Coach Vick posted some great thoughts on resisted sprints with sleds and questioned the 10% rule. When something innovative or new comes along I am completely open but skeptical because often people believe they have stumbled on something other's didn't grasp or think of. The question is can we use acceleration protocols that are not following the guidelines of the coaches before us regarding hill slopes and weights of sleds. My answer is did you try the original methods first and if so did you record the data? Observation is sometimes an illusion and often each year we change more than one tiny variable so we must be careful of what to extrapolate. If I did the exact same program the next year with the same athlete the results will be different. Remember training builds session to session, and season to season.

When I look at hills and sleds I look at what I can modify. I can't adjust hills besides run up speeds and distances but it's easier to adjust sled weights. Coach Vick ...Keep Reading

I was talking to a few coaches over the last week and we all concluded that HRV (heart rate variability) is the new lactate. Promising but limited. Just like cybex testing before lactate, HR monitors in the 90s, VO2 Max in the 80s, blood pressure cuffs in the "golden" years, the numbers are nice but what does it really mean? If you are generation X or Y we will talk about sympathetic and parasympathetic balance but that's the stride length and stride frequency equivalent debate rehashed. How is all of this changing training? Coach Skinner (the first man under 50 in the 100m freestyle) said he was slave to his lactate tester, and I think we could repeat the same syndrome if we don't pay attention to the past. For example I never found HRV scores that shocking....what did people expect after intense workouts or recovery days? The chart to the right is HRV real time from one of two products I use (no omegawave here). Is it necessary? No. It's not what you measure it's what you modify. ...Keep Reading

On Saturday, Jamaica's Nesta Carter ran a wind legal 9.78 for 100m. That makes Jamaica, a country with a population about the same as Brooklyn, NY, by far the most dominant sprint country in the world. They now have 3 of the 4 fastest men in history in Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, and Nesta Carter all running at the same time. That make's the Miami Heat's lineup of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh look like a YMCA pickup basketball team. As if that weren't enough, they also have the precocious (20 years old) Yohan Blake backing these guys up with a time of 9.89 this year (in to a -0.4 m/s head wind nonetheless). That's 3 of the 4 fastest men in history and a guy who has a chance at being faster than all of them as the 'slow' leg on their 'dream team' relay. With good handoffs and a healthy foursome they could likely go 36.7. Sick. There women aren't too far behind either (3 of the top 6 this year). You can say it's drugs, yams, or grass running, but whatever it is the stats ...Keep Reading

My Company, HPC is offering a back-to-school sale on all of our DVDs and books and tomorrow is the last day of the sale. Save up to 30% on DVD bundles and 20% on individual DVDs. You can purchase the DVDs at the HPC company store. Here are some snippets from our some of our more popular DVDs.

It's not what to coach, it's what to leave alone. Often I hear cues that are most likely descriptive factors, meaning hints to athletes of what to do when in reality they have no real ability to execute such a task. I remember when Richard Quick presented in Burlington at a local clinic before his passing someone asked a question of what drills or cues he used to fix certain movements. His response was "I don't think you coach that". That concept rings true as many of the issues we see in sprinting are purely spinal reflexes or visual happenings, not conscious activities. We could get into many debates with what is going on at high speeds, but the realities are what the athlete can do is highly dictated by newton's laws, stretch reflexes, general strength, genetic talents, body structure, race relaxation, and arm action.One example is the stretch reflex of the hips causing the foot to pull back, this is visually happening but at contact the motion becomes a vertical squatting ...Keep Reading

Staleness (nervous overwork)

"Condition" is mental and physical fitness for the event, attitude toward the work, enthusiasm through the "grind," triumph over mistakes, improvement in trial performances, full recuperation between daily workouts conserve nervous energy and indicate increasing fitness for the approaching contest. Danger signals of overtraining are loss of sleep, fretfulness, lassitude, overanxiety, indifference, lack of concentration. - Charles Hutchins, MD 1929 (former college coach)

Lot's of things now are considered new, but I think we should reflect on the past and see how we can refine today. We have only made progress if we have fully exhausted what the wisdom of coaches in the past have done.

Much of the soft tissue of the human body can be described as plastic, elastic, or some combination of the two depending on the strain. Knowing which elements have which properties and how best to train them can be important knowledge for a coach to have. Elastic tissue is similar to a rubber band. Stretch it and it will snap back. When we speak of the elastic tissues of the body we're primarily concerned with the tendons. Plastic tissue doesn't have that same recoil. If it's stretched too far it will remain stretched and have a permanent deformation. Cartilage and to a lesser extent fascia is generally thought to be plastic in nature.

Efficient movement requires sufficient mobility in all tissues to permit adequate range of motion at a joint while still being able to take full advantage of the elastic properties of tendons and muscles. Very few people have the perfect balance which makes addressing the different structures (and there associated ranges of motion) very important to ...Keep Reading