Ok I’m amazed at decathlon/pentathlon. How in the world do people get good at it? How are there enough hours in the day?

In the Olympic trials, Ashton Eaton long jumped farther in the decathlon than any of long jumpers jumped in the long jump trials.

Yep. My son was a D1 All American in the decathlon. Was a freak athlete but never thought about track until the track coach grabbed him after 9th grade basketball practice (he could dunk at age 13), had him run and try some stuff and he was basically good at everything.

Except pole vaulting. Didn't vault until college. Never was great. Managed 14.5 ft, which isn't terrible for a high school vaulter, but he lost a lot of points there to the others at nationals. Was 230 lbs in college and was quite good at the throws. 4:28 1500m was respectable.

Some of your training overlaps. For example, you do certain things that apply to the 1500 and 400. You do certain things that apply to the shot put and discus. You do certain things that apply to the 110HH and 100. It's about learning how to kill as many birds with as few stones as possible...plus straight up working your tail off.

I’m amazed that he could long jump, high jump, and polevault at all weighing 230 pounds. That in and of itself is an amazing feat. How in the world do people begin to learn how to polevault? I mean, I wouldn’t even know how to begin.

You get multi-talented athletes, people who can play multiple sports, types. I could be on the XC team running 5ks in the fall then be running 300mH or 100-400m sprints in the spring, while playing soccer. So I could run a solid mile in the 4s, 100m around 11, had done shuttle hurdle relay in a meet. I even was an ok long jumper once upon a time though I hated it.

All you'd have to do is teach me to do some of the other field events with the hardest to me seeming like pole vault. That one scares me.

You seem to be suggesting it's too much for a college to handle but they usually have all these events covered just compartmentalized with specialist participation. You just break down the boundaries and spend a little time each week in all the areas, with each coach and setup. It's all there in a normal college setup.

I think we have to define our terms here. It's not so much that they suck, but that pretty good is not the same as great. At D1 you aren't winning meets with a mid-to-high 10 100m. You might occasionally make a final at a weak/small meet. You won't win those. You will get killed at NCAAs. Occasionally there is someone like Hall at HJ or Ehammer at LJ who might podium at something.

Let's say I can do that across a list of events. I can dutifully be a solid college sprinter, a finalist LJ, a pretty good HJ, or I can be a really good decathlete who benefits as opposed to is punished for being "good" at a few things but not "great" at any one of them.

However to be blunt, while no one would say a 10.7 sprinter absolutely sucks, they are out of their depth at an elite level.

It doesn't matter if people watch your event. The prize money is still the same.

The event I know the most intimately is the 1500 and that's downright embarrassing. They would barely make a DIII program with those times and certainly not qualify for my DIII school's top seven (our top runners were generally 4:05 to 4:20 1500 runners). What would there time be in the 1500 if they did it without 4 events that day?

Is there a way to look that up?

If you already have great speed, strong shoulders, and gymnastic body control (which come naturally to a lot of 'natural athlete' types), doing a decent PV is easy. Accelerate like you would for long jump, run hard, plant hard, use your upper body instincts (like when you're out on the streets doing a parkour move to vault over a fence). Voila, you can clear a decent height with bad technique, if you have the confidence/fearlessness that you gain from lots of jumping / falling from high places. It's just basic physics and body control and mental aggressiveness. You can then get better and better with lots more reps and some coaching. Your body remembers how it feels when it works.

sure, you're either born with that natural body-control / gymnastic ability or you're not (if you can throw the discus really well, you might have it already, it's a very different throw from the other 2). If you're afraid of heights or falling, you may never get there, because you have to trust yourself. Doing gymnastics can help you get that confidence to be high and upside down.

230 lbs is huge for a decathlete. at some point being too muscular starts to hurt you when gravity is more involved, HJ, PV, LJ a bit. Gain some ability in the throws, but lose some in the other events. If you're a DK Metcalf type, maybe you could do decathlon at that size, Jurgen Hingson was close to that, maybe 225. but at 6'7" those pounds were spread out more like LePage.

Ya. He's 6'6", but still looked pretty big. World record holder Kevin Mayer is like 180.

One indoor meet he ran the open 600m with a bunch of normal middle distance runners. Somebody in the crowd said "that guy looks like Shrek". Everyone laughed and during the race the crowd started yelling "go Shrek". He won his heat and they went nuts.

Long-jumped 24.5 ft at that weight and like I said ran the 1500m in 4:28 at the end of a decathlon.

