It’s been a while since I last watched the SA series. Just today I was able to get a few minutes to watch the sprint mechanic video. It’s a gem! With some discussion going on about block starts, there is videos on that too.
I know T-Slow is at a training camp in Texas and mentioned he watched some of these on the trip down to re-familiarize with concepts so he could make the camp useful.
There are other reviews in this sub thread no this product. For some of the newer people to the forum, this is great footage of Charlie in action. As someone fortunate enough to have seen him first hand, this is as good as it gets. You’ll see changes within a few reps from a few runners at the clinic. Plus you’ll hear some of the subtle cues Charlie uses that are so simple.
It’s very true what ESTI says- I watched the South Africa series again on the way down to Texas on the plane, and it helped to reiterate what cues to look for. What is most amazing about the whole suite of CF products is that it has given me a huge advantage in helping me (even though I am a novice coach) to understand what is most important, and to focus our efforts on a few key things and not get bogged down in the minutiae of details.
I have seen SO many coaches who know far more than I do about technique, etc. get stuck focusing on things that either don’t really matter or are just symptoms of a deeper unsolved problem, stressing out their athletes in the process.
As a real life example, one of the athletes accompanying us on this trip has some technical issues that need to be worked on, but his tissue was so incredibly spasmed that the actual workload during the camp has been very moderate, and the focus has been on deep massage intervention, tempo work, and rest days in order to get his shockingly tight tissue loose. Only then did we start focusing on technical work. These are concepts discussed in the Vancouver download, and shown in real time in the fantastic Jane Project download.
If we had simply tried to correct this athlete’s technique with his existing ultra-high muscle tone, I believe the camp would have been a total waste of time for him. It is another classic example of Charlie’s “less is more” philosophy in action- do what matters most first, and go from there.
For example, I consider my “eye” as beginner working toward novice when it comes to catching technical issues, and still find it somewhat difficult to tell what is an actual problem versus what works for that individual athlete. I need to take video and watch things repeatedly to be able to catch things. Thankfully with the ability to easily share video, ESTI has been very helpful as always in providing advice and ideas. Once we are back in Toronto, I will post some video of the technical intervention done on this trip, as it is entirely inspired from things learned here.
We also have had some very interesting tissue intervention provided by a talented Kenyan massage therapist (who works very closely with 1500m Olympic silver medalist Leonel Manzano). He incorporates a lot of stretching into his massages, something I haven’t seen much of in the past. He stated that his style is a blend of traditional Kenyan massage and also Chinese techniques that were learned when he spent 7 months in China working with youth gymnasts. Hopefully he will allow us to post some clips to show his work so you can get a visual idea of what is being described.