To Steve Sailer, the most interesting storyline going into the 2012 Olympics is whether the American long sprinter Allyson Felix will finally give in and go over to the dark side in her pursuit of individual gold:
She had to settle in 2004 and 2008 for silver medals in the 200m, losing each time to Jamaican women with biceps twice the diameter of hers.
Felix is the 21st Century black female version of the old Chariots of Fire Olympians: a well-spoken minister’s daughter from the nice middle class black suburb of L.A.. She’s just really fast. She turned professional right out of high school, so she couldn’t run college track, but still got her U.S.C. degree quickly. It’s easy to picture her as a high school principal some day. Corporate America would love to give her lots of money, if she’d only win individual gold. So, I imagine, there’s a lot of pressure on her to Do What It Takes. Americans love a winner.
And, at the 2011 world championship (pictured above), Allyson lost in the 400m by 0.03 seconds to a Botswanan with massive biceps.
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I went to the 1984 Olympics at the L.A. Coliseum and saw an NFL receiver’s wife with massive arms edge out a skinny Florence Griffith-Joyner for gold in the 200m. Then Flo-Jo lost the 1987 world championships to an East German with big arms. So, she showed up in 1988 looking like Wonder Woman, and set all the records, which still stand. She died in 1998.
Allyson has actually been training for years under Bear Ross, who describes the Holy Grail of Speed Training as increasing mass-specific force — or getting stronger without adding bulk. He recommends a program built around deadlifts and plyos:
The key to this workout’s effectiveness? TIME.
What was timed? The rest period between sets is exactly 5 minutes allowing up to 90% or more ATP regeneration. The benefit is much more rapid strength gain. By keeping sets and reps low, timed and without lifts to failure, lactic acid was minimal or non-existent. The benefit was that the athletes felt exhilarated and ready for a full event workout after lifting.
Great, but does it work…
In September of 2002, we began high school sprinter Allyson Felix’s final assault on Marion Jones’ national high school 200-meter record. At the time, Allyson weighed 121 lbs. She had improved at a rate of ½ second or better the two previous years so we were not expecting anywhere near that improvement rate in 2002. When you’re already under 23 seconds in the 200 meters an additional half-second drop in time in a single season is incredible.
Allyson, and the other athletes we trained, began the new training protocol in September. Allyson’s previous best deadlift was 125 lbs, primarily because we did not focus on that lift in the past.
Allyson increased September’s 125 lbs deadlift to 270 lbs in mid April (as witnessed by Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated) and to an estimated 300 lbs by June. Her body weight increased a paltry 2 pounds from 121 lbs to 123 lbs. Meanwhile, her 200-meter sprint time dropped from 22.83 in 2003 to 22.11 in 2004 (adjusted to 22.30 for altitude, a ½ second or better gain!). She had run the fastest 200 meters in the world (without resorting to drugs) for all women.
Right about now you may be thinking that Allyson Felix is a gifted athlete and that this is not good proof of the effectiveness of the workout.
Sure, Allyson’s tremendous natural talent allowed for eye-popping times, but ALL of her teammates showed significant reductions in time for sprints, as did the athletes of other sports doing the same workout. They also showed as large or larger increases in strength both in actual pounds and percentages.
One of Allyson’s sprint partners increased from 85 lbs to 215 lbs in the deadlift over the same time period yet increased her body weight from 98 pounds to 100 pounds. She had shown little improvement in her hurdle times over the previous 2 years but improved dramatically in 2003. Her best time in the 300 hurdles in 2001 was 46.67. In 2002 her time regressed to 46.83. In 2003, using the workout described above, she won the California Southern Section Division IV 300 meter hurdle championship in 45.88. This was a big improvement for someone who had been running competitively for at least 7 years. Soccer players had equivalent gains as did athletes in baseball and other sports.
Peter Weyand’s study has not been universally accepted by the coaching elite. Some may not trust the study because it challenges long-held concepts of what makes people run faster or it runs counter to what they think they see. Others may feel there is no way to adjust training to fit the study. From our experience, neither could be further from the truth!
This is the most interesting thing I’ve read about the Olympics in a long, long time.