1978 European Championships Hammer Throw Analysis

Great Analysis of the 1978 European Championships.

The Fives

Speed, Strength, Skill, Stamina and Suppleness. Each of these categories need to be addressed when considering the training and periodization for athletes. In my most recent discussion with fellow coach, Mary Stoll, we discussed these five aspects. As I was reading through what Dan Pfaff had to say today I realized that I share his philosophy about coaching.

A Point of Emphasis

The point that Mary and I struck on during our conversation was how do you decide what out of the five categories gets the most attention? Obviously skill acquisition is a big one but more importantly you have to examine your athletes to determine where they are weakest. This is the easiest way to determine what your focus for each training cycle should be. Early in the year my focus will be on skill acquisition and strength/power. I then might move toward the acquisition of Stamina. Later in the year the focus of my cycle will move to Speed and Suppleness. The important thing to understand is that at no time during the year am I disregarding any one of the five different categories. I am merely changing my emphasis.

Paul Brozik - A Case Study

Earlier I blogged about learning to sprint. If we apply the principles of training each of the five categories we realize that sprint technique falls under the Skill category. I have been guilty of over looking and disregarding these different aspects as a coach and looking back I realize how important it is to include all five. For example, when discussing the explanation for Paul Broziks apparent improvement in long jump from 24' to a State and School record 25'2", Colte Haines made the comment that Paul credited his diverse training as a decathlete to his success. In the years prior Paul trained as a jumper. The difference in the volume and intensity of the workouts in previous years was substantial. Stair runs were replaced with intense interval training sessions supplimented with heavier lifts. In years prior Paul would have never run more than 150m in a workout, in the year where he experienced the dramatic increase in his long jump his workouts were often comprised of a mix of distances from 600m on down.

I can only surmise from this that Paul derived an overall increase in ability because of the increased attention to other aspects required to be a successful decathlete. It is likely that the increased attention to Strength and Stamina enabled him to jump farther. I will try to get the video of his 25'2" jump at Kansas up.

The Canadian Athletics Coaching Centre

This is a good resource for coaches of any level. Many different articles are included on the various events in track. As I read through them I'll add commentary on those that I find most helpful.

The Canadian Athletics Coaching Center

Dan Pfaff on Carl Lewis

It wasn't until last year that I was introduced to Dan Pfaff. I have undoubtedly been intrigued by this man and have become quite interested in what he has had to say about the sport of Track and Field. I was lucky enough to hear him speak in Ames Iowa last year at a track clinic. I wasn't blown away by everything that he had to say but I was struck by the way that he said things. I've added a clip on Dan below and included an article on his analysis of Carl Lewis.

Visit Flotrack For More Videos

Dan on Carl

High Jump Rotation

I'm tired of hearing high school coaches, and coaches in general telling their athletes to pull their chin back to their chest to get their legs over the high jump bar. Consult the picture below. Please tell them to keep their head back and to shorten their lower body by drawing their heels together and pushing their knees out.

Runway Mechanics....

These two videos involve two different jumpers of differing abilities. The top video is Colte Haines. In this video he jumps over 23'. In the other video you see John Shubeck jump just over 19'. There are differences in the dynamics of their approaches. Notice the difference in position at the board of each jumper. These are the questions that these video's prompt in myself.

1. How do we break up the long jump runway into differing phases and how then do we teach each phase?

2. Obviously natural ability is a determining factor but how do we maximize speed at the board and how do we train athletes to harness this thus developing bigger jumps?

3. What coaching marks or checks should we use to develop and track changes in runway approach and what things should we see based on these checks or marks? Below these videos I discuss some of these issues.



Developing speed

Each athlete is blessed with a certain ability to apply force to the track and a certain ability to move their limbs at a certain speed. How then do we make athletes faster? First of all this is something that I think all coaches struggle with. In my opinion the easiest thing that we can do is to make them better runners. This is done through teaching with mach drills (see post below). Beyond this we need to develop power through lifting and beyond that explosiveness, through lifting again and plyometrics.

Learning the Runway

The approach in long jump is slightly more than beginning from a standing start and running to the board and jumping. There is a push phase where the athlete stays in a drive position developing speed, then a transition phase where the athlete moves into a body position to jump and a prepatory phase where the athlete maintains this speed but prepares their body to leave the board. This involves the penultimate step and then the transfer into the drive phase off the board and into the air.

We must determine a method or progression to teach the body awareness to progress through each phase properly while developing and harnessing maximal velocity through the take off board.

A Season of Progression

In order to teach and emphasize the differing aspects of the approach and the jump it is prudent to teach through a progression and steady lengthening of the approach. Athletes will be concerned because they will not be able to jump as far from a short approach, because of this it is important as a coach to make it clear to the athlete the purpose of jumping from a much shorter distance. The reduction in distance traveled on the runway reduces potential variables in the approach allowing the athlete to jump under better control developing vital body awareness which once coupled with a long approach will allow the athlete to inevitably jump farther in a more consistent and controlled manner.

