Since getting into the sports performance coaching industry waaaay back 2000, I have had many coaches who I have looked up to and have learned from throughout the years.
It’s funny seeing topics, concepts, and exercises rehashed and renamed. With the easy access of information, I would have thought it would be easier to learn from the legends and the originators. However, after bringing up Tudor Bumpa in a conversation the other day, and none of the coaches I was with knew who he was, I now feel an obligation to start recognizing some of leaders/legends in the field.
What better way to start then to recognize the coaches who had influenced me the most. My background as a track sprinter and track coach pushed me into the speed training realm and these are the coaches that heavily influenced my programing & training philosophy and how I trained my athletes. All of these coaches are trailblazers who have lead our industry to new ideas and methods.
Here we go….
My Top 5 Speed Training Experts
1). Charlie Francis
The man, the myth, the legend. Charlie Francis was one of the first coaches to openly share exactly how he was training his elite athletes, like Ben Johnson. Speed development, conditioning, recovery, etc. he shared it all. If you were around back then in our industry, then you were on the Charlie Francis Forum (that and Mel Siff’s SuperTraining Discussion Board). His books Charlie Francis Training System and Speed Trap are classics and still a must read! CFTS is probably the greatest book ever written on sprinting!
I was fortunate enough to meet Charlie in Boston when he and Ian King did a conference here. Besides sharing his wealth of knowledge, Charlie would answer all of your questions. I understand how hard this is, especially with his size of following, and I appreciate this and the amount of time it must have taken him. He helped me discover Gerard Mach and the Mach drills (which pretty much all of today’s speed drills derived from).
2). Loren Seagrave
The amount of times I watched Loren Seagrave and Kevin O’Donnell’s ‘Speed Dynamics’ VHS tapes, is uncountable. Loren Seagrave looked like the speed coach version of Magnum PI in the video, laying out speed drills and techniques. There was nothing like it at the time. He went over his dynamic warm up (which was big difference from what most were doing), principles of speed, and of course the speed drills he used to get athletes faster. It was game-changing for many coaches, he changed the culture of the warm-up.
I saw Loren last here in Massachusetts when he started the Velocity franchise and was going around speaking a lot more then. He was known for the amazing athletes he turned out as the sprint coach at LSU and was the Director of Performance at IMG. He’s still coaching Olympic athletes and consulting organizations, and is still a legend in the game!
3). Vern Gambetta
Legendary Strength & Conditioning Coach. Started Gambetta Sports Training System. S&C Coach for Major League Soccer, US Men’s World Cup Soccer team, Chicago White Sox, New York Mets, plus many other world class athletes. Early on, his P.A.L. System (posture, arm action, leg action), was a great system for breaking down running mechanics and teaching progressions. I owned and re-read all of his books Athletic Development, Sport Specific Speed (my favorite), Complete Guide to Medicine Ball Training, and The Gambetta Method. There weren’t many coaches out there sharing information on how they were training while going into why they train that way. Coach Gambetta founded the GAIN network to continue coaches education. He presents at coaching clinics all over the world, I’ve seen him a bunch at PerformBetter events, and when I hosted my first ever coaches clinic, I had him there (the presenters at my first clinic were Vern Gambetta, Tudor Bumpa, Mike Clark, and Mark Verstegen). He moved the industry forward!
4). Mark Verstegen
I was graduating college in 2000 with an exercise science degree, unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t want to do research and there wasn’t a great path for college strength & conditioning coaches. I went to a seminar in western Massachusetts (I got credit for college for attending the event). After a couple average presentations, this guy took the stage and blew my mind. He was passionate about training athlete and opened my eyes to the possibility to working with athletes in the private sector. This wasn’t really being done back then. Mark Verstegen was leaving IPI to start Athletes Performance (later EXOS) in Arizona. I talked to him after his presentation and I was already to go out to Arizona to intern for him. He knew it was a big move for me and let me know about a coach who was doing great things in Boston and recommend that I start there if I decided not to move across the country. The Boston coach he refer me to was Mike Boyle, were I ended up interning. Many track coaches had the sprinting part down, but not the weight room, and most strength & conditioning coaches had the weighht room down, but were weaker in the speed department, Mark was able to combine the two systematically, Mark laid out his sports performance training system and it revolutionized our industry.
5). Latif Thomas
Latif was a co-captain with me on our high school track team, competed at college against each other, coached high school track together (and later against each other), started a business together, and was the best man at my wedding. I miss him. He made me a better coach. We were both always learning and always trying to get better. We had endless discussions about training, coaching, speed development, and how to get the most out of our athletes. We challenged each other daily and I know I wouldn’t have been even half as good as I was without him. He was a big personality, loved to talk training with anyone, and was always willing to help out other coaches and athletes, and took the complexity out of training sprinters. He worked with high school athletes and was all-in and was only looking for ways for them to improve. In a world when we only heard what coaches were doing with elite athletes and an endless budget, Latif share with everyone how he was getting his high school athletes faster when you had to run in the schools hallways during the winter and only had about 30 meters of straightaways to work with. Our Complete Speed Training courses were sold all over the world and Latif truly impacted the high school track & field industry.
BONUS – USATF Level II
Although not a person per se, the USATF Level II coaching education certification was amazing. My instructors were Gary Winkler, Denis Shaver, Boo Schexnayder, and then Gerard Mach joined to present during a session. It was unreal the level of knowledge that I gained and set me up with science that I needed. From speed volumes (acceleration, max velocity, speed endurance, special I, special II), to recovery times, to actually explaining what is happening in the body during training, the USATF Lv II curriculum during the early 2000’s was second to none. Strictly speaking speed, track sprint coaches were so far ahead of strength coaches at the time.
Honorable Mention
Not a great heading, but I wanted to recognize a few other coaches who greatly impacted me as a coach, and who had a great impact on our industry.
John Smith
HSI Head Coach. I would scour the internet looking for any information I could find from Coach Smith. Looking for drills, cues, plyos, speed workouts, etc. I do wish he was more available and open to share his training information, but the results he was getting had me following along and digging into anything I could find. My biggest cue I got from him that has helped countless my athletes was (and I still use today) – “Step Over, Drive Down”
Dan Pfaff
Mike Boyle
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