Today’s guest is Tony Holler, Head track coach at Plainfield North High School, Illinois and Co-founder of the Track-Football Consortium in the Chicago area.
I’ve known Tony for about 3 years now after meeting for him the first time at the original “Track-Football Consortium”. Listening to Tony talk about team culture and building sprinters was one of the most memorable aspects of my experiences there, and really keyed me into a different mentality when it came to track practice.
Tony has had great success at Plainfield North, including this last year where freshman Marcellus Moore ran 10.40 at the Illinois state track meet, one of the best freshman performances in high school track history. He is also a chemistry teacher and has many years of football coaching experience in his belt. Tony has written some amazing articles over the years on Simplifaster, and formerly, FreelapUSA, on sprint culture, training, and coaching.
Tony knows how to make track fun. When most people think of track, they think of intense speed-endurance and tempo workouts, throwing up after practice, and shin-splints. Tony’s practices look nothing like this, and they are the antithesis of the long-slow running model, and he gets great results. His model towards speed training coincides heavily with former podcast guest Jeff Moyer’s attitude towards training athletes, as we have spoken at length about in the form of strength training.
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:
- A recap of Tony’s last track season and what he learned from Marcellus Moore, the #1 freshman in the United States
- Tony’s sprint philosophy and its evolution over the years
- Setting up lactate training throughout the competitive season
- Approaches to rest and short practices for high school track and field
- The rationale and idea behind “X-Factor” plyometric and agility workouts
- Ideas on recording and publishing athletes sprint times
- Fluctuations in the “mode” of speed training throughout a high-school year
- Peaking considerations in a “low dose” training system
“Whatever it is that makes people fast, I think (Marcellus’s) feet might be the most important thing”
“I’ve always told kids to run fast and loose, and make it look easy, and I’ve quit saying that to Marcellus, because there is nothing loose or easy about the way that he runs”
“You don’t change things just because it’s not your stereotypical look (in athletes)”
“I started writing down the (40 yard dash) times, ranking them, and putting them up on a bulletin board, which became the most popular bulletin board in the high school”
“We never do a lactate workout until the season starts”
“In a period of 19 weeks, there is 27 lactate workouts (including meets counting as lactate workouts)”
“47.99 wasn’t bad for a junior, there was nothing wrong with him dying a little bit late in the race”
“I don’t even know what a tempo workout is! We don’t say the words tempo, fitness, conditioning in our program”
“To me, track and field is all about performance, it’s not about keeping kids until 5pm”
“We never practice more than 40 minutes”
“There’s no way to say “get your knees up” to a guy running at 10 meters per second”
“The record, rank and publish is critical to what we do”
About Tony Holler
Tony Holler is a teacher and coach at Plainfield North High School. Holler has 35 years of 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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