The sport of track and field would be better off if Clyde Hart never entered it and took up coaching.

Indoor? wrote:

You are trying to act like Clyde hart coached all of his elite sprinters the same way and that he was unable to adapt his program when you know nothing about the specifics of each.

No, I'm not saying Hart could not adapt, I'm saying the fundamental philosophy of long to short is inefficient and that due to him coming up with it a lot of lower level track was set back.

I firmly believe that the most efficient way to train 400m sprinters is by building a good base of speed and then extending it. Not the other way around. you say ZERO 400m sprinters train using feed the cats and I'm saying maybe they should train more in this way. They can still keep the speed endurance work and lactate tolerance training but maybe this should be emphasized less and speed should be focused on more.

Ditto Peter Coe

Wrestling cat wrote:

coach wrote:

Question for you wrestling cat. How many kids that train for the 200 are truly sprinters? How many kids that run the 4x100 are truly 100 meter runners? Some have more potential in the 400 anyway.

I had a friend who was a great coach and his runners couldn't understand why one of them was given different training. They thought their coach was babying this runner. He explained that this young man (who ended up placing in the state meet 100) was a sprinter and they weren't. They were quartermilers. Buy-in was tough.

Quartermilers are sprinters looool. 400m is a sprint distance.

I'm not talking about the 45 second college runner or the 47. HS stud but the 50 second HS guy who can also run 11.4 /23. Should they train the same as the 10.5 second kid? Where is their future?

coach wrote:

I'm not talking about the 45 second college runner or the 47. HS stud but the 50 second HS guy who can also run 11.4 /23. Should they train the same as the 10.5 second kid? Where is their future?

yes they should train the same. A 50 second guy who runs 23 can go sub 50 by working on pure endurance and lactate tolerance but he'll find it pretty much impossible to do sub 48 seconds for a 400m with a 23 second 200m. 23 x2 is 46 seconds so unless he can magically hold his 200m speed for a 400m his speed/speed reserve must improve if he wants to keep improving in the 400m into the 47-45 second range. You could train him with 200m intervals and he may break 50 seconds but he will likely plateau after that. If you accept that he will never ever be able to break sub 11 in the 100m then you are also accepting that he will never run 47-45 in the 400m.

Ok so looking at this dudes training program and pedigree.

In his entire 35 year career he's won 15 individual or relay titles out of a total of 175 opportunities per gender. Which is not a very good ratio.

He has one very exceptional athlete who has progressed very well in the 200. However he ran 10.40 as a 9th grader and hasn't progessed that much since. He also has a bunch of very mediocre sprinters behind him and historically on milesplit it seems that his best runner besides this guy has run a 10.98.

Tht girls side seems to have a bit more success but once again never really any depth and the top end isn't really that special minus one or two individuals.

If " feeding the cats" is such a great way to train why does he neither have that many state winners (keep in mind he's also not in the highest Illinois class) nor have a great amount of depth behind the 2/4 great athletes that he's had.

Also if this is a system based on maximum speed potential why has his best athlete ever not dropped any significant amount of time in the 100 in 4 years.

Not saying that his system has no merit. But you can see the flaws just by looking at the track record especially in the 400 where the results have been very sub par. As opposed to Clyde who has developed many Olympic athletes in the same amount of time basically

Also I don’t think he coaches the girls.

So does Clyde Hart still suck or what

For a time I too was starting to think that cross country running was bad for sprinting because it requires different form and changes the fibers somewhat. However consider the benefits:

First one must be able to run many speeds. No one is going to run with classic sprinting form all the time. It is possible to get injured while jogging, especially if you are not used to it. The 100 meter dash is 8% aerobic. Aerobic ability is important for all athletes. Perhaps most importantly you can use jogging and/or long distance biking to recover from workouts. Body composition is important to sprinters. Most will do better at a lighter weight than a heavier weight if the amount of muscle is the same. Periodization is important in all training programs. IF all you do all year long is sprint, you are bound to eventually run into injury problems. Sprinting is hard on the body! (As far as who uses distance running to train for the sprints it's an exception to the rule. There are people who have done it and been successful. I would name them but it might reveal my identity.) Recently I have been told that if you want to avoid the hamstring problems common to sprinters, being in all-around shape is the number one solution. Distance running helps everyone.

Mostly it's a myth that it hurts a sprinter to run long distance. One day a week is sufficient and 3-5 miles on that day is enough. You do not do that in season. It will not hurt a high school kid to do it, but I would make it be their choice.

High school 100/200 sprinters have set state records in the new millennium while running competitive cross country in the fall.

