Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #180: Gill1918 Presents Mechelle Freeman "Part 1 Building Championship Relays"
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
- 0:03coaches, for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
- 0:06Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
- 0:09Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
- 0:12you grow as a coach. We'll bring in the once a year
- 0:15track clinic straight to your ears daily.
- 0:17Interested in creating your own episode?
- 0:19Everyone's welcome to participate.
- 0:21Check out the show notes below For more information.
- 0:23Now let's get into today's topic.
- 0:32All right, good morning. It's some seats in the front of
- 0:34here. If anybody wants to come up,
- 0:36feel free, but it's a pleasure to be here.
- 0:39Like, like, like you say, I just finished teaching about sprints
- 0:44and you'll see that a lot of the positions and intensities and
- 0:48efforts that you execute as a sprinter translates to the
- 0:52relays because the relays is an expression of an acceleration
- 0:59drill and how you are allowing the acceleration patterns of two
- 1:06different athletes to meet at the right time.
- 1:10So in the time and space that you have with your exchange zone
- 1:15to keep the baton moving as fast as possible.
- 1:19And we're going to talk about how I just developed my process
- 1:24into doing that with the national teams.
- 1:27So first just building winning teams.
- 1:30You know, when it comes down, I've been winning relays since I
- 1:33was 10. So when it comes to relays, I'm
- 1:37the I'm, I'm, I like to say I'm one of those relay athletes
- 1:40that, you know, they run a little different with the baton
- 1:42in their hand. You know, you have some of those
- 1:44athletes that they made you something in the open, but when
- 1:46you put a stick in their hand, it's a different animal.
- 1:50I was, I was tending to be like that, but I was, you know, a
- 1:53respectable sprinter. Clearly, however, the relays
- 1:56bring something out of you because it's a different part of
- 1:58you that, you know, steps up a bit when you have teammates
- 2:02relying on you to do your part. And so when it comes to building
- 2:07winning teams, it's a couple of areas that I realized had a high
- 2:15responsibility for the outcome of the success or failure of
- 2:19relays. And that came with technical
- 2:22things that we did in the zones that we'll go over.
- 2:26That came with relationships and management of relationships that
- 2:31we'll talk about. And it also came with
- 2:35recognizing the value of just placing athletes in the
- 2:45positions that pulled out the best of who they are.
- 2:49And you can find that in in athletes that people will be
- 2:54surprised will be selected. But I'm going to talk about some
- 2:58of the ways that I was able to pull out the value in athletes
- 3:03that I needed based on the demand of the task that I needed
- 3:08to feel. So the process, I have been
- 3:16running for a very long time, 30 years.
- 3:19You know, I started in high school.
- 3:22I'm from Maryland, I have a twin sister.
- 3:23It was the two of us. So we've been running our relays
- 3:25together for a very, very long time from grassroots level.
- 3:31I'm a junior Olympic champion, I'm a high school state
- 3:35relationship. And then we went to the
- 3:36University of South Carolina. We won championship relays
- 3:40there. So relays are in my DNA.
- 3:43I have a special love for for relays.
- 3:46I after University of South Carolina, I took some time off
- 3:49because I was injured. It was 2002.
- 3:52I was initially planning to go to the 2004 Olympics train
- 3:55forward attempt. However, I had a very bad
- 3:59hamstring, chronic hamstring injury that kept me out of that.
- 4:01So I'd made a pivot, went to Graduate School, did that for
- 4:05two years and worked in New York City for two years.
- 4:07So I have four years away from the sport and I thought I was
- 4:12done, didn't think I was going to be an athlete any longer.
- 4:17After four years I decided to come back.
- 4:20It was 2006. The next year will be a 2007
- 4:24world championship. The next year after that will be
- 4:25a 2008 Olympics. Nine months after quitting my
- 4:29job, I made the world championship team.
- 4:31I finished 9th in the world in 100 meters.
- 4:33Nine months before that, I was working in the cubicle four
- 4:36years away, deconditioned physically, mentally, my my
- 4:40nervous system was not thinking about running.
- 4:44So I can a whole nother session on those nine months of what it
- 4:47took on just to reposition my mind, body and spirit to be an
- 4:51elite athlete. After that, I made the 2018,
- 4:56just missing out on the individual event.
- 4:59I made it for the relay pool, now the relay pool in the USA.
- 5:04Yeah, exactly. The automatic selection for
- 5:11relay come from the 100 meters in the four by one.
