The death of aerobic training?

coach D wrote:

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I'll point out here that in Jamaica Steve Francis has Asafa Powell pulling sleds with up to 50 pounds (no, that's not a misprint and he has women pulling half that amount) for six months of the year, and the athletes also do both long and short (it's been described as a 40 degree angle) hill sprints. They are also doing overdistance training (repeats like 8X200, 6X300, 4X450 at 80% speed)--and Usain Bolt in a different club also does this kind of thing, just varying in degree.

When people here produce someone with a 6.32 sec 60 meter split, go right ahead and criticize....

Coach D:

I don't think the Jamaica runners are doing heavy duty sled work and hill runs the week prior to the Olympics, would you not agree? I just used an example of what Mike Boyle did with guys prepping for the Combine one to two weeks prior to the big day. By the way I never saw any of Boyle's runners doing more than 60 meters on the football field, except for the obligatory one mile run for time. When he worked with the basketball team, I think those guys had to run two miles (can't remember).... :-). Yup, I forgot he did work with basketball for a short period of time.

My main point is that there are experts in track and field that are totally ignored for one reason or another (Vern Gambetta for one), while others who have little background in our sport have climbed the mountain to become some sort of guru, almost as if they have been granted an honorary doctorial degree from Harvard or Stanford. I prefer learning from my fellow coaches who have spent many years "in the trenches" and know both the physiology of our sport and the practicality of applying the same.

Tellez has his runners do aerobic distance runs. So does Clyde Hart.

There are many roads to rome and to make definitive statements like Boyle did is flat out wrong. If he's arrogant enough to think that we have everything figured out, then good for him, he'll sell all kinds of e-books, but the reality doesn't back him up.

Boyle is a 'guru'. He makes bold statements that he knows people will react to, to sell his books/dvds/merchandise.

Also, to the poster who posted the fiber type changes. Your off by quiet a bit. FT-b to a transition is relatively easy. FT-a to ST transitions take forever.

If fiber type transitions were soo important, then he better stop training his athletes because sprint training or heavy lifting converts those FT-b fibers into FT-a.

The reality is once again that there are many techniques on classifying fibers and that it isn't just a solid change but numerous changes that take place to a variety of the things in the muscle fiber.

A lot of weight lifters disagree with Mike Boyle's theory that rear-leg elevated split squats are far superior to back and front squats.

Article:

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/the_squat_good_exercise_gone_bad

Discussion:

http://tnation.tmuscle.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding_article/the_squat_good_exercise_gone_bad_1

marathondude wrote:

luv2run - Do you agree with his assertion that basketball players/hockey players should not do any base work? Do you agree that doing so will hurt their explosiveness?

Probably not traditional distance running base work. However, hockey is pretty aerobic. They go hard and then sit, but those efforts are relatively short.

If you do 45 sec on/45 sec off, that becomes more and more aerobic as you continue.

regarding one of Runningart's posts earlier ... I don't understand why flexibility is considered a component of physical fitness?

Regarding the debate about "long slow running producing long slow runners." For people who know the physiology (unlike me), how plausible is the idea that lots of longer, slower running is fine as long as there is enough fast-paced running throughout the week too (like strides at close to max speed)?

coach D wrote:

Given the sheer number of Jamaicans performing well (not just Bolt, but Powell, Sherri-Ann Fraser, Kerron Stewart, VCB, and others, you would have to be an absolute moron not to realize that they have something in the systems they are using. People like John Smith are not absolute morons thus have taken parts of what the Jamaicans are doing and are using them.

The sprint training area is ruled by tradition, superstition, and all around mindlessness. I am not convinced that any of the supposedly world-class coaches know what they are doing. In light of the fact that most great non-Jamaiacan sprinters are of Jamaican descent, you would have to be an absolute moron to believe that Jamaican sprint success is due to anything other than genetics.

coach D wrote:

Given the sheer number of Jamaicans performing well (not just Bolt, but Powell, Sherri-Ann Fraser, Kerron Stewart, VCB, and others, you would have to be an absolute moron not to realize that they have something in the systems they are using. People like John Smith are not absolute morons thus have taken parts of what the Jamaicans are doing and are using them.

A is A wrote:

The sprint training area is ruled by tradition, superstition, and all around mindlessness. I am not convinced that any of the supposedly world-class coaches know what they are doing. In light of the fact that most great non-Jamaiacan sprinters are of Jamaican descent, you would have to be an absolute moron to believe that Jamaican sprint success is due to anything other than genetics.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

A. Nonymous wrote:

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Laugh at yourself. You really think Jamaica is such a wellspring of intellectual achievement that the coaches there are able to use their superior minds to devise superior training programs that nobody else can figure out?

yahhhh wrote:

Also, to the poster who posted the fiber type changes. Your off by quiet a bit. FT-b to a transition is relatively easy. FT-a to ST transitions take forever.

If fiber type transitions were soo important, then he better stop training his athletes because sprint training or heavy lifting converts those FT-b fibers into FT-a.

The reality is once again that there are many techniques on classifying fibers and that it isn't just a solid change but numerous changes that take place to a variety of the things in the muscle fiber.

