It’s always hard to define anything to everyone’s satisfaction. A Long to Short theorist might argue that my program is L-to-S because you could consider the short break 60s early on as split-run 240s, so I guess it’s in the eyes of the beholder.
The main thing is to look at the workouts themselves and what they lead to at various points in the season.
What I’d like to see more questions on is the transition where track work is added to the grass work and how much grass work is maintained, volume distribution, etc.
which means he is a member here…?
At what point does a Q&A become a seminar? 
Would Franno be so accommodating if it gets more structured? 
Thanks KK, I am really pleased with my young fellows progress this year, 10.81 down to 10.41 (in Sydney) in 12 months as a 18-19 year old, plus that nice 3rd place over some very talented Aus men in Melbourne, he has done well. I am going to post some things we have done and used in the last while at the end of the season for feedback which will hopefully provoke some interesting discussion.
I had a list of about 20 questions to ask SF and I got through about half of them. Obviously a bit more time to ask some q’s would have been good although SF did go for 2 hours which was great.
Some more general ideas on themes would have been good. SF obviously has ideas on how he progresses things and this is where he is really successful it seems.
If you look at what they do in Jamaica - track/grass work, weights, plyos, med ball and abs. That’s about it. The weights, plyos and med ball and abs don’t seem anything flash, so I was wanting to get the bottom of how he progresses the running work, a bit like CF would show in a l to s progression.
Also is there any specific hip flexor work that he does to invoke such development here? Asafa is very developed here, is this just Asafa or is it intentionally worked on…maybe this has been answered somewhere else…
Plus the whole stiffness idea/eccentric work etc and if this is intentionally worked on…
I didn’t see any of the practical sessions that SF did so maybe others can comment on how useful those were…
MY APOLOGIES TO WHOMEVER COMPILED THE FOLLOWING. I ASSUME IT WAS PUBLISHED ON THIS FORUM SOME TIME LAST YEAR. IN ANY CASE, IT IS PERHAPS TIMELY TO RESURRECT IT IN ORDER TO SEE IF IT CAN ADD ANYTHING TO THE NOTES TAKEN THIS YEAR FROM FRANNO’S Q&A IN SYDNEY…
Masterclass 22July 2005
Stephen Francis
He started by mentioning that there are 2 ways to prepare a sprinter:
1: Long to Short…Get them fit with an autumn of volume/mileage/over-distance.
Proceed to more specific work…more intense. Sprinting added at the end.
2: Short to Long…Develop speed from day 1. As the winter season involves 60m competition, prepare for this in Oct and Nov
After March, introduce speed endurance.
General Preparation is 4 months. Some start in September but the pros in late October or even November. This phase will go till March and will involve
Hill sprints: Twice a week.
Weights: 4 times a week.
He mentioned that he doesn’t perform traditional lifts, apart from Bench presses and Cleans. He rarely does squats as they can be dangerous. Lots of years experience required. Instead, he prefers the 1 leg squat, which is more sprint specific. If he is gonna involve a squat, it’ll be a front squat, so the weight can be thrown forward in case of emergency. He likes jump squats and split jumps. Weights will be done before a sprint session.
Drills are performed to specifically strengthen, rather than to improve form. He will use high knees and straight leg bounds for specific strength. High knees for 100 or even 150m to develop hip flexors. He emphasised trying to understand what the body does in sprinting and then develop those muscles.
He wants attention paid to the back body: from the lumbar back to the heel, these being the most involved in sprinting. He’ll perform hamstring work 4-5 times a week as this area works 3 times more than the front. His guys hardly get injured there due to the extra effort spent on this area.
Sprinting, he mentioned, is not natural, so hams get stressed. Important to do hip extension exercises: e.g. straight leg pulley hip extension. Not much focus needed on quads
Running will be done in sneakers on grass till Feb.
8x300m with 5 min rest.
12x200m with 3 min rest.
These slow endurance style workouts will be performed twice a week. His 300’s are his staple workout and should be done every week. They develop resistance to pain.
There will also be 2 sprint sessions a week. These will include mechanics from blocks, sled work from blocks, 20’s, 30’s etc.
One day a week, there’ll be Circuit training work. He mentioned Burpees as a typical circuit station, but wasn’t too keen on demonstrating!!! Circuits will go on till Dec.
Also, he’ll never change a program to accomodate indoor season
He also won’t peak for e.g. a Commonwealths. Sherone Simpson ran 11.11 in January and 11.03 in August. As long as one keeps the specifics in the program they’ll perform well. He mentioned a need to be at best against the Americans. If it’s a less important period, don’t change preparation. Some periods will obviously get sacrificed when targeting specific times of the year.
He also performs testing on his athletes. He has a 3 week training cycle followed by 1 week of testing. Tests will go on till April, examples of which are: Vertical jump, Long jump, throw for distance, 1RM in gym. He has a repetoire of 15-18 tests and will perform 3 a day on test week.
