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.
No so sure about that. People argue intensity on one end and others argue volume. Look at MVP: Sure, 15-20x30-40m hills submax (if you’ve seen the videos) is a lot, but 6x300m @ about 85-90% is a lot as well.
Any link to those vids?
Similar constructs as the ja stuff I have seen.
You and I have talked about this before some, isn’t the 6x300 on grass and often in flats so the 85-90% is tough to gauge but since it is on grass you can do a lot more volume.
They were posted on here a good year and a half ago. The search function was changed and is weak, so it will probably be tough to find, but someone who has it bookmarked might be able to repost. It showed them @ like 5am in the morning doing drills and then sprints up what looked like a dirt or gravel road (and Asafa showed up late, half asleep and understandably so). There was another that showed him doing sled sprints and some grass tempo 300s in there as well.
But yeah, it is hard to gauge exactly. I mean a very relaxed start and on nicer, but thicker grass is going to make you run a bit slower than your best. Assuming he is running on the same grass track though 37s for Asafa would be well above 85% (assuming the same type of effort was given at the start while the 37s may very well have significantly easier starts). I mean, it certainly isn’t high quality SE, but there is going to be more than just a recovery effect–there should be a significant training effect.
On top of that, grass does let you handle substantially higher vol bc of the lack of lower leg issues and overall stress.
And again, Asafa has run 45.x during the late winter/early spring in Australia and Bolt ran 44low early this year, so while those times are not equivalent to their 100s or 200s, it is certainly beyond a level of just “showing up for the fans” in my eyes.
For me, it’s a matter of both volume and intensity.
My stance is that once the weekly contents of sprints are categorized into the varied intensity ranges- the intensity range that registers the highest in volume (relative to what we understand as upper range volume limits for the respective intensity ranges) is what would constitute the emphasis. Then it becomes a matter of identifying which direction the character of the load volume (long to short or short to long) is heading when we look at a number of weeks in succession.
The one factor I think we can count on, regardless of the athlete/training camp, is that regardless which way the load is heading, long to short or short to long, it will be heading their smoothly/gradually; thus making the direction evident. I state this because the likelihood of injury would be too high in the case of frequent shifts in the weekly emphasis.
I think you would be hard pressed to classify most programs even close to this level. Ever seen a sample Bob Kersee week? If you can categorize that kind of stuff in this fashion or Clyde Hart work… then by all means please posts because I think most here have a difficult time seeing any particular structure. I don’t disagree with your position at all, but I don’t know if you can really do that even with top programs. As much as most people like to believe things are clear cut/organized/etc., most are far from it.
The one factor I think we can count on, regardless of the athlete/training camp, is that regardless which way the load is heading, long to short or short to long, it will be heading their smoothly/gradually; thus making the direction evident. I state this because the likelihood of injury would be too high in the case of frequent shifts in the weekly emphasis.
Again–no disagreement from your philosophy at all and it makes sense, but there are lots of injuries in track even with the coaches and therapy (see Angela’s fantastic book or a Pfaff seminar) and Asafa has been injured nearly every season, as has Sherone Simpson and some others. Not sure things work out like this at all.
I think the video was from a danish ( or other north european) tv program, and no more available, unless somone saved the video.
Regardless of what you are doing the better you get the more you should think about what strategy will allow you to get as much work done at the highest intensity as possible and still recover. For me spreading the load across the year using S2L is the best strategy to achieve this in the 100m but if you can find a better one then please share your insights.
I don’t doubt that it would prove time consuming to categorize the various programs out there. For the program to yield consistent results over time; however, I would suspect a gradual trend one way or the other would have to, by default, become evident.
The alternative would indicate some sort of complex approach to programming the actual speed work which, in and of itself, lends to interesting problems so I’d be curious to know of the actual intentions of some of the coaches out there who do not think in terms of short to long or long to short and, subsequently, do not program the speed work in a way that gradually works towards longer or shorter distances over the course of the year.
No question injuries tend to come with the territory regarding athletes who are capable of generating the forces necessary to compete at the highest levels; however, I’d suspect, which is something I generally avoid, that ‘most’ of the soft tissue injuries we see in T&F have more to do with programming/coaching errors versus the demands of the sprint training itself; regardless if the program is S-L, L-S, or any other variant.
Honestly, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to deem most of these systems as ends-to-middle rather than S2L or L2S. Many programs seem to go short to long with acceleration work and long to short with int. tempo and SE.
I think for the most part, the days of true L2S in terms of no acceleration work whatsoever for the majority of the fall and winter period, are over.
Re. Stephen Francis, has he specified the progression from hills>sled>grass>track with regard to the acceleration portion of his program? Does he view the sled and hill work to be interchangeable or is it a designed progression to flat sprinting?