This is reprinted from the New York Times Sports page. A friend of mine called my attention to this. His coach Bob Kiphuth at Yale was a pioneer in the application of dryland training to swimming. It is interesting to note in the article that they could not put the long hours in the pool because they did not have goggles and the pools were heavily chlorinated.Alan Ford, Top Freestyler in 1940s, Is [...]

KRAENZLEIN, ALVIN 1876-1928Track-and-field championHurdling InnovatorAlvin Kraenzlein is one of the pivotal figures in the development of track and field. Historians of the sport recognize him as the father of straight-lead-leg hurdling (in which the first leg over the hurdle is kept straight and parallel to the ground). Hurdlers continue to employ this technique, which permits the athlete to clea [...]

I have not been posting as frequently because I am on my annual fall college tour. I started out at North Carolina State on August 28 working with both Track & Field and Swimming. Very enjoyable visit catching up with Rollie Geiger, an old friend and competitor from my college track coaching days back in the Pleistocene era. Then off to University of Michigan for women’s swimming. Then a “wond [...]

Summer’s over. It’s Fall. On college campuses all across the country, pre-season track training has begun in earnest. And with pre-season training comes the battery of tests that most good coaches use to assess progress and program effectiveness and provide a competitive opportunity to athletes who might not otherwise compete for another 4-6 months. I personally love test week. In my setups, [...]

Jorge Carvajal of Hollywood, Florida emailed me the following: "I was wondering if you could blog on your approach to reading. Do you read to increase performance knowledge? Do you read sometime just for pleasure? Do you read any magazines? How do you structure your reading to get the most out of it without getting information overload, yet stay current with respect to training information?"Read [...]