A sprint program centred on learning is the key to life-long speed development

“GDOL” - The most frequently said phrase at training over the last 6 months. Every time I hear it, I get the coaching-tingles deep inside. GDOL stands for ‘Good Day Of Learning’ and it has underpinned much of the training experience thus far. As much as I believe training is about physical development, I also believe that physical development needs to be paired with:

• Technical Development

• Strategic Development

• Emotional Development

• Human Development

• Development of Purpose

There are many other traits which I’ve probably failed to, or have yet, to recognise, but my point is that in order to increase performance in a competitive setting, more than just physical development needs to be trained. Physical development will absolutely improve performance. Simply sprinting with more frequency or intensity, or getting stronger, WILL lead to an improvement of sprint times. However, there will be a cap on what can be accomplished. I stole a photo from Nick DiMarco’s (Elon University) instagram page to highlight this point. The cap of the person who only develops physically will be at a ‘trained individual’. This is where I observe a fault in the development of track and field athletes in Australia. There seems to be an emphasis on ‘what’ you do (running ‘X’ amount of metres or lifting ‘Y’ amount of weights) with a disregard on ‘how’ you do it. Perhaps this is the case because working hard is easier than working smart.

Shifting the emphasis towards a learning-centred model shifts the paradigm to HOW and WHY you are doing something and less about WHAT and HOW MUCH.

The best example of the antithesis of a learning-centred training model occurs in youth sports. I started playing Australian Rules Football when I was 13 years old. I remember a guy named Jeff (not his real name) dominating the league I played in for the first two years I played football. He didn’t necessarily have the greatest skills, but he scared the shit out of me and anyone who stood in his path because he had the body of a SpringBock Rugby player while I was yet to grow my first pube. Even if I, or other smaller players (even skinnier and smaller than I) didn’t dominate the game like Jeff did, we found ways to contribute positively to the team and as the years progressed, myself and my teammates developed physically. By the time we were 15-16 years old, Jeff wasn’t so big anymore and we had spent the previous 3 years learning and problem solving the game of Australian Rules Football. Jeff during those 3 years had no need to develop his skills or understanding of the game because there was no need to. He was the man due to his physical presence. But now, he had no physical presence and still no skill. So he sucked and now, the kids who he once dominated, were dominating him. Had he been in an environment where there was a requirement for the development of skill or understanding of how the game functioned, he still would have been a fantastic player (as he was a great athlete). But as stated, there was no need to focus on the process (the skills and understanding) as the outcome (the winning and dominance) was so reinforcing of habit.

I contrast this story of Jeff by looking at footage of LeBron James playing basketball in high school. Even if it was EXTREMELY clear, that even in high school, LeBron could possibly be the greatest physical specimen of all time, the way he played the game is a fantastic example of a learning centred model. Despite the fact that LeBron probably could’ve overpowered every defender on every possession, even in the final game of his high school career against the number 1 team in the country, Oak Hill Academy, LeBron shows a brilliant display of shot creation and passing. He took shots which had the possibility to miss and integrated his team mates into the game. Perhaps he knew that one day he would be in the NBA and at that point, the difference between his physicality and his opponent’s wouldn’t be so drastic; and that by playing and training the way he was at High School, his game could translate to the professional level. If he was genius enough to recognise that (and I don’t doubt that he was) it would display that, even if he had lost that game against Oak Hill Academy, the learning experience of the game would be more important than the outcome.

Once you’ve learned something, it’s hard to unlearn it (once you GDOL you can’t un-GDOL). One of the frustrating parts of the athletic experience is that injuries occur. Health comes and goes and sometimes other things need to take priority in life. If you were to solely develop physically, your success as an athlete hinges so finely on perfect health. Furthermore, what happens when you have a break from training at the end of a season? Do you go back to square one? Although results will never linearly improve, I see learning as the best way to ensure a constant upward trend of results. Ironically, by shifting the focus away from results, results will over time improve.

So how can you integrate elements of learning into the training environment for sprints? Here are some ideas and things which I’ve observed over the last 6 months:

• Prescribe drills which the athletes will fail at. Every sprinter can do A-Skips in their sleep and probably haven’t learned anything from doing them for a long time.

• Prescribe meaning to all drills and exercises. Why are we doing an A-Skip? (I’ll continue to use A-Skip as an example not because I hate them, I just don’t think they’re frequently done with any intent or purpose).

• Prescribe drills which exaggerate a specific quality. Let the athletes feel what it is to be too low or too high so they can find their own posture (for example) rather than what they think their ideal posture is.

• Target specific qualities and provide examples of what professional execution of that quality looks like. For example, in our acceleration, we were trying to get the hip to extend prior to knee extension, so I’ve spent the last 5 months forwarding videos of Christian Coleman and Carlin Isles dropping their shins at the start of acceleration. Give the athletes a relevant model, too. If they’re a 90kg beast, perhaps they can’t really empathise watching Andre De Grasse.

• Encourage experimentation. Failure is a great learning tool (as mentioned above).

• Wait for the athlete to give you their feedback before you give your feedback.

• Praise good execution of skill rather than praising a good time.

• Encourage discussion and feedback within the squad (although just keep a keen ear to overhear some potentially harmful feedback).

• Attach emotions to actions and see the results. Do you compete better stressed, relaxed, angry? Etc.

• Find out if the athletes are enjoying the experience and keep track of their goals.

To take a learning-centred approach to training isn’t to neglect hard work. Oftentimes, I actually think people can accomplish more work THROUGH learning. Games are a fantastic example of this. This article is to emphasise, as I often do, that along with the physical, one must strive for technical, strategic and emotional mastery of your craft through your training experience. Make every training session a GDOL.