Mo Farah & Galen Rupp: Strength Training
What’s more, coach Salazar has tailored the exercises specific to running by modifying the Olympic Lifts to mimic running form. This gives the athletes the added benefit of specificity. He explains, “This is as important as anything we do in our training. It isn’t just, ‘Well let’s just go hit the weight room and do a few exercises.’ This is a very sort of synchronized and specific training program that they are on.”
A lost art.
While strength training is fashionable lately, Salazar’s Nike Oregon Project certainty isn’t the first to pioneer the concept. Nearly three decades before Salazar, Peter Coe, the coach and father of famed Sebastian Coe, used strength training to develop strong and efficient form and to prevent injury in his athletes. He explained that strength training benefited his athletes by “minimising stress on the connective tissues of the musculoskeletal system (ligaments, tendons, and cartilage)” and making “the entire support system more durable.”
An engineer by training, Peter Coe’s approach was always methodical and technical. In his all-encompassing book Better Training for Distance Runners, you can see his thinking first hand. Peter Coe noted that even the powerful engine of Steve Cram (former 1500m world record holder and ’84 1500m Olympic silver medalist), was poorly served by his misaligned gait and could benefit from improved biomechanics.
You can almost imagine Peter Coe perfectly placed in a Formula 1 pit crew. He would go onto describe the seriousness of poor biomechanics that burdened even the great Steve Cram. Steve Cram’s left foot “is markedly turned out (everted), as well as his left knee, giving that leg a reduced forward vector as it generates propulsive thrust,” said Coe. “An excessive amount of Cram’s propulsive energy is being absorbed by the knee and ankle joints in resisting the torsional stresses generated by his everted foot plant.”
