What is your opinion of Alberto Salazar as a coach? (Read 1632 times)

hey DP,

 

Very good quotes from Salazar. Difference between him and myself? What he describes to what you "should" be able to do, I teach how to do....

 

What you're supposed to look like is vastly inferior than describing the biomechanic process to mimic it perfectly. He was describing a picture, sure, but nowhere does he give the instruction for how to do it...

 

And to restate, overstriding is the limits of humans and horses, and the correction for training a horse not to overstride is no different than teaching a human how to do it. And of course cats don't do it at all...

 

That's why cats can stalk. Watch a cat stalk, and you'll see their lead step far out in front of them, not landing under their hips.

 

Besides, forward lean is what caused pronation, not to mention shortens stride length...

 

So you agree salazar knows what he is talking about, he just doesn't ezplain it well...yet his runners run like he is describing. You're issue is once again about having it only in the language you use. #FTW for salazar and vicariously me eg rupp winning for salazar in american 2 mile. Tada!

 Too much lateral sway in Rupp technique, along with too much pronation. No intoed form in his technique at all... His left hand is coming across his chest much further than his right arm in swing, which is a byproduct of pronation, no symmetry in arm swing and therefore no symmetry in leg swing either.  He's landing inline quite well, but centerline of his knees are on the outside of the centerline of his feet, wich will strain his IT Band.

 

Not to mention how little publicity he's received for it, even here in Portland, Oregon. Nice record, but no marketing bump from it.

 

Could have been faster...

 

It's called exhaustion.

Could have been faster. 

 

 

 

 

is that sj in the saddle? ...or under it?

I think I've posted this here earlier but, in the world of sprinting, the trend has been moving toward what they call "two-line" landing technique.  This is probably because they are moving their legs so quickly.  I've seen one book written on this technique applied to distance running.  Personally I don't think this is a good idea for distance running.  I think, though I don't have the statistics, I'd say more than 80% of us already land on one line when we run; perhaps even when we walk.  When you stand on one foot, there's no way you can stand on the side; you'd HAVE TO have your foot placed right directly underneath your Center of Gravity.  That's simple "physics"...or whatever it is!! ;o)  Our legs are sticking out from the side of our hips and this would create torque that is one of the main causes of pronation.  I always say that pronation is a normal phenomena.  Over-pronation may not be a favorable; but we all more or less pronate (unless you supinate).  This happens whether you are fast or slow.  In fact, the slower you are, you probably have more of a tendency to do this because of the reason I pointed out above.  Here's a good image:

Maybe if you can't really see it well with Peter (#466), John Davies (#467) is a good one.  You can see his left foot is directly underneath his C of G.  He's pronating because these guys (middle distance runner sprinting in the final 100m) are landing on the ball of their foot and, as they do that, because their body is still moving forward, there's a natural tendency for the heel to roll inward/forward slightly.  Here's another good one:

Of course this is not quite a frontal image so you can't just say this but...  You can see the left foot of Reiko Tosa (#F1) is directly under her C of G.  This is why there are higher likelihood of female runners getting over-pronation because of their wider hips.  Here's another interesting thing; right foot of Rita Jeptoo (#F5) is rolling slightly inward.  This is the phase when her heel is just coming off from the ground.  As this happens and your foot is getting prepared for "push-off" phase, we all (more than 90% of us) push off at the base of our big toe.  This creates higher tendency of forefoot rolling inward as well simply because of the higher pressure point.  Oh, Rita, Rita, Rita...  If only I didn't help her out because her coach, Renato Canova, had some visa issue and got stuck at Italy and couldn't make it to Boston, Reiko would have at least finished 2nd, not 3rd...and I would have had a higher pay-day!! ;o)

 

Talking about a form is interesting but it really doesn't mean a thing.  Remember Bill Rodgers' famous flapping right hand?  There's a reason why runners do that sort of thing--Reiko always swing her right hand out toward the end of the marathon.  You can't think about a good form; your form is the products of many different factors such as structure and muscle balance (or imbalance)...  Jim Ryun used to swing his head side to side but supposedly it's because he couldn't hear well with his one ear.  Our head coach at Hitachi used to always talk about straightening your back leg.  That used to drive me nuts because, yelling at the runners to straighten their back leg won't help much (except maybe scaring them to run at all); to do so, you probably be better off to introduce something like hill bounding.  

