[This is a guest post by Drake Webster. Drake is one of the coaches at my training center, Athletic Lab. Drake has his CSCS and USATF Level 1 certifications and coaches youth to professional athletes at Athletic Lab] Recently I watched the 30 for 30 ESPN special titled 9.79. This was a documentary of the events of the 1988 summer Olympics when Ben Johnson of Canada broke the world record in the 10 [...]

Periodization is a viable concept that certainly will help improve our sport development system, but we also need trained coaches to plan and then implement the plan. A productive sport development system is coach driven and athlete centered. The solution lies in educating our coaches in the principles of planning in order to optimize resources and time. To achieve athletic success in a systematic [...]

According to this report, 2 Jamaican sprinters who had qualified for Berlin have tested positive for banned substances (not necessarily PEDs). The report does not name names but confirms that it is not one of the super stars and that one of the positives is a female. Is anyone surprised? Do you think this is the start of many slip ups by the Caribbean nation or just a couple fools who wanted to ta [...]

"I wonder why. I wonder why. / I wonder why I wonder / I wonder why I wonder why / I wonder why I wonder!" Scientist Richard FeynmanFeynman is one of my heroes. I also wonder why. Here are some of the things I recently have wondered about:Why does every injury, no matter how insignificant need an MRI?Why when we know so much more about sport science, do we keep making the same training mistakes [...]

Dwain is back in the spot light. It's not a position he's unfamiliar with. First it was as a young phenom sprinter and would-be challenger to then Sprint god, Maurice Greene. Then it was as a drug cheating member of the now-notorious Balco dopers. More recently, he's grabbed attention as a prodigal son of sorts. Returning to the highest levels of the sport, presumably clean, and doing so while [...]

Imagine you are a truck driver on the East coast with a shipment bound for L.A. The person receiving that shipment has promised that your payment for this job will be based on how quickly you can get the shipment to him. The faster you get it there the more you'll be paid. In fact, your pay will go up exponentially for every hour of time you save. He's also given you secret directions on back ro [...]

Check out this very thought provoking interview answer by Lance Armstrong about the differences between suspended dopers who are repentful and those who are not. I was REALLY impressed by how well the guy speaks and thinks on the spot. His talk raises some interesting questions about how we should handle athletes who are caught doping but refuse to admit their guilt; and also about how open we sho [...]

Since my first love in sport is track and field, I've always been a little miffed at the double standard that the media and general public have against the sport with regards to drug use when compared to the more 'prime time' sports like football, baseball, and hockey. If you listed to the main stream media, you'd think every single athlete in track is dirty and little would ever be mentioned [...]

Most coaches of speed-power athletes plan at least one day of rest in to the training protocol. This is generally regarded as a time tested method of ensuring physical readiness for the upcoming week. In my "just a thought" blog series, I've promised to throw out some of the stranger training ideas that pop in to my head. I don't necessarily think they're valid so much as I am curious about t [...]

This is a link to an article from the ESPN and the Outside the Lines report on ESPN. It is a good introduction to the beginnings of the drug culture that we have today in sport and serves a poignant reminder that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. The focus is on two people Sid Gillman, the head coach of the San Diego Chargers and Alvin Roy, the first strength coach in pro footba [...]