Is Drew Hunter wasting his potential by training with Tinman?

and now we are saying speed endurance stuff is the same thing as max velocity. okay

Dude I don’t know where the all the hate is coming from. Salazars group does short sprints at the end of the workout. You can disagree with a style of training and a coach, but everyone here is just saying it’s dumb without explaining why.

cbenson4 wrote:

Drew is 22 years old. That means he ran 13:21 and qualified for worlds at the same age as a college senior. He's also run 3:35 and 7:39. What more can you ask of a young talent? He's doing extremely well under Tinman.

Drew's already better than Nikes dead drunk guy ever was at a younger age.

M.A.A.D. wrote:

Drew's already better than Nikes dead drunk guy ever was at a younger age.

Obvious troll, but worth noting this is absurdly incorrect. Yes, it was a different era, but Prefontaine finished 4th in the Olympics at age 21. He set the American record before that in winning the Olympic Trials. Even in full shape, you'd probably peg Hunter to finish behind a half-dozen athletes or more in an American 5000m race (guys in the mix are Lomong, Chelimo, Kincaid, Centrowitz, Fisher, McGorty, Mead, Klecker, True, Hill, Jager, Jenkins, Day)

I don't know why everyone is jumping all over one workout. If it is posted on his strava I would assume more is posted so post enough to give context for how a training cycle is going and discuss that but over analyzing one workout is idiotic.

He seems like he is doing well and has had some success but my biggest concern is just tactics. His biggest win was time trialing from the slow heat. The two USA races I can think of that he raced were the 5k where he wasn't a factor over the last 200 (although I think he was hurt?) and the 1500 where he wasn't a factor over the last 300. I don't think he made the wrong move by taking the Pro route but I wonder if between dominating in high school and missing the NCAA experience he isn't as tactically experienced. Granted he has time to keep improving on that route but it was something that jumped out at me.

Without YouTube, Hunter would be about as well know these days as Sowinski, and I'm not sure Hunter's upside will reach even that level.

shootpost wrote:

shootpost wrote:

I knew it was stupid to bring up the 5th at USA because my point is lost.

I only really value medaling at Olympics and World Championships. So my criticism of Tinman is I don't believe he does the speed work and training required to win those big races on the last lap.

Him getting 5th at USA getting absolutely BURNTTTT the last lap against USA runners shows how far he has to go. And with Tinmans current training I don't see anything that makes me go "give him time he will develop it." Cause he sure as hell isn't gonna outrun 3:29/12:50 guys in the middle of the race.

Lopez Lomong put 50m on him the last lap with a 10k in the legs. Lopez Lomong is very good, but not a world beater. Shows how lacking Drews finishing speed it.

Or it shows he was running on a broken foot... you can see his gait start to break down a few minutes before the finish.

ExPhys wrote:

Sorry Phil.

I know you love defending Tom but doing sprints "all out" at the end of 5 x 1200 and 5 x 200 seems nonsensical.

5 x 60m "all out" is a neuromuscular workout.

That completely gets defeated when the neuromuscular system is fried beforehand. Had he just stopped after the 200's I wouldn't have been as confused by the structure.

1) All workouts are neuromuscular.

2) The workout seem just fine to me.

malmo wrote:

ExPhys wrote:

Sorry Phil.

I know you love defending Tom but doing sprints "all out" at the end of 5 x 1200 and 5 x 200 seems nonsensical.

5 x 60m "all out" is a neuromuscular workout.

That completely gets defeated when the neuromuscular system is fried beforehand. Had he just stopped after the 200's I wouldn't have been as confused by the structure.

1) All workouts are neuromuscular.

2) The workout seem just fine to me.

I remember hearing Jonathan Marcus say something very similar to what ExPhys is saying. Except he called this type of workout useless. I would argue that physiology has not progressed to the point where we could accurately determine that this workout is useless.

That's a gross oversimplification of the term "neuromuscular"

Yes. ANY type of physical activity is using the neuromuscular system.

Going for an hour run @ 70% vs. 30m Fly's require a very different amount of neuromuscular activity.

Attempting to run 60m @ 100% of TOP SPEED requires a nervous system that is fresh. It's the same reason that most olympic lifts are prescribed at the beginning of a strength session vs. at the end of a strength session.

I forget that you're only a distance runner and not a sprint coach so of course, the workout would make sense to you.

I don’t think you’re understanding here. Regardless of the sprints being out before or after the bulk of the workout, the goal is most likely, and I say most likely because I did not prescribe the workout, to focus on muscle force and alactic power production.

