This week’s guest is UK senior athletics coach, Steve Fudge. Steve had initial training and experiences in strength and conditioning before he began training track and field sprinters in the UK. It is this combination that has helped him create a unique and incredibly effective way of seeing the development of the sprint athlete, according to each athlete’s own biochemistry and physical abilities. Steve has worked with two sub-10 sprinters (James Dasaolu, Adam Gemili) in addition to other great athletes.
Taken from an article on mcmillanspeed.com, “Steve is the epitome of the ‘lateral thinker’. With expanding interests in therapy, nutrition, philosophy, and neuro-science, as well as a background in strength & conditioning and massage, Steve has been able to successfully apply his studies to the science of his sport.”
I really enjoy speaking with coaches who have had a variety of backgrounds, as each sport or discipline we work with adds to our view and understanding of singular disciplines. In my own path, my experience as a strength coach has benefitted my knowledge of track and field coaching tremendously, and my work with swimmers and exactly what does transfer from the weight room to the water has globally enhanced my coaching abilities.
Listening to Steve, is it awesome to hear his multi-disciplinary background filtered down into simple, practical, and effective answers that have big ramifications for us as coaches working with athletes interested in running faster, jumping higher and moving better. This was a particularly enjoyable episode to record and edit on my own end, and the information is practical to virtually any type of coach or athlete out there.
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Key Points:
- Steve’s background in coaching
- How Steve’s background in strength and conditioning has influenced his work as a track coach
- Steve’s view on the role of the weight room in building speed
- The role of weight room 1-rep maxes in speed performance
- Measuring and monitoring bar speeds in the weight room
- Steve’s take on some of the more specific exercises in the weight room
- Single vs. double leg movements in the weight room
- How long intensive weight room work can be carried on before it becomes a problem
- Keeping strength training in a program to a greater degree than males later into the season
- Hormonal adaptations in strength training and performance
- Ideas on hamstring injury prevention
- The role of potentiation from the weightroom to the track
Quotes:
“The weightroom is part of a broader jigsaw puzzle, it is an important part, but what’s more important is how that part of the weightroom works into the bigger program. It doesn’t matter how good that strength program is, the overall program has to be good”
“I never want an athlete to go into the weightroom unmotivated, so yeah of course we definitely give them ideas of weights we want them to hit and targets we want them to hit and we want them to keep progressing in the weightroom, but we don’t necessarily want the whole program to become about how strong they are. We want them to progress and move forward in the weightroom in such a way that it compliments their running program”
“If we want someone to run at 12 meters per second, the most specific primary stimulus we can give them is fast running sessions”
“We can definitely use things in the weightroom to move forward the physical potentials of the athlete”
“Hip flexion done properly is quite a hard skill to do, so we’ve found that is a limiting factor in how the athlete and the crossed extensor reflex can come together. We’ve done a lot of exercises which are working on that end range hip flexion, that above 90 degrees hip flexion and making sure that the pelvis can stay in the proper position for that to materialize”
“One of the things that we have found with (specific work in the weightroom) is that you can stand on the track, and reference back to the weightroom and say “remember that skillset that you learned”, it gives you a neural link back to the weightroom that you can use on the trackside”
“Double leg lifting, you’re going to use to drive your physical, your hormonal, your cross-sectional area, demands you want to move forward”
“I could push heavy weightroom work for 6 to 8 week periods… as you bring fast running in fast running becomes the primary stimulus for the athlete and maintains a lot of the physical things you want to maintain; running fast is the most anabolic the most hormonally and neurally specific adaptations you could want”
“How fast can you switch off the stress response and switch on the parasympathetic nervous system… some athletes were unable to do that very very quickly after workouts”
“Athletes will hurt their hamstrings because of poor programming more than anything else… making sure than an athlete will never enter into a high velocity running session in a fatigued state… organize your training around your high velocity running sessions”
About Steve Fudge:
Steve Fudge is a UK Master coach, whose stable of sprinters has yielded sub-10 second men Adam Gemili and James Dasaolu; World and Paralympic 100m gold medallist Jonny Peacock, 200m sprinter Chris Clarke, and World youth 100m champion Asha Philip.
Steve is the epitome of the ‘lateral thinker’. With expanding interests in therapy, nutrition, philosophy, and neuro-science, as well as a background in strength & conditioning and massage, Steve has been able to successfully apply his studies to the science of his sport.
Steve Fudge is known for taking the scientific route and concentrating on recovery, according to his sprinters.
Steve graduated from Edinburgh University in sports science in 2003, completed an internship at the University of Washington as a strength and conditioning coach, then a similar role at the Australian Institute of Sport.
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