Could you please elaborate which resource you are going to de-emphasize??
So the Jamaicans know much about strength training?
Why don’t we see them doing any lifts properly in basically any video and plenty of lifts with dangerous technique? (TopCat–the video was on NBC, so you may be able to find it online, though I’m not sure)
If weights are completely general and achieving moderate technical ability, ranges of motion, and more have little meaning, why don’t we just use machines? It’s general and follows all sprint work, so it shouldn’t make a difference, should it…
Tell SI to shove that stat:
6 Angelo Taylor USA 47.25 (PB) 0.164
2 4 Kerron Clement USA 47.98 . 0.265
3 7 Bershawn Jackson USA 48.06 . 0.145
The main thing that I’ve learned from Usain Bolt’s victory is that it’s silly to race against Usain Bolt.
I’m sure you know something about weight training in isolation, but, clearly, you know fuck-all about sprinting or how to get anyone ready for it, so lets just leave it at that.
Wow, you must be having a bad day Cf? 
You can see the pattern in the annual and phase plans from the Vanc downloads.
I do believe Mr Francis [Charlie] has been in the blocks in various international meets in the past and understands the “ESSENCE OF THE GAME”. Please keep that in mind at all times you “Paper Tigers” out there. Thanks Charlie for the knowledge both from myself and my athletes in our progress towards our sporting goals.
May I add that if you analyse Clyde Hart’s 400 and 200 training it has many similarities to the Winters program for example the Tuesday - 3x 200m cut-downs, 200 walk, done at 25-24-23 secs. I just want to add for those people who will now assume that I am advocating that we all start taking on the Bud Winters program(s), I am not.
When someone comes back time after time insisting they know everything about weights and Glen Mills and Stephen Francis know nothing, it’s just goes beyond the pale.
I have explained the facts of life on here for YEARS about the role of weights, not just here and clearly it has all been to no effect.
The lesson here is the training itself, not whether you like their lifting technique!
Two tales to illustrate:
I remember Gerrard Mach giving a presentation about 400m preparation. A member of the audience interrupted him and said: “I disagree”
Gerrard said: “Sit down! You can’t disagree! This is what I did for my results. Take it or leave it!”
The other is my millionth telling of the story of Kondrateva, the 1980 Olmympic 100m champ. She divorced her husband/coach and married Yuri Seydich, the Oly hammer champ. So Seydich said to me:“I looked at her weight training program and it was a shambles. Well I straightened that out!”
Of course, the weights were great but she never ran well again.
If I said that, you’d have a point. I’ve mentioned before how there were things specifically from Stephen Francis that I’ve talked to people in his group about that I thought was very enlightening.
What I don’t find enlightening is saying his athletes are going fast because of the grass or whatever else instead of talent and other uncontrollable things when we’ve seen his Jamaican beauties smiling up on the podium.
I have explained the facts of life on here for YEARS about the role of weights, not just here and clearly it has all been to no effect.
The lesson here is the training itself, not whether you like their lifting technique!
Two tales to illustrate:
I remember Gerrard Mach giving a presentation about 400m preparation. A member of the audience interrupted him and said: “I disagree”
Gerrard said: “Sit down! You can’t disagree! This is what I did for my results. Take it or leave it!”
The other is my millionth telling of the story of Kondrateva, the 1980 Olmympic 100m champ. She divorced her husband/coach and married Yuri Seydich, the Oly hammer champ. So Seydich said to me:“I looked at her weight training program and it was a shambles. Well I straightened that out!”
Of course, the weights were great but she never ran well again.
I think you missed what I was trying to say, which is likely my fault since I apparently haven’t been clear.
-People have been insisting weights are general, but where does that stop? If machine circuits are bad (as you and others have said many times), how can weights be completely general?
-You say the weights always follow the sprinting for best results. That makes a lot of sense and your experience and results obviously indicate truth in that (to put it lightly). Here is the rub, how can you have graphs and charts about the varying intensities, volumes, and densities of all these different elements each week and within microcycles and how you are to manipulate them so finely if weights must always follow the sprints and essentially never have any ability for planning since they only follow the sprint workouts?