Again, I said I was simplifying the process. But, yes, IIa can convert to IIb and vice versa. And as I have already stated, it is a use it or lose it proposition. Not sure how that is "off by quite (sic) a bit"

To others that have asked about this transition, if you incorporate some stimulus to the FT fibers on a regular basis, you can maintain or even improve your percentages and not have to worry about losing speed/power.

In conclusion, boyle is not entirely wrong in what he is saying, it is how he is saying it and how it is interpreted by the majority of coaches. Coach schuder is sport on in his assessment

There are some very good sprint coaches.

Whether the jamaican ones are or not who knows.

What clouds sprint coaches is the drug issue.

Boyle loves Charlie Francis, yet Francis never had a big time successful drug free sprinter.

A couple points on recent posts...

Mike Boyle has never claimed to be a track and field coach, not that I know of. He's primarily a strength & conditioning coach focusing on hockey players. That's his bread and butter. He's prepped football players and athletes in other sports, but he's a hockey man at first.

The OP took a Mike Boyle presentation that had no track and field context at all and placed it in a track and field context. This thread should never have been about track and field or distance running as Mike Boyle's presentations have nothing to do with either.

His anti-squat stance flies in the face of 100 years of experience and results...but his stance is under the context of 20 years of his experience, which as I said is mostly training hockey players. Hockey players, at the top level, tend to have hip issues galore, strained groins through most of the season, and they tend to be long legged. Performing squats with long legs and hip issues isn't exactly productive. I think he's stated that he hasn't had his athletes do a back squat in over 10 years and haven't had them do front squats for over a year.

Training is all individually based. If I trained mostly a small segment of the athlete population my training stances would be very narrow. Boyle, whether he realizes it or not, is also creating an uproar for the sake of creating an uproar. Any coach who is paid to do something other than train athletes (seminars, online work, writing, etc) is going to say and do things that further that area of his career whether they realize it or not.

Alan

Hey alan, next time cite T-muscle guys instead of just copying what they say :)...

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/the_squat_good_exercise_gone_bad

Runningart 2004,

I don't think anyone has questioned Boyles take on squats. It appears to me that the title of the thread is "death of aerobic training". Boyle did in fact say something along the lines of...."....if you have a good athlete and you want to ruin them, have them run cross country." I would think that is what most of the responses on here and in fact, what the thread is all about. why are we discussing whether hockey players should do squats or not!!!!!!!!

"...."....if you have a good athlete and you want to ruin them, have them run cross country." "

I'm williing to bet $100 he wasn't talking about track and field athletes or distance runners. Running cross-country serves no purpose for 99% of athletes. There's a thousand better ways for athletes to prepare for their sport than "run cross country". I don't understand how this is even debatable.

Alan

CC isn't the best thing for most athletes.

But it sure didn't ruin Kerron Clement or Bershawn Jackson.

and that's taken from Magness' take on it:

http://stevemagness.blogspot.com/

Runningart2004 wrote:

"...."....if you have a good athlete and you want to ruin them, have them run cross country." "

I'm williing to bet $100 he wasn't talking about track and field athletes or distance runners. Running cross-country serves no purpose for 99% of athletes. There's a thousand better ways for athletes to prepare for their sport than "run cross country". I don't understand how this is even debatable.

Alan

You'd lose the $100. did you even listen to the presentation? Why would you comment on what a guy said if you didn't even hear what he said?????

Runningart2004 wrote:

"...."....if you have a good athlete and you want to ruin them, have them run cross country." "

I'm williing to bet $100 he wasn't talking about track and field athletes or distance runners. Running cross-country serves no purpose for 99% of athletes. There's a thousand better ways for athletes to prepare for their sport than "run cross country". I don't understand how this is even debatable.

Alan

wonder dog wrote:

You'd lose the $100. did you even listen to the presentation? Why would you comment on what a guy said if you didn't even hear what he said?????

I listened to it and I agree with Alan. Boyle was not talking about distance runners. He even qualified his remarks as not pertaining to a 10K runner. In Boyle's mind there is an obvious difference between "athlete" and "distance runner."

Picking and choosing a handful of elite athletes in other sports who have run cross country in high school doesn't prove anything. There are always going to be outliers. There are always going to be kids who try different things in high school, and as has been stated you typically don't just fall into interval training right at the start, you may need some aerobic training at first before heading into interval training. I don't think Lebron James is running an XC season pre-season. I knew this argument would come up about how some basketball player or sprinter or whoever ran XC 30 years ago and is now a great athlete.

Mike Boyle:

"If someone says to you, I want to run a 10k, then we're going to do some aerobic training, we're going to get you ready to do what you want to do"...

..."It helps beginners if they are unable to do intervals"

"..all of my best hockey players have the worse aerobic conditioning"

All things I agree with, and nothing that is a breakthrough. Again...he wasn't talking about distance runners, he was talking about athletes in other sports and sprinters.

Runners are going to be pissed because he says XC ruins you for other sports, which is basically true. Runners typically have this "holier than thou" attitude about their sport, I know because I used to have the same stance. His statement about the 40in vertical guy and the 19in vertical guy says a lot. TRAIN FOR YOUR INDIVIDUAL NEEDS. If you can jump 40in but gas out easily...then you may need a short time doing some aerobic work. If you have a 19in vertical then you need to work on power, strenth, explosiveness, anaerobic ability, etc.

Alan