Core work is performed 3 times a week. Large amount of abs work is done with a medicine ball.
He mentioned a disliking to sand runs as they stress the quads too much
He also doesn’t use overspeed training for fear of getting hurt. It’s easy for athlete to lose control during overspeed. The important thing is to stay healthy and not do anything stupid. Normal sprints to 60m are also largely avoided for fear of injury, 50-60m being prime stage for athlete to pull up.
Glen Mills
His main emphasis was on developing a philosophy. We all read the same books, study the same courses, get the same internet research info, but the important thing is ‘how we use this knowledge in the circumstances we’re in’. The coach is measured by results, not by knowledge.
The info must be adjusted to get the results, as it is important to be specific to the athlete’s needs. Athletes have various deficiencies, so treat them differently.
He was keen on getting sprinters to develop technical skills from early age. Work on e.g. arm drive movement 6 times a week. Because sprinting is a precision event, every movement is crucial. If one area is negative, it will have a serious overall impact. If ground time over one stride is improved, over 46 strides its huge.
He’s a believer in starting speed from day 1. If you don’t need it, it won’t help, so he doesn’t perform volume and mileage for months at the beginning. It will have a negative effect. If a muscle runs slow for months, and suddenly you want it to change gear, it doesn’t work. From day 1, he’ll also include mechanical drills, starting drills and games involving response.
He’s an advocate of training the body and the mind. Feel everything you do in your workouts, every drill, every stretch. No music or other interruption, just focus. Stay un-interrupted in the mind and you’ll exert more force.
Talking about the 100m, if a final time is slow, don’t attack the wrong area. Look at all components: from start to drive to acceleration to top speed, maintenance and deceleration. Analyse each stage, and you’ll find weaknesses. You may start giving speed endurance work when the problem lies in the max speed phase.
He touched on how some sprinters run well one day and like a snail the other. These aren’t genuine sprinters. They’re not genuinely fast.
He mentioned how Kim Collins does no weights because he doesn’t like them. His strength work comes from plyometrics and resistance work without weights. To get to the level he has, he obviously has an abundance of fast twitch muscle fibres. However, these will age. This, along with general wear and tear will force him to do more weights in the future. Half measure weights, though, will not produce results. He’ll have to commit.
He performs tests on his athletes every 8 weeks as opposed to Stephen’s 4.
His only overspeed work is with a gentle slope. He also hates parachutes as they fly all over the place.
It was an awesome day, with the Masterclass lasting 2 hours, followed by an amazing Crystal Palace meet in the evening.
I was positioned on the back straight, so saw history in the making with woman’s first 5m Vault. It was also a perfect place to watch Gatlin scream away from the bunch with 10m to go. Wariner also looked great, leaning and charging into the first bend, even though he lost this one.
AND THESE WERE NOTES FROM FRANNO’S 2008 PRE-OLYMPIC Q&A IN SYDNEY…
He believes the training should closely resemble the action as possible, therefore he goes with split squats, single-leg deadlifts, lunges, steps up, one-legged squats and all that one-legged stuff.
He doesn’t ever want anyone to go top-speed in training, even in their short stuff.
He emphasised they start with 30m accels from day one, up hills, sleds, plyos post-weights.
But I would say he follows more of a concurrent program because, while he goes S2L on his speed days, his “intensive tempo” program goes L2S with long work such as 5x300 with 10min rest at 39sec or 38-high on a 300m grass track (with two bends). He said even up to the last week or two before a championship, he will ask them to hit a 300 or 250.
He said he doesn’t think tapering does much.
He said he athletes never run 60m, they seem to go up to 50m (2x50 seems as far as he goes with his really short work “I get by mostly on 30s”). But they will go 80, 90 and 100s “but I use that because it’s easier to regulate the pace. I’ve seen too much damage at 60m”).
He believes the main reason to do bench press is because it makes your hands and arms strong to hold you up in the set position. “I believe the bench press help you run faster because it keeps you steady on your hands in the set position”.
Everything is either instinctive or traditional. Like, they all run SSE out to 300m because it is traditional in Jamaica “you’ve got to have a 300 time. It’s almost as important as the 150 time”.
The hill they run on he showed by the tilt of his hand at 45 degrees, bloody steep, but then it levels out more for their longer work up to 150m in length. Walk backs rec. Typically 5mins betweemn 150s on the hill for Sherone. 15.8 is her PB for 150 and he says she has run 22 on their 150m hill.
They don’t do “sand runs” which he says is because they are an hour from the better beach. He says maybe he’s the nly Ja coach who doesn’ty run sand.
“Split runs are not my favourite session” but he will use them sometimes, mostly if someone has been lazy doing a single rep fast enough, so he was order them to do a 200 + 200m.
