Four Decades of Athlete-Centered Sprint and Jumps Training with Randy Huntington

Randy Huntington brings over four decades of experience coaching professional and amateur athletes and is currently the national coach for Chinese athletics. After arriving in China in November 2013, Coach Huntington started implementing the strategies necessary to develop Chinese athletes and coaches, with his long-term goal to leave a legacy of coaches to help China achieve greatness in the future. His athlete-centered approach was challenging to implement at first, but common understanding and cooperation have now brought a better focus on this philosophy of coaching within athletics, and the results are starting to be seen in a variety of different events.

Huntington is rated as a USATF Master Coach in the jumps (one of nine). He has coached many world-class athletes over the years, including 37 Olympians and World Championship Team members. While under Coach Huntington’s tutelage, Mike Powell and Willie Banks set world records in the long jump and triple jump. Seven of his athletes have been in the U.S. All-Time Top 10 in their respective events.

Freelap USA: When you first start working with a sprinter, what are the technical markers and proficiencies you look for? Are you able to outline some key aspects of your technical model and how important it is that the athletes move toward that model over time?

Randy Huntington: I consider it very important that my athletes move toward a technical model. I think it’s important that athletes “look like” the great ones, so therefore, technically, much of what I look for is probably quite common. I focus on things like ground contact time, stride length, and stride frequency, and I’m also very keen to determine how the sprinter achieves these metrics.

When I first began working in China, the athletes and coaches there were essentially used to working with a stopwatch as their sole tool for recording measurements. I started videoing the athletes to give them an idea of the quality of their technique at a rudimentary level. Until that point, they had little input regarding technical metrics, except for some frequency work they had done with some visiting Japanese coaches.

I measure the athlete’s stride length at maximum velocity, somewhere between 40 and 70 meters, and I compare it to their anthropometrics. I look at greater trochanter length, height, femur length, tibia length, and medial malleolus to big toe. These anatomical metrics can provide an estimate of what the athlete’s optimal stride length should be, but also, the ratios between these measurements can provide some insight into what may need to be done in terms of drilling and strength training, for example, to enable the lever system to function as closely as possible to one that has the optimal ratios.

Su Bingtian had a very short greater trochanter length (0.895 meters), comparable to a shorter female, which led him to have a short stride length, although he had recorded over five strides per second, so his frequency was high. We, therefore, had to decrease his frequency to allow his stride length to increase, bringing him closer to an optimal combination of the two metrics.

I also look at how quickly the athlete goes from frontside to the ground and then from the ground back to frontside, and these recovery mechanics are all part of trying to achieve the aforementioned optimal stride length. You must have force applied down to the track, and you need the correct preparation of the limbs coming off the ground. Now, if you have the correct pelvic posture, which will be enabled by the anatomy above it, and the foot hits the ground correctly, you will get a stretch reflex through the hip flexor, assisting with these recovery mechanics. Gideon Ariel told me that muscles set up joints to take advantage of the elastic properties available, and that is what we are talking about here.

With ground contact times of 0.09 seconds, we’re now in the realm of nonvolitional movements; we can’t generally move that fast using concentric methods, so therefore, we need to capitalize on the elastic response of the tissues. This will also enable the correct path of the foot to occur through the recovery phase. Harry Jerome once said to me, “You wait for the track to give something back, and then you use it.” The person who was the best in the world at this was Carl Lewis. He was simply so patient and able to utilize elasticity so effectively, and you could see it happen somewhere between 55 meters and 70 meters in his races.

So, I do have a technical model, but it’s based on science. With Su, we knew he had a high stride frequency but also a low stride length, so we needed to start addressing his stride length through various means, be it flexibility, strength, force application, or recovery mechanics, which was his low-hanging fruit. Most of these qualities were already at a high level, so we really focused on his recovery mechanics.

One of the issues was that his ground contact times were so brief, as low as 0.074 seconds, that he didn’t have enough time to develop stride length—as counterintuitive as that may sound! Without the ability to measure his ground contact times, this would have been a far more challenging issue. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth reiterating: you can’t manage what you don’t measure!

Freelap USA: When teaching an athlete a new technical concept, how important are drills? Do you tend to use a lot of drills, or do you teach the athlete to progress their technique through their running?

Randy Huntington: All of the above! I’m big on drills, but not necessarily just for technique, and it’s worth noting that trying to perform a movement at 11 meters per second can be very different from trying to perform that movement at 2 or 3 meters per second. That said, I do use the “whole-part-whole” method, breaking a movement down into its components and teaching the athlete how to feel each of those movements. I think drills offer two benefits:

1. They are a form of coordination training.
2. They are a method through which we can strengthen particular muscles used for rotation and support upon ground impact in a specific way.

With our drills, we typically start over 10 meters and work up to 65 meters. Years ago, Brent McFarlane said to me, “Why do something wrong for 5 meters?” so I always invest time in learning how to perform a movement correctly over a short distance. I truly believe that you create the technical model, and then you train the model. This method allows me to teach the model, enabling the athlete to both ingrain that model and develop some technical endurance.

Drills offer two benefits: they are a form of coordination training and a method through which we can strengthen specific muscles used for rotation and support upon ground impact in a specific way. Share on X

Initially, I tend to look for smaller ranges of motion to work on the precision of the skill. If, for example, we’re developing a concept such as force application, large ranges of motion will likely result in a lack of accuracy and leave the athlete open to injury risk.