- 5:16The old selection used to be top four are automatically in the
- 5:20pool from there. The relay coach, the only
- 5:23position on the national team that has a job of selection, has
- 5:28the capability to now pick discretionary selections.
- 5:35In the past, they typically went top 6 just to keep it easy.
- 5:39Top six, top six, top 6. But one thing that I recognized,
- 5:45especially due to my experience in 2008, sometimes the top six,
- 5:50you may have 6 athletes that all rent anchor leg.
- 5:55So now from the very moment of selection, we weren't thinking
- 5:59about the task demand. We need first legs, we need
- 6:03second legs, we need third legs, we need 4th legs, not just six
- 6:08top fastest people. So that was the culture that I
- 6:12was coming into or that I had just gone through my four years
- 6:17as an athlete in the USA relay program at the 2008 Olympics.
- 6:22We were a part of the first time the men and the women were both
- 6:27disqualified in the four by one at the same Olympic Games.
- 6:32In that time I can see the areas of opportunities.
- 6:35The USA relay program, you don't know who is making the team
- 6:38until this election event, USA championships, Olympic trials.
- 6:42From there you have three to four weeks before the global
- 6:45championship. In that three to four weeks we
- 6:48only have hopefully, if we had it, a relay camp for three to
- 6:53four days. That's 12 reps, 12 reps that I
- 7:01am hopefully to get with the exact runners.
- 7:06If you look at the history of our failures in the relay
- 7:09programs, it came down to lack of continuity based on lack of
- 7:15practice opportunities. And for me, I saw the area
- 7:19opportunity on how we can reassess our selection process.
- 7:26So coming in, I took the I ran 2008, 2009 and I retired in
- 7:322010. I started to get my coaching
- 7:36certifications and I coached high school for four years, was
- 7:40doing marketing jobs and and things like that.
- 7:43I got a call from Sue Humphries asking me that, you know, would
- 7:47I be interested in applying? They were going to add an
- 7:49assistant relay position to the relay program.
- 7:53At the time, Dennis Mitchell was the head coach and they wanted
- 7:56to have an assistant added to the program and they were
- 7:58leaning towards a woman. It had never been a woman in the
- 8:03relay coach position. It was started by Brooks Johnson
- 8:06and Oren Richburg and started to pull out the relay position out
- 8:10of our national teams because the selection of our coaches,
- 8:14typically our coaches on our national teams coach some of the
- 8:17athletes on the team. You're talking about collegian
- 8:20coaches and private coaches that had athletes that made the team.
- 8:25So if you were a Sprint coach for the national team, typically
- 8:29you used to handle the relays and sometimes you had athletes
- 8:32on the relay to remove bias and add independence.
- 8:37The relay position started OK, starting with Brooks Johnson.
- 8:42Once I am we started to have this relay position. 2015 I got
- 8:46hired. It was my first time starting.
- 8:49I started as the assistant relays coach traveling to the
- 8:52junior teams. I would go and travel on all our
- 8:54under 20 teams, Under 20 Panams, World Championships, all of our
- 8:59junior teams. I was going there and and
- 9:01working with all of those athletes, OK.
- 9:03So I started to observe what was happening based on what I
- 9:07experienced in my own as an athlete and what I was seeing
- 9:10with the athletes. Now I can really see from the
- 9:13coach's side. I have no time.
- 9:16Once we get on site, the on site schedule, people are doubling.
- 9:21The 100 runners are available when the 200 runners aren't.
- 9:24I mean, are are are the 100 are available, the 200 athletes
- 9:27aren't. The 200 athletes are available
- 9:29now, but the 100 athletes aren't.
- 9:31So now you're dealing with schedules.
- 9:34How am I going to figure this out?
- 9:36So I decided this what problem I needed to address, identify the
- 9:40need. I took it back to school.
- 9:42I'm a smart lady. I'm a figure it out going back
- 9:44to science projects. What's the problem and what's my
- 9:47hypothesis? And I had to figure it out from
- 9:49there. The problem that we talked
- 9:52about, right? What my hypothesis?
- 9:55If I can give a way to come up with an objective way of
- 10:00selection so that I can talent ID and cast appropriately from
- 10:05the very beginning of selection, then I am minimizing the
- 10:10learning curve necessary based on the time and space that I'm
- 10:15given. So that means that you better
- 10:17come to me. I'm put in the best people who
- 10:20do the task the best and they're going to come and have the most
- 10:23advantage at the point of selection.
- 10:26OK, that's one. So I just was going to create a
- 10:30leg based relay program. We had never done that before,
- 10:34breaking down the demands of the task for each leg.
