Thanks! Im very proud of those kids.
As for my college career, I walked onto the team as a 41' triple jumper. Nothing special by any means. I progressively got worse until I tore my hamstring mid freshman year. My first meet back after taking two months off, I PRed to 43'. That's how overtrained I was. Spent the next two years never reaching that mark again. In that time I was plagued with injuries including shin splints, pulled hop flexor, and torn cartilage in both knees. Going into Sr year I was restriced from the traditonal preseason of running stairs for an hour. We also got a jumps coach who focused on quality over quantity. I improved to 45' after spending 2 years not cracking 43' again. Unofficially I jumped 46' in practice. I was strong, had great technique but was slow as sin.
The coach had no idea how to manage the needs of specific events. Preseason was spent running/bounding stairs from 30-60mins nonstop. That was 8 weeks of aerobic development. I can't remember one workout that included more than 45s recovery, most had a jog as recovery.
Secondly, volume was WAY too high. He was proudest of a workout that was 16x200m on an indoor track. Goal time was 32-35s with 1-1:30 rest. A midseason workout once was 3x8x80m all out sprints with a walk back and 5 mins recovery.
Nothing was ever timed or measured so there was no concept of a drop off. We ran till we dropped.
Finally there was no real speed work up until the week of league championships. At that point we would do a workout along the lines of a flying 30 with a 200m walk recovery. So speed was never developed..it was only introduced at the end. That was their idea of peaking.
In that time I saw a lot of good athletes get worse while a very small handfull improved. And the only ones that really improved were the multi-event athletes who were predisposed to have a higher work capacity. Most other people didnt even beat their HS marks until Sr year. Some never even came close.
