This week’s guest is track and field coach Rana Reider. For those of us who live on the internet, we don’t often hear much of Rana’s training and philosophy, but he is one of the absolute best in the world.
Rana spent time as an NAIA track coach before coaching at NCAA schools Florida and Kansas State, as well as UK Athletics, and he has been taking on some of the biggest names in the sport today, such as Christian Taylor and Dafne Schippers as a private track coach. He has been awarded the NAIA National Coach of the Year honor in 2000, and 2011 Nike Coach of the Year.
Rana’s use of technology in the midst of a training session is truly incredible to hear explained. He makes use of pieces like the 1080 sprint and the Freelap system, in addition to Optojump and other tools, all in one run. Rana also takes multiple blood tests during the course of training sessions to determine how to create an optimal flow of the training session.
Listening to Rana talk was one of the rare opportunities for me so far in recording this podcast. My Evernote also gained a few extra pages after going through this recording again, as there were many great ideas of coaching and training.
Although Rana uses technology frequently, this episode will show his wisdom in terms of when, and when not to use it with his athletes, and how to take the optimal path in different training situations and athlete types.
It is my pleasure to bring to you a training and technology talk with coach Rana Reider.
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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.
Key Points:
- Rana’s background in the field
- Rana’s coaching style
- Technology and data collection in the scope of sprint training and athletics
- Autoregulating based on technology and monitoring
- How Rana learned to create his workouts and training cycles
- Assisted and resisted sprinting and Rana’s use of the 1080 sprint
- Monitoring in the weightroom
- Saliva and blood testing
- Data collection and time of year
Quotes:
“Different athletes get motivated differently; I have to mold my coaching style on the track differently for each athlete”
“We’ve figured out this year, the intensity this year has gone to a level that is so high that I’ve had to monitor more than I normally would; heart rate, blood, technical and state of mind”
“Early in the training year, I give them a little bit of feedback, but I don’t show them a whole lot of film because I want them to understand the cues I’m giving them; from a spatial awareness and technical standpoint, they need to learn what they’re doing”
“(Expanding on that last point) I do want them to understand that they can work hard, they can start to get fit, and they don’t need to immediately see if on video. You have to get fit, you have to understand what you can and can’t do and why you are going to get sore, and what training load means”
“If we get to the point where we’re at 5 runs and they’re falling off, I’m going to cut them off…that’s on the high high level. The developmental athletes I think, they have to start working through some of those fatigue factors and understand that when the body gets into a state of fatigue and high lactic levels, they are going to have to work through that because they are not going to feel perfect all season long”
“One of the reasons I think I’m successful is I have a pretty good eye, I let myself coach”
“You have to know, what does each exercise, what does each run do to each athlete”
“I use the 1080 sprint between 3-4 times per week depending on what the group is… we use it every acceleration session”
“With the Gym Aware (the athletes) can watch each other lift and it becomes more of a contest to see who is lifting the fastest at what percentage of their max. It becomes a game and keeps them interested”
“We stick to the major lifts, Olympic lifts, depending on whether they can squat or not, we’ll do squats, Christian Taylor, 2 days before the Olympic qualifying did a hang clean of 155kg”
“Each individual recovers differently from a weight session, if you’re training 40 weeks of the year you better have a pretty good idea of what each training cycle did for your athlete and what it took for them to recover”
“If Christian Taylor is doing max velocity stuff, flying 30s, flying 40’s, it’ll take him 3 days to recover, it really beats him up. If you tell him to do 3×350 with 5 minutes rest, he can run 44 seconds, no problem, he is ready to jump the next day”
About Rana Reider:
In 20 years of coaching, Reider has led numerous athletes to success at Florida, Kansas State, Clemson, Life University, California Baptist and Riverside Community College. He was previously awarded the NAIA National Coach of the Year honor in 2000, and 2011 Nike Coach of the Year. Notable athletes who train under Reider include Christian Taylor, Daphne Schippers, and Churandy Martina. Reider has also coached the reigning Olympic decathlon champion and this year’s Visa Humanitarian of the Year Bryan Clay in the jumps.
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