We all know less can be more, but doing less is hard. We all hate to be out worked. Coach Tony Holler came to track and field coaching as an outsider and stumbled upon the benefits of minimalist training. On this week’s GAINcast he joins us to talk about how his training program came about, how it is put together, and additional thoughts on training speed.
One of the key principles of training is overload. The overload principle states that body system adaptation fails to occur without an overloading stimulus. In other words, we have to give the body a challenge beyond what we are accustomed to in order to adapt to a higher level of performance. Somewhere along the way coaches started to think that we can only find overload in the weight room. In reality, for some qualities that is the last place we want to look. Maximum speed sprinting, for example, can provide overload in many areas that no other exercises can match.
We often talking about sprinting and jumping as separate components of training, but when you look at the training of the world’s best sprinters and jumpers, there is more in common than different. Randy Huntington has worked with athletes ranging from world long jump record holder Mike Powell to Chinese 100-meter record holder Su Bingtian. He joins the podcast this week to discuss how he conceptualizes the two events and what his experience has been working in a new culture.
To celebrate our 200th episode of the HMMR Podcast, we’ve gone back and selected some top quotes from our past episodes. On Friday we posted the first 100. Below we continue the project with quotes from our second 100 episodes.
Back in April 2015 Nick Garcia and I started the HMMR Podcast. Last week, after more than four years of work, we published our 200th episode. During that time we’ve had on Olympic champions, world record holders, hall of famers. We’ve had on experts from a variety of backgrounds including coaching, strength training, sports science, nutrition, physical therapy, and more. Most importantly, we’ve learned a lot on the way and hope our listeners have too.
Speed is speed, right? Well, not exactly. The speed demands in team sports have some critical differences compared to track and field sprinting. Those had big ramifications in how speed should be trained for team sports. On this episode of the GAINcast, we take a look at training team speed.
The modern barbell is over a century old, but we are still exploring its use in training. Throughout June we took at the barbell, with topics ranging from lessons from top Olympic lifting coaches, to whether we even need the barbell at all. In total we produced 2 new podcast episodes and 7 new articles from 7 contributors and guests.
Vern Gambetta’s GAIN event brings together top practitioners from around the globe in a variety of fields. While the presentations are world-class, what makes it special is the side conversations that we strike up. We tried to recreate that on this week’s podcast by interviewing three faculty members live from GAIN: Angus Ross, Greg Gatz, and John Pryor.
The USATF Junior Championships took place over the weekend. The junior championships are a unique competition as it is open to all athletes born in 2000 or later, allowing many college freshman to also enter. Junior men also throw the 6-kilogram international implement, which is more than a pound heavier than the standard high school hammer. Joseph Benedetto, a freshman at Ole Miss, won the boy’s competition with Kyle Brown (West Forsyth, Cumming, GA) as the top high school finisher in fourth place. Mayyi Mahama won the girl’s comeptition. The Penn freshman has now added more than 20 feet to her personal best from high school. Samantha Kunza (Timberland, Wentzville, MO) was the top high school thrower in fifth place.
Earlier this week we posted part one of our interview with weightlifting coach John Thrush. Thrush has had a long and distinguished career coach national champions from the Pacific Northwest. In part one we looked at his own development as a coach and the two key elements of his coaching philosophy. In part two below we dive into weightlifting technique, and help athletes with the mental side of training.
