BTC has a secret

Well maybe not so secret, but like the Purloined Letter people will ignore the obvious. 

Undoubtedly the fast track +  super spikes could have been worth about 10 seconds combined in the 5000m.

However, it is impossible to deny BTC is a top group. Jerry’s training plan must be fairly good - anecdotally new athletes that join talk about how hard the sessions are compared to what they’re used too. This is similar to Andy Youngs group (hard sessions) with Muir and Reekie, arguably just as impressive a group as BTC, expect with less mileage. This might explain why they don’t have quite the same injury rate as BTC.

Something that has to be mentioned is the groups injury rate and drop outs from the club, which is a disheartening thing about BTC. Good to see them racing more so far this year, though.

The secret is, they recruit athletes who are at or near the top of their abilities and take the credit for that last 1% of their development.

Can you please ellaborate?

If you read my post carefully, I am not assuming that their secret is of the illegal variety, but these athletes do have some advantage that they are keeping to themselves and I don't think its in the number of intervals they run or their unique work ethic over other pro clubs.

The “secret” is taking the best athletes in N. America, throwing all the eggs against the wall, calling the ones that don’t break a success, and forgetting the ones that break down and underperform. I am sure Simon Bairu, Tim Nelson, Chris Derrick, German Fernandez and the other mega-talented underperformers through the years would love to be let in on the BTC “secret.”

Fisher admitted as much in a recent interview. He said you get destroyed by a huge increase in both volume AND intensity, and either start thriving or… don’t. He said thankfully he started thriving. 

This style of coaching is not secret, or impressive in my opinion. It’s quite common in the NCAA. My PAC-10 coach had the same system: huge step up in volume and intensity, no personalization, one size fits all. Guess what, tons of people break. I think of my recruiting class of 8, one (1!) made it through all 4 years of eligibility without getting chronically injured, cut, or quitting. 

Jerry is just doing the same thing but with the very best athletes. He probably doesn’t have time to individualize training and properly manage intensity to avoid trashing some of our best— he’s trying to keep up with the latest developments in our sport, like knowing what nandrolone is. 

Here are the 13:00 and under 5000m guys from BTC that I can think of:

Matt Tegenkamp (12:58), Chris Solinsky (12:55), Lopez Lomong (12:58?), Woody Kincaid (12:58), Matt Centrowitz (13:00), Moh Ahmed (12:47), Grant Fisher (12:53), and Marc Scott (12:57). This is not something new. Jerry gets his guys to 13 flat or under if they can stay healthy on his routine. The only thing different now is how many he can get in this shape at one time.

Unlike all those other pros who don’t train…

Who else said something like that before, oh ya:

"Everybody wants to know what I am on," Armstrong says. "What am I on? I'm on my bike, busting my ass six hours a day.”

Being able to do harder workouts than anyone else is hardly proof they are t doping, in fact it points to the contrary.

Yeah, this is the point of the whole thread. How is he keeping more and more athletes healthy and performing at a high level.  Whats the secret sauce.

All pros train, but even if they're mostly on some grey area stuff if you have the best of the best picked out and working out hard they'll get fast 

I'm extremely disappointed that this wasn't about Bitcoin.

The amount of disrespect towards runners of other nations here are incredible. Just incredible.

OTC has a more medals, especially gold, than BTC. I'm not sure I agree with your last sentence. And that's just for the USA training groups.

Any training group Haile or Kenenisa or Kipchoge have been in is arguably higher quality as well.

They are very good at running fast in low-key (low-pressure) time-trial meets, I'll give you that. 

wish I could have been there to see Fisher run 12:53 though

I don’t get the idea that the BTC athletes get no training plan adjustments for each athlete. How much longer would that take - an hour a week? I think the overall training philosophy remains the same, but you have to make adjustments for each runner if they are going to peak at the right times, and push their adaptation response up to the max. 

I think if Fisher doesn’t run faster than 12:53 this Spring or Summer something is wrong.

Jerry is a top quartile coach, but not clearly the best.

The things you mentioned (driving athletes into the ground, being set in their ways and inflexible) all describe Schumacher.

He's basically just Martin Smith with better athletes and more money.

The training is by all accounts grueling and unadaptable. Keep up or get out.

And the coach appears to have maintained a passive/unaware stance on at least one athlete doping in order to thrive in the program.

Question: Have any athletes in the program spoken strongly against doping?

Name another pro group that had 6 13:00 or faster guys, and then another 10 sub 13:10.