- 10:38And from the moment of selection I am, I'm going to do something
- 10:42different. I'm going to move away from
- 10:44going to top six, I'm going top four.
- 10:48And depending on the way I'm set up with my top 4 athletes in the
- 10:52history of their experience, I'm filling in the gaps.
- 10:56Now that started to shake some feathers, right?
- 10:59Because now I'm looking at my 200 girls.
- 11:01Because of course, at the elite level, third leg is always the
- 11:05leg that nobody runs. So now I started to pull from my
- 11:10200 meter runners and it hadn't been done like that before.
- 11:14Now I'm looking at my 200 girls sometimes who didn't make top
- 11:17three. Now I'm going to pick a fourth
- 11:18place 200 girl over the 4th over the 5th place 100 girl.
- 11:23How dare you? But did it make sense based on
- 11:28the task of the demand? Second thing, creating an
- 11:33objective process for decision making.
- 11:36Again, when it came to OK, you have the legs and you would
- 11:44understand the demands of that, but you also need to talk about
- 11:49the skill side of the four by one.
- 11:51If we're going from top six, we're only thinking about speed.
- 11:55But the skill side, how do we pass the baton?
- 11:59We had never kept track of metrics of passing the baton and
- 12:05addressing this as a relay program.
- 12:08So that was my second part of the process.
- 12:11I am going to emphasize the execution of the skill.
- 12:17So the process I developed minimize risk, maximize
- 12:21performance. Like I said, if you're giving me
- 12:24minimal time and space, my risk assessment, I'm going to do
- 12:28everything to minimize my risk. Now, if you came in here and
- 12:33you're on the team, and like I said, if you have less
- 12:36experience of the leg that has the most opportunity based on
- 12:40what the what the what we have the athletes that made the team,
- 12:43that means that you may come in with a disadvantage based on
- 12:47time and space. I got that's all I have maximize
- 12:52performance. Yes, my job is to win gold
- 12:56medals, but one thing about what I'm going to do is you're going
- 13:00to see the best way that we are going to win the gold medal, not
- 13:06just a we can pull this off. Who are the best four people?
- 13:13Not just because somebody runs the 100, Who are the best four
- 13:17people? And then sticking to that, I
- 13:22created a manual. We didn't have one.
- 13:27How are we following selection? So I said the Team USA is a leg
- 13:32based relay program such that athletes are chosen based on
- 13:36their ability to execute the demands of each leg, the four by
- 13:42100m relay exchange zones process and metrics.
- 13:46So I started doing all the metrics, somebody Andy Farrar,
- 13:50he used to keep our metrics throughout the years and he
- 13:53would send it to us, you know, as I was assistant coaching, we
- 13:56would see it, but what do we do with it?
- 13:58And so I started to look over it and on the next slide we'll go
- 14:01over it. But what I started to see is
- 14:03that as a relay program, since they weren't used to one another
- 14:07three biggest areas was in fact had the highest contribution to
- 14:11the success or failure of our of our past.
- 14:14One was the reading of the take off marks.
- 14:17They weren't used to the runners.
- 14:19So we had to figure out how can we all get alignment on how
- 14:23we're reading the take off mark so that we can be operating from
- 14:27the same line of sight. How are we measuring the take
- 14:31off mark based on the incoming runner?
- 14:34OK. So precision of the takeoff mark
- 14:38was 1 area had to be addressed. Exceptional and consistent
- 14:43acceleration by both incoming and outgoing runners.
- 14:46Like I said at the very beginning, following the
- 14:49normative acceleration curve. The same way you leave as an
- 14:54outgoing runner is the same way you should be leaving when you
- 14:57start to 100 meters. The same way that you're coming
- 15:00in the zone as the incoming runner is the same way you have
- 15:04to maintain that acceleration to the full extent of the demand of
- 15:09that leg. So you minimize speed leg and
- 15:13just and deceleration as best as possible.
- 15:16OK. And then last sound pass
- 15:19mechanic, that was the last area.
- 15:21Once I got the merge at the right spot based on the
- 15:25different acceleration patterns and they were meeting at the
- 15:28right spot, then you got to take the short amount of time,
- 15:32shortest amount of time to get the past off in the safest way.
- 15:37Once I did this, I started to realize the baton speed for the
- 15:42elite level. And again, I'll break this down
- 15:44to the high school level. Same theory, just depends on
- 15:46what speeds you're working with. OK, at the elite level, the
- 15:50women are going through maximum velocity about one second, you
- 15:54know, a second every 10, every 1010 meters.