Another HS coach who is more impressed by a HS coach than a who has coached multiple Olympians. So cliche.

You have no idea how much a coach who constantly coached multiple Olympians knows. I was coached by three. The amount of broad understanding they have across a multitude of areas including anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, endocrinology, physics, force production, and applied training is astonishing. Only someone who with no knowledge can engulf themselves in Feed the Cat and proclaim that Tony Holler knows more than an Olympic coach.

Moreover, you make the argument that holler is impressive because his program can take a slow kid and make him faster. Do you know how much faster that kid would be if he was coached by an Olympic coach?

This is truly the dumbest argument ever espoused by someone who doesn’t have a clue.

The world of HS coaching would be better. Coach Hart inherited 46 second 400 guys and were grown men. HS coaches coach 14-18 year olds who havent reached their ceiling of real speed and dont have the training maturity to run these type of workouts. HS coaches feed them all that crap though because when you google 400m workout ideas, thats what comes up.

I coach at a small HS and im glad all the other schools run their kids through all that crap, we kill these teams. Our kids are less prone to injury, are happy, and can withstand 2 day meets much better.

For olympian type freaks...sure. For young immature HS guys and girls...NO.

Just my opinion.

Ill always lean toward the Latif Thomas / T. Holler approach for the younger guys.

coachhejl wrote:

The world of HS coaching would be better. Coach Hart inherited 46 second 400 guys and were grown men. HS coaches coach 14-18 year olds who havent reached their ceiling of real speed and dont have the training maturity to run these type of workouts. HS coaches feed them all that crap though because when you google 400m workout ideas, thats what comes up.

I coach at a small HS and im glad all the other schools run their kids through all that crap, we kill these teams. Our kids are less prone to injury, are happy, and can withstand 2 day meets much better.

For olympian type freaks...sure. For young immature HS guys and girls...NO.

Just my opinion.

Ill always lean toward the Latif Thomas / T. Holler approach for the younger guys.

I agree with most of what you're saying.

Any HS coach who googles 400 meter training and mimics any college program is an idiot. We have a coaching education program for a reason.

I find that the programs that injure the kids are the ones that do too much of anything especially too much speed work and racing.

The old thread bump was great for a laugh to see the OP claim that Ryan Banta is a better coach than Clyde Hart. Oh man I almost fell out of my chair when I got to that post. Hilariously priceless.

Better is not the right word. C. Hart is argueably the best in his niche. His ecosystem.

Theres no way you can tell me, if he has a brain...which obviously he does, that he would coach a 3a high school freshman or sophmore kid the same. Yet, we have coaches all over the nation feeding these young, immature, underdevloped kids a clyde hart program.

Its borderline abuse...lol.

Different things work for different people. We don't coach events; we coach athletes who compete in those events.

To suggest that *anybody* has THE BEST WAY to coach 400m runners is wrong. The most we can say about any coach is that s/he has found a *good* way to coach *some* 400m runners.

I like these threads that lay out many different training philosophies and programs. They provide more tools that a coach might use with given individuals.

But there's no need, and no truth IMO, in touting *any* program as "the best"--but neither is there accuracy in disparaging a program that has been shown to produce good results for some athletes (or, at the very least, to not hurt them!).

yea I can agree with that.

what are you talking about? wrote:

Wrestling cat wrote:

Lol. You're kidding right?

no, the 400 is about 60% aerobic. now, maybe some 400 runners don't need to work on this aspect if they took some red blood cell boosters.

I know this is an old post, but since it has come up, I feel the need to interject: The 400 as run at the world class level is nowhere close to 60% aerobic. The 50/50 split is right around 100 seconds (Pierre Gastin I think has a graph in a paper on this).

So I was board today and found I was mentioned in the thread. For historical sake I think its important to high light Norman was coached by Watts a 400 meter centric coach while at college. He is a talent and has done well as a pro. Run low tens in the 100 in high school. Clyde Hart and I talked about the time of this original posting and the thing he cut was the mid range stuff a la speed endurance training because Mike kept getting hurt. So short speed and longer sprints at full effort. The middle stuff was less than full effort. As for me I train sprinters in the way that their talent dictates. I use testing and commonly understood DNA attributes sprinters have to gear their training. The system I use is a concurrent method that covers what ever is the event's key performance indicators. Some sprinters I train like Tony while others I train in a modified Clyde Hart system. We have called this #criticalmasssystem we cover all of these methods and more in the Sprinter's Compendium.

Ryry wrote:

So I was board today

Dynamite drop in Banta...