PART 1 OF MY POST wrote:
I made this post two years ago but I think it’s pretty spot on for this topic. I totally agree with you OP, except what you say is true for slow twitch type runners but runners with a lot of natural speed won’t need what you’re saying. That’s why you see a lot of 800/1500 runners who didn’t do much training as teenagers become really good but you won’t see an all time great 5k/10k runner who didn’t play A LOT of aerobic sports during his development.
The post was an answer to someone who was talking about some « African genetic superiority » :
[1/2]
OK ? Then take a slow twitch kid, make him run 10km from and to school everyday from his early youth, put him on altitude training, and almost no intense and fast work. That's what most of the fastest ever east Africans distance runners did as youngsters (Barega, Bekele, Kipchoge etc).
Just take 10 white slow twitch kids, put them on the same thing, and if they can handle it you'll end up with some world class runners, and that's what Jakob did, and I'm sad that there are not more western kids doing the same.
If you look at the stats, the most important thing in running is by far being very active from an early age.
You have a lot of type of activities which can achieve this same goal, but you'll find being very active from an early age is the common point in 95% of world class distance runners (this does not include the 800m which rely much more on natural speed).
You can have a lot of type of activites which achieve this goal :
- Jakob, structured training program from his early days, with focus on developing his aerobic base and his running technique
- Jimmy Gressier, grew up in the streets, coming from another sport, 3 hours of football (soccer) everyday his whole life, it builds a big aerobic base (think about it, a 12 years old playing 3 hours of soccer everyday runs a way bigger weekly mileage than a typical middle school runner who runs 2 to 3 times a week for 45 min), and it even develops sprint speed as a bonus. This insane training made him good at soccer (semi finalist at the world school championship 2014), but even better at running, so he eventually choosed running when he was 17. I think Grant Fisher did the same.
- El Guerrouj type, very few peoples know it but El Guerrouj did something which can be similar to Jakob (but with way less resources obviously). He played soccer his early days, then switched to running because he used to ruin his clothes playing soccer, loved it, and ran everyday, just because it was the most logical thing for him to improve, without knowing that peoples say that you shouldn't train a lot if you're young. By the time he was 15 (freshman in highschool) he was training 13 TIMES A WEEK, if an American kid was training as much as a freshman in highschool, most of you would say burnout and other BS on letsrun. At 16 he moved to Rabat to stop school and get a structured training in the national institute with the best coach in the country. (How can you think you'll be better than this type of guys, Jakob, Hicham if you're focusing mostly on school and only rely on your natural talent to eventually be competitive at the world level, while they're running twice your mileage and literally living to become good at track.)
- The "east African" type, young slow twitch runners, running/walking a lot of miles everyday, before even reaching teenage years. A lot of aerobic base building, allowing them to handle a lot more training and improve much more when they start structured training. It might sound a little « cliché » but the fact is that Kipchoge, Barega, Bekele and a lot of others who became all time greats ran from and to school everyday.
- Henrik type, similar to Gressier, building his aerobic base without running, but by doing a lot of XC skiing (was a youth national champion in norway) He then choosed to focus entirely in running, and this big aerobic base gave him an unfair advantage over the others.
- Sebastien Coe type (not comparable to the others because he's much more gifted in natural speed, so it could make up the gap even without a huge aerobic base, but that's still interesting) Trained by his father, who didn't know much about the " holy principles" of running in Europe and America, but rather testing everything and focusing on what works with his kid, and not what is recommended by a scientist who has never run a mile in his life.
Commons points between these runners :
- They all got the most out of their natural talent.
- They all did what they wanted and thought was the best, without caring about what a so called expert said is good for long term development (the exemple of Peter Coe and Seb) Some even built a huge base WITHOUT knowing it, like Gressier, if they started running earlier with a coach, they likely would not have been world class because the coach would have regulated their training and therefore prevented the building of the huge aerobic base they got thanks to playing other sports.
- They all had an insanely active youth, I believe there's a golden age when you're young, in which your body reacts a lot more to training, and they got a "super body" thanks to being active at that age, allowing them to handle an insane load of training without being overtrained and getting injured, once they become adults.
Thank you, that is very interesting. I agree, almost all high-level athletes, whether slow twitch in aerobic or not, enjoyed extremely active childhoods. I think young people, because they are still growing, can handle quite a bit of training. In fact, I think that 16 to 18-year-old men can probably handle more training than some professionals in their mid 20s. The adolescents are still growing and getting better just by waking up in the morning. The professionals, while faster overall, don’t have that same advantage.