- 15:59OK. So if I can keep them going
- 16:01covering one second through the every 10 meters through the
- 16:04zone, it's a 30 meter zone. We should be maintaining the
- 16:08intensity of that incoming runner with the outgoing runners
- 16:11acceleration maximum space and time that they have to be at the
- 16:16the best place that they can be at where you minimize risk of
- 16:19the pass of where they are in their acceleration curve.
- 16:22And if I can get them to meet up at the right spot, then I can
- 16:26maintain the momentum of the incoming runners Max velocity.
- 16:29That makes sense. So at the elite level, 3
- 16:34seconds, I'm, I, this is me again.
- 16:37I'm, I'm testing this out. Can we keep them there?
- 16:41Men? They were about 2.7.
- 16:43And then as you go down, I have another slide.
- 16:46We'll talk about how we'll go from each level athlete
- 16:49depending on their speed and how that number changes.
- 16:53All right, case studies just to give you as oh, I was like my
- 16:57pointer. I forgot it's again my I got it,
- 16:58I got it. All right.
- 17:00So just to give you a sense, it's hard to read, so I'm just
- 17:02going to look at the letters. So you see the A right there.
- 17:05The A, this is from one of our World Championships.
- 17:08Before I started to apply the process, I was looking at this
- 17:11data. So A is where the incoming
- 17:14runner is on the first movement of the outgoing runner.
- 17:19OK, the mark, let me just see the goal mark is this line right
- 17:24here. You see that?
- 17:26Do you see where the A runners are?
- 17:28Right here when that outgoing runner took off, all of them
- 17:34left early, right? You can see that everybody left
- 17:37early, they are right there. Incoming runner B right here is
- 17:42where the outgoing runner put their hand back.
- 17:45So right here, this is 9, this is 10 meters in the zone, 10m
- 17:49zone. It's elite level.
- 17:51You're putting your hand back to get the baton.
- 17:53So what are you doing? That already shows you that the
- 17:56outgoing runner is not at maximum potential of where they
- 17:59can be at their acceleration before they're leaving the zone.
- 18:02So you're again, the baton is slowing up.
- 18:05OK B is where she put her hand back here, 10 meters, 12 meters,
- 18:0912 meters. C is where they got the baton.
- 18:13So on this first runner here she put her hand back at 12 she got
- 18:18the baton at 17. What does that look like that
- 18:24looks like that y'all see it you know you see it every time so
- 18:29that means she literally is not accelerated.
- 18:32She is just waiting for the baton.
- 18:34This is that World Championships.
- 18:36OK again, B10, she gets the baton.
- 18:41That's 4 meters from B to C. It's still slowing up right
- 18:45there. Still slowing up, just not as
- 18:47bad. I mean, I remember this first
- 18:49exchange here, B to C. That means what if it's that
- 18:54close? What does that mean?
- 18:57That means what? That you you ran up on her.
- 19:02So that means that's the one you like.
- 19:07That's what this was showing me, right?
- 19:09The baton speed at the world championship level averaged at
- 19:133.23 point 2. So we already knew that we
- 19:20weren't maximizing our potential.
- 19:22So now it came down to, OK, do we have the right runners?
- 19:25Do we have enough time? Do we teach?
- 19:27Do we tell? And I just we're figuring it all
- 19:30out. OK, So I started to create a
- 19:35rubric, a manual. We didn't have one on what it
- 19:39looked like for selection because again, now I'm a talent.
- 19:42ID like that's my job. I got AID talent.
- 19:45So what are the things that you're saying for selection for
- 19:48what? What are your seasons?
- 19:49Best personal best? You know, what do you do at
- 19:52championship events? You know, keep track of trending
- 19:55marks for the season, Keep track of acceleration.
- 19:58Are you all tracking times for acceleration?
- 20:020 to 30, zero to 20, fly started?
- 20:06Are you keeping their times? Yes, it will be a way that you
- 20:10can do it without it, but I'm also going to show you a way
- 20:12that if you have the metrics of their acceleration and their
- 20:15flies, now you can do some calculated coaching.
- 20:19OK, Keeping track of baton speeds.
- 20:22We weren't doing it. Hey, I need some timing gates.
- 20:27I need some timing gates. I need some iPads at relay camp
- 20:31so we can start tracking what this looks like.
- 20:35The art side of it, because it's the science, but you got to have
- 20:39the art right? The art of it is the take off
- 20:41Mark. I'm reading the accuracy.