-You are mentioning how the grass work is very important for success, but Jamaicans and people from the Caribbean have been doing sprints on grass for decades. It is only recently that we have people from the Caribbean (not just of Caribbean descent) running 9.7s and 9.8s, so clearly something has changed because the talent has always been there. Asafa, Usain, Atkins, Richard Thompson, Martina, Frater, Burns and more have come on hard pretty quickly, many with rapid and huge improvements in a couple years or less (Usain, Atkins, Thompson)–I don’t think the grass sprints just started.
For the record, Jamaicans have been putting out world class runners for decades, it’s not like Asafa was the first successful Jamaican, even on the world stage. Are Bolt and Powell the fastest ever because they are the best talents ever, or because of their training programs? Maybe a combination of both, but we’ll never know for sure, all we can do is speculate.
Franno and mills have taken them to the next level so we should congratulate them. Their training programs should be up for discussion just like everybody else’s on this forum.
Well I’m sure there are a lot of world class sprinters who have used machines with good results. I don’t see any advantage to using machines for all of our weights work and it probably just means you have to do more exercises to achieve the same result. But at the same time you can of course use them for some exercises. I don’t think anyone suggests you couldn’t use them at least a little. It is a fine balance and for me a less strong argument (against using them) than perhaps some of the other issues we deal with.
Here is the rub, how can you have graphs and charts about the varying intensities, volumes, and densities of all these different elements each week and within microcycles and how you are to manipulate them so finely if weights must always follow the sprints and essentially never have any ability for planning since they only follow the sprint workouts?
We could say the same for the sprinting. You have a plan that makes sense but ultimately you have to adjust for fatigue factors. The maintenance phase for example. It makes sense that you can’t aim to improve strength while trying to peak in speed so you can make this suggestion. You could also do light bodybuilding type weights but that would probably lead to a big decrease in strength. You could try and push on the weights but that could lead to an increase in muscle tone (detrimental to SE) and fatigue, both which don’t help. So you can plan but you don’t have to always do.
That short clip of Asafa playing around with weights is what people are talking about!? haha…you’re not serious. You can’t tell ANYTHING from that footage. It was quick montage of lifts. Unless you’ve trained in MVP over the last couple of years and witnessed yourself the weight session you can’t say shit about how weak or strong he is. Why are folk quick to critque lifting from a short clip when the guy is running 9.7x!? Isn’t that the most important thing!? That session might have been a bare minimum maintenance session!? The one thing I’ve noticed about folk on this site is when someone runs fast everyone runs around like headless chickens looking for the ‘holy grail’ of why he’s running this fast…is it the density of his bones or the length of his achilles!? wtf… Correct me if I’m wrong but did I see a post on the diet of Jamaicans?! (Root veg etc)…come on! The guy is fast because of a structured training programme built on years of training with a coach who has an understanding of the components of sprinting. SIMPLE.
What lessons can we learn from Bolt: If you stick with good programme long enough you too will run fast.
Thank you for the response, TC.
So basically everything works about equally as well so long as it comes after the sprinting and doesn’t interrupt it? That seems to be the general conclusion being presented. To me, that just seems rather odd since we have been presented a number of graphs indicating very fine manipulation to very specific numbers within microcycles and rebounds from them in a specific time frame after and more, but that seems like a fruitless endeavor (if it can even be done) if every time things must change because of fatigue from a workout and it is constantly changing.
This is only another in a long line of videos of Asafa and others lifting with such technique that I don’t see how you could properly quantify their lifts. I think most remember the bench press video and some others.
I agree with the bolded part. I think there are different reasons for why they’re succeeding though. Stephen Francis is an old guy. He didn’t just start coaching, but now he has a bunch of guys (people forget he coaches a couple of the Trinis as well) going under 10 pretty regularly. When multiple people go 10.4-10.6 to 9.8-9.9 in a couple years, I cringe when people say it’s because they’re doing grass sprints.
Ten see what you can pick out. Do you see any similarities to the GPP download to the film on the hils work? Do you think this is what Bud Winters did? (hint: no) How long has this been done? Francis doesn’t do sand runs, which IMO is a good thing. It has already been pointed out that Asafa doesn’t do the 200s that the others do in Competition. Is that a factor when there are four rounds or is it simply a matter of not getting through the training program ion one piece?
There is a lot we can’t know and some we can. It’s still worth looking.
Can you expand more on this sand comment?
I don’t like sand running because it is usually much too soft- thought we did power speed drills out of the water in the packed sand at some training camps