Dan Pfaff’s name is hardly foreign for readers of this blog. As the head coach at Altis, the new name for the ever-growing World Athletics Center, he currently coaches dozens of athletes and helps run a successful coaching education program. With success producing champions in nearly every track and field event, he is without a doubt one of the top coaches in our sport. This year is no exception as Pfaff was Mr. Long Jump at the world championships taking in two medals and three top-four performances. He guided Fabrice Lapierre to silver and Greg Rutherford to gold. Pfaff helped Rutherford capture Olympic Gold in 2012 while working in the UK and starting working with him again recently. In the women’s long jump Christabel Nettey broke the Canadian record on several occasions this year and placed fourth at the World Championships, just two inches from the podium.
In addition to being a top coach and having a wicked mustache, Dan is also a top educator and a person I am always looking to learn more from. When Dan told me he would be in Switzerland for 48 hours for the Lausanne Diamond League meet earlier this summer, I booked time off work and bought my train ticket. I’m not a big fan of the Diamond League for how they treat the throwers, but there some few advantages to having two Diamond League meets in the immediate vicinity.

Two years ago he joined us for a training talk about strategies for coaching technique, training intensity, and defining key performance indicators. When he came to town this time I wanted to both take a look at his training in more detail and take a step back. To start with we talked about his in-season programming and his three-day rollover method, which I have written about a little before. In the second part of the interview, which will be posted later this week, we then took a step back to discuss his training philosophy and how he takes that to create a plan. Read more