finished with a big PB in 48.09, a big psychological boost. It became instantly clear to him that energy management is important. Now we were getting somewhere!
One of the things that became more apparent as we progressed through the transition was that the races themselves are a big enough stimulus- there is no need to lay a ton of work down on top of quality races. In a compressed season like ours you need to pick your poison- quality workouts or quality races. We needed races, so the work took a back seat. This meant cancelling workouts on occasion, or cutting back on volume based on either the feeling of the athlete or his immediate form. I can say that the planned 350-300-250-180-150-120 workouts usually looked more like 300-250-180, and once 350-300-250 as the athlete felt he needed to go out to 350 at least once during the prep period.
The next meet was again in ESTI’s neck of the woods, so we invited him to the race. It was great to have his eyes on the scene and to get his take on the race. This was a national standards qualifier meet, but ironically it was so windy that over the entire two day meet, not a single sprint race had legal wind, with most races the wind blowing in the +2.5 to +4.0 range. Obviously, this meant the 400 would be tough. He got a pretty good start and ran a fast 150 before getting hit with some wind. He seemed to sag between 150 and 250, which KitKat explains is to be expected when still in the transition phase. He came around to finish in 47.98 for another PB and his first time under 48 seconds, another nice psychological boost. He was under the impression that he would be running the 200m race the following day, but there was zero reason to risk hitting those kinds of velocities with only a couple of weeks to Trials, especially since the wind was ridiculous and times wouldn’t count. ESTI and I broke it to him at lunch. He was disappointed at first, but understood that there were bigger fish to fry.