I would highly recommend Tinman.....Only found him to be caring and responsive. He is passionate about helping people run faster. I would ignore the negative comments.
I would highly recommend Tinman.....Only found him to be caring and responsive. He is passionate about helping people run faster. I would ignore the negative comments.
TinmanTrained wrote:
I sparsely visit therunzone.com anymore but mainly as running hasn't even been secondary for me for a couple of years. I wasn't aware of any particular reason for people not posting there, though traffic has certainly noticeably reduced over time. But there are a lot of years of great posts though by Tom.
I think Final Surge is where he works with runners now?
Folks can bash Tom all he wants, and maybe he has had some irascible moments, but who hasn't? I wouldn't even call it a character flaw, I would call it being human as we all have our moments. I've just interacted with him too many times, over too many years to believe anything other than he really loves helping people,
I´m not saying that he doesn´t know his stuff, but when people (like myself) tried to discuss stuff with him, as opposed to just swallow anything he said, you always got a response in an aggressive, lecturing tone.
He was also constantly bragging about his own running, how his coaching had improved everybody he had worked with, what a brilliant teacher he was etc.
he's more of a salesman than a coach. sure, his training methods are fine, but he's so quick to take full credit for the talent and hard work of the runner. I remember when he said drew hunter wasn't that talented and it was really his training plans that got drew to where he was.
his strategy is to hype up his own stuff like crazy, selling it to more and more talented people, then taking credit for those talented people who were going to run fast with or without him
I intend to hire Tinman for one of my kids who is making really nice progress. I feel that I have taken him just as far as I can. Based on everything I have read on this site, the guy knows his stuff. Running is probably more populated with know-it-alls than most other endeavors/professions. I cannot tell you how many times I have reacted in a far more aggressive tone in person as well as in writing. I have also been held accountable.
I like that honesty in people, not rudeness for a sport, but honesty so that there is little chance for confusion.
Have you ever been to a pediatrician? Do you know how they speak? Cats meowing? Well I speak in grunts and I am perfectly capable to communicate with someone who speaks the same language but can succinctly convey know-how.
I think some of the above commentary (from contributors other than TinmanTrained) was in bad faith.
Most of the time, those exchanges are polite on his part, but let's look at the big picture here: tinman's had some incredible successes as a coach, particularly with Hunter and he should be given credit for them. Hunter ran 3:57 at the end of high school, along with 1:48 and a national xc title. He beat Fisher the year before. Sure, he gets a lot of criticism, but Renato Canova gets even more, and look at how many world and Olympic champions Canova has coached! No one is above criticism on this site, because there are always people who will find something to disrespect, no matter how extraordinarily accomplished are the objects of criticism and no matter how unaccomplished are the critics.
His coaching and overall philosophy seems very solid to me, perhaps I would back off a little on some of the volume for the younger athletes. Except for Ritz and perhaps a few others, most of the U.S. top professional runners were surprisingly undertrained in high school. A lot of our top pros split their time with another sport until their mid teens and Molly Huddle didn't even start running cross country until her senior of high school. Brenda Martinez, Jenny Simpson, Shannon Rowbury, Emily Infeld and Kate Grace for example, were all low mileage athletes in high school. When you look at the names of the NCAA champs and Olympians, very few of them won Footlocker, H.S National Track Champs or even came close to any H.S. records. I have heard Tinman speak and what he considers low volume is high to high to me. One of the problems with training really hard in high school is that you can end up at a college where the training is no more difficult or even less than what you did in high school. However, I do understand when you are training super talented blue chip high school athletes who have big goals, you have to train hard to accomplish those goals. One of the disadvantages of being a paid private coach of talented young athletes, you are paid for results and you have to feed the beast so to speak.
With all of that said, Tinman appears to know what he doing and is passionate about it.
Tom states that a 13 year-old girl is as mature as a 15-16 year old boy. This may be statistically valid for the youth population as a whole, but he is not factoring in the self-selecting nature of young girl phenoms. Most of them are late bloomers (apparently not until 25 in the case of Hasay lol), so this assumption either should be considered invalid or at the very least, employed on a case-by-case basis. I do agree with his endurance-based training, and emphasizing easy days being very easy, which allows a more long-term development arc for the kids.
He has been on the coaching circuit as of late and certainly seems to be cashing in on Drew's success. I'm going to one of his clinics in February and looking forward to it.
Way too many coaches that don't care to share their thoughts on training, so I give him credit for doing what he is doing.
