This week’s guest is Curtis Taylor, sprints coach for Oregon University track and field. Curtis has assembled one of the most dominating collegiate women’s sprint groups in history, featuring the likes of 2016 Olympians Ariana Washington (also 100/200m NCAA champ this past year), Deajah Stevens, and has consulted other successful athletes and Olympic competitors.
Curtis also coached Hannah Cunliffe to a big PR with a sub-11 second 100m dash in her sophomore year as a transfer from Oklahoma.
Curtis is one of the best sprint coaches in the nation, and I’m thrilled to have him on the podcast. Back to back with Henk Kraaijenhof (ep 20), this could be considered one of the best “sprint doubles” in history!
In this episode we go inside Curtis’ training philosophy and learn some things that have led to his sprint coaching successes.
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Key Points:
- The use of plyometrics in training track sprinters, and key points of implementation
- Progressing plyometrics in context of contact time
- Curtis’s approach to strength training for sprinters
- Upper body training for sprinters
- Curtis’s thoughts on resisted and overspeed training devices
- Ideas on fixing sprint errors and cueing
- One of Curtis’s favorite sprint drills
- Curtis’s ideas on overdistance training and tempo
- Trochanter length as a rule by which to optimize sprint technique
- Loading and deloading ideals for sprint athletes
Quotes:
“With plyometrics, we are dealing with the ability to reduce ground contact time”
“Most people want to increase the intensity of what they are doing (by raising the height of the hurdle or box). By increasing the intensity, you end up increasing the ground contact time, which is not what you want to do!”
“To apply more force on the ground, you need to spend more time on the ground to jump higher, and if we are spending more time on the ground, we are defeating the purpose of what a hurdle hop is for”
“Even if you can recreate the movements of the track in the weightroom, you can’t move the weight as fast as what you can do on the track…there is a fine line with lifting, that you don’t go too far on the maximal strength end of things, and you aren’t sacrificing speed of movement”
“We’ll have 4-6 weeks this fall where we are able to lift heavy”
“As a coach, you have to figure out different cues that work for different people”
“We don’t do a lot of running drills, but we do the same ones, there are millions of running drills, but you have got to find the ones that work best for you. We have about 6 drills that work best for me, and I keep those in rotation”
“Once you have established a culture within your group, the new kids can look at the older kids and figure out a way to do these things correctly”
“People land too far in front of their body, then you have to wait until the foot comes under the center of mass until you can push. Then your heel recovery is worse, recovering from way behind the body. It’s a bad circle, in which it continues to get worse as you go down the track. There is a skid drill we do, which involves an active paw to put you in the right position. You can hear the way the drill sounds, watch someone do it right, and then try to recreate that sound. When someone does it right, all the other mechanical issues start to clean themselves up”
“The slower you run, the more your technique is compromised, and the more you run in bad technique, the more you emphasize bad technique”
“I try to make sure that most of the stuff I’m doing, I can take to the starting line, whether it’s in the weightroom, in my drills, plyometrics; if I can’t take it to the starting line, then what’s the use of it?”
“Your strength length is limited and influenced by your trochanter length; I can’t get someone who is 5’5” to run like Usain Bolt”
“It’s importance for you to understand what the norms are for stride length based on your trochanter length for different parts of the race, and that you’re using that properly during that time”
“I’ve never employed more than 3 hard training weeks in a row. The more mature they are, the more rest they need. People who are developing need less rest, they need more work”
“During my deloading weeks, I try to eliminate as much as I can of what the (block) emphasis is” (Note on my end; my best collegiate track meet, I did a moderate track workout early in the week, and a short, but heavy strength workout on Tuesday… Saturday, I set a huge double lifetime PR in high/triple jump, jumping stimulus was unloaded, but strength stimulus was still loaded!)
Show Notes:
Here is a link to Curtis’ ideas on stride and trochanter length.
How to Calculate Optimal Stride Length and Stride Frequency Using Trochanter Length
About Curtis Taylor
(From goducks.com) After an illustrious career developing world-class talent at the high school and junior college levels, Curtis Taylor joined the Oregon coaching staff before the 2014 season, immediately helping the Ducks reach new heights in the sprints, relays and hurdles.
In his first two years at Oregon, Taylor was a part of six NCAA team championships as he assisted with Oregon’s sweep of the 2014 NCAA Indoor Championships and the 2015 NCAA Outdoor Championships, along with the men’s first outdoor championships in 30 years in 2014 and their indoor championship defense in 2015.
Taylor was named the USTFCCA West Region Assistant Coach of the Year during both the 2015 indoor and outdoor seasons, the second and third of his tenure after winning during the 2014 indoor season as well. The Ducks earned 11 All-America performances in 2015 alone, under Taylor.
Taylor came to Oregon from Laney College in Oakland, Calif., where he spent eight years as the Head Women’s Track and Field Coach.
Taylor took a program that finished 23rd at the 2006 California Community College State Track and Field Championships before his arrival and immediately helped them compete for state titles. By his second year at Laney, the team won the Nor Cal Regional Championship and finished second at the state meet, earning Taylor the title of California State Junior College Coach of the Year. The honor was followed by being named the Nor Cal Region Women’s Coach of the Year both in 2007 and 2008.
Taylor began his coaching career at the interscholastic level in 1988 at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland as an assistant coach before becoming head coach at Skyline High School, also in Oakland, for six years.
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