400/800 Times to Walk On at D1 School?

Training
41

[quote]batman730 wrote:

[quote]Airtruth wrote:

[quote]batman730 wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]batman730 wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
just how FAST you can get is a different question,
[/quote]
No. It’s the most important question. [/quote]

So, if you’re not genetically predisposed to being elite an sprinter there’s no point in even trying to improve your foot speed cause either you have it or you don’t?

That line of thinking makes no sense to me. You can’t teach someone to be a superfreak, but you can, in many cases, absolutely teach them to be a hell of a lot faster than they may “naturally” be. To believe otherwise is self defeating, unless you happen to be a superfreak.

[/quote]
You miss the point. The OP was asking about running at a D1 school, i.e., running competitively. It’s not about getting faster than you are but getting fast enough to compete. Anyone can get faster. Anyone can get stronger. Not everyone, and in fact almost no one, can get fast enough to compete at a high level by simply “learning.” How many kids started to “learn” a sport at a young age then continued to “learn” through HS then, when it came time to go to college, had to stick to learning in the classroom because they just weren’t good enough to practice that sport anymore? [/quote]

My point was more geared toward your statement that “speed can’t be taught” period. In my opinion and that of many others more qualified than myself, that statement is simply untrue. Furthermore, that line of thinking is extremely damaging for the long term development of many, if not the overwhelming majority of athletes. My own athletic development was definitely negatively impacted by this widespread belief. And yes, I am a white guy. I am also faster in my 30’s than I ever was in my teens and 20’s, although I am certainly by no means fast enough to run D1 track. I may never have been, but I could definitely have gone further in my other sports if someone had taught my 14 year old self how to be fast instead of just telling me to run.
[/quote]

I’m a black guy and my athletic development was negatively impacted by that belief in the opposite way. Having to supposedly rely on natural talent all I knew how to do was try harder. Now at 34 when I focus I’m faster then I ever was but I feel like I would’ve been a great athlete had I learned these things at 14
[/quote]

I know what you’re saying. That’s why I feel compelled to pipe up whenever I hear someone toss out the whole “speed can’t be taught” line.

When I played football in HS (OLB), I was definitely not the fastest kid on the field. I could hit and move well and I had great size for my age and a good work ethic and intensity, but I just wasn’t that fast flat out. We never did timed stuff, but I would have been really lackluster.

Flash forward to me at 32 years of age I end up involved in a program does speed/fitness testing. I have LEARNED a little since I was a kid about what makes fast people fast and what made me slow, but I have done very little actual running outside of fooling around with this or that sport, doing hill sprints etc., but focusing on technique when I do run. With minimal specific prep and at a decent but by no means remarkable fitness level, I turn in a 0:57 400m, a 0:12 and change 100m and a 9:47 2500m (all hand timed and so kind of irrelevant, but you get the idea). I did this at a body weight of 205# (6’4"). Not really impressive times and definitely not D1 track material, but I’m not the slow kid any more either. I haven’t been exposed to radiation or anything since I was a slow-ass 16 year old, so my genetic potential shouldn’t have changed much. What gives?

So yeah, I wonder what I may have accomplished, and more to the point I wonder how many other guys coming up will never get the chance to find out what they might really be capable of for want of proper training.
[/quote]
everybody would’ve said you were born fast

42

This has turned into an interesting discussion. While I do believe you can train to be faster, elite athleticism is genetic. I’ll use myself as an example. I played basically no sports growing up. I was chubby, slow and uncoordinated. All of a sudden puberty hits, I get skinny and take up basketball. This is the tail end of 6th grade. Fast forward to summer after 9th grade. Between these 3 or so years i was the definition of average athlete, except I could jump pretty well. All of a sudden, it was like someone took the chains off. I wasn’t doing any training other than playing, and it seemed like I was getting faster and more athletic by the day.

By the end of that summer I was ALWAYS the most athletic dude on the court. I was blowing by everyone and dunking with ease at 5’7". By my late teens/early twenties I had beaten TJ Ford(who was once considered the fastest dude in the NBA) in a foot race and had Kenny Smith’s old personal trainer tell me I was hands down the fastest person he’d ever seen on a basketball court. Once I started strength training it got even crazier. I’m not saying this to brag, I’m illustrating a point. I never “trained” for these things, they just happened. All I had to do was find an outlet for my natural gifts to express themselves.

