Today’s episode features track coach Tony Holler, famous for his “Feed the Cats” training system for high school sprinters. He is also the coach of Marcellus Moore, a rising junior and one of the top sprinters in the nation with a 100m personal best of 10.31 ran as a high school sophomore.
Tony is a teacher and coach at Plainfield North High School with 35 years experience coaching football, basketball, and track. He is a member of Illinois Track & Field Hall of Fame and appeared on episode #61 where he spoke on his essentials of the “Feed the Cats” sprint philosophy that prioritizes maximal speed training, rest and low-dosage work.
Training is much more than X’s and O’s, as the environment coaches create has a massive impact on the athlete. The environment the “Feed the Cats”/Rank-Record-Publish model provides for Tony’s sprinters is so powerful, it has drawn the interest of not only other sports, but also interest to it’s application of life in general (especially on my end).
Recently, Tony put out an article highlighting his experience implementing the “Bigger Faster Stronger” strength training program and how has related the “PR” model that BFS incorporates into his speed training this year. Setting a practice or competition PR is powerful, and Tony has great insight on ways to harness this. We also get into topics on coaching phenoms, strength training and the nuts and bolts of a training environment that is maximally conducive to speed building.
Check out Tony’s “Feed the Cats” DVD with Championship Productions.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Key Points
- How “Feed the Cats” and “Rank, Record, Publish” has filtered into football and basketball coaching
- Recent lessons Tony has gained from training a phenom (Marcellus Moore 10.31 100m dash as a HS sophomore)
- How kids doing what they like (instead of what they are forced to do) is a game changer
- How Tony got to his position where he doesn’t utilize weight training for his sprinters and his background in Bigger Faster Stronger
- Bigger, faster, stronger and the concept of “constant PR’s” in training
- Tony’s “speed cycle” in sprint training that was inspired by BFS
- How to maintain dopamine levels through training structure
- What Tony has been doing with X-Factor training recently
Tony Holler Quotes
“Prioritize speed #1, prioritize rest #2, those are the two fundamental principles of feed the cats”
“(Marcellus) is much smoother, much more consistent. His top end speed hasn’t improved much, but he holds it a lot better…. He hasn’t missed a race in 2 years… he is the opposite of a flexible kid”
“Most of the time, phenoms are the hardest kids to coach”
“Cats have fun racing somebody, they have fun running the fastest 10m fly they’ve ever run”
“Cats don’t run 3 miles, and they don’t see “now what” either. They like to get out of practice early”
“Kids are really really good at what they like; they wouldn’t cheat it they liked what they did. They’ll read like crazy if they like what they are reading”
“The further away from kids in education you get, the more money you make”
“The grind is not the right religion for people; instead we need to get really good at things that we love”
“My non-football players don’t lift after practice, but I tell them to do 100 pushups a day. Looking frail is no way to live your life”
“I do like strength, I just don’t see a difference in between kids who lift in their sprinting, and kids who don’t lift in their sprinting, if there was a difference, I would change my mind”
“When you micro-dose, you’ll never ruin the next day, and that’s critical to “Feed the Cats”
“When we micro-dose in the weight room, we would lift, but we would not lift to soreness… Charlie Francis said you should never be sore from training”
“I think slow guys run with their muscles more than fast guys (who utilize more from their tendons, bones, joints)”
“The first time I heard the term “PR” was from Al Carius (North Central Track Coach) who said “Run for fun and PR’s”
“They are actually throwing one kid slapping another kid during a squat…. I guess that’s why I am a sprint coach”
“Getting beat is not a performance enhancer; we don’t get motivated and then do great things. Instead we start something and we get positive feedback, and we get the dopamine hit, and that’s what creates the motivation”
“There’s three things you can do in practice to get faster: Max speed, mechanics, and then jumping”
“Whoever decided that planks are something everyone should do should maybe think if that’s something that is causing hip flexor problems”
“Dopamine allows you to move your limbs faster and gives you reckless confidence; two elements that make kids fast”
About Tony Holler
Tony Holler is a teacher and coach at Plainfield North High School. Holler has 35 years experience coaching football, basketball, and track. Holler is a member of Illinois Track & Field Hall of Fame and Co-director of Football-Track Activation Consortium along with Chris Korfist.
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