The Track and Field Performance Podcast

Dan Pfaff is widely regarded as one of the most influential track and field coaches of all-time with over 50 years of experience. 

His thought provoking insights on sports performance concepts always come with a lot of dept and in this episode, He spoke about the rationale for having a holistic knowledge base and how coaches can develop that. From there, we dove into debriefing throughout the season so that coaches can make the athlete aware of the overall objectives to facilitate 'smoother' sailing throughout the year.

The horizontal jumps is an area where Dan has had a lot of success coaching athletes like Greg Rutherford, Fabrice Lapierre, and Kareem Streete-Thompson to name a few. He described how he navigates complex issues like approach accuracy and take off mechanics. The final big theme of the discussion was the necessity for mental resilience so that athletes can perform under pressure. 

Thanks to Dan for coming and sharing his lifetime worth of wisdom

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Coaches Jeremy Lyons, Gerard O'Donnell, and Aideen Synott have created a high performing environment for sprinters in Ireland to thrive both collegiately and post-collegiately. Through years of hard work and collaboration, they've enabled the likes of Sophie Becker, Cillian Greene, and Jack Raftery to become Olympians, European medalists, and household names in Irish Athletics.

In this episode, Jeremy and Gerard began by discussing how the club came to be and the characteristics they look for in prospective athletes before diving deep into the details of their annual training plan and how they manage volume, intensity, and density throughout the year, but perhaps what is most impressive and noteworthy, is how they adapt when met with constraints and opportunities in season.

If you like learning from passionate coaches who think outside the box to get the most out of their athletes, look no further than this conversation -- thank you Jeremy and Gerard.

Instagram: Dublin_Sprint
Gerard's website: https://www.godspeed.ie/

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CEO of Altis and world class sprints coach Stu McMillan came back on the podcast to talk about the importance of pursuing what is interesting to you as an individual, the core features of high level sprinting, trialing new methods with your athletes in an informed way, and much more.

I hope you enjoy. Give Stu and Altis a follow if you haven't already.
-Instagram: FingerMash and Altis
-Altis Website: https://altis.world/

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Rolf Ohman is a coach and innovator with over 35 years of experience in global sports such as Track and Field; he was a high level decathlete before beginning his coaching career. 

Between 2016 and 2017, he served as Head Coach for the Dalian Olympic Sports Center before becoming the Assistant Head Coach under Randy Huntington for the Chinese National Team in Sprints and Jumps, he then moved to a  Head Coach role at the Hong Kong Sports Institute until the summer 2023. Now, Rolf is coaching athletes like Jacob Despard - one of Australia's hottest prospect in 100m. 

He is also the renowned creator of the 1080 Technology, including the revolutionary 1080 sprint device and 1080 quantum.  In this episode, he explained some of the key pillars of his training philosophy such as periodization, weight room, and plyometric exercises -- particularly for elite/highly trained athletes. 

Thanks Rolf for such a thorough insight into your years of hard work.

Follow Rolf: https://www.instagram.com/tailwindsquad

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Jim VanHootegem has over 20+ years of experience as a collegiate coach working at schools like Texas A&M, The University of Oklahoma, and Arkansas. He has achieved great success with athletes like Fabrice Lapierre and Julian Reid -- both who have achieved medals at World and European championships. 

In his career so far, he has guided his programs to 12 NCAA team championships and 27 conference team titles as well as 72 All-Americans as an event coach, and another 55 honorees as a head coach. He currently serves as the sprints and jumps coach at South Plains Community College in Texas.

In this episode, Jim spoke about the foundations of his coaching philosophy, essential technical elements in the horizontal jumps, setting expectations for athletes, and much more. 

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Very few coaches can say they've had five athletes run 1.44 or faster in the 800m. Joseph Deng and Peter Bol (among several others) have risen to the top of the event -- thanks to the guidance of Justin Rinaldi.

His group named 'Fast8TrackClub' not only highlights their aim, but it matches how they get there -- they run fast, all year round, but the devil is in the details, so in this episode, Justin unpacked his coaching philosophy which was born out of his own experience as an athlete, and the mistakes he made along the way.

Follow Justin and the Fast8TrackClub
-https://www.instagram.com/fast8trackclub/
-https://www.instagram.com/jrinaldi800
-https://twitter.com/jrinaldi800

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Sports and Exercise physiotherapist, to many of Australia's top track and field athletes, Sam Leslie, discusses his multi-layered approach to rehabilitating and reducing injuries as well as improving event specific performance.

Sam, who works out of MyPhysio Evolution, in Melbourne Australia, takes an evidence based approach to help establish timelines for the returning to full health and selecting methods that match the athletes characteristics and the current stage of the injury among other variables. He explains the contents and application of direction-based programming which is a focal point of his practice throughout this episode.

Lifestyle and stress management was also a feature of the discussion, Sam is currently developing an educational resource and application called 'Peak' to empower athletes in managing their health and performance.

High Performance athletes Sam works with: Kathryn Mitchell (Javelin), Chris Mitrevski (LJ), Jake Penny (100m and relay), Jacob Despard (10mm and relay), Tess Kirsopp Cole (800m), Tori West (Heptathlon), Tayleb Willis (110mH), Mackenzie Mielczarek (Javelin)

You can find more about Sam and his work through his Instagram (below) and his articles on Simpli Faster:
-@samleslie_sportsphysio
-https://simplifaster.com/articles/author/samleslie/

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Daniel Davey is the Founder of DaveyNutrition and has over 15 years experience as a Performance Nutritionist, 9 of which were spent in elite sport environments with Dublin GAA and Leinster Rugby. 

We sat down to discuss topics like fueling and recovery based on individual demands like event groups in Athletics as well as creating processes to make nutrition feel like a fun and sustainable experience. 

Daniel has been around several players who have been in the conversation of 'best in the world' at what they do. In this episode, we spent a lot of time talking about the behaviors and routines of elite athletes.

Find more Daniels content and services via: https://www.daveynutrition.com/ and his Instagram: @daveynutrition

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Coach to Olympic, Paralympic, World, European and Commonwealth Medalists, Steve Fudge has not just harnessed the talent of elite level prospects, but over the years he has developed a system that is building  world class sprinters from a very earl stage in their career.

In this episode, Steve spoke about how the initial movements at the start can impact the acceleration, the transition and max velocity 'phases'. When executed well there is fluid continuity from one step to another instead of erratic or disjointed movement.

Steve carefully explains his methods for developing the technical and physical qualities for the short sprint events alongside managing the factors that come with individual athletes that govern their application. 

Thank you Steve for sharing such valuable information to all the listeners!

Streaming on all major podcasting platforms. 

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John is a well-known coach, content creator, and writer on all things athletics, but perhaps most pertinently, he has a massive aptitude for horizontal jumps training.

In his first few years of coaching he guided two men under the age 20 jump over 7.70m in the long jump -- one became European Junior Champion. Since that time, he has guided several more athletes to jump 7.70+, 6.30+ (for women) and16.20m in the mens triple jump.

John believes that specificity can be achieved early in the winter and over training is often a major hinderance to long term development. Designing winter training that is both progressive and specific is what our conversation revolved around.

Topics:
-Specific fitness in the winter training plan
-Using undulating periodization
-Speed development
-Over reaching and peaking
-Developing the long jump takeoff (physiologically and technically)

Follow John on Social Media:
-Instagram: instagram.com/johnshepherdwritertrackcoach
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Johnshepherdtrackcoach

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