U jelly brah.
U jelly brah.
BRG/253 wrote:
Charlie was a failed coach who first cockblocked himself from his profession thanks to being a cheater and then wasted the rest of his life obsessing over Ben's race in Seoul.
0/10.
Sprintgeezer wrote:
When I tell you he was a lab experiment, I'm not kidding.
I've seen lots of doped-up guys. I used to work and work out at a Gold's Gym that was famous for them, back in the 80's.
There is a muscular density that they achieve that is UNACHIEVABLE without roids. Like some other poster said, "their muscles have muscles".
Density--like the muscles themselves are composed of something else. It's difficult to describe.
And Johnson was the best of the best. Optimized for sprinting--not too big, developed in an unbalanced way, almost perfect. There hasn't been anyone like him, before or since.
They took him too far, IMHO. He went 9.79 He could have gone 9.76 in that very race. He would likely have gone 9.6x before he was finished. Did they NEED him to go that fast?
When he went 9.83, he crushed the old 9.93 record by a full tenth, and that 9.93 record was set at altitude! Then 9.7x? Was that really necessary? All he needed was 9.90 and he would have cleaned-up. He was WAY too far out there. People didn't just want him to win, they wanted to see how far they could take things--to experiment.
Bolt has gone 9.58 a similar drop in 100m time as Ben Johnson.
I still think it's incredibly depressing to never know how many of the world records are due to drug use...
now ur talking...check out ze kips and epiopians
coach d wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwDXU683psU
"He didn't molest anyone's child. He took half a cc of stanozolol three times a week for six weeks. Big deal."
GoldenMile wrote:
I still think it's incredibly depressing to never know how many of the world records are due to drug use...
There's no way to know that anything in life is or isn't. So you'll be incredibly depressed forever maybe
FloJo,The Ben Johnson on the womens' side that got away clean. Look closely at her from one year prior in Rome. Smooth and beautiful like Felix. A contender but not dominant. Then in 88, good enough to beat the Germans and Russians both at their own game. Evelyn had to be ashamed but she got hers in 84.
Message:
Charlie knew nothing. All his theories were wrong.
First, speed comes from talent, not drugs
A more exhaustive training regimen does not make you faster. Higher quality training helps polish what you were born with.
Taking drugs so you can do more training will do absolutely nothing to make you faster. It will only increase your odds of getting injured thanks to doing too much superfluous activity.
Plenty of top sprinters are clean
______________________________________________________________
First, drugs or no drugs, Charlie Francis was an excellent sprint coach/performance coach. His theories were and still are cutting edge in training philosophy and are to this day being implemented by college and professional track coaches in countries all over the world. If you have read and comprehended any of his work or even listened to him speak about sprinting, weights and strength and conditioning you would understand how important his ideas are to sport performance. While he speaks with much bravado and an ultra high ego (most coaches have enormous egos by the way), the roots of his training system is a less is more approach. And he says as much in many of his articles and books (You should read 'Speed Trap' or 'The Charlie Francis Training Theory').
His model of high intensity days followed by low intensity days allowing for proper recovery of both the muscular system as well as the central nervous system are ideas all good coaches who work with power/speed athletes take into consideration today. Also the idea that speed needs to be worked on year round is absolutely correct. For a 100m sprinter, slogging slow repeat 600s does not produce the right muscle fiber sprinters need. There is a place for that, but if a sprinter is not good/strong enough to hold form for 100m at the start of the training season, his short to long approach makes tons of sense. If the sprinter can run fast to 10m the work to 20m, then advancing to 30m and so forth, it lays out a natural progression for athletes who have a full series of indoor races at 60m, which Ben Johnson had, setting the 60m world record of 6.41 for 60m.
As for injuries, Johnson trained for roughly ten years with Francis and had only one significant injury. Pretty remarkable if you think about it since guys in this day in age always seem to miss a meet or a handful with problems. Good coaches know when to push the pedal and when to tap the brakes. Francis seemed to have pretty go hold on injuries and prevention. His implementing of massage and physio work with the attention to muscle density and feeling are well documented in his work.
Johnson was light years ahead of his time in 1988. Throw him on a tight Mondo track in London and he runs with Bolt. Obviously, drugs played a huge part in his success, but the guy was definitely pretty darn quick and I just cannot believe that drugs alone took him from 10.30 to 9.79. To do that, you have to have good coaching and be in a good program with consistency of training and minimal time off due to injuries, which he obviously was.
I understand the bashing of Francis on these boards, but to say his training theories are wrong and that he knew nothing is straight up preposterous. Understand the event and the requirements of the event and the man's work and theories before you comment like that. Do not assume because his meal ticket was caught with drugs that drug use alone was the sole reason for his world record performances.
I highly doubt most sprinters are clean. Look at their physique over the course of the season. When they show up at the Olympic Games they are shredded. Indoors they look nothing like that. Special Endurance work will definitely cut a runner up, but these guys carry not an ounce of bad weight. Drug companies will always be ahead of the testers. Would not surprise me at all to hear that most of these guys are sauced up. It is the nature of the sport. People do not want to pay money to see guys run 10 flat for gold medals.
Darrell Robinson did call out Carl and FloJo, and paid a terrible price:
http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Griffith_Joyner_Florence.html
Which men in this year's Olympic 100m final had an indoor season? Powell ran a few races, but did anyone else?
Pretty good previous LR thread on FloJo....
