Want to make sure I understand you correctly, if a program includes sleds or hills from day 1 it’s a S2L program?
Would this program be a S2L or L2S?
For example: 11.0 sprinter
Mon: 2x4x40 sleds
Tue: 2x500 @ 400 PR +:20 at the ¼ - 15:00rest
Wed: 6x200 37 rest 2mins
Thur: 3x4x50 hills run/walk down
Fri: 2x4x40 sleds
First off, I’d flip Wed and Thurs.
The HI volumes are 1240 hills and sleds and 1000 SE, so I’d say S-to-L.
37 seemed to be the fastest but that’s on grass- tough for most but not so tough for Asafa.
Another point in all this is convergence- both programs move towards the events and when one aspect is already as good as it’s likely ever going to get, you may move through that aspect sooner.
In 1988, Ben was breaking WRs in 50y etc even though he was getting out behind the field sometimes. he was strong enough but hadn’t done a great number of block starts before the comp period and let the meets bring the feel for starts back.
It appears as though something similar happened with Bolt in 2009 as his starts came back to 2008 level at the WCs- and he was totally confident they would with minimal emphasis and he said so.
Yea that’s what I’m looking at doing.
Charlie- given that Stephen Francis said Asafa ran a best of 32.8 for 300m on grass, the 37sec 300s in training would put him a little under 90% and higher for the other guys. That looks like they are putting some emphasis on longer runs especially if (as SF said) they do up to six reps of 300m. How intense do the longer runs have to be in order to “qualify” as L-S? I assume its an intensity issue since 6x300m is significantly more volume than the 24x40m hills?
You have to look at weekly HI volume totals and as there are more than one hills session as well as sled pulls, blocks etc. This is my opinion of how the training effect is applied but it may not be shared.
TopCat
Didn’t the Santa Monica guys (Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell, Mike Marsh, etc) use Long-to-short? They not only ran under 10secs (significantly in the case of Lewis and Burrell) but broke world records (Ben’s scrapped time aside).
Yes, L-to-S with success for the long and lanky guys but not for Stan Floyd, who was muscular and came as world no 1 from a program that was very weights dependant.
Charlie, can you expand on that?When Floyd run his best times, how was his training like?
The interesting thing is that the longest and lankiest world class athlete, and the fastest of all time, appears to be using a short-to-long programme!!
Ran sub 20 at a teen with long-to-short and did long-to-short (according to his coach) in 2009. Not sure it makes a difference if you’re on that level.
Thanks for clarifying
Fogelson, what are your sources for Bolt being on a long to short program? I don’t think his program is all that clear cut. Perhaps you have more information than me, but I wouldn’t rely only on Glen Mills’ word; he seems to “play dumb” at times.
Tyson Gay also claims he eats McDonald’s every day, but I don’t buy that either. These guys are always obfuscating (to a degree) about their programs it seems.
I’m going by what Glen Mills “said” in an interview for this year, after saying that they did 2009 a bit different with Bolt being late to start back-up training and what not. Did I say it was clear cut? No. I mean, the whole basis for what anyone is calling short-to-long or long-to-short essentially amounts to what Mills has said and whether or not he ran a 100m race before a 200m race and whether or not he did some starts, so I don’t think either is exactly a well founded position. If you look at the workouts posted, it seems quite ‘tempo based’ in nature with very high volumes of moderate tempo pr CSW or whatever you want to call it type work on grass. He ran a 44.low relay leg in early winter (after supposedly starting up training only in November or so after substantial rest), so it is not as-if the guy isn’t doing a very significant work over longer distances relatively early in his program.
Play dumb? Not actually dumb? I wouldn’t be surprised. A friend of mine saw a large stable of American athletes in SoCal over spring break, seeing each workout for the entire 8-9 days he was there. He is a long distance guy, but from what he told me, I am not sure I would consider anything they were doing “smart” (people taking breaks between drills to talk on cell phones for long periods of time, coach going off and not watching people’s runs, etc.). This isn’t exactly rocket science and it isn’t like Glen Mills started coaching in 2008 (hell, he was coaching Bolt for 2007 as well).
I guess every NCAA program does S2L if you based it around starts. Don’t know too many programs who aren’t doing starts within the first 2 months.
I agree. I am just saying that when people hear that somebody did 20s or 30s or starts or whatever early on, it somehow means they’re doing S2L.
If you look @ Charlie’s materials, he even talks about how it is about the emphasis. The L2S program he presents in the Vanc seminar has a pretty good amount of accel work (IMO) from day 1. I guess it is a matter of interpretation and if it works, then who cares what you call it.
The principles of them are the same to me and the description is mostly semantics. Often times both LtoS and StoL start accel and starts almost immediately and both will often have overdistance or at least a similar volume of tempo work, some more than others. They both extend the accel from shorter to longer and both often bring the tempo/overdistance down in length and volume and extend the rest intervals. They both follow a general to specific and more volume to less volume and less intensity to more intensity format - from Tellez to Pfaff to CF to Franno to John Smith they all have that commonality.
When you realize that what’s the difference really…
Opposed to start with 1,500m and work down to 40m increasing intensity
What do you mean?
Charlie already clarified the issue.
The significance is to look at the trend of weekly volumes of sprint work, categorizing the sprints into the different intensity ranges (start/accel, maxV, speed end, special end), and how the trend takes form; graduated upwards or downwards, again by examining the total weekly volumes of each, either towards the long or short range of the most concentrated efforts.
If one were to take the time to do this for most programs I’d think the trend would become more clear. The problem, which was already pointed out, is that the yearly programs of the top sprinters are not so readily available and drawing concrete conclusions based upon a single training week is a slippery slope.