- 20:43It's a great fair poor 'cause I'm looking, I'm keeping track
- 20:46of that now 'cause my learning curve has to be this versus this
- 20:50when I got 2 days of practice, no competitive opportunity.
- 20:53The games are here and we had two passes and and 10 passes,
- 20:57OK, Consistent acceleration through the zone.
- 20:59Do you have great accelerators? Because I tell you right now
- 21:02when you leave here, the one thing I want you to work on when
- 21:05you go back to your relays is literally making sure they are
- 21:07accelerating appropriately. OK?
- 21:12Again, championship runners with their relay leg experience,
- 21:16global championship and all on site, perform all the things
- 21:20when you're on site, when you're at championships, how are they
- 21:23performing? You're considering all these
- 21:25things like what is your rubric? What is your rubric that you is
- 21:29helping you select your athletes and place them in the task that
- 21:34pulls out and maximizes what they can contribute?
- 21:41First thing what I started to do, I sat them down.
- 21:43I need you all to understand the demand of each leg.
- 21:47So I mean I know y'all been running relays your whole life,
- 21:49me too, but I just want to make sure you understand.
- 21:53First leg you have 80 meters out of the blocks to run before you
- 21:58get to your exchange zone. It is the shortest leg on the
- 22:02track. Once you get to the exchange
- 22:05zone, you got 30 meters of running opportunity in your
- 22:09brain. You need someone who is
- 22:11technically efficient, explosive out the block, getting all the
- 22:15way through the running opportunity of 110 meters.
- 22:19They need to understand they are running 110 meters, that's it.
- 22:25110. Even if they pass it here and
- 22:28there's a hundred 110 second leg, you start out 30 meters in
- 22:35the zone, you're running opportunity outside of the zone,
- 22:3970 meters on a straight. Then you have another 30m zone.
- 22:44You need someone who can handle the demands of 130 meters on a
- 22:50straight third leg, 30 meters. Same thing as the second 7030.
- 22:59However, the difference is managing the centrifugal forces
- 23:05of running that high velocities on a turn.
- 23:10OK, then last 30 meters, 90 meters to the finish line, 120
- 23:15meters, making sure they understand what is their full
- 23:20running capacity opportunity so that they so you can cast
- 23:25appropriately. OK, who is doing that best?
- 23:32All right, again, I just said this, but just quickly just
- 23:34staying like first leg, understanding that you need a
- 23:36proficient starter. OK, you got to don't put nobody
- 23:39in first leg who can't come out. The blacks that great.
- 23:42Set them up appropriately, handles pressure.
- 23:47It starts with you from the very first step, that person that you
- 23:52know that can set it off, set the tone because all the other
- 23:56three athletes are watching. You're watching first leg how
- 24:00you like hey or you like set them up, don't people?
- 24:09People say I put my first leg the slowest one on 1st.
- 24:12What? No set them up Second leg you
- 24:18have to be aggressively able to Sprint up to 130 meters further.
- 24:25You have to be able to receive and give the baton in the left
- 24:28hand. It's some people who just can't
- 24:31do it. Disqualified.
- 24:37It is the IT. You have to cast appropriately.
- 24:41Third leg. It is the only leg on the track
- 24:45where you have a freight train coming at you straight on.
- 24:50It is a different depth perception.
- 24:53You need somebody smart because the second to third exchange is
- 24:58the highest probability of failure out of all the exchanges
- 25:02just because of that difference of how the incoming runner is
- 25:05coming in. They misjudged that pass a lot
- 25:10from 2:00 to 3:00 also on third leg, which I ended up going a
- 25:14lot with my 200 runners at the elite level.
- 25:17I even had somebody who said they ended up with a 800m runner
- 25:20on third leg. But again, it comes down to
- 25:22who's executing that speed in that position.
- 25:28Anchor leg, that's the leg that's, it's a lot of here, it's
- 25:33a lot of here. Mind and heart on the track.
- 25:38The anchor leg is the the exchange, the only exchange
- 25:41where everyone's lined up together because at that point
- 25:44the staggers broken off and everybody that said anchor leg
- 25:48is right here, right here, right here is less space in between
- 25:52them. So imagine the traffic when you
- 25:55got everybody on third leg coming in.
- 25:59Anchor leg needs to be locked and loaded and let them and not
- 26:03allow the pressure of everyone coming in at the same time.
- 26:06And it's busy. It's the busiest exchange for
- 26:09them to stay locked in and to still execute under pressure.
