You can't teach speed!

Thanks for the link, which makes clear that talent is key in sprinting (wow, shocker there) but does not say that sprinters cannot be taught to get faster.

Subject-self recollection is probably one of the most biased and least reliable/accurate ways of collecting data.

Distance runners are exactly the same.

Corrector of Ignorance wrote:

Distance runners are exactly the same.

Undisputed--though sometimes a bit of basic fitness is required, before the talent becomes evident.

"Speed" is a code word for "blacks", isn't it?

No, but you can absolutely refine mechanics and optimize strength, coordination, and mobility in order to realize the genetic potential.

The fact is that coaching and training did produce very significant improvement in the runners that they studied. Shawn Crawford, for example, ran 10.51 at 19 but well under 10 later. There were other lower profile runners with dramatic improvements and no suspicions. What they are saying really is that the fastest in the world started out fast, relative to their age groups, and that the percentage improvements later weren't that significant. Even so, they say that greater physical maturity accounts for some of that improvement after 19. And most of their competitors had already trained for five years even by 19. Wilma Rudolph was a poor example, because she actually spent years on exercises to overcome her walking problems, as I recall--a sort of Forrest Gump story.

And if you look at high school programs, you will see that there are dramatic differences between good and bad programs. That's not a genetic issue. That's a coaching issue.

Distance running is much more coachable/trainable in terms of percentage improvements, however. As Tim Noakes points out, you can take an untrained athlete and within a portion of a year make that person able to hold, say, their 3k or 5k pace initially for an entire marathon. When I came back from injury, I ran 20:30 on about 10 mpw and then later 19:15 on under 20, and eventually ran about 18:53 pace for an entire marathon.

That's a very stupid study. Sprinters were generally faster than their peers when they were youths before the onset of formal training? Golly gee, shazamm! Hold the presses. Nobel Prize!

Not to dumb scientists, those sprinters would have come nowhere near being world class without specialized sprint training.

Don't kid yourself. Systematic training will allow the speed to surface, but if it's not there to begin with, then no amount of training will reveal speed.

You can't make chicken soup out of chicken feathers. Either the talent is there or it isn't. If it were simply a matter of coaching, then there would be far more sub 10 second sprinters. Some people realize their potential sooner than others either by being a hyper responder to training or to a combination of training and supplementation.

Yeah, Wilma Rudolph had polio as a kid. Kind of an inspirational story. She had to wear leg braces for years. I think she proves that talent is very important. She missed all her early years of biomechanical development and strength development but she still managed to do incredible things after.

Let's all pause for a moment to remember all the straw men killed for the sake of that study. :-)

There is very little useful information in what I read on that link. You can obviously improve your speed. Training, improving techinque, lifting, PED's, they all help improve your speed.

Could you imagine a world where you can simply run sub 10. You would just kick it all day doing nothing. Then you show up for race day and if coach has anything to say you just tell him to F*&k off.

Nobody thinks you can go from slow to world class, but you can get faster. Faster for you might still be slow for others but its still faster than before and it is still achieved by training.

Funny thing about the article is it tries to dispute the 10000 hours and then all the sprinters it gives you from elite to pr well wouldn't you know it was 9 years. Oh so talent means you get there one year earlier and you have to be fast to being with which makes sense but it still takes almost 10 years to truly become excellent.

I agree speed can be enhanced to the point many would argue you are teaching speed.

Info is from the table 2 which discusses 20 fastest Americans. Medium is 7.5 and the mean is 8.7.

You know what I hate about posts like this? It makes it seem like you can't improve and become faster. We assume if a kid isn't fast on the first day of practice, they can never contribute to a team and they won't improve. So we "move them up" and they become mediocre distance runners instead of mediocre sprinters. True, they can't become national class, but in high school and college sports, there are a lot of places to contribute in the sprints at the local level and you certainly don't have to have national class speed to help out the team.

If we worked on developing more sprinters, we might get more kids from other sports who don't want to run distance and actually improve the depth of our sprinters.

10/10

Right on! I sell kids from the other sports on me being an expert in enhancing their speed/strength/coordination/mobility/power etc. In the high school setting, a kid doesn't need to be a world class sprinter to enjoy and contribute to a program. My thinking is that is that if you do it long enough and continue to stay on the cutting edge of performance development you're going to coach some really fast kids.

I'm fortunate to coach at a school where the other teams are starting to buy into systematic, developmentally appropriate training beyond the "conditioning" phase you typically see at that level. The kids are hurt less often and perform much better and get more out of each sport.

\"youths\" or yoots?

what?!? wrote:

"youths" or yoots?