When you say that you reverse the conversion of IIb/x to IIa through maintenance in weights and sub-max on the track, does it mean your IIb/x fibers that turned into IIa will turn into IIb/x fibers again?? I thought it requires complete rest in order for reverse-conversion to occur. Does just going into a sort of peaking/maintenance schedule actually turn your fibers into IIb/x again, resulting in greater speed? Is this one of the ways in which peaking does occur? (in addition to refreshing of the CNS and optimization of muscle tones) How long of peaking/maintenance period is needed to see such reverse-conversion?
Hey all. Thank you everyone for your generosity, kindness, and especially patience. I really do appreciate the extra time and effort you all have put in in trying to help me reach my goals. I know it has been frustrating for many of you, and I apologize for making things so frustrating. Some times, I just can’t seem to be able to help holding in all of the negativity that has been branded into me. I am fully aware and completely understand that I have not trained myself properly, of course, this is because of my inability to be able to handle my own emotions and reactions to what I do. At any rate, I ran 11.81 in better conditions than last week, on a faster track, and 2.0 wind, if that really means anything. (last week was 11.79). Anyhow, I am 22 years old and my PR (11.15) is from when I was 19, three years ago, as some of you may know. I realize now I just need to accept my fate for what it is and stop fighting it. I’m about to graduate next month and I need to figure my life out. It’s like I’m going through a mid-life crisis already at the age of 22. My life’s number one goal for the past two years has to PR again. It just had a personal meaning to me, it would have brought me the validation I need, and would have done justice to what happened to me in 2013. But I see now it just is not destined to be. I lost, I lost a long time ago, and I need to accept it. I just can’t keep living with this dark cloud over me. I need to stop letting myself down and come to terms with the reality of things that I am no longer what I once was. Anyways, I’m going to be taking a leave for a while to figure out what I’m going to do. Thanks again. Bye for now.
Hey Brett, I’ve been through something very similar as you as far as training goes. Twice actually. When I was in HS, I hit 11.30 FAT at 17 years old but after that my life went downhill fast. I had disc surgery when I was 18 years old, missed my entire senior year of football and track. I had accepted the fact that I was only going to be good enough for open meets/unattached at best. Once I finally got over this injury which was a year later I decided that I just wanted to compete in open meets. To make a long story short, I didn’t come close to reaching my old personal best. I had thought that I had done everything right to run somewhat close to my old PB but I didn’t. I also had thought that I had better training than the way I was trained by my idiot HS coaches, but I too made some bad mistakes looking back at my old journals. It all ended after I strained my hamstring during mid-season doing 300yd tempo runs (stupid mistake). I moved on from track after that because I had found better opportunities in sports that I was better at.
About 5 years later, I went through a very similar cycle again with the sport of Weightlifting. Except this time, my ability to compete in sports is permanently over because of a career ending injury that happened because of a surgical complication. There were a lot of times where I thought “why bother even being involved in athletics anymore as a career”. Because like you, I chose to have a career in coaching. The honest truth is that I like training way too much to give it up. My injury permanently took away the ability for me to squat below parallel without having deep pain. But I have found a way to train around it as well as crush and continue to crush personal records prior to my injury. Not only this, but I have gained a ton of respect from people around me by having the ability to express my passion to train hard and be strong.
There will be several athletes that are going to question your expertise as a sport coach, strength coach, or sport scientist. At my last job, I was stuck working with 15 NFL prospects getting ready for the combine. They were all skeptical of my knowledge as to how to help them get stronger through improving their technique. The third week I was working with them, one of the players stumbled upon a video of me hang power cleaning 300lbs weighing 170. He then showed it to all of the other combine guys and they had all viewed me differently after that. Aside from this, there have been a few other instances where my ability to “walk the talk” helped me gain more respect from players and sport coaches than coaches or sport science nerds who didn’t train at all and looked like the average joe.
RB34 on this site is a great inspiration to be that coach who walks the talk. He’s been on this site for a while and trains hard well into his 30s. If you give it all up now, you are going to miss out on a huge opportunity to better yourself in life. I’d give anything to be back into your shoes right now. You wouldn’t be on this site if you weren’t passionate about training hard to become a better athlete. Like a lot of people on this site, you probably live to train. Don’t give up on what you enjoy doing. Mistakes should be taken as a training tool to get better.
It sounds to me like you are a bit too quick to give up. This is the second time you're ready to throw the towel within a few months. You haven't had the proper consistent buildup needed to be running near your PB right now. The season I ran my PB (11.01), I started off with 11.51, so if that experience is anything to go by you should be able to drop a lot of time with consistent training for a decent period of time.
On the other hand, I also think you may need to learn not to tie your sense of purpose in life to how fast you are running. You are an intelligent young man with a desire to succeed and there is a lot more you can offer to this world than a low 11s 100m race.