Coaches should spend time in practice focusing on the varying aspects of the jump, developing skills that will allow the jumper to apply them to the runway during a meet. For example a coach may break the last 4 steps of the jump down enough that athletes may come from a very short six step approach while focusing on learning the specific body posture during the last four steps. By eliminating other variables the coach allows the athlete to focus on the skill that is being acquired. Similarly the coach may spend a specific practice developing the drive phase of the jump where the athlete attempts to hit tape marks on the runway while maintaining correct body posture. Is important to identify where athletes need improvement while not ignoring the fact that the athlete can and should progress and focus on all areas of the jump rather than becoming fixated on the areas where they may struggle.

A good coach will apply the idea of a progression to all of their jumps, including Triple Jump and High Jump.

Winning Conference Championships

How do different teams go about winning conference championships? When I first began running track competitively way back in 7th grade I understood that the last track meet of the year was the most important one. The conference meet was the only meet that was scored. We won our conference meets both in 7th and in 8th grade. Of course in high  school I was welcomed onto a team with only two other members. There would be no region championships. However, after endless conversations and persistant pleading I left my high school with a track team that boasted nearly 35 members.

My first year in college I was lucky enough to be able to compete for Jerry Schafer at SDSM&T in Rapid City, SD. We never really competed for a conference championship. We didn't have the numbers, we had the quality but no numbers. When I transfered to USD I did so because I wanted to compete for a conference championship. I made the assumption that was exactly what we would be doing. I was wrong. In our first conference meet we dealt with a very formidable NDSU team that defeated us at our place. This was to be the tune that I would dance to while NDSU remained in our conference. This was the first time when I began to question what it took to win a conference championship.

I first looked at the record books and found some solace in the fact that while NDSU typically gave us a good lashing at our conference meet, we (USD) managed to finish higher than them at the national meet. This again peaked my interest, what were they doing differently than us at the conference level? I'm going to attempt to take a stab at this here.

1. Numbers - you can't compete at a conference meet unless you have numbers. You still need high level athletes that can win their event and multiple events (I believe this explains the paradox of losing conference and finishing higher at nationals.) but you also need mid-level athletes to take those places 3-7. A great example of this can be seen on the womens side at USD where there is depth in a lot of the events but maybe only one girl going to nationals. On the mens side at the same time you would have seen the one person in the event place at nationals but remain the only person in the event at conference.

2. Mid-Level Athletes - I'm making this a sub point because it's a requirement. You have to score up and down the charts, not just 1 and 2.

3. Strength Across the Board - You can't be a one dimmensional team. Right away there exeptions this rule; Colorado for example this past year, I would, however, argue that it was the athletest outside of their distance program who put them over the top. If they had only their distance team they still would have come up short in their pursuit of a conference championship.

4. Strategy - Unless you are loaded the conference meet is one where strategy is very important. Maybe you conference allows unlimited entry's or only scores through six (some one please explain the logic behind this last one). Either way you have to decide where your athletes can effectively score the most points. I'm going to tie this one into recruiting as well - see below.

5. Recruiting to Win - I think I've seen this enough times to not have to mention it but here it is. Recruit where your conference is weak. I don't care if you hate coaching the vault or aren't fond of the throws. These two spots are typically places where decent athletes can make the difference. A distance heavy program sprinkled with a few field events could be very hard on the rest of your conference in terms of taking points away.

What it all comes down to, I think, is recruiting. Winning is typically an easy sell and convincing kids that they are a necessary component is an even easier sell. Title IX can get in the way on the mens side but in another post I'll discuss different ways that various programs get around this. Some day, Some where some one will figure out that there is no comparable sport on the female side to football and stop counting it against men's athletics. My next post will deal with runway and takeoff mechanics for long and triple jump. I'm still hashing out my thoughts about that.

Sprinting and Stage Training

I've been struggling with this one for a long time. As an athlete in college I was more than perplexed by the different movements that we did each day during fall track. Why were we wasting our time learning these stupid A and B skips? What was the purpose of learning Anklings? What struck me the most was that we weren't getting into shape. Practices were low in intensity and high in volume (as far as pillar, sprint drills stretching and abs were concerned). It wasn't 'till this past year as I was reading through Tudor Bompa's book that I realized that we were engaging in what was called stage training. Bompa writesin chapter three of his book that "the longer the duration of the first phase the better the performance is in the next one. IN the first phase a high volume of training with moderate intensity should prevail...the broader and stronger the G.P.P. (General Physical Preparation) the  higher the level of biomotor abilites that may be reaced."