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3186227
I found this info interesting on Lewis regarding the high number of his Santa Monica Track Club teammates with braces:
"For more than a decade during the 1980s and '90s, the Santa Monica Track Club, led by Carl Lewis and Leroy Burrell -- who have both publicly campaigned against performance-enhancing drugs -- dominated world track. After nine SMTC athletes took home medals at the 1991 World Athletic Championships in Tokyo, doping experts pointedly noted the unusual fact that seven of those medal winners, Lewis most prominently, wore dental braces. Less than 1 percent of the adult population wears braces, but crooked teeth is a common side effect of using hGH. Lewis, who never failed a drug test, now suffers from chronic, degenerative arthritis. The SMTC's coach, Joe Douglas, has denied that any of his athletes used performance-enhancing drugs."
Augusto E. Perez wrote:
Which men in this year's Olympic 100m final had an indoor season? Powell ran a few races, but did anyone else?
Gatlin was the 2012 indoor World Champion at 60m and then got Bronze in the Olympic 100m.
AnonymousPseudonym wrote:
The stimulant he (lewis) tested positive for isn't even on the banned list any more.
Lewis tested positive three times. Additionally, it is irrelevant if it's not on the list now. It was on the banned substance list when he used it, which means he cheated based on the standards of the time. We can't punish people based on laws of the future, I hope that is obvious. Lewis cheated, and IMO it's silly to try to separate athletes based on the perceived degree to which they cheated. He tested positive and shouldn't have been able to run, even based on 1988 anti-doping practices.
I'd say testing + for a stimulant is like getting a ticket for speeding, testing + for anabolic steroids is like a DUI.
Both broke the rules, one more severely than the other.
I see both sides to the Carl Lewis issue.
Besides any stimulants, I am inclined to believe that he took performance enhancing drugs. But maybe not. It would just be conjecture.
What I get from this documentary and follow up interviews with Ben Johnson is that he strongly believes Lewis and others were juicing.
The irony is, that to this day, Ben feels cheated because he was caught or targeted to be caught and the others weren't.
He doesn't seem to have any realization that he, along with the others accused, cheated clean athletes from the chance of even reaching the final.
I encourage everyone to read "Speed Trap" by Charlie Francis.
It is the most honest book about the sport out there.
Since reading that book I have doubted everyone, and then BALCO confirmed my doubts.
This documentary is pretty good as well.
* wrote:
Augusto E. Perez wrote:Which men in this year's Olympic 100m final had an indoor season? Powell ran a few races, but did anyone else?
Gatlin was the 2012 indoor World Champion at 60m and then got Bronze in the Olympic 100m.
So that's two of them
Odd.
They came off as regular human beings to me.
On the other hand, the majority of letsrun posters do strike me as douches
looker wrote:
GoldenMile wrote:I still think it's incredibly depressing to never know how many of the world records are due to drug use...
There's no way to know that anything in life is or isn't. So you'll be incredibly depressed forever maybe
:-/ Perhaps you are right.
In any case, doesn't anyone feel the same way about the track records? I had a much longer post planned out about the topic, but at the time yesterday I got distracted by work, so that was all I posted.
Willy Mays Hayes wrote:
First, drugs or no drugs, Charlie Francis was an excellent sprint coach/performance coach. His theories were and still are cutting edge in training philosophy and are to this day being implemented by college and professional track coaches in countries all over the world. If you have read and comprehended any of his work or even listened to him speak about sprinting, weights and strength and conditioning you would understand how important his ideas are to sport performance. While he speaks with much bravado and an ultra high ego (most coaches have enormous egos by the way), the roots of his training system is a less is more approach. And he says as much in many of his articles and books (You should read 'Speed Trap' or 'The Charlie Francis Training Theory').
His model of high intensity days followed by low intensity days allowing for proper recovery of both the muscular system as well as the central nervous system are ideas all good coaches who work with power/speed athletes take into consideration today. Also the idea that speed needs to be worked on year round is absolutely correct. For a 100m sprinter, slogging slow repeat 600s does not produce the right muscle fiber sprinters need. There is a place for that, but if a sprinter is not good/strong enough to hold form for 100m at the start of the training season, his short to long approach makes tons of sense. If the sprinter can run fast to 10m the work to 20m, then advancing to 30m and so forth, it lays out a natural progression for athletes who have a full series of indoor races at 60m, which Ben Johnson had, setting the 60m world record of 6.41 for 60m.
As for injuries, Johnson trained for roughly ten years with Francis and had only one significant injury. Pretty remarkable if you think about it since guys in this day in age always seem to miss a meet or a handful with problems. Good coaches know when to push the pedal and when to tap the brakes. Francis seemed to have pretty go hold on injuries and prevention. His implementing of massage and physio work with the attention to muscle density and feeling are well documented in his work.
Johnson was light years ahead of his time in 1988. Throw him on a tight Mondo track in London and he runs with Bolt. Obviously, drugs played a huge part in his success, but the guy was definitely pretty darn quick and I just cannot believe that drugs alone took him from 10.30 to 9.79. To do that, you have to have good coaching and be in a good program with consistency of training and minimal time off due to injuries, which he obviously was.
I understand the bashing of Francis on these boards, but to say his training theories are wrong and that he knew nothing is straight up preposterous. Understand the event and the requirements of the event and the man's work and theories before you comment like that. Do not assume because his meal ticket was caught with drugs that drug use alone was the sole reason for his world record performances.
I highly doubt most sprinters are clean. Look at their physique over the course of the season. When they show up at the Olympic Games they are shredded. Indoors they look nothing like that. Special Endurance work will definitely cut a runner up, but these guys carry not an ounce of bad weight. Drug companies will always be ahead of the testers. Would not surprise me at all to hear that most of these guys are sauced up. It is the nature of the sport. People do not want to pay money to see guys run 10 flat for gold medals.
You're begging the question, evaluating Charlie's theories by looking at them from within a framework based on Charlie's theories.
Charlie was a f*cking joke and so are all the coaches who idolize him.