Alex Ray
01-21-2007, 06:40 PM
Source: www.delta-sky.com (http://www.delta-sky.com/)
Published: October 2005
By Ian Stafford
When he was a kid, Justin Gatlin used to hurdle over fire hydrants dotted around the sidewalks of Brooklyn, New York. These days, his training methods are a little more sophisticated. They seem to work, too.
Gatlin is the Olympic champion in the 100 meters, after winning one of the greatest sprints of all time at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece, relegating the great Maurice Greene to third in the process. The top three finishers were well under 10 seconds, with just two hundredths of a second separating gold and bronze.
Gatlin followed up this triumph by claiming a bronze medal in the 200-meter final, and a silver medal when he helped the American sprint relay team into second place on the final day of the Games.
He wasn’t really supposed to win like this. “I was stunned when I heard after winning the 100 meters gold medal that nobody had me down to be the champion,” the 23-year-old admits. “It was a real wake-up call. It made me determined to prove that I was no fluke.”
You could say he’s proved his point. In Helsinki, Finland, this past August, he became the first man since Greene to pick up both the 100- and the 200-meter gold at the World Outdoor Track & Field Championships. And his 100-meter margin of 0.17 seconds was the widest in the meet’s history. You could also say that going to Athens and Helsinki was worth interrupting his pursuit of a college degree, something he’s promised his mom he’ll get.
For him, though, the days of hurdling fire hydrants some 15 years ago remain as vivid as ever. “All my friends wanted to play baseball for the Yankees, or basketball for the Knicks, but all I ever wanted to do was run,” says Gatlin. “To me, anyone could dribble a basketball, but there’s only one guy who can be the best sprinter in the world. If I win, it’s down to me. If I lose, I can only blame myself. That’s how I like it.
“Of course, there weren’t too many facilities in Brooklyn for me to use when I was 8 or 9. So I made up my own training methods, and that included hurdling the hydrants. One time I clipped a hydrant so hard I fell onto a car bumper and split my lip. I went home crying to my mom, but the next day I was so determined to get it right I went back to the same hydrant, and this time cleared it by a mile.”
It was this same determination that 15 years later—after a move to Pensacola, Florida, followed by one to Raleigh, North Carolina; after a switch from hurdling to sprinting; after an overturned drug ban when it was accepted that the amphetamines found in his body had been part of medication used for attention deficit disorder; and after a world indoor 60-meter title claimed in 2003—made Gatlin an Olympic champion.
That and his training regimen, which, he swears, is the key. After the Olympic Games in 2004, he took time off between October and December. “Apart from a few light jogs I didn’t even think about training,” he explains. “It’s important that when you’re training it’s all-consuming, but when you’re not you have to have other things in your life.”
From last December until May of this year, however, it was full on. Really full on. “I trained for six hours a day, every day of the week except for Sundays,” Gatlin recalls. “Three hours would be spent on the track, and three hours in the weight room. On Sundays it would be rest. And I mean total rest. People mistakenly believe that if you do nothing but train you can only get better. You’ve got to work hard, but the harder you work, the harder you must rest and relax.”
The hard work Gatlin puts in pays off. “A lot of athletes can win a one-off race, but if you want to be Olympic or world champion you’ve got to get through a lot of races,” he says. “In Athens I was in nine races, when you’ve added up the first and second heats, semifinals and finals of the 100, 200 and the relays. For that you need a great deal of stamina and strength.”
Hence the six hours a day. “The name of the game is muscle memory,” says Gatlin. “Most guys train three days a week. My body is now used to stresses and strains. On the track we do everything, from working on our speed to our stamina. I’ll do a lot of starts, for example, to improve my speed off the blocks. In Athens I was the slowest starter, yet still managed to win. We’ll also do flying starts, when you’re jogging and then suddenly having to sprint. That’s good for the fast-twitch muscles.”
Though Gatlin is a 100-meter specialist, that doesn’t mean the aerobic portion of his intense training regimen stops at that distance. He also runs a large number of 250- and 300-meter sprints, with very little recovery time in between. “This is to build up endurance,” he says. “It’s often the hardest part of training, because once you’ve [done] eight 300-meter sprints with only 30 seconds’ rest in between each one, you’re suffering.”
For runners and other cardiocentric athletes, this “suffering” is often due to the burning sensation from lactic-acid buildup in the legs, which is one of your body’s natural ways of letting off steam. For elite athletes, it’s something of a badge of honor. “If you don’t experience this, you haven’t given your all,” says Gatlin. “The most tiring part of a major competition is the victory lap after you’ve won the race. By definition you’ve given your all in the final, and there is next to nothing left, even to complete a jog once around the track.”
After a break of a couple of hours following his track work, Gatlin says, he heads for the weight room for a three-hour session. After all, there’s much more to a runner’s training than just running. “[The work with weights], obviously, is to build up strength and power. A sprinter needs this everywhere, not just in his legs,” he explains. “Upper-body strength is just as important as lower-body strength, which is why we do so much work with dumbbells, press-ups and power cleans. Squats, jerks, inclines—you name it, I do it. This is what got me through nine races at the Olympics.”
