Sprinter Training
Usain Bolt vs. Latif Thomas
Hey everybody. Latif Thomas here and today I want to talk again about sprint training but I want to talk about in really contrast something ha happened to me this past weekend. This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the puma street meet that was held in Boston, Massachusetts. It was an awesome event.
I'm going to talk about it and show a little bit of footage later on this week. Now, being as cool as I am, I had the opportunity to work security for Usain Bolt.
Usain Bolt is a puma guy and he was there and it was a Jamaican flavored kind of meet and it was very cool. If you don't know who Usain Bolt is somehow, Usain Bolt is the fastest sprinter and man who ever lived. He has the world record in the 100. He has the world record in the 200 and world record in, quite honestly I did not think would be broken until I was an old man at best and he's a member of the Jamaican four by 100‑meter world record team.
Those guys were here. Some of those sprinters were here this weekend for the meet. Some of the Jamaican sprinters here because USA track and field not quite doing these kind of things but again I talk about that later. Really what had happened during the course of the week or course of the day is we're hanging there, we're trying to keep people away from Usain and people are coming over and telling me these ridiculous stories about why they need autographs and pictures and you send somebody off and escort them across the line, they'd sneak around and come back. It was actually impressive how sneaky and rude people got. But I understand that. Totally understand that.
So anyway at the end of the afternoon, Usain starts getting tired and doesn't really want to be there anymore so he decides to get down. He's gonna leave and go take off. So he goes over and grabs a bike, a puma bike there for one of the events so all of us on security detail whatever you want to call it. We all hop on a bike and we're off and running riding down the streets of Boston so I got a little bit of footage of that, and I hope you will watch the entire video. We're riding and again I've talked about this before this is not a new analogy that I'm talking credit for but I think in a lot of ways mechanics not exactly but we can repair are a lot like riding a bicycle.
So we're out riding bikes a bunch of us chases Usain around and some other Jamaican Olympians, all of a sudden Usain would just start pedaling and take off. Of course he's the fastest man who ever lived so we can't keep up with him. He's just out. I got to thinking about how that applies to our sprint training. When you think about riding a bike just like running, riding a bike the good thing about that is from a mechanical strand point is you stay in a pretty efficient position because the bike pedals are on a fixed path. Ultimately what you want to do if you want to ride the bike fast, is pedal faster so how do you do that?
Well, it's essentially the same thing I talk about for a sprinter. Teaching athletes how to run fast and that is the more force when you're pedaling, the more force you apply down, the faster you're gonna go. Even when you are not talking about sprint training, the more force you apply on a consistent basis, the faster you're gonna go. The more force you can apply in subsequently shorter periods of time, the faster you're going to go.
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That was the case with Usain as he was riding the bike because he is more explosive and faster. He can apply more force in shorter periods of time and get his bike going faster. Because of the strength and power, he can continue to pedal faster and leave everybody in had the dust. Again, if you know from ride ago bike, at some point when you're riding a bike, you reach a point where you can't pedal any fasters. You can't apply any more force. You're at top speed. In order to maintain that you just keep pedaling. It's like floating in sprinting. Riding a bike and sprinting is a lot of the same principles applied force application.
A lot of times coaches say oh, you can't teach speed or you can't make a sprinters faster. Now, I make a career out of disproving that idea, but here's the important thing when we compare this analogy of Usain is insanely taking off on these bikes is I'm pretty fast. I can run fairly fast. Certainly faster than the vast majority of people out there. I didn't have a prayer catching these cats. There was no chance. From a sprint training standpoint, it's really not that complicated. It's one of those things you tend to make more complicated than they are. People always say you can't train speed. Well, think about it like this. If you can get an athlete to apply more force to the ground in less time, they're gonna get faster. Doesn't matter what sport.
Doesn't matter how much coaching experience you have. Doesn't matter what you do. If you can get them to apply more force into the ground in less time spending less time on the ground, they're gonna run faster. How do you do that? Well, there are lots of ways you can do that. You don't have to be a master coach or a collegiate athlete or Usain Bolt to figure that out. All you have to do is understand what you're trying to do. The first thing you need to improve the mechanics.
Like I said, when you ride a bike those pedals are on a fixed path. When you're running, kids got all types of craziness. Some kids got too much backside mechanics which when you watch them run, all the leg action seems to be taking place behind their body. Some kids got too much front side mechanics. All the action their pawing and reaching and slapping at the ground. Everything seems to be taking place in front of the body. Some kids especially male athletes are what I call ice skaters. They have such tight hips but they don't look like they're getting front side or backside mechanics or even getting their feet off the ground. It doesn't look like they're spinning their wheels because they're so tight. So one thing that you can do to improve and make your athletes faster is improve their running mechanics. Get them on that fixed path like riding a bike. You do that by teaching speed drills.
Now, you have to know what speed drills are supposed to look like and what the point are. What the point of those drills are. So I highly recommend that you go out and teach your athlete speed drills regardless of the sport. Now, if you're a little bit overweight or a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of teaching them, well, go out and get a program like complete speed training for example.
