Tyler Germain Episode 29 " Celebrating the development of speed and meaningful metrics to drive intent"

On episode 27 I sat down with Tyler Germain, the head of track and field at Kalamazoo Central High School. Tyler is only 35 years old but he's already got 17 years of experience on the track. Tyler talks about some of the various roles that he has held at different times as well as some of the different locations where he's coached. This naturally turns the conversation to how his perspective has shifted as he has spent more time on the track. This last year was Tyler's first year as the head track and field coach at his school, Tyler implemented the Feed the Cats system popularized by coach Tony Holler. Tyler shares that this varied from the approach in previous years. With Feed the cats naturally the focus of prep is to develop max velocity sprint metrics in a sensible manner. Tyler discusses how he stacks his week with max speed Mondays, followed by a more technical/ plyometric Tuesday, Followed by short accelerations on Wednesdays, Thursdays tend to be on the lower end of volume and the end of the week is where volume will be slightly higher and perhaps lactate work will occur. Tyler talks the distances and volumes that he typically facilitates on each day and why he likes particular distances for certain metrics and adaptations. At Kalamazoo Tyler is attempting to develop what he refers to as a culture of speed, we spend some time talking about how he is growing that very concept through his Summer speed camps. Tyler hopes to not only develop a love of sprinting and speed in his program but in all programs. We discuss some of the metrics that he utilizes to keep check on development and Tyler discusses his first years data and his average increase in speed. The numbers are pretty impressive especially considering all of the obstacles that he encountered during this Covid year. We talk some of his considerations for hurdles and the first rationale that he has for hurdlers regardless of distance, is that Hurdlers are sprinters first. Slow hurdlers no matter how good their form will not win; therefore, Coach Germain trains his hurdlers like sprinters first and foremost. Coach Germain also shares that he much prefers more dynamic methods to work on the rigors and technical aspects of hurdling. We end our conversation by discussing one of his articles that he published with simplifaster discussing how to facilitate a natural love for athletic process in child hood. We discuss how to naturally facilitate a love for jumping, running, skipping, throwing, hurdling, and being what coach Germain referred to as a "chaos Muppet". Overall this is a great conversation, I loved listening to Coach Germain's rationale and vision for the future, and I can't wait to see how he continues to implement many of the things we talked about today under more ideal circumstances. Check out links below to Coach Germain's twitter as well as previously published simplifaster articles. 

@TrackCoachTG https://twitter.com/TrackCoachTG

Simplifaster Articles by Coach Germain https://simplifaster.com/articles/author/tylergermain/