All this was preparatory work for the summer track and field season. Gatlin likens it to a bank balance. “You spend the whole winter and spring depositing money into your bank account,” he says. “Come the summer, I’m ready to withdraw.”
The key here, he says, is to ease up, and do little more than make a few tweaks and minor adjustments: “You can’t overdo it from May onward. My only worry is staying healthy. I’m in shape by now, so it’s all about technique, such as your starts from the blocks. Now I’m ready to justify my position as Olympic champion.”
On top of the physical training, he adds two vital extra ingredients. First, Gatlin has come a long way in terms of diet and nutrition. “Only three or four years ago, my diet would be courtesy of Burger King. I’d eat anything I could get my hands on,” he says. “Now I understand the value of a healthful diet and good nutrition. Now my diet is all about carbohydrates. I eat a lot of fruit and rice and potatoes. I eat pasta. And I eat white meat, such as chicken, and fish. I steer well clear of food with chemicals in it.”
But it’s not all about the physical side of things when you’re a world champion athlete. Second, Gatlin works hard to find the extra edge mentally, too. “Your mental preparation, once you reach the highest level, is vital,” he says. “If I’m to keep on improving, and to meet the challenge of defending my Olympic title, this is where I’m most likely to benefit. I used to psych myself out before races. I’d be worrying far too much about others. Now I concentrate on myself. I know that if I do the job, the others won’t come into the equation.”
But what about us, the casual athletes who compete at no higher level than at the local club, or against friends? Can an Olympic star really pass on training tips that are as useful to you or me as they are to him?
“Absolutely,” Gatlin insists. “Maybe my results are better, but it’s the same principles. You have to build up a regimen. People always complain about the state of their stomachs, but they never do any sit-ups. Wake up, do 10 sit-ups as soon as you get out of bed, and then 10 press-ups. Do it every day until it becomes part of the fabric of the day, like cleaning your teeth.”
The key, says Gatlin, is repetition and challenging yourself to do better: “The 10 sit-ups will become 100 press-ups, and the better you become at it the more enjoyable it will become. Set personal goals. Keep improving your standards, whether it’s the number of press-ups or your times. If you don’t do these core workouts, you’ll be in trouble. And then remember to relax. Your body and mind need to be ready for it.”
Sound advice, it seems, but not everyone can be an Olympic or world champion. “Yeah?” Gatlin asks, his face breaking into a broad grin. “Try telling that to the kid who hurdled the fire hydrants.”
Published: October 2005
By Ian Stafford
When he was a kid, Justin Gatlin used to hurdle over fire hydrants dotted around the sidewalks of Brooklyn, New York. These days, his training methods are a little more sophisticated. They seem to work, too.
Gatlin is the Olympic champion in the 100 meters, after winning one of the greatest sprints of all time at the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece, relegating the great Maurice Greene to third in the process. The top three finishers were well under 10 seconds, with just two hundredths of a second separating gold and bronze.
Gatlin followed up this triumph by claiming a bronze medal in the 200-meter final, and a silver medal when he helped the American sprint relay team into second place on the final day of the Games.
He wasn’t really supposed to win like this. “I was stunned when I heard after winning the 100 meters gold medal that nobody had me down to be the champion,” the 23-year-old admits. “It was a real wake-up call. It made me determined to prove that I was no fluke.”
You could say he’s proved his point. In Helsinki, Finland, this past August, he became the first man since Greene to pick up both the 100- and the 200-meter gold at the World Outdoor Track & Field Championships. And his 100-meter margin of 0.17 seconds was the widest in the meet’s history. You could also say that going to Athens and Helsinki was worth interrupting his pursuit of a college degree, something he’s promised his mom he’ll get.
For him, though, the days of hurdling fire hydrants some 15 years ago remain as vivid as ever. “All my friends wanted to play baseball for the Yankees, or basketball for the Knicks, but all I ever wanted to do was run,” says Gatlin. “To me, anyone could dribble a basketball, but there’s only one guy who can be the best sprinter in the world. If I win, it’s down to me. If I lose, I can only blame myself. That’s how I like it.
“Of course, there weren’t too many facilities in Brooklyn for me to use when I was 8 or 9. So I made up my own training methods, and that included hurdling the hydrants. One time I clipped a hydrant so hard I fell onto a car bumper and split my lip. I went home crying to my mom, but the next day I was so determined to get it right I went back to the same hydrant, and this time cleared it by a mile.”
It was this same determination that 15 years later—after a move to Pensacola, Florida, followed by one to Raleigh, North Carolina; after a switch from hurdling to sprinting; after an overturned drug ban when it was accepted that the amphetamines found in his body had been part of medication used for attention deficit disorder; and after a world indoor 60-meter title claimed in 2003—made Gatlin an Olympic champion.