Do you have a link to that clinic?
Tinman certainly should be given credit for Drew Hunter's success, but let's not forget that Drew was coached by his parents thru his junior year, using Tinman style training and a logical volume progression his first 3 years of high school. It is not as if Tinman started coaching Hunter as a 30 mile per week, poorly coached, 4:20 runner and the next year he magically morphed into a 3:57 miler...the foundation was already there. Similarly, Grace Ping was quite a successful runner before Tinman took over her training. Not trying to say he isn't good at what he does- he is- but he is also working with very talented individuals who were already experiencing success when he took them on. He is just taking them to higher levels. Morgan Pearson will be interesting to watch. He already is improving under his new coach, and he is another one who I think most of us would agree was well coached prior to coming to Tinman.
It's not as if Tinman just took over his senior year. He was coaching Drew's mom, and surely that training was influencing her coaching as well. So I would think that overall around 50% of Drew's success can be attributed to Schwartz.
2o3nfeq wrote:
Tinman certainly should be given credit for Drew Hunter's success, but let's not forget that Drew was coached by his parents thru his junior year, using Tinman style training and a logical volume progression his first 3 years of high school. It is not as if Tinman started coaching Hunter as a 30 mile per week, poorly coached, 4:20 runner and the next year he magically morphed into a 3:57 miler...the foundation was already there. Similarly, Grace Ping was quite a successful runner before Tinman took over her training. Not trying to say he isn't good at what he does- he is- but he is also working with very talented individuals who were already experiencing success when he took them on. He is just taking them to higher levels. Morgan Pearson will be interesting to watch. He already is improving under his new coach, and he is another one who I think most of us would agree was well coached prior to coming to Tinman.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UTWUADTzVbnerzyWLFnI84j4X79-ZMUmya-y4eOsP6Y/edit#gid=624464087SlowFatMaster wrote:
Do you have a link to that clinic?
Same Stuff - Different Terms?
No, not 50%.
Drew is insanely talented. Do you attribute 50% of Bekele's success to his coach?
Do you give Scott Razcko 50% of the credit for Webb?
What will be interesting is to see the development. While most don't want to hear this, High School kids are easier to coach. They have so many hormones.
not all there wrote:
Tom is smart but arrogant. His ego is his downfall.
The point is, the guy is smart, but he's a bit of a whack job.
Are you looking for a boyfriend, or do you want a coach? Who cares about his ego? Can he make me run faster?
True, Hunter outkicked the sub-four miler Grant Fisher as a junior and it was no fluke.
Oh my bad. 99.99% of Drew's success is due to his DNA. 50% refers to the remaining smidgen of influence that a coach might provide.
verbal ranting wrote:
No, not 50%.
Drew is insanely talented. Do you attribute 50% of Bekele's success to his coach?
Do you give Scott Razcko 50% of the credit for Webb?
What will be interesting is to see the development. While most don't want to hear this, High School kids are easier to coach. They have so many hormones.
not all there wrote:
Tom is smart but arrogant. His ego is his downfall.
He's a good coach but he's ripe to put others down and claim others are stealing from him. He once went on a long rant about how Greg McMillan ripped off all of his calculators.
He's claimed to be coaching a few guys who he emailed once or twice and he didn't actually coach at all.
The point is, the guy is smart, but he's a bit of a whack job.
Agreed. Greg McMillan has been around for a long time. To me the Tinman is more of a guy who became famous later because of one person he coached...Andrew Hunter. Anyone can get lucky once.
Billy Fap wrote:
Grace Ping
Sources in Minnesota say she has been coached by her father who is a tremendous runner.
Look at Ping's body. She looks like the many other girl 2 X state champions in junior high school. Perhaps she will do as well as Jordan Hasay. That might be her peak. It depends mostly on what her Dad does with her.
jjjjjj wrote:
Most of the time, those exchanges are polite on his part, but let's look at the big picture here: tinman's had some incredible successes as a coach, particularly with Hunter and he should be given credit for them. Hunter ran 3:57 at the end of high school, along with 1:48 and a national xc title. He beat Fisher the year before. Sure, he gets a lot of criticism, but Renato Canova gets even more, and look at how many world and Olympic champions Canova has coached! No one is above criticism on this site, because there are always people who will find something to disrespect, no matter how extraordinarily accomplished are the objects of criticism and no matter how unaccomplished are the critics.
Drew Hunter not talented? How then is it that he beat Grant Fisher as a junior in high school when Fisher was a senior?