John Cook...

Great job by Coach John Cook on all three of his athletes,

Shalane Flanagan, Shannon Rowbury and Erin Donohue.

Were any of his GMU athletes juiced? I have heard rumors he is a fan of performance enhancing drugs. Not sure if this is true or not.

Cook faked a DMR time in a panicked attempt to improve their place on the desending order list... and the NCAA committee almost threw the relay out of the meet during the challenge period. A stupid move by Cook, as his team was exceptional; I think they won the race that year, along with the team championship.

I don't know about all that cheating stuff, but I do know that back in the day he looked like Southside Johnny Lyon.

http://us.ent1.yimg.com/images.launch.yahoo.com/000/029/776/29776697.jpg

any info on his training methods?

Pretty inovative, back in the day, anyway. Lots of core strength drills and Mock (sp?) drills before they were popular. Moderate volume, but very specific intensity work.

Cook does not work with salazar at all and they are not good friends,

The Nike Oregon Project was unsuccessful

Reason for no google stuff is that most of his coaching achievements happened pre-internet/information age

Do you know him? If you did, you wouldnt think him a shady character.

I know.... wrote:

Cook does not work with salazar at all and they are not good friends,.

Cook was in charge of the middle distance runners in the NOP i thought? Richard Smith was training under him for a while if i remember correctly?

Correct, but the nop is now defunct, at least the mid-distance part of it. Richard Smith did pretty well under him.

that is quite an organization. It started as a marathon group which is also now defunct. You would think tha Nike would be able to do a better job with a limitless budget and resources.

I used to know..... wrote:

Pretty inovative, back in the day, anyway. Lots of core strength drills and Mock (sp?) drills before they were popular. Moderate volume, but very specific intensity work.

"Back in the day', my high school used to run circles around his teams with nothing but scrappy kids. We didn't waste our time on pilates or any other nonsense. We got up at 5:45am and ran while his kids were sound asleep in bed. Our coach, Robert Budd, was the greatest motivator I've ever come across. He used to tell us, and had us believing, that the only thing on our minds during a race should be a seven-letter word -- DOMINATE. It took us three years before we figured out that 'dominate' was eight letters.

I must contribute to this thread having been coached by him for 7 years "back in the day."

I was a 50., 2:02 high schooler who walked onto his program and was groomed to run 1:49, 3:42. (I am a white Americam if that means anything to anyone)

His training was very much modeled off of Coe.

Unless I was completely oblivious and there were secret meetings that I didn't know about, he was not involved with any PED's.

I believe the "fake" DMR time was a race ran early in a day before any other events in a home meet run with maybe one other team competing (I wasn't there). That team consisted of the NCAA champion in the 400 and the mile and the NCAA runer up for 800m. The DMR team won at NCAA's that year.

He coached Abdi Bile to a 3:31 NCAA post season record and 1987 World Champion. Julius Achon- 2 time NCAA Champ, 3:35 1500m, 1:44.55 800 NCAA in season record.

He set up a day once where 6 of his athletes ran 1:46. or better in the same race.

He has had recent success with some Nike athletes including Alex Kipkirchir of Kenya.

And he is obviouly doing very well know with Shalane Flanigan and some other girls. Not bad for a reired Floridian.

-Scooter

John Cook and Alberto Salazar regularly communicate and would be considered friends by any measure, and Cook is notoriously dyspeptic when it comes to banned substances. I know such testimonials don't mean a damned thing in this environment, but hey, someone asked. There's an answer.

Colleen De Reuck and the Culpeppers swear by Pilates. So does Ryan Hall. Don't knock it. You might have broken 1:01 and 8:15 if you'd done Pilates. Plus you need a good night's sleep for recovery purposes. Lack of sleep doesn't make you tougher. Believe it or not, coaches have actually learned some new and better things since your era.

Come on, Malmo.......... life in Maryland was not all grit and glory. I don't recall your HS teams 'running circles' around Cook's Edison HS teams, but that is beside the point. Your teams were obviously very good and Budd was obviously a great coach. That does not negate the fact that Cook's team were very good, as well. He took kids from way less than 'ideal' backgrounds (the notorious Rose Hill section of Alexandria) and got them to accomplish quite a bit. I seem to recall not only George Watts, but many others who were well below 10:00 for 2 miles in the mid-70's.

I'm sure that "back in the day" Cook's guys didn't do pilates either. In fact his guys at GMU were doing 'pilates' way before they were popular, and they wern't simply 'pilates,' they were core strength exercises that were specifically designed with RUNNING fast in mind, not usually the stated goal of 'pilates.'

I'm really not a big Cook fan, but have got to give credit where credit is due. His personality can be way over the top, but he gets results, and gets athletes to believe in what they are doing.... sound a lot like a coach who had you believing an eight-letter word only had sever letters.

The sport needs more dedicated coaches like Budd and Cook.

Holy heck, we've got a regular bunch of Thomas Edison's here reinventing the wheel. To think of it, the 15 years that I spent 5 days a week doing core work, all I needed to do is set up a studio next to a coffee shop and call in 'Malates' and take credit for being the first to do it! LOL!

I've got this great idea for catching mice. It's a pretty simple contraption, really, I don't know why anyone didn't think of it sooner?

Scooter Rosenberg, you are my hero!

Malmo, I guess we're both missing the point of the original post, asking about some of Cook's training methods. I hope I didn't give the impression that Cook was the FIRST to used core strength work, but I know plenty of other programs didn't and maybe that contributed to his early success, just like it did to yours.

The point is, Cook was/is innovative/creative compared to a lot of his coaching peers, just as both your HS and college coaches were. Sometimes putting in a lot of hard work is innovative compared to lots of other coaches/programs.

Not setting Cook, Budd, Groves, etc. on a pedestal, just making observations. Your oberservations here seem to be tinged with bitterness and defensiveness. The pedestal I've always had you on has been lowered a bit.

1) Don't need core, just get up and run at 5:45 am

2) I did core 5 days a week

Conclusion: stop being an ass.