And before anyone asks why I didn’t do anything with it, I had several opportunities but was a punk ass kid and kept shooting myself in the foot. I’m 30 now with 2 bum knees and can still put down a 360 on a good day at 5’9". It’s genetics + work, but mostly genetics.

43

Elite sprinters don’t train to get fast; they train to get faster. If you need to train to get fast then you are not fast and probably never will be. You may get faster but that’s only relative to you.

44

i feel like there is some confusion on what is meant by “genetics”

everyone is born with a different composition of muscle fibers (FT and ST)… those who are predisposed to having more FT are simply faster at the start, many of the “elite” sprinters people keep talking about…

having a head start in fast twitch development is hardly the end all be all of sprinting. it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, if we assume we have 2 specimens, one with 60% FT and one with 40% FT, and they have identical training, etc., obviously the 60% specimen will be more advanced for a while, but the law of diminishing returns shows that eventually they will become more or less equal. whether or not different people have different ceilings for FT composition is a different question

in short, even if one is born with favorable genetics, training CAN reverse that… in either direction

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

and to those who want to play the race card, say that black people are statistically born with a higher concentration of FT (making this up for the discussion), if they all join the track clubs, they will be funneled into sprinting and then uneducated people will attribute this to “GENETICS”… again, erroneously.

so for people like “whiteflash” (lol), lets say he had a nice chunk of FT, plays only basketball, which is pretty much FT training (short sprints and jumping), he will obviously get faster… this does not mean he is some genetic marvel (sorry bud)

long post

45

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
i feel like there is some confusion on what is meant by “genetics”

everyone is born with a different composition of muscle fibers (FT and ST)… those who are predisposed to having more FT are simply faster at the start, many of the “elite” sprinters people keep talking about…

having a head start in fast twitch development is hardly the end all be all of sprinting. it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, if we assume we have 2 specimens, one with 60% FT and one with 40% FT, and they have identical training, etc., obviously the 60% specimen will be more advanced for a while, but the law of diminishing returns shows that eventually they will become more or less equal. whether or not different people have different ceilings for FT composition is a different question

in short, even if one is born with favorable genetics, training CAN reverse that… in either direction

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

and to those who want to play the race card, say that black people are statistically born with a higher concentration of FT (making this up for the discussion), if they all join the track clubs, they will be funneled into sprinting and then uneducated people will attribute this to “GENETICS”… again, erroneously.

so for people like “whiteflash” (lol), lets say he had a nice chunk of FT, plays only basketball, which is pretty much FT training (short sprints and jumping), he will obviously get faster… this does not mean he is some genetic marvel (sorry bud)

long post[/quote]
Are you saying that if I trained side by side with Usain Bolt that eventually we would become “more or less equal”?

46

is less than a second “more or less equal”? 2 seconds?

what i’m really saying is that the playing field is more level than many are lead to believe

obviously there are those who seem to have an unusually fortunate combination of genetics and environment… but not every D1 or “elite” athlete falls into that bin, not by a long shot

47

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
this does not mean he is some genetic marvel (sorry bud)[/quote]

360s at 5’9 is pretty much marvelous, def nowhere near average.

:slight_smile:

48

when in the fuck is the OP going to give us his times??

49

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
is less than a second “more or less equal”? 2 seconds?

what i’m really saying is that the playing field is more level than many are lead to believe
[/quote]
I totally agree with you. I think people who demonstrate speed at the right time in life (early high school) further separate from the pack because they receive coaching and are given hours of practice. Many others may have great potential but it goes unrealized because they may enter high school overweight, or pre-pubescent, or maybe with weak glutes/hip flexors/other sprinting muscles. It could be that some of those kids are undiscovered talents who just need a little more work to get them started.

Personally, I would guess about 3 second separates a genetic elite from on the opposite end of the spectrum. By this I mean there are probably some able-bodied men who, even if they trained every day with top coaches and achieved a low body fat percentage, could still never run 100m faster than 12.6 seconds.

I would like to test my own potential. I’d like to think it’s better than average but nobody ever taught me to run so this potential went completely untapped. I was one of the fastest kids in my elementary school but was a very late bloomer physically and drifted away from sports. I think I have pretty good fast twitch muscles though because I could dunk a basketball by the time I got to college (I’m 6-2 but have very short arms.) I also have long legs, thin thighs but strong glutes, and a relatively light frame. When I was in my twenties, I timed myself a few times in the 100m and managed somewhere in the low 13s. I’m guessing with practice and coaching, maybe I could have gotten into the high 11s. Now I’m in my mid 30s and wonder what I could achieve if I practiced a couple times a week.