What you write about a dark cloud hanging over you and what sounds like a traumatic experience you had two years ago has me worried. Please make sure you get the help you need if you are suffering from some sort of emotional trauma or depression.
I wish you all the best in all your endeavours, Robin.
So you can see how my start has changed from previously (just go to my channel on there “flash gambit” and look at my other videos)
Though obviously from what I have been told, it still needs a lot of work.
I apologize for the lack of frames, my friend who recorded me did it in a slow speed on his camera and it just came out like that.
What seems to be a bigger issue though, is probably max v mechanics. I am super plantarflexed. (among other issues of course) I swear, the closest my heels get to touching the ground is like 3 inches away or so. I need to re-work everything. Any tips, advice, drills, recommendations, whatever, much appreciated.
You are right, that is extreme plantarflexion which also seems to prevent you from extending your knee before and during ground contact. Are you doing B skips? Maybe try to focus on dorsiflexing (or just cocking the big toe up as Charlie used to say) before touchdown.
You have fixed the heel recovery for your start which is good to see. When you go into your start position your hips ascend into a good position but then go back down into a hunched position. Just stay at the top. Also, your back foot needs to press against the block. You are only touching the block with the ball of your left foot, which means your heel has to travel back before it can push against the block when you start moving. Finally, your right arm is moving to the back/side instead of forwards as you push out of the blocks.
What does this mean for us?
How do we take advantage of this?
This effect may have some bearing on my recently-completed season. I opened with an 11.5, followed it up with an 11.6, and then finished with two 11.8s.
Why? Well I noticed more than anything a precipitous drop in speed endurance and a slight drop in max velocity. Probably because I spend most of the competition phase training with volumes similar to those used in my SPP! And a lot of that was heavy 110s and 120s! Flying in the face of everything I learned from CF’s material (as mentioned by lkh).
This was after a very productive GPP and SPP, wherein we all did some impressive things (at least for us): in our ten meter test (taken from HQ slow mo video, several angles), one of my guys hit 0.91, I hit 0.98 - both bests for us which would project us to PRs early in the season.
So I ----- and my group ---- all noticed a regression during the season, instead of improvements. And I suppose the culprit is that we did not allow our gains to “set in” and kept pushing well beyond the stopping point.
This is all to say: Brett, these guys are giving great advice. You’re young and have a long time left to PR; I PR’d electronically at age 29 last year and expect to do so again next year at 31. And Robin1 is right about seeking help if you need it.
Been doing a lot of technical work. Just trying to run correctly before speeding things us. Lots of light little plyos like ankle hops, ankle skips, etc. Trying to get the ankle joint functioning properly, trying to get that stretch reflex in the calf and let the heel ‘kiss’ off the ground as Tellez of course always mentioned. Going to do a few stadiums and stairs today too before tempo.
To me, it looks like you’re straining too much for tempo. I don’t think technique work during tempo runs will do much for you - the speed is so diminished that there’s just not much possibility of transfer. You look like you’re bounding here in some of the videos, rather than just running at 70%. (I’m not sure if I’m looking at the right videos - they’re “Sprint 1/8-8/8” ?)
That being said, looks like the tippy-toed issue is being resolved. The thing will be to see if that holds when you’re going all out.
Well sure haha, it’s gonna be a whole different animal trying to be translating it to 30% faster, but it’s a start for me right now. All I’ve been doing is tempo and some stadiums. My form has been so bad that I need to get the pattern down before I can speed it up.
I see. I sometimes do it too, dabbling with voluntary cues during tempo running to see what works best for me and then applying those cues when I’m actually sprinting.
You do look like you’re going a little fast here. Where would you say you are on the speed spectrum - above 75%? If you’re not doing full-out sprint work, I suppose it doesn’t matter, as you would not be impeding anything else by doing intensive tempo.
75% for me is pretty much 15s for me, which would basically be an 800m pace, and I can tell you I’m definitely below that. I think I just look faster than I’m really going on those, I always make an effort to get a nice full ROM even on tempos. Probably not textbook, but just how I do them, I like feeling a stretch when I do them.
I like the idea of running in bare feet on grass. It is very therapeutic. However, these runs are clearly far too fast to be considered tempo runs, and the range of motion is excessive as well.
Your technique is not good- you display significant anterior pelvic tilt and this is truly the limiting factor in 100m performance. Until you attack this issue head-on, it will be difficult to achieve your ultimate performance. Your foot should not be kicking you in the ass on recovery. Max velocity mechanics are up and down- you are pushing back too much, which is causing your legs to spend an excessive amount of time behind the body.
As discussed previously, I strongly suggest you invest heavily in yourself if you want to achieve your best. Take a look at my 400m coaching journal and you will get an idea of what my top athlete and I have done to improve ourselves over the past few seasons. I have offered in the past to have you come up and do a session with us as long as you can get yourself here, and you are still welcome to join for a session in the near future.