 

As some one else said, it is rather unfortunate because this thread could have been very interesting.  There are actually lots of interesting, and could-be useful information here but, simply because of lack of appropriate presentation, it seems to be buried behind...  I know of 3 individuals in Japan, and I know 2 of them personally, who had come up with rather outrageously new concept.  One guy, I think I've talked about him here at RA before, is a martial art master and he's the one who talks about how Paula Radcliffe "runs like a dolphin".  He has come up with this really unique strengthening and flexibility training.  He had written a dozen books--I have most of them because his spokesperson is a good friend of mine and she always sends me his books--he's got DVD out, you can even search his name at YouTube (his name is Hideo Takaoka).  Many elite athletes uses his unique warm-up exercises, Yoko Shibui one of them.  And Ichiro being another.  Another guy is the one who preaches Namba running technique.  It's nuts to think about moving the arm and the leg of the same side at the same time (right foot and right arm swinging forward together...).  But he coaches Shingo Suetsugu on this concept and he won the bronze medal in 200m at Paris World Championships--he was the ONLY Asian flat-sprinter (hurdle not included) to ever have won a medal in Olympics/World Champs.  The last guy, and this is the one I don't know, Yuji Kobayashi, had come up with a very unique weight training machine; literally going BACKWARDS of traditional thinking of how to apply the load.  He had even come up with his own weight training machine.  Many elite athletes swear by this; Ichiro has this machine, my friend's team, Mitsui-Sumitomo, has this machine as well.  He said that, you work on this machine for 15-minutes and you can sprint flat-out without any warm-up.  I guess a common denominator of all these 3 people are; they all shared their unique ideas; published it, and the results proved their efficacy.  Of course, none of them mention anything about Kenyan women so I don't know how good they are... ;o)

Our body-brain mechanisms are incredibly quick, precise, and automatic.  With every step we take, all the parts of our body are adjusting and adapting.  If the footfall is moved to the medial or lateral side, then the legs, hips, torso, arms, and head must adjust.  Well and wonderful. We run the way our bodies and subconscious minds deem best.  Seems to me that to change running form based on a twenty minute coaching session is fraught with peril.  A significant change in one aspect of our form will probably be asking all parts of our bodies to do things they are not prepared to do.  Yes, we can improve our form, but I would expect (and desire) the changes to be very incremental, over a period of weeks or months.

 

 

Totally agree.

Our body-brain mechanisms are incredibly quick, precise, and automatic.  With every step we take, all the parts of our body are adjusting and adapting.  If the footfall is moved to the medial or lateral side, then the legs, hips, torso, arms, and head must adjust.  Well and wonderful. We run the way our bodies and subconscious minds deem best.  Seems to me that to change running form based on a twenty minute coaching session is fraught with peril.  A significant change in one aspect of our form will probably be asking all parts of our bodies to do things they are not prepared to do.  Yes, we can improve our form, but I would expect (and desire) the changes to be very incremental, over a period of weeks or months.

This is a good article about the "attempt" to change runner's form: http://www.runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=20506  I know both of them and I talked to Greg about this quite extensively and, like you said, it ain't easy and it ain't just "form".  It involves a lot more than just "form".  Paige struggled with this a lot more than most people realize.  In other words, it's not that "easy" in real life.

2) Racewalkers swivel their hips in order to lengthen their stride, this automatically puts their footsteps in a single track, or very close to it. This is not something I have observed in runners to anywhere near the same extent.

A point related to this: there's a limit to how fast one can racewalk.  Even for those animals that have multiple gaits, there are "tipping points" where the animal changes between them based on efficiency or just the ability to go at the desired speed.  There's a reason a horse (voluntarily) changes from walk to trot to canter to gallop, instead of just using its "most efficient" form all the time.  This is the reason I couldn't get interested in running performance improvements through animal form mimicry, despite trying the masking tape deal on a treadmill.

 

To his credit, Salazar not only trains his athletes well, but to the extent he focuses on form, it seems to be on running form, and further on race-pace form.

Last week I was running my workout at the track, and at the same time there was a high school team there working out. This must have been one of their first track practices. The coach put heavy emphasis, all workout long, on proper footstrike. The coach had the runners lined up and would watch them and "correct" them if their heels seemed to be hitting the ground. It struck me as very odd since there was so much else that could be improved upon--and there seemed to me to be no conception by this coach that certain runners may be striking differently because of different strengths, weaknesses, balance issues, etc.

 

This was just one slice of practice, so I probably shouldn't be so judgmental. But I thought, "Damn the marketers do have an effect. They are ruining my sport, making it about trivialities and amplifying insignificant details."

 

Those kids needed to learn how to run hard, how to pace themselves. They needed to get fit, and they needed to learn how to compete. Sure, they also needed to learn proper form, but no one was talking to them about that; they weren't doing drills. Instead, they were running back and forth over 40m and consciously thinking about their footstrike. I seriously can't think of a worse way to introduce kids to the important elements of running or of teaching kids to run naturally. But this is what we are getting because of shoe company marketing.

 

This thread is kinda like that track practice. 19 pages of running back and forth, thinking about inconsequential trivialities. It's a great way to waste time, but a bad way to make progress.