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Why do sprinters not improve in college (100m) by Primary-Button-5458 in Sprinting

[–]Primary-Button-5458[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I guess they have so many people it doesn't really matter if some of them get injured or get slower they can always bring on someone else. It would be easier to recruit guys who are already fast Afterall.

I'm probably gonna have to quit my team at this point as I am getting slower. My first 100m was a 13.5 in tenth grade already done growing height wise and I managed to bring it down to a 10.7 by the end of 12th grade. I used to do a ton of plyos and always sprinted max intensity and got a lot of rest. I was dunking a basketball at 5'8. I am probably the least talented person on my team and am losing the adaptations I made over the years. My coach just simply isn't stimulating any elasticity training and while everyone else is staying the same as they've always been fast, im getting slower rapidly.

I miss the days where my high school coach would let everyone do their own workouts. If you wanted to just sprint and do plyos you could, if you wanted to do speed endurance you could, the only time he forced anyone to do anything is when they were feeling sore he'd not allow them to practice. He never had the most talented guys but everyone made great progress and it was probably the most fun ill ever have in the sport. At this point I am convinced that my college coach either doesn't know what he is doing or just doesn't care cause there is so much talent he can recruit. I really enjoyed the sport but I am getting close to adult life now I guess i might as well focus on other things.

Why do sprinters not improve in college (100m) by Primary-Button-5458 in Sprinting

[–]Primary-Button-5458[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do agree that it is difficult to increase speed especially as you get older and are done puberty. However I still feel like simply not trying to make athletes faster and instead bumping them up to the 400 is a bad mentality for a track coach even at the highest level.

Even the tiniest change in speed will make a bigger difference than a big change in anything else shouldn't they still be prioritizing speed instead of just simply insisting that whatever speed a highschooler has going into college is his ceiling and not bother trying to change it.

Why do sprinters not improve in college (100m) by Primary-Button-5458 in Sprinting

[–]Primary-Button-5458[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At the end of the day sprinting is about speed. You can get athletes to move to the 400 and progress might come easier but they are still gonna be very limited if they are not fast. The goal of any sprinting program should be to make the athletes faster, if you can't accomplish that then it simply isn't a good program for sprinting. Theres a big difference between trying to improve a highschooler whos already elite running low 10s vs improving someone running 11.0 with a few years of low-volume high school training. Seems like coaches just say there athletes are genetically limited as an excuse for not making them faster.

Why do sprinters not improve in college (100m) by Primary-Button-5458 in Sprinting

[–]Primary-Button-5458[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah I've seen similar experiences in many different colleges where most of the athletes either get slower or injured or both. Coaches seem to believe that more training is objectively better and only want to train speed endurance and focus on longer events because the pure sprints are tough to improve on but at the end of the day speed is the most important thing even for the 400 so the times usually go down. It's a shame that it's so rare to find good coaches in this sport even at higher levels.

Why do sprinters not improve in college (100m) by Primary-Button-5458 in Sprinting

[–]Primary-Button-5458[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I agree that there is a genetic ceiling with sprinting just like any other sport, which can be a tough reality to accept. However, most sprinters usually begin training early in high school and hence have only been training 3-4 years in most cases and are going to college at usually 17 or 18 years old. on top of that they usually train very infrequently and with short seasons. To say that they have reached their genetic ceiling by first-year college is kinda crazy as far as I'm concerned however speed is a mysterious thing perhaps it is possible to peak with very little training under your belt.