If you can't do the exercise yourself or the drills yourself, that's not an excuse not to do them. Give them to your captains. Give them to your son or daughter. Give them to your team leaders. Have them watch how to do the speed drills. Learn how to do the speed drills then they can teach your other kids on your team or teach themselves and you can just spot check they're actually doing it. Fixed kids running mechanics. Get them on that running path like riding a bike. They're gonna be more efficient in applying force to the ground. Instead of formulating out in front of them or behind them or whatever. Getting stronger. The more force they can apply the better. If you can teach your athletes to apply more force so they can pedal faster longer, they're gonna get better so how do you do that?
Well, you put your sprinters in the weight room. You get them stronger. If you don't know the best ways to do that again, get your hands on a program like speed training that's gonna show you what lifts to do and what order and what reps and how to teach them. Not comfortable teaching in the weight room, give it to your seniors, your captains, your upper class men, your leaders. They can learn the stuff. It's not that complicated.
You got athletes who are really tight and inflexible and can't figure it out. They can improve their flexibility and mobility through hurdles and other things. Improving athletic flexibility is going to get them on that fixed path and allow them to run faster regardless of sport. Regardless of age or skill level. Regardless of your coaching experience. You don't have to be again an Olympic coach to be able to do this stuff. It's very simple. If you do these things, you improve their mechanics so they're more efficient and better mechanical position. You make them stronger so they can apply more force to the ground and longer. You improve their flexibility so they can actually get through the ranges of motion they need if they want to be successful athletes regardless of sport. Then you're gonna have faster athletes. That's really the key to the whole thing. Having a consistent approach, a unified approach to coaching and working with athletes. You do that you're gonna get better results. I promise you that. Call it whatever. Get your hand on complete speed training this will solve your problems because it shows you step by step how to do all these things and get those athletes on that fixed path so they can pull away from the crowd when we're talking about riding a bike or running down the track, running down a football field, soccer field, basketball court. Whatever it is. That's the key to do it. That's how you get faster or be able to apply for force to the ground. That's not something I learned so much but something that became so much more factual and obvious and blatant to me and watching Usain Bolt ride a bike.
Now, the truth is Usain Bolt wasn't doing it to be fast or act fast or be lightening fast. Usain Bolt fastest human being ever to live, the reality is the kid really just wanted to ride as fast as he could so he could clam on the brakes and l
ay a huge patch of rubber ‑‑ tire rubber a skid mark and then admire his handy work. Repeatedly that's what he was doing. He was having a good time doing it as were his friends. It's not always about being fast with these guys. They're just regular people. What I want to do now is share with you just some random footage I took on this flip camera of hue san and us riding around. It's not to sell anything. It's not him riding crazy fast or anything. It's just some footage of the world's fastest human that you will never get to see anywhere else. It's random. It starts and stops. I'm riding a bike so it's not gonna be industrial magic special affects here. But if you're a track guy and you like sort of seeing what regular what famous people are like sort of acting like regular people I think it would be a cool video to watch. I've got some other footage and pictures I want to share a little bit later on in the week and give you my take on the street meet where I'm gonna talk about why track and field need to be privatized and USA track and field needs to be disadvantage or dissolved or something. No offense to people possibly.
This is the conclusion I've come to so ride a bike is like running fast guys. If you can pedal fast and apply force to the ground, you want to ride fast around your bike, you can drive your feet down into the ground, you can run fast regardless of sport. Keep those things in mind, your athletes will get faster. It's physically impossible not to get faster. It's not that complicated guys I'm telling you.
Every day I'm impressed by the feed back that my athletes can give me during our sprint training simply by just talking about most stuff and thinking it through. Less and less as a coach provide answers to athletes and now only ask more questions unstill they provide their own answers now I got kids teaching kids hurdles. Teaching kids blocks. Teaching kids speed work. Teaching kids how to lift weights in the weight room. It's not rocket science but if you keep doing the same things you've always done, you're gonna keep getting the same results. Trust me, I can look at our legalist in track and see how much faster the times are now than they were a few years ago. I know that I can't afford to keep doing the same things that were done. Of course I would not do that but coaches who do are gonna get left behind. Programs, athletes, so again, it's your choice of course. You can continue to do the same things get those results. Maybe you're satisfied with those results. I know I'm never satisfied with results no matter how many titles my athletes win.
Get your hands on that now let's take a couple minutes and just look at some Usain Bolt riding around town kind of video. It's pretty random but some of you will appreciate. Got comments, questions, leave them below as always. Thanks for your time. I'll be back a little bit later and tell you what I thought about this puma street meet because to attend another one you're gonna have to live in Europe. Think they're gonna be in London, Paris, Zurich I think are the other three puma street meets they're gonna have this year. If you're one of my European listeners, you're gonna be in good shape. If you're a American and particularly live in new England and you did not attend this and you're a track person, shame on you. Shame on you. Okay. So let's look at some footage.