We were taking our precious time learning how to run. The component approach to running falls into the Principle of Multilateral Development which Bompa covers in the 2nd chapter of his book. He writes, "Specialization is not a unilateral process but rather a complex one which is based on a solid groundwork of multilateral development." There are two principles involved in the development of sprinters here:

1.exercises from the specialized sport (sprinting) that  parallel or mimic the movement requirements of sprinting.

2. exercises utilized to develop biomotor abilities, i.e. med ball throws, plyometrics, warm up drills, etc.

Mach drills, as sprinting drills are called began in the late 70s with the Russian and Eastern Bloc countries. Of course the idea is to mimic the movements that occur during proper running in a very controlled and focused manner. This allows that athlete to recruit and develop the CNS to develop the neural pathways in such a manner so that the motion becomes the primary message sent to the muscles when running.

We focused on things like negative foot speed which means that at some point during the sprint cycle the heel and the foot move rapidly backwards in relation to the track.  I think the most important thing that I was able to derive from this stage training was the ability to efficiently push my hips down the track. This has served me and many of my athletes in every event. You can of course now understand the benefits of developing the skills necessary to sprint. Before running your kids into the ground with difficult interval workouts do them a service and teach them to sprint....

Becoming an Athlete

It is my full intention to chronicle my thoughts here as I develop as a track coach. There will be very little personal revelation only my thoughts on developing young men and women into athletes.

Sprinting

I was recently home in Vermillion, SD from Dakota Days which is our home coming. I attended our home cross country meet and was even able to again drive the gator as the chase

 vehicle during the 3k alumni race. Towards the end of my visit I had a chance to again  talk with my friends and fellow coaches, Sam Pribyl (Pole Vault - 17'9" pr) and Mary Stoll (Mid-Distance, 800 - 2:10 pr). 

We were all in Mary's trailer and we were discussing my plans for training my pole vaulters. I was discussing the fact that I was hoping in this next phase to introduce resistance and overspeed to my athletes when Mary made the comment that it was a little early in the season to be introducing overspeed. Initially I was sort of shocked but then she made this comment. "Do they even know how to run correctly? How can they benefit from overspeed if their mechanics aren't even solid?" 

That was a slap in my face. I hadn't even considered how important introducing proper running mechanics could be. Had I really been guiding my kids in the wrong direction? More than likely not but I had missed a key concept that had been pounded into my head for the past seven years. Running Mechanics.

In essence I believe that every runner can improve their mechanics. In this case it is likely that any overspeed training would exaggerate any mechanical problems my athletes have rather than stimulate the CNS (central nervous system) and recruiting neural pathways to teach the correct firing of recruited muscles during full speed sprinting. More plainly, I would be doing more harm than good.

As a result I have gone back to the drawing board and I plan to introduce drills such as Tennesse Tape (adapted from sprint drills by Gary Winkler) and Stick and Shift Drills to teach the proper stride cadence and pattern for acceleration. It is important to establish this stride pattern so that athletes generate optimal power and avoid over striding.

Becoming an Athlete

The other thing that has dominated my thoughts of late has been the concept of creating athletes.

  Many coaches believe that they have to teach their kids to be technically sound while ignoring the fundamental ability to move their bodies correctly. It is no wonder that so many coaches have such a hard time getting their athletes to perform the complex movements in their events. These athletes do not have the proper skills to perform even the most simple of movements!

 I have found with both my throwers and my vaulters that many of these kids are not athletic. When I say that I mean to say that they are not able to recruit their limbs and their body as a whole to perform the actions required of their event. I have a thrower who is unable to skip for example. While at first this might seem simply humorous it is in fact deeply troubling. The movements required to accelerate the shot put and weight are infinately more complex than skipping. From the beginning of the year I have been struggling with what I should be doing with my warm up for my throwers and I have come to the conclusion that their warm must serve a dual  purpose.

1. It is an excellent time to introduce progessively difficult physical movements that teach body awareness (kinesthetic knowledge - the ability to cause muscles to direct limbs to move in a certain pattern resulting in a desired motion) and coordination.

2. It serves to increase the core temperature of muscles resulting in a decreased risk for injury.

Many coaches miss the boat when it comes to creating athletes. I phrased my philosophy of coaching to Sam this way. No matter how good of a technical coach you are athletes will surprise you. They will likely learn more than you and become a master of the event if you keep them healthy and make them into better athletes.

Of course my pole vaulters and throwers fail to understand why they must do hurdle drills and different skips and lunges and sprint drills. None of these movements are event specific however they are developing athleticism in each athlete. This is precisely the reason that Multi-event athletes are so versitile. They are masters of no single event, however, they are usually the most kinesthetically aware because of the requirements of so many different movements of so many different events.