There is no need to them at the beginning of the workout in this phase of training. The focus is on the other stuff, not the sprints.

A distance runner is never sprinting at the beginning of a race, so it is more specific to practice sprinting at ends of workouts because that directly correlates with race efforts.

You talk about sprinting coaching and yet you don’t understand anything but maximal power reaches into the muscle fibers. I think you need to go back to your physiology classes.

That's actually really funny.

You talk about the focus being most likely on "muscle force and alactic power production"....

You do realize that muscle force production is GREATLY reduced at the end of a 5 x 1200m & 5 x 200m workout right?

If the focus isn't on the sprint, then why do them at all? Unless the goal is to infact increase top end speed and muscle force production... in which case sprints should be done before being taxed.

sizlin wrote:

I don’t think you’re understanding here. Regardless of the sprints being out before or after the bulk of the workout, the goal is most likely, and I say most likely because I did not prescribe the workout, to focus on muscle force and alactic power production.

There is no need to them at the beginning of the workout in this phase of training. The focus is on the other stuff, not the sprints.

A distance runner is never sprinting at the beginning of a race, so it is more specific to practice sprinting at ends of workouts because that directly correlates with race efforts.

You talk about sprinting coaching and yet you don’t understand anything but maximal power reaches into the muscle fibers. I think you need to go back to your physiology classes.

You are wrong. The science is settled on this. Ex-Phys is right. The science is also settled on combined workouts like this being ineffective. The best way to get results is to hit one stimulus really hard in a workout session, not hitting 3 stimuli in a small way.

Tinman is a fraud.

Drew by 22 had run 3:35/7:38/13:21.

Joe Falcon had run 3:35/3:52/7:46 (and ran 13:20 at 26, I think).

Bob Kennedy had run 3:38/7:47?/13:22.

Drew's doing just fine, though he's improved only 5-6 seconds from hs in the mile.

Maybe I’m not wording my argument correctly.

Let’s say the goal of the these sprints are to increase force and power. You don’t necessarily need to be fresh in order to produce maximum amounts of force or power. ATP-PC system is not going to be tapped into by doing the workout Drew did.

Sprints have their place at both before and after a workout. At the end of the workout however, is more specific to racing distance. You don’t need to be sprinting at top speed to elicit FT muscle fiber activation. Force production tires after high intensity and high volume, which this workout did not involve.

Let’s just theoretically say that for 5x60m sprints that we are sprinting all out, we want activate our FT muscles. at the beginning of a workout, 100% effort is 200 N. After the workout you start the sprints, still at 100% but can only produce 19x N.

Are the sprints not as effective because you’re not producing as much force, even though you are still working at 100% effort? You might be running slower at the end of a workout. But the goal at this point of the season (fundamental phase or whatever you prefer to call it) is not to run as fast as possible, but to achieve the highest internal load.

And in the situation where this workout WOULD be very intense...

Like I said before, sprints at the end of a workout are more specific to kicking at the end of a race. In addition to that, I would say “kicking” is more about how much you reduce loss of form, power, etc. Than it is traditional sprinting.

So how do you teach distance runners to maintain form and produce as much power as possible while they’re fatigued?

Simply you must practice sprinting at the end of depleting sessions, there’s no other way to train that last 100m than to practice it.

For some context, here's Drew Hunter's training log

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jea_nGALhC4OcQXDwjiFXVM2HYG1tm3Fgx3dR5u2i1I/edit?usp=sharing

zxczxcv wrote:

Drew by 22 had run 3:35/7:38/13:21.

Joe Falcon had run 3:35/3:52/7:46 (and ran 13:20 at 26, I think).

Bob Kennedy had run 3:38/7:47?/13:22.

Drew's doing just fine, though he's improved only 5-6 seconds from hs in the mile.

To start off, I like Drew and hope he jumps another level.

However, the problem with this is 3:35/13:21 mean totally different things depending on the era. Right now Drew's 1500m PR is off the Olympic standard, so being able to run that is practically useless on the world stage. 13:21 is 20 seconds away from being competitive in a high-level race.

When Kennedy had 13:22 at age 22 the World record was barely under 13. Falcon had to take another big step forward to reach (short-lived) world relevance. That being said his NCAA titles between 1987-88 are more impressive credentials than Drew and are a better indicator for future progression once he became a pro.

I agree with a lot of what you are saying, i just think this is far better done with 2s, 3s, 400s