- 26:13Anchor leg is a high pressure leg.
- 26:16Got to have somebody to be able to handle it.
- 26:19So acceleration curve, you know, we talked about this here.
- 26:22So if you think about the normal acceleration curve, we just went
- 26:24over this in the speed session. Remember, by the time that the
- 26:29athletes are getting, you see 10203050 all the way up here to
- 26:32140 on the meter, on the X axis. On the Y axis, that's your
- 26:36percentage of maximum velocity. So by the time you're getting to
- 26:4030 meters in the zone, you're at about 80%.
- 26:45That opportunity for the outgoing runner is about 80% on
- 26:49the acceleration curve. Can you get your outgoing runner
- 26:53up to 80% of their acceleration even at the high school level?
- 26:59At the high school level, are you driving them to accelerate
- 27:03in their normal acceleration curve in the zone or do you see
- 27:08it? We got to change that.
- 27:10That's what we're going to talk about here on the baton speeds.
- 27:14And again, I want to shout out JT Ayers because these are his
- 27:17his images because they're great.
- 27:19But if you look at here, the relay at its core is a time and
- 27:23synchronized acceleration exercise.
- 27:25Accelerations fail in duration, in intensity, or both.
- 27:32They're either not going hard enough or they have to break the
- 27:36curve because of some reason. OK, so you're these failures
- 27:40have consequences for the gold mark.
- 27:44Before I make the gold mark, which we're going to go to in a
- 27:46few, it comes down to making sure this is correct.
- 27:52So let's look at this, this zone, this is the first exchange
- 27:55zone, so 80 to 110, right? Boom boom.
- 28:00If they get that baton like we saw in the in the first here you
- 28:04go you got 12315 meters, 20 meters, you'll see the
- 28:11differences in velocities. Y'all follow.
- 28:14So the out this is the here's the incoming runner, purple line
- 28:19outgoing runner. OK, if they pass here, this is
- 28:24the large differences in their velocities.
- 28:26They pass a little bit farther in, you're minimizing velocity
- 28:30more by the time you get to maximizing that 80% of that
- 28:34outgoing runner in that Max velocity of that incoming runner
- 28:38you want to try to pass ideally here.
- 28:45So let's look at it at a 10 meters.
- 28:47The difference in velocities is substantial.
- 28:50What we just talked about, boom, incoming runner, they still
- 28:55flying. I'm trying to pull use all the
- 28:58speed. If I pass 10 meters in the zone,
- 29:02my outgoing runner is only about 30% of their velocity on their
- 29:05on their acceleration curve. Now if I get to 15 meters, we
- 29:16minimize it, it's better. It's safe.
- 29:19We like to say safe passes. This is what safe passes is
- 29:22giving you, OK, the difference in velocity there.
- 29:28Now if, if your team is just you, you got it now, you could
- 29:32take the risk. Now the risk is going to
- 29:35increase, but the reward also increases.
- 29:38But you got to know who you're working with now to make the
- 29:41risk assessment. Sometimes the safe is what we
- 29:43got to do today, especially when you got to run an alternate.
- 29:46I hear it. Ideally, the minimizing of the
- 29:49velocity is optimized. 20 meters in the zone, 20 meters in the
- 29:55zones. My outgoing runner is is up to
- 29:58that 80%. My outgoing runner is just about
- 30:02where she's at that starting to decelerate.
- 30:04It's time for you to take over the acceleration, non
- 30:09negotiables acceleration. I want you just the same angles
- 30:12we talked about in the Sprint session.
- 30:14You're setting yourself up the same way when you talk about
- 30:17positions in the zone. The best thing for me, two point
- 30:21or three-point. What should we do?
- 30:224 point, it comes down to line of sight.
- 30:27Line of sight, What is the best position for the athlete to be
- 30:31set up? Where my hips are forward, my
- 30:33feet are forward, and I'm ready to go this direction and my line
- 30:38of sight is unobstructed. OK, now if they can come down
- 30:44and still come here and still see it, or they got to be here
- 30:48because it's too much to go upside down a little bit, you
- 30:51got to know who you're working with.
- 30:54The biggest thing here is setting their angles up to set
- 30:57them up for the appropriate acceleration curve.
- 31:00Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
- 31:03episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
- 31:07It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
- 31:10amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
- 31:13The Guild 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
- 31:18build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
- 31:21heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
- 31:25there. So please get a hold of me,
- 31:27e-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
- 31:32and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
- 31:35Project. Hope you enjoy today, they will
- 31:37see you tomorrow.