There is a difference between top of the D3 leaderboard making NCAAs and your average guy who is deemed a decathlete by their small school and finishes a meet. Look the second one up to know "what it takes to make a team." Look the first one up if you have ambitions for domination and go to a high flying D3 program. Don't get the two confused. The 50th best decathlete in D3 runs an 11.6, 52.83, 4:46, barely jumps 20'.

I would beat him in almost every facet way back then. The only things I think he would have done better than me are the two events getting over a bar.

Kind of like there was a kid on here asking if he'd make Hopkins, and yeah, low 4 minute 1500 then. There you might have a cut or train and take a picture but not see a meet. But a ton of programs have kids who run high 4 or can't break 5. Tiny schools with 1000-1500 people who maybe have 10-15 in their whole XC team and take everyone everyplace for TF and XC.

To me there are two D3s, the elite team experience and then the rest of us small schools. In my little world I was our soccer MVP and fastest sprinter. I didn't have to worry about making either team, few soccer players got cut, and about anyone who showed up could run. But there's being allowed on and there's being able to win a heat, make a final, run with the big dogs at conference or beyond.

I can only suppose they do not give equal time to each event in training. I guess many do not devote a great deal of time building endurance for the 800. The basic runners might but I would imagine most of the training is in developing field skills, and hurdles etc.

You’re focusing on the one event out of 10 that rewards aerobic fitness/middle distance ability above strength/speed/skill. If a decathlete did focus on that one thing in their training, their total score would be horrible as it neglects the big picture (the commonality of skills in the other events).

Turning your argument around…what would your results look like in the other nine events aside from the 1500m?

You should change the heading to "decathlon/heptathlon." Regarding the pentathlon, I can give you my own experience. The military likes to have a good pentathlon team, because the pentathlon envisions the activities of a great military agent of the past: He could shoot guns, fight with swords, and travel well (to escape, attack, or deliver messages) by horse, water, or foot. Decades ago, when I was in the military, the pentathlon program would seek to recruit athletes who could run and swim distances reasonably well; they figured that they could teach the athletes the more arcane (and less taxing) events of fencing, horse-riding, and pistol-shooting.

Regarding the decathlon and heptathlon, the most important thing to recognize is that one can become world-class using almost purely anaerobic capacities and skills; decent aerobic conditioning or capacity is unnecessary. In the decathlon, the only significant aerobic stress is in the final event, the 1500m. (in the heptathlon, the 800m, which merely adds a fair bit of aerobic stress to the demands of the 400.) By that point, the competition is usually pretty much over, and a poor 1500m runner, like Daley Thompson, could simply jog five minutes or so and still get an easy win. (By contrast, Bruce Jenner, Thompson's great predecessor, was surprisingly good at 1500m by decathlon standards.) The time demands of nine (or six) individual anaerobic track and field events, especially with highly overlapping conditioning and skills development, are not so different from the time demands of endurance events, like the marathon and (perhaps most relevantly) triathlon.

Juliane Hvid who represented Denmark in the 3000mSC at the 2023 worlds in Budapest is a former military pentathlete. She had great results in mil-pent, but it didn't go too well in Budapest as she clipped the second barrier, landed face first and and cut her chin up in the heats. She finished in 10:09 (PB is 9:33) instead of taking an easy DNF.

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pro decathletes and the best in D1 - who are the next generation of them -- are going to be better across every event than a D3 decathlete. but my point is any one of these groups are going to generally do average or even slow times for their level. pro decathletes will start doing times that might win that race in a D3 meet, but their comparison in doing so becomes the people who win olympic medals in individual events eg noah lyles. so they run a 10.3 but compared to an event elite running 9.7. i also understand he can high jump at a HS type level. the deal is what would noah lyles run a 1500 in or how far would he throw a discus? he is "great" at his speciality. the quality of an average decathlete is to do "good" times and distance for their level across 10 events. the ones lyles doesn't compete in.

there are a handful like joyner-kersee, hall, ehammer, who are truly elite at a specific event while doing multi-events, and can compete for podia. but often enough, well, ehammer has as much hardware as a long jumper as a decathlete and it's debatable whether multi-events are better or worse a choice then. does dacathlon make him happy to stick with the sport, or does it keep him from being an elite long jumper?

i say that in part because while D3 decathletes might have some significantly slower times, so do the people winning the individual events at NCAAs at their level. it's all relative.

^^^ My college roommate was an all-american decathlete and dude was good at everything. Obviously, he could sprint, jump and throw, but he also crushed the less athletic activities; ping pong, pool, golf, ultimate frisbee, you name it. And if had not done it yet, he just needed a go or 2 before he was proficient and after a while, was better than most of us. It's called natural ability and he had it in spades.