That and his training regimen, which, he swears, is the key. After the Olympic Games in 2004, he took time off between October and December. “Apart from a few light jogs I didn’t even think about training,” he explains. “It’s important that when you’re training it’s all-consuming, but when you’re not you have to have other things in your life.”
From last December until May of this year, however, it was full on. Really full on. “I trained for six hours a day, every day of the week except for Sundays,” Gatlin recalls. “Three hours would be spent on the track, and three hours in the weight room. On Sundays it would be rest. And I mean total rest. People mistakenly believe that if you do nothing but train you can only get better. You’ve got to work hard, but the harder you work, the harder you must rest and relax.”
The hard work Gatlin puts in pays off. “A lot of athletes can win a one-off race, but if you want to be Olympic or world champion you’ve got to get through a lot of races,” he says. “In Athens I was in nine races, when you’ve added up the first and second heats, semifinals and finals of the 100, 200 and the relays. For that you need a great deal of stamina and strength.”
Hence the six hours a day. “The name of the game is muscle memory,” says Gatlin. “Most guys train three days a week. My body is now used to stresses and strains. On the track we do everything, from working on our speed to our stamina. I’ll do a lot of starts, for example, to improve my speed off the blocks. In Athens I was the slowest starter, yet still managed to win. We’ll also do flying starts, when you’re jogging and then suddenly having to sprint. That’s good for the fast-twitch muscles.”
Though Gatlin is a 100-meter specialist, that doesn’t mean the aerobic portion of his intense training regimen stops at that distance. He also runs a large number of 250- and 300-meter sprints, with very little recovery time in between. “This is to build up endurance,” he says. “It’s often the hardest part of training, because once you’ve [done] eight 300-meter sprints with only 30 seconds’ rest in between each one, you’re suffering.”
For runners and other cardiocentric athletes, this “suffering” is often due to the burning sensation from lactic-acid buildup in the legs, which is one of your body’s natural ways of letting off steam. For elite athletes, it’s something of a badge of honor. “If you don’t experience this, you haven’t given your all,” says Gatlin. “The most tiring part of a major competition is the victory lap after you’ve won the race. By definition you’ve given your all in the final, and there is next to nothing left, even to complete a jog once around the track.”
After a break of a couple of hours following his track work, Gatlin says, he heads for the weight room for a three-hour session. After all, there’s much more to a runner’s training than just running. “[The work with weights], obviously, is to build up strength and power. A sprinter needs this everywhere, not just in his legs,” he explains. “Upper-body strength is just as important as lower-body strength, which is why we do so much work with dumbbells, press-ups and power cleans. Squats, jerks, inclines—you name it, I do it. This is what got me through nine races at the Olympics.”
All this was preparatory work for the summer track and field season. Gatlin likens it to a bank balance. “You spend the whole winter and spring depositing money into your bank account,” he says. “Come the summer, I’m ready to withdraw.”
The key here, he says, is to ease up, and do little more than make a few tweaks and minor adjustments: “You can’t overdo it from May onward. My only worry is staying healthy. I’m in shape by now, so it’s all about technique, such as your starts from the blocks. Now I’m ready to justify my position as Olympic champion.”
On top of the physical training, he adds two vital extra ingredients. First, Gatlin has come a long way in terms of diet and nutrition. “Only three or four years ago, my diet would be courtesy of Burger King. I’d eat anything I could get my hands on,” he says. “Now I understand the value of a healthful diet and good nutrition. Now my diet is all about carbohydrates. I eat a lot of fruit and rice and potatoes. I eat pasta. And I eat white meat, such as chicken, and fish. I steer well clear of food with chemicals in it.”
But it’s not all about the physical side of things when you’re a world champion athlete. Second, Gatlin works hard to find the extra edge mentally, too. “Your mental preparation, once you reach the highest level, is vital,” he says. “If I’m to keep on improving, and to meet the challenge of defending my Olympic title, this is where I’m most likely to benefit. I used to psych myself out before races. I’d be worrying far too much about others. Now I concentrate on myself. I know that if I do the job, the others won’t come into the equation.”
But what about us, the casual athletes who compete at no higher level than at the local club, or against friends? Can an Olympic star really pass on training tips that are as useful to you or me as they are to him?
“Absolutely,” Gatlin insists. “Maybe my results are better, but it’s the same principles. You have to build up a regimen. People always complain about the state of their stomachs, but they never do any sit-ups. Wake up, do 10 sit-ups as soon as you get out of bed, and then 10 press-ups. Do it every day until it becomes part of the fabric of the day, like cleaning your teeth.”
The key, says Gatlin, is repetition and challenging yourself to do better: “The 10 sit-ups will become 100 press-ups, and the better you become at it the more enjoyable it will become. Set personal goals. Keep improving your standards, whether it’s the number of press-ups or your times. If you don’t do these core workouts, you’ll be in trouble. And then remember to relax. Your body and mind need to be ready for it.”
Sound advice, it seems, but not everyone can be an Olympic or world champion. “Yeah?” Gatlin asks, his face breaking into a broad grin. “Try telling that to the kid who hurdled the fire hydrants.”