I love this hand written note from Charlie. ( Charles Merrick Francis is CMF on top of page/ my mom made this letter head for him) Charlie was very creative. I wanted him to do an entire sketch book of drawings of drills and exercises because they were fun and hand done and they seemed to jump off the page.
I did a lot of medicine ball training. A few of the drills are shown above in his stick person drawings. The bulk of the explosive med ball work was performed in the spring and in the fall. These exercises illustrated above are shown live in video in GPP or General Preparation Phase ( for all sports) here. I am performing the drills in GPP video just after giving birth to our son born in 1999.
Charlie wrote these speed training workouts for me at some point when I was training on my own in California in the mid 1990's. We used to go to the Bay area and stay with his room mate from college John and Marilyn in Palo Alto. This would be a small training camp for me and Charlie and I treasured our visits with this lovely family.
The hand written note gives you an idea of some typical speed workouts for 100mh in the spring before I would have started competing. Charlie did not like it when he was not there to watch all my training so it did not happen often but I kept the drawings as I thought they were interesting.
Thank goodness we started this website and thank goodness we have so much information regarding how Charlie coached. All information doesn't not have to be graphed and typed and perfect. Sharing information was something Charlie was extraordinary about and many coaches, parents and athletes across the globe have him to thank for his life long generosity.
"Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds"
Albert Einstein
Cheers,
Coach Angela Coon