FRANNO IN Melbourne…gee he’s an excitable bloke…had trouble calming him down for this photo. 
He looks ready for a nap.
Is that old dude in the background performing some sort of ninja stadium maneuver?
Yes. He’s already demolished the rest of the crowd and disposed of the evidence.
funny … how many attended that Melbourne meet. The weather was … no wonder elsewhere in Oz, Melbourne is known as Bleak City :eek:
The photo was taken about 80 minutes before the first track event. This is the back straight of Melbourne’s Olympic Park. The weather was very cold for early March. Hence the crowd was not a big as previous years. Back straight seats don’t fill as quickly as the main grandstand on the opposite side.
As for the chap scaling the fence - the fence extends from the fence around the track to the top of the terraces, which means you either jump the fence (as the chap is demonstrating) or trek to the top of the terrace and walk around it. Don’t know why there isn’t a gate at the bottom, but I guess those who built the joint have got their reasons.
The only people who hang around where that photo was taken are throwers/ throws coaches and people interested in 1500m races.
You may get the occassional high jump spectator around there only because they turned right instead of left.
I’m surprised that no one has commented on the sled pulls with a relatively large performance decrement (.6 difference between the two). Definitely not within the accepted 10% dropoff range. At this point does the purpose and effect of the exercise change?
As an aside I also saw a picture with Bolt pulling a sled loaded with the same amount that Franno prescribes…
I always timed sleds over 30m so the difference may be alot less.
Starting from zero is more resistive than entering the final 10m segment (20m to 30m) at a high speed. So 10% to 30m would be higher difference 0 to 20 and higher still 0 to 10.
As for the poundage, all that really counts is the surface friction created- that’s where the resistance comes from.
What does that mean?
Good question.
I think he means some athletes (usain bolt) can just step on a track and run fast times with minimal prep or guidance… while other athletes can run fast but they have to train very well and work hard but can still put up good times (myself)
Guys, this is the start list for the elite mens and womens 400 (and womens 800) at the California Relays this weekend. This is a mondo track at Cerritos College near Los Angeles, where they hold state championships and 2 US National High School Records were set last year:
Event 45 Men 400 Meter Dash Elite
1 127 Rodriguez, Gilbert Unattached
2 6 Moore, Carlos Cheetah
3 69 Kelley, Kai D Sports
4 48 Edgar, Tyrone (UK) Hsinternational
5 330 Caesar, Kelsey Cerritos
6 182 Haywood, Makio Mystyle
7 49 Dixon, Leroy Hsinternational
8 57 Devore, Tariq New Era TC
9 7 Schnelting, Daniel CheetahEvent 46 Women 800 Meter Dash Elite
1 442 White-Edwards, Mekka LA Valley
2 191 Jepkemboi, Monicah Southwestern
3 169 Chotzen, Yael Unattached
4 70 Danvers, Tasha (UK) D Sports
5 66 Rhetta, Sherron Unattached
6 1 Demus, Lashinda Unattached
7 65 McDonald, Christol Unattached
8 532 Turner, Alysha West Los Angeles
9 488 Sadauskaite, Justina GlendaleEvent 48 Women 400 Meter Dash Elite
3 28 Meighan, Arbony speedjumpelite
4 185 Edwards, Torri nike
5 165 Rodriguez, Carol Unattached
6 168 Jeter, Carmelita Unattached
7 118 Goodwin, Deanna Unattached
8 102 Ochoa, Karla Unattached
Now, where do you think John Smith (and others) got this??
BTW Carlos Moore is a guy who went to Mt. Sac College and still trains there. He ran 9.97w at Modesto last year and ran in a couple of Golden League meets I think.
Ato Boldon mentioned his his blog years ago that they used to run a 400m time trial in March or April, and it was years ago. At the occasion he ran it with Leonard Scott. Some years earlier, John Smith had Inger Miller run some 400m & relays competitions in April. Whether it is 400m time trial, 4x400m relay or open 400m, it has been there for decades. The question is where Smith, Franno or Mills got this?
Although Ato ran 9.86, both he and Inger trained primarily as 200 specialists. Scott did run some 400 trials (in practice) but he was particularly short on speed endurance (JS had him doing 200 in meets outdoors for the same reason).
Last year, Carmelita Jeter ran the 100 in the same meet, and the 100m specialists I mentioned above were not racing 400. Some, like Leroy Dixon, were doing 4X100 at Mt. Sac in recent years.
I know some of these people, and I know that the change in emphasis is not a coincidence. John Smith keeps up-to-date as much as any coach in the world, and there are other adjustments to what we witnessed in Beijing that everyone is supposed to keep their mouths shut about (and as has been mentioned previously in this thread, you never know who’s reading this). The 400s, though, are now public knowledge if you know about the meet.