Great Gifts
Garmin Forerunner 305 |
 Arguably the most advanced training aid on the market. Monitor your speed, pace, distance and also your heart rate and use a series of features designed to help you get the most from your training.
Price £255
More Info
|
Hilly Twin Skin Anklet |
 Two layered technical socks to keep your keep comfortable for mile after mile.
Price £8.95
More Info
|
Ultralife Detox |
 Ultralife Detox is one of the most effective cleansing and detoxification products available. It has been scientifically developed to improve digestion, bowel function and eliminate toxins.
Price £9.25
More Info
|
Garmin Forerunner 205 |
 Use cutting edge technology to monitor your training with this speed distance system. It does far more than tell you how far and how fast you have run!
Price £200
More Info
|
Hilly Runners Pouch |
 Versatile running pack suitable for carrying a range of items such as a mobile phone/iPod/mp3 player and plus larger items in the main compartment. Price £17.50
More Info
|
Ultralife Max |
 The ultimate sports nutrition and energy drink, combining bioactive vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, antioxidants, ginseng and other potent nutrients for the very best in sports nutrition!
Price £ 12.55
More Info
|
|
Elite coaching special - Clyde Hart coach to Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner
The learning process
Clyde has always been a scholar of coaching and looked to learn and improve.
He said: "I thought, 'There has got to be a better way to train the 400m people. I am not training people to produce Olympians, I am doing it to produce a team for the university, our job is to produce a good collegiate team.
"Talking to coaches around the world I came up with the best things people are doing to train 400m people. We have cleaned it up here and there and learned a bit. But basically the programme we use is the same as 30 years ago but a bit better. We have got it better. The rest factor has changed because we are learning all the time.”
The system
Clyde has developed a highly successful framework that leads to success: "Virtually every Monday we are going to do 200ms. In our system we have a year round programme. We do get some kids who have been playing football. One ran 45.1sec - he'd played football all Fall and I got him in the January.
"We start in the fall. Our college season is on until June - about six weeks to two months out from here.
"From September to December is basic training. The four to five weeks up to October they are on the grass areas, running ideally on a slight hill. They build basic conditioning with aerobic work. Aerobic ability is important. The 400m is not just about anaerobic - that view is antiquated.
"From what I have learned in the last 30 years I am not learning much new knowledge but my knowledge is being reinforced. Coaches today are not smarter than in the past but they have a bigger vocabulary. We used to do ‘related work’ - now we do ‘plyometrics’, everything has a label to it and science proves what we're doing.”
Clyde believes the principles of training are the same for many events: "I trained Michael Johnson like I trained a four minute miler. A four minute miler was doing a lot of the same things Michael Johnson was - a lot of the same things in training but more of them.
"Everything in the programme is based on progression or regression.”
This gives Clyde his first ‘golden rule’: "The best coaching advice I have ever had is 'Go from quantity to quality'. That is for anything you ever do for a sprinter, quarter miler, miler or whoever. You get a base of quantity and go to quality.
"Right now [October 11] we are doing quantity - 30min running each day. That could be 6 x 5min run or 2 x 15min run, running some stadium steps and plyometrics. They are going to be in good shape.
"On Monday is 200ms. Then for two days a week for six weeks we are on the grass doing over distance work. We want to keep the oxygen uptake there. Some kids have never gone beyond 200m but they are going to do some half mile runs.
"I'm not interested in how fast they run their half mile runs. I'm interested in what they come through 400m in during their half mile runs. I put them down a cone at a quarter mile. I tell them what to go through in.”
Clyde is very clear that ‘training’ is just that – it is where you get fitter, not where you prove yourself.
"We race when they fire the gun, we train to train.”
So there are not big hang ups on what the training times are at this stage: "I say, 'Come through [400m] in 70sec and then see what you can finish in'. Some of them die, some finish strongly. Then you say come through in 69 or 68. When you have got the point where they are hitting half a mile comfortably instead of saying, 'We are now going to do 1100m' you say ‘It's 750m’. Then they come through faster. You don't have to tell them to do that. They give it a bit more as they know they are not running as far. Then you cut it to 700m.
"By the time we are taking them to train on the track I want them to be running a 600m. Then we stay at that until they have got their 400m time down.
"In March-April-May we get down to 450m. That's still 50m further than they will run in a race.
"From March we never run more than 450m. I give them 50m more than they need. They may be do two of them with a 10min break. Each one is in 57-58sec. We tried 15min and then cut it to 14min, 13min...I found that they could handle 10min. Michael could handle 6min to 8min rest. At his best he would run 2 x 450m in 50sec with 8min rest.
"The longest workout we have ever done - not counting warm up and warm down - would be under 20min, I think we have never worked more than 20min. That's not counting the Fall phase.”
To comment on this article in our forum click here.
|
Services
Looking for a Buddy? |
If you want some encour- agement, support, and banter to help you stick to those New Year's Resolutions we have just the thing – Sports Fitness Partners.
You can swap messages with kindred spirits through our secure system which means you can check their profile before accepting their messages, don’t have to share your email and can 'bar' people at any time.
Just click here to register
|
|