50

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

[/quote]

A. I don’t think it has been proven that slow twitch can convert to fast twitch.

B. Sprinters have 80% or more FT, not 60%.

C. Who is telling 10 year olds they have genetic limitations and restricting what sports they play? This isn’t the USSR. Plenty of kids participate in sports they don’t have a genetic predisposition to excel at. They train alongside more gifted individuals and still, they don’t manage to close the gap. I’m sure there are people on this site who played HS football. They trained as hard as anyone else, maybe even harder, yet once HS was over they faced the reality that they didn’t have what it takes to play in college.

D. Don’t restrict yourself to America. Maybe here white kids are told they are slower than blacks and should forget about sprinting, I don’t know (I doubt it). What about other nations which have almost no blacks? You don’t think Russian sprinters are training hard and or properly? Yet, it is still blacks whose roots can be traced to West Africa that dominate sprinting.

51

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
i feel like there is some confusion on what is meant by “genetics”

everyone is born with a different composition of muscle fibers (FT and ST)… those who are predisposed to having more FT are simply faster at the start, many of the “elite” sprinters people keep talking about…

having a head start in fast twitch development is hardly the end all be all of sprinting. it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, if we assume we have 2 specimens, one with 60% FT and one with 40% FT, and they have identical training, etc., obviously the 60% specimen will be more advanced for a while, but the law of diminishing returns shows that eventually they will become more or less equal. whether or not different people have different ceilings for FT composition is a different question

in short, even if one is born with favorable genetics, training CAN reverse that… in either direction

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

and to those who want to play the race card, say that black people are statistically born with a higher concentration of FT (making this up for the discussion), if they all join the track clubs, they will be funneled into sprinting and then uneducated people will attribute this to “GENETICS”… again, erroneously.

so for people like “whiteflash” (lol), lets say he had a nice chunk of FT, plays only basketball, which is pretty much FT training (short sprints and jumping), he will obviously get faster… this does not mean he is some genetic marvel (sorry bud)

long post[/quote]

I’m not going to call myself a “genetic marvel”, 'caue that’s incrediblly douchey, but a lot of people played as much or more basketball than me and couldn’t do what I could, or even still can at 30 with bum knees. To this day I get asked non-stop what I do/did for my hops and speed, and no matter what I say the real answer is “the right parents”. Sorry dude, you’re wrong on this.

52

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

[/quote]

A. I don’t think it has been proven that slow twitch can convert to fast twitch.

B. Sprinters have 80% or more FT, not 60%.

C. Who is telling 10 year olds they have genetic limitations and restricting what sports they play? This isn’t the USSR. Plenty of kids participate in sports they don’t have a genetic predisposition to excel at. They train alongside more gifted individuals and still, they don’t manage to close the gap. I’m sure there are people on this site who played HS football. They trained as hard as anyone else, maybe even harder, yet once HS was over they faced the reality that they didn’t have what it takes to play in college.

D. Don’t restrict yourself to America. Maybe here white kids are told they are slower than blacks and should forget about sprinting, I don’t know (I doubt it). What about other nations which have almost no blacks? You don’t think Russian sprinters are training hard and or properly? Yet, it is still blacks whose roots can be traced to West Africa that dominate sprinting. [/quote]

This. Don’t remember where I read it, but over 90% of elite black 100m sprinters heritage can be traced to a specific region of West Africa. It’s genetics and evolution. Arguing otherwise shows one can’t accept reality.

53

[quote]WhiteFlash wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

[/quote]

A. I don’t think it has been proven that slow twitch can convert to fast twitch.

B. Sprinters have 80% or more FT, not 60%.

C. Who is telling 10 year olds they have genetic limitations and restricting what sports they play? This isn’t the USSR. Plenty of kids participate in sports they don’t have a genetic predisposition to excel at. They train alongside more gifted individuals and still, they don’t manage to close the gap. I’m sure there are people on this site who played HS football. They trained as hard as anyone else, maybe even harder, yet once HS was over they faced the reality that they didn’t have what it takes to play in college.

