Ross looks to bare bones

Expert Discussion Advanced Sports Sciences
141

From the evidence, he had all but given up the sport by the time he got to Osaka, heaven only knows what he was thinking on that tour.

He did no training for seven weeks post Osaka, rejoined his Newcastle coach but started skipping sessions and asked to join Nancarrow’s group to try S2L to try to rekindle some enthusiasm for the sport.

Sometimes shit happens. Sometimes it is not anyone’s fault. Athletes burn out, coaches do too and it’s mostly a negative environment which eats like a cancer at your being.

One day you wake up and question your motivation and sometimes you’re left without sufficient reason to continue commiting.

I’m sure we all want the best for Josh Ross and he should do whatever makes him happy and whatever he feels he must do.

Hopefully he does not walk away from the sport, but people bashing his coaching arrangements actually does not help the situation one iota.

He was unhappy with his coaching situation with his two previous coaches otherwise he wouldn’t have quit them. So to say his current coaching arrangement is to blame for his current lack of performance is to take his situation in isolation, when clearly it is part of an emerging pattern . . .

Maybe he is just confused at the moment. Bad timing to be sure.

But I understand he just moved into a new apartment five minutes from his training track, so he presumably had intentions of continuing with Nanny and he has been in print quoted as saying he has a great group of enthusiastic and dedicated athletes around him.

If an elite athlete is motivated to perform, he does not need anyone else at the track other than for companionship or as a supportive audience. Fasuba reached 9.85 training just with his girlfiend, a mediocre 400m runner, by his side. Maybe that’s all JR needs too.

142

Fact is, my own performance doesn’t mean squat. I shouldn’t be walking properly with the degree of calcium deposits in my achilles so I am more than happy with that 11.6.

I got more physiology & biomechanics behind me than most going around. And obviously I have tapped into Steffenson 400m work including large discussions involving John Smith 100m guys. So I am in a position that you will never be in.

143

Stop with the funny’s, if you look around, Youngy has been in your current STEPS yrs ago my young jedi. Yrs ago. Since then, he has added his own experience into the pie. Youngy knows his shit.

144

Thats only half the process mate. Where is your application? Results? Theory is great, but actions speak louder than words.

145

Physiologists and biomech people are a dime a dozen. Blackboard gurus proliferate. They talk a great race and very, very, very few deliver a performance because they are shithouse coaches.
Just coach someone. Really coach someone for a year or more. Accept all the responsibilities that go with the gig. See if you can do it. You might grow through the experience.

146

Sounds like he needs to hang around Steff a bit more. Always in the dumps, gee how bad could life be, he only ran 10.08 last season.

JR should spend 6 months with Charlie than 9.9 will be only a matter of time. Oh well, if only that was an option. JR did have a offer with John Smith, so his ability to select the right coach is very questionable.

147

I am a little bit different. I spent many years in the trenches. Khemal & Barber were the two big coaches in Oz in the 90s and I spent endless hours observing their methods. Experience will only vindicate what I say now.

148

Sharmer, - Just goes to show how much you know about me. John Smith and Warren Edmondson were brought out to Australia in the 1970’s by a good friend of mine, John Toleman. Smith was 2nd in the Bill McManus 400m at Stawell off scratch in 1979, while Warren won the Stawell Gift in 1977 off 1.25m. I have followed John’s career and am very familiar with Smith’s methods. I have studied the training methods of the greatest coaches on the planet for the best part of two decades. I just don’t spruke about it. (Until now :rolleyes: ) I’d rather let my results speak for themselves.

btw, I retired at the age of 32 running off 5.75m, having won a Gift off 6.50m and running 2nd at Stawell at the age of 31 to my stablemate Steve Brimacombe who incidentally was a 10.28s/20.40s national champion over both distances and won medals in relays just as Steffenson has. (btw, Steve and I are the only same stable quinella of a Stawell Gift in it’s 126 year history)

Yet at the age of 16-17 I was running low 12’s and 24’s. I couldn’t run to save myself.

Matt Barber hey, great record through the 90’s, no question and mine does not compare - yet. But for the record, the last time our squads went head to head in the 4 x 200m relay at Ballarat in 2005, my team of 4 pro-runners (At the time my team had only one runner who was 10.8 the other 3 hadn’t broken 11s.) knocked off Matt Barber’s squad that included Olympian Andrew McManus - a 10.3 runner; 10.6 runner Darren Rogers, national 110.m hurdles finalist Paul Emondson and another good sub 11s A grade runner in Simon Crichton.

This thread is about coaching and on that front - YOUR (not Khmel’s, not Barber’s, not Smith’s etc) I repeat, YOUR record & experience in the trenches does not come close to mine.

Really, win a race off 13.25m - that can’t be too hard for a bloke with your knowledge?

See you at Stawell.

149

We have some hypersensitive insecure ones here. Tomorrow I am sacrificing my own training to time a 44s 400m guy. I wonder who you’re working with tomorrow.

I posted one week of Johns workouts in another thread and you couldnt comprehend those volumes. So you obviously don’t get it.

Life is great :smiley: Cheer up

150

Barber, barber ??? :confused: ah, yeh, he’s the guy who said athletes should run with a low centre of mass. His solitary athlete (while he was coaching that athlete) with any level of international success was Dean Capobianco … I was trackside when he made a world 200 final, Gothenburg I think. But he ran tall at that meet, nice triple extension and all that. Dean Capobianco. . . Now he’s much more famous for something else :rolleyes: but maybe we’d better not say for what on this forum. C’mon pal, you better do better than that when you boast about your “influences”…people may take you at your word :o

Anyway, there’s theory and then there’s the real world where you will be expected to produce results. :eek: That is the world real coaches live in every day. Nuf respect Youngy, Nancarrow et al.

