Dwain Chambers Q & A

[robin1]

Dwain Chambers gave a Q & A session at my university today, and while most of the questions were about a topic that can't be discussed here, I thought I'd post some points from what he said in regards to his training methodology.

He said that he is hoping to run both the 100m and the 200m at the World Championships this year and is thus doing more endurance based work than usual. I asked him whether he follows a short to long or long to short approach, and his answer was "definitely long to short". He said he recently ran 400m in 48.5s in training. He did, however, mention that he is trying to hit certain split times in training using infrared speedgates, and the one split time he mentioned was 6.3s for 60m. This is in contrast to another statement he made, which is that he's only running at 75% in training. I assume that this is referring to perceived effort rather than time, but it still seems to me to be an understatement. He also mentioned that quality is more important to him than quantity, especially as he is getting older. I asked him if, from the time he spent with Glen Mills in Jamaica, he can explain to me why the Jamaicans are so dominant in the sprints. He couldn't really, but mentioned good funding and a great talent pool. He also mentioned that his fitness improved greatly from football and rugby training, and that he still uses some of the training modalities from these sports in his sprint training. The examples he gave were repeated accelerations and fast changes in direction.

It would be interesting to hear from anyone who’s actually observed his training, so we can get a better idea of the programme he follows.

He was asked about his previous statement that he thinks he will be able to challenge Usain Bolt, and his explanation was that he has analysed Usain’s runs and concluded that Usain has a larger stride length but lower stride frequency than himself, and that Usain gets into his running stride 20m into the race as opposed to his own 30m. Over the last five months, he said, he has thus worked hard on improving his stride length in order to be able to get to Bolt’s level. He stated that his 6.5 over 60m equates to 9.84 over the 100m and that he will be able to run 9.7 if he can get his 60m time down to 6.4 (I didn’t have the audacity to ask him how he has come to these conclusions).

I hope this is of interest to some of you.

[earle]

Interesting stuff, thanks man.

[TopCat]

As you can see he talks about doing long to short, though clearly the high intensity part of his training is short to long or at least SHORT & LONG. Again he is working on endurance - which I would term work capacity or general conditioning. Those 400m reps are super slow for someone running 10.0 so again it is tempo even if it is at the more intensive end of the spectrum. Maybe if he partitioned some of his work up a little more methodically he would run faster? Who knows.

Interesting what he says about stride length. For those of us at the podium project this year that was the consensus of the coaches there. To beat Bolt you must improve stride length - especially for Dix. Pity it isn't as simple as that! As though the two are completely separate things that can be improved in isolation. The question you should have asked there is what are you doing to improve stride length specifically?

Thanks for posting. Very interesting to hear this stuff.

[robin1]

The question you should have asked there is what are you doing to improve stride length specifically?

The chairperson only allowed me to ask one question during the open session, but I talked to Dwain one-on-one afterwards, which is where I asked the questions I wrote about. After a few minutes of talking to him, I was asked to step aside to give a chance to those lining up behind me to ask their questions.

There's a video on youtube of him doing the stick drill, so maybe that's one way of him trying to improve his stride length. Since his stride already borders on overstriding at times, however, I'm not sure how much room for improvement there is before he will get himself into trouble.

[Nikoluski]

In his CFTS, Charlie says about Ben: "The importance of reduced contact time is demonstrated through Ben Johnson's career. From 1981 to 1988 his average stride length remained constant (46.6 strides per 100 metres) yet his time improved from 10.25 seconds to 9.79 seconds solely due to increased stride frequency." Comments?

[Charlie Francis]

As you can see he talks about doing long to short, though clearly the high intensity part of his training is short to long or at least SHORT & LONG. Again he is working on endurance - which I would term work capacity or general conditioning. Those 400m reps are super slow for someone running 10.0 so again it is tempo even if it is at the more intensive end of the spectrum. Maybe if he partitioned some of his work up a little more methodically he would run faster? Who knows.

Interesting what he says about stride length. For those of us at the podium project this year that was the consensus of the coaches there. To beat Bolt you must improve stride length - especially for Dix. Pity it isn't as simple as that! As though the two are completely separate things that can be improved in isolation. The question you should have asked there is what are you doing to improve stride length specifically?

Thanks for posting. Very interesting to hear this stuff.

It is alway disturbing to hear people run off with the experience of the winner du jour and claim everyone must do the same thing. Matching stride length with a long legged 6ft 5 in guy is just plain retarded!!

[Charlie Francis]

In his CFTS, Charlie says about Ben: "The importance of reduced contact time is demonstrated through Ben Johnson's career. From 1981 to 1988 his average stride length remained constant (46.6 strides per 100 metres) yet his time improved from 10.25 seconds to 9.79 seconds solely due to increased stride frequency." Comments?

In the forum review, this is addressed as the AVERAGE stride length remained constant but the distribution changed with more power/less contact time.

[ESTI]

It is alway disturbing to hear people run off with the experience of the winner du jour and claim everyone must do the same thing. Matching stride length with a long legged 6ft 5 in guy is just plain retarded!!

My thinking exactly. I predict an influx of stride ladders being used!

[Charlie Francis]

My thinking exactly. I predict an influx of stride ladders being used!

What else is disturbing is the interview itself. What the hell is he talking about here. Everything is completely contradictory.
And as for incorporating direction change work from football- WTF is that about?
Along with the stride ladders, might we expect tires next?

[flettotenko]

In the forum review, this is addressed as the AVERAGE stride length remained constant but the distribution changed with more power/less contact time.

I thought 2008 was the first year powell hit 44 strides, running full tilt to the line (monaco9.82, gateshead9.87, lausanne9.72, stuttgart9.87).

Then I stumbled on the powell 10.05ParisWC2003Heat9-100m video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17ZOT...e=channel_page
He went 44 strides in this 10.05 run, apparently running full tilt to line, way back in 2003 with a lesser built vessel. 2004, 2005, 2006 he seemed to run slightly shorter strides with more frequency. This past year 2008 he seems to have come back to this natural stride length from 2003.