D. Don’t restrict yourself to America. Maybe here white kids are told they are slower than blacks and should forget about sprinting, I don’t know (I doubt it). What about other nations which have almost no blacks? You don’t think Russian sprinters are training hard and or properly? Yet, it is still blacks whose roots can be traced to West Africa that dominate sprinting. [/quote]

This. Don’t remember where I read it, but over 90% of elite black 100m sprinters heritage can be traced to a specific region of West Africa. It’s genetics and evolution. Arguing otherwise shows one can’t accept reality.[/quote]
I don’t know why white people get offended at the idea that blacks from a certain part of Africa show a more frequent genetic predisposition to run fast than other population groups. The Dutch, as a group, are taller than Italians. Is an Italian going to be offended by this FACT? Just go watch soccer and you’ll feel better about sports and race as all races and ethnic groups have representatives at the highest levels of the game.

And it doesn’t mean that there aren’t fast white men out there, relative to blacks of West African descent, but there just aren’t that many. Only one white man has ever broken 10 seconds in the 100m. Only 3 or 4 men of non West African descent have ever broken 10 seconds and it isn’t for lack of trying.

54

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
i feel like there is some confusion on what is meant by “genetics”

everyone is born with a different composition of muscle fibers (FT and ST)… those who are predisposed to having more FT are simply faster at the start, many of the “elite” sprinters people keep talking about…

having a head start in fast twitch development is hardly the end all be all of sprinting. it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, if we assume we have 2 specimens, one with 60% FT and one with 40% FT, and they have identical training, etc., obviously the 60% specimen will be more advanced for a while, but the law of diminishing returns shows that eventually they will become more or less equal. whether or not different people have different ceilings for FT composition is a different question

[/quote]

Also, who’s to say that the athlete with a higher proportion of FT will default to running with the technique that is necessary to go fast? Right out of the box I was a pretty good jumper/thrower (set district records in discus, shot and long jump on my first attempts) but my “natural” running form was just crap. You cannot begin to exhaust your “genetic potential” if you’re just flat out not doing your sport right. Do people really believe that 2 year old Michael Phelps dominated at freestyle the first time they tossed him in the pool? No, he sank. Similarly, I imagine that Askel Svindal was not a super stud the first time he strapped on skis. He had to learn his sport first.

Yet that’s how we treat running. Everybody “can” do it so there’s obviously nothing to it. Nobody teaches kids how to do it well, they just tell them to run and the kids who happen to get it just “are” fast, so they get developed as per the rest of your example.

55

[quote]bruceprice wrote:

[quote]batman730 wrote:
Flash forward to me at 32 years of age I end up involved in a program does speed/fitness testing. I have LEARNED a little since I was a kid about what makes fast people fast and what made me slow, but I have done very little actual running outside of fooling around with this or that sport, doing hill sprints etc., but focusing on technique when I do run. With minimal specific prep and at a decent but by no means remarkable fitness level, I turn in a 0:57 400m, a 0:12 and change 100m and a 9:47 2500m
[/quote]

What were your times when you started the program and how long did it take you to get them down to the current level?[/quote]

The only time that changed during that program was the 2500m (down from 10:13). There was no significant sprint work involved. All grinding runs and burpees and such with just a few token faster pieces.

As to how long it took to get down from slow ass teenager to moderately fast old guy, that’s hard to answer as I didn’t follow any particular program and it was all very haphazard and off and on. It was really more of a mental shift than anything.

Look how many people broke a 4 minute mile in the year after Bannister did simply because they now believed it was possible.

56

[quote]batman730 wrote:
As to how long it took to get down from slow ass teenager to moderately fast old guy, that’s hard to answer as I didn’t follow any particular program and it was all very haphazard and off and on. It was really more of a mental shift than anything.[/quote]
Do you remember what your progression was like in the 100m in your process of getting down to 12-and-change seconds- what your first few times were like and how quickly your improved?

57

I wanted to Chime in on this…Out of High school I ran 48.12,21.81,and 10.89. I literally emailed every major division 1 track program and every since one sent me a media guide or called me.My teammate ran 11.01 100,50.53 and 22.56. He got responses from every single program he contacted and he ended up at Iowa.They told him to either become a 400h, DECATHLON, run the 800 he choose the deca…It really depends on how flexible you are.But it you can run 10.99,22.1 and 50, there is a D1 program out there…May not be much money but its there.