151

Barbers record is all over Nancarrow and Youngys. Paul Green ran 20.4 under him. Shane Hair 8.29 long jump. You must realise that his record is outstanding in the pros’. He sets many of his guys for big gifts. Many have earned thousands from the pros. Winning $40,000 or make a relay team, what’s the better choice? For someone whose best hope is for 10.3. They should take the money.

Low Centre of Mass

Impulse = Force x Time

Lower COM ^ time of F therefore increases Impulse. I disagree with Matt COM theory but their can be a biomechanical argument supporting it.

152

KK

This is what we should be talking about. Not me, Barber or you. This program doesn’t cut it. JR needs results now, any dumb idiot could realise that.

153

No medals, but no matter.

Yes, there is an argument for low COM, for the early acceleration phase only, so long as it doesn’t adversely affect ROM, quality of contact etc. There is a better argument for just allowing the talent to do what comes naturally rather than imposing form upon him.

Now see, that’s where you’ve got to sort out your facts and fictions and don’t just bullshit your way through because every now and then you’ll get caught out.

Paul Greene’s wind-legal lifetime best auto time for 200m was 20.80 when he ran second in a race in Pullman, US in 1994.

The record of achievement actually suggests Greene ran his best when his own father was coaching him at the 1990 Auckland Com Games where he was a 200m finalist.

154

It looks pretty consistent with the S2L I’ve seen on CF’s graphs actually. I think the detail of strength training etc is missing. The devil, as they say, is always in the detail. If you don’t know all the details, a wise man will reserve judgement.

But if Ross feels sluggish or lacking in foot speed, this program is not at fault. It obviously addresses precisely those aspects such as foot-speed Ross has supposedly complained about.

Coaching is a detective story: we are always looking for clues.

I don’t think on the face of it that JR’s problems have anything to do with his training program. I may be wrong, but that work looks fine for the stated objective of developing his first 30 to 60m. But on the Canberra run, he was nowhere from the gun.

You can talk about special endurance, runs out to 120 or to 300 but the absence of strength there has no correlation to his Canberra deficiency over 30m.

As a coach you have to answer the correct question, that is to say, ask the right question to begin with and proceed from there.

155

Sharmer - John Steffenson could run 44s with or without you on the scene. He has proven that before. You don’t make any difference. You have attached yourself to him, hoping it might give you some credibility. I gather his name appears in bold on your CV now.

I do make a difference - I coach 20 athletes and its fair to say most of them I’ve recruited myself to the sport. EVERY one of them have PB’s recorded whilst in my squad.

Just in the last 10 days I have had the following results (since Friday 18th Jan) -

D Tippins 10.81/21.51/46.83 ALL life time PB’s at 33 years of age.

D Woodhams - 10.96/21.77 - PB’s and had never broken 11s/22s before.

C Watkins - 21.64 PB and a solid 47.29 in Canberra after coming off a hamstring injury.

That’s three sub 21.8s 200m athletes - handy in any squad let alone a backwater like Adelaide.

Not to mention the five 120m Gifts we have won this season - Whyalla, Mt Gambier, Reynella, PreBay & Burnie.

This weekend is the richest 400m race in SA and one of the more prestigious quarter miles in the country. The 29th Camden Classic. There are 48 entries - 12 (25%) are from my squad including the only two runners handicapped behind 10m - Tippins & Watkins. Most of my runners are in the red, white or blue, ie: the back of the field.

Tippins & Watkins are the only two SA runners who have run sub 47s at notoriously slow SANTOS stadium in the last 4 years. Consider neither could break 48.2 before they joined me…it’s a reasonable record.

Your coaching record is zilch, nothing, nil, etc. That’s why until you do achieve a fraction of what I’ve done or Nanny for that matter (who happens to be in charge of the S&C of the team that has a stranglehold on the 2nd SF in the A League), I think your advice aint worth a grain of salt.

Win some races off your 13.25m, coach some athletes, offer an opinion; but stop criticising others who have achieved a damn sight more than you have.

156

What does the 10pu/20su mean??

157

pushup / situp

158

I agree with these comments. Se has nothing to do with the question here. Is it a residual of the calf problem or what? What is the emphasis at the gun. how aggressive is the arm action.

159

Sharmer,
in your list of knowledge sources I didn’t see mention of CF. How much of his S-L methods do you understand? That is what Nanny is using as a template. It appears that is where some of the confusion may be.

Did you attend the Sydney seminar last year?

Suggesting JR spend time with CF sounds a great idea in theory but his aversion and reaction to periods of time overseas is well known. His issues aren’t going to be fixed short term regardless of who is coaching him.

160

You don’t know squat. I said to John when he first came from Perth running 47s that he could run 44s. So there’s no jumping on the bandwagon there mate. And there’s no John Steff on my CV.

I am sure your coaching achievements are reasonable. I don’t see why you need to prove yourself so much. But if you ever really wanted to get serious with coaching than you need to set yourself up in Sydney.

10.8, 21.8, 46.8 - are good achievements with the level of athletes you have. I know Khemal would poach 10.8 juniors year after year. You may have the knowledge and skill to get guys running very fast but I don’t see it happening with the talent base you’re working with.

No need to be bitter, cheer up