What are you defining as long to short? Clyde Hart’s program doesn’t exactly get progressively shorter. It goes from higher volume, slower speed to lower volume, higher speed. The rep distances aren’t dramatically different. I don’t really understand what you are calling long to short in this situation. It’s like not he is running fast 600s or 800s to start his season and then cuts it down.
I will need more detail because I’m perplexed when you say you took elements. What elements? It literally is “start with 12 x 200 and drop a rep and a second each month” essentially. Yeah, I’m dumbing it down, but that’s essentially what it amounts to. That isn’t what I would call long to short if you want to buy into that terminology. SMTC where guys are running FAST 500s and the like for 100m guys in the fall is much closer to the interpretation off ‘long to short’ (although they’re still doing starts and ‘technique work’ over short distances early on).
I think those programs can have situational success because people don’t get fat and often don’t get hurt if they are durable and the coach/athlete relationship isn’t capable of handling any intensity in a program (ie poor or no attention to recovery). If you are fit, healthy, young, and not close to your potential, you’ll PR just showing up. In the context of most HS and college programs, athletes might even need these ridiculous tempo volumes since their coaches and teams subject them to ridiculous volumes of meets that might leave a faster, but less fit athlete out of commission. When I was in high school, we had at least 2 and often 3 meets a week, of which would involve 100/200/4×1/4×4 and the other an invite with prelims and finals in the 1/2 and then a 4×1. That’s insane volume. If you come into that without a lot of fitness, you’ll crumble if you are putting in a lot of effort into the races. That’s where talented lazy, potentially even uncaring athletes are key. They can survive that even if they aren’t perfectly fit because they are essentially performing submaximally.