58

[quote]PureBreeze wrote:
I wanted to Chime in on this…Out of High school I ran 48.12,21.81,and 10.89. I literally emailed every major division 1 track program and every since one sent me a media guide or called me.My teammate ran 11.01 100,50.53 and 22.56. He got responses from every single program he contacted and he ended up at Iowa.They told him to either become a 400h, DECATHLON, run the 800 he choose the deca…It really depends on how flexible you are.But it you can run 10.99,22.1 and 50, there is a D1 program out there…May not be much money but its there.[/quote]

oh what’s this? someone with real world experience that agrees with me? i wasn’t pulling those numbers out of my ass. nice running dude

59

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

[/quote]

A. I don’t think it has been proven that slow twitch can convert to fast twitch.

B. Sprinters have 80% or more FT, not 60%.

C. Who is telling 10 year olds they have genetic limitations and restricting what sports they play? This isn’t the USSR. Plenty of kids participate in sports they don’t have a genetic predisposition to excel at. They train alongside more gifted individuals and still, they don’t manage to close the gap. I’m sure there are people on this site who played HS football. They trained as hard as anyone else, maybe even harder, yet once HS was over they faced the reality that they didn’t have what it takes to play in college.

D. Don’t restrict yourself to America. Maybe here white kids are told they are slower than blacks and should forget about sprinting, I don’t know (I doubt it). What about other nations which have almost no blacks? You don’t think Russian sprinters are training hard and or properly? Yet, it is still blacks whose roots can be traced to West Africa that dominate sprinting. [/quote]

a) you are distinguishing between number of fibers and mass, which is not incorrect… i was referring to mass (we will be fair and say the jury is still out on fibers, not on mass)

b) …it was an example about the influence of starting points… lol

c) perhaps the failures didn’t train properly (FOR THEIR BODY), or did so after it was too late

d) i’m not going to repost the same article, but i’m sure your anecdote has more weight than 5 years of genetic research

60

it’s not a difficult to trace as they base it all off of American and caribean sprinters. Which generally hail from slavery days which is West Africa, it’s not like they ran DNA test and proved this.

Keep in mind that Christophe Lemaitre is a white sprinter that ran under 10 sec. If he would’ve did this in the Olympics before Carl Lewis would he have been traced back to West Africa? West Africans run in the other islands in the carribean, canada, and across latin america. How come it’s always America and Jamaica in it? Maybe that’s what the culture has them do from an early age. Did everyone not see the special every time Bolt ran that showed how in Jamaica kids start sprinting races like we play Tag. Jamaicans have ruled the sprints from the last 2 olympics. Are they genetically superior than American West Africans?

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]swhole milk wrote:
it is proven that FT can be converted to ST, and vice versa… so even if someone has less FT at the onset, they can “catch up”.

now, for zecarlo, who is obsessed with elite sprinters being chosen by god (lol ;P), let me say this about our 2 specimens: they both join a track club at age 10. they are put through a bunch of random tests and told what to do… the 60% specimen remains a sprinter and becomes really fast, and the 40% becomes a distance runner and is told he is “genetically” slow… the training exacerbates their starting point…

[/quote]

A. I don’t think it has been proven that slow twitch can convert to fast twitch. [/quote]It has, as well as the fast twitch is up to 4 different types.

[quote]
B. Sprinters have 80% or more FT, not 60%.
[/quote] This has not been proven and I doubt ever will. As even slow twitch when activated is likely fast enough to be used in sprinting.

[quote]
C. Who is telling 10 year olds they have genetic limitations and restricting what sports they play? This isn’t the USSR. Plenty of kids participate in sports they don’t have a genetic predisposition to excel at. They train alongside more gifted individuals and still, they don’t manage to close the gap. I’m sure there are people on this site who played HS football. They trained as hard as anyone else, maybe even harder, yet once HS was over they faced the reality that they didn’t have what it takes to play in college. [/quote] Where do you live? It happens more than not that parents and coaches take their White kids for longer runs and have them play other sports soccer, baseball, tennis. That’s part of the culture.

[quote]
D. Don’t restrict yourself to America. Maybe here white kids are told they are slower than blacks and should forget about sprinting, I don’t know (I doubt it). What about other nations which have almost no blacks? You don’t think Russian sprinters are training hard and or properly? Yet, it is still blacks whose roots can be traced to West Africa that dominate sprinting. [/quote] Other nations can’t compete with american in 90% of sports so what are you saying? Other nations have white sprinters but the major races are the boiled down by elimination rounds. Other countries don’t focus on sports like America does, so their not going to succeed like we do. Did you not see the metal count?