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This week’s guest is Curtis Taylor, sprints coach for Oregon University track and field.  Curtis has assembled one of the most dominating collegiate women’s sprint groups in history, featuring the likes of 2016 Olympians Ariana Washington (also 100/200m NCAA champ this past year), Deajah Stevens, and has consulted other successful athletes and Olympic competitors. Curtis also coached Hannah Cunliffe to a big PR with a sub-11 second 100m dash in her sophomore year as a transfer from Oklahoma. Curtis is one of the best sprint coaches in the nation, and I’m thrilled to have him on the podcast.  Back to back with Henk Kraaijenhof (ep 20), this could be considered one of the best “sprint doubles” in history! In this episode we go inside Curtis’ training philosophy and learn some things that have led to his sprint coaching successes. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. 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: The use of plyometrics in training track sprinters, and key points of implementation Progressing plyometrics in context of contact time Curtis’s approach to strength training for sprinters Upper body training for sprinters Curtis’s thoughts on resisted and overspeed training devices Ideas on fixing sprint errors and cueing One of Curtis’s favorite sprint drills Curtis’s ideas on overdistance training and tempo Trochanter length as a rule by which to optimize sprint technique Loading and deloading ideals for sprint athletes Quotes: “With plyometrics, we are dealing with the ability to reduce ground contact time” “Most people want to increase the intensity of what they are doing (by raising the height of the hurdle or box).  By increasing the intensity, you end up increasing the ground contact time, which is not what you want to do!” “To apply more force on the ground, you need to spend more time on the ground to jump higher, and if we are spending more time on the ground, we are defeating the purpose of what a hurdle hop is for” “Even if you can recreate the movements of the track in the weightroom, you can’t move the weight as fast as what you can do on the track…there is a fine line with lifting, that you don’t go too far on the maximal strength end of things, and you aren’t sacrificing speed of movement” “We’ll have 4-6 weeks this fall where we are able to lift heavy” “As a coach, you have to figure out different cues that work for different people” “We don’t do a lot of running drills, but we do the same ones, there are millions of running drills, but you have got to find the ones that work best for you.  We have about 6 drills that work best for me, and I keep those in rotation” “Once you have established a culture within your group, the new kids can look at the older kids and figure out a way to do these things correctly” “People land too far in front of their body, then you have to wait until the foot comes under the center of mass until you can push.  Then your heel recovery is worse, recovering from way behind the body.  It’s a bad circle, in which it continues to get worse as you go down the track.  There is a skid drill we do, which involves an active paw to put you in the right position.  You can hear the way the drill sounds, watch someone do it right, and then try to recreate that sound.  When someone does it right, all the other mechanical issues start to clean themselves up” “The slower you run, the more your technique is compromised, and the more you run in bad technique, the more you emphasize bad technique” “I try to make sure that most of the stuff I’m doing, I can take to the starting line, whether it’s in the weightroom, in my drills, plyometrics; if I can’t take it to the starting line, then what’s the use of it?” “Your strength length is limited and influenced...