A good example of a progression is ankling. The athlete starts with regular ankling, then ankling with activator belts. I introduce Exogen for vertical loading, then I use the 1080 for horizontal loading, and finally, I go back to basic ankling without resistance. We can assess the effectiveness of the progression and interventions.

I term things like the activator belt as compliance hardware and an integration tool, as we teach the body to comply with a specific skill and integrate that skill into movement. It’s worth outlining the process of introducing an athlete to the activator belt. We start with heel and wall slides to teach the athlete what movements they should be feeling when they are in the recovery phase of the stride.

From here, we’ll do walking before slowly increasing the horizontal velocity of the movement. We’ll progress through rights, then lefts, then we’ll do right-rights, left-lefts, then right-right-lefts and left-left-rights, and then right-right-left-left and left-left-right-right, and then we’ll get into “running” or right-left-right-left. This progression takes anywhere from three months to a year to achieve.

The difference in Su’s coordination between year one and year two of working with him was drastic. In the second year, he was so smooth and had what I like to call “smooth speed.” He was applying force and recovering in preparation for the next contact so effectively that I knew he was ready to run fast.

We also progress from the smaller drills, such as the ankling we’ve discussed, to bigger drills, such as running or skipping As. This is much like my answer to the first question: they’re all very much standard practices. I’m not using drills that are significantly different than what most other coaches would use.

Throughout the periods in which the athletes are working on drills, they are also running, so they’re doing the “whole” skill but with a specific emphasis on whichever component they are working on with those drills. This helps to give those drills some context and build buy-in as to their importance, and the drill can provide some proprioceptive feedback as to what they need to be feeling when running.

Freelap USA: How important is it to develop the appropriate energy systems for a sprinter? How do you go about doing this through running workouts, and can you provide some examples?

Randy Huntington: First and foremost, it’s important to understand that all energy systems are always operating.

Acceleration is the aspect I devote the most attention to because, after only about four strides, an athlete is already at close to 75% of their maximum velocity. We work on transitioning from acceleration mechanics to maximum velocity mechanics, and I think moving between those two technical models is extremely important. In China, to communicate the concept, I changed the wording of speed endurance to extending speed. Referring to my first answer and what Harry Jerome told me about waiting for the elasticity of the track, this is what I’m looking for when I talk about extending speed, so it’s a technical and kinesthetic consideration as well as a metabolic one.

We work on transitioning from acceleration mechanics to maximum velocity mechanics, and I think moving between these two technical models is extremely important, says @hunt895wr. Share on X

I think the 100 meters requires more aerobic training than we typically provide, which may explain why a long-to-short approach sometimes works better than a short-to-long approach (not that it always does), depending on the athlete. I like the categorization of diesels and flyers and how this may influence how we approach coaching an athlete. Parts of their program will be different, while parts will probably remain the same.

To develop more aerobic qualities in an athlete, I use a 6x200m workout, as popularized by Coach Tom Tellez, and start with 2–3 minutes’ rest. Then, over time, I progress the recovery down 30­–60 seconds. While you can run farther than 200 meters, this isn’t really necessary for a 100-meter athlete, in my opinion.

Freelap USA: Having listened to you interviewed in podcasts, I get the impression you’re a fan of technology to support the performance of your athletes, and I know you’re a big proponent of Keiser. What kind of technologies do you use in your daily practice when coaching speed-power athletes?

Randy Huntington: I’m a big fan of technology, so much so that it earned me the nickname “Mr. Gizmo” by Tony Sandoval when l was working at Cal. I mentioned some examples of technology I use in my drilling progressions. We’ve been using Exogen since 2017. It offers the vertical loading that I mentioned, and also limb-specific loading that allows an athlete to develop technical mastery by building kinesthetic awareness, as well as torque loading the joints proximally to the wearable resistance. The other technologies I mentioned that feature in our drill progressions are the 1080, which I’ve used since 2015, and the Activator Belt, which I’ve used since 1996.

I’m a fan of the Shuttle MVP Pro to quickly teach the feeling of shifting from an eccentric contraction to a concentric one. This would, again, fall under the category of compliance hardware. Since 2017, I have been using Humon to monitor the actual oxygen content of the muscle, which can help determine recovery intervals between reps within a workout. It prevents the use of arbitrary recoveries, where individuals may need more or they may need less. Humon doesn’t exist anymore, but there are companies like Train Red and Moxy, plus a new one called Glomp, that provide similar information.

I was one of the first people in the United States to use Omegawave, and I still use it to tell me how well the athletes are adapting to the training load. As you mentioned, I’ve used Keiser since 1983, and I’d go as far as to say it’s part of my DNA. I have tried using alternate methods, but I simply do not get the same results.

I find just having a mass-based device alone to be a limitation, so whenever possible, I blend mass and Keiser. My feeling is that without Keiser, you’re missing a great tool and potentially leaving some performance on the table. They produced the seated calf raise machine in 1987 specifically for Willie Banks, and I think without this, it would have been more challenging for us to get the results we did.

My feeling is that without Keiser, you’re missing a great tool and potentially leaving some performance on the table, says @hunt895wr. Share on X

I also use velocity-based training devices such as GymAware, Vmaxpro, and Movescount. I have used some devices that are more involved with the mind, such as Muse and the Soundbrenner. The Soundbrenner stemmed from Music in Sync in the ’80s and ’90s, which an athlete wears on their wrist. It provides a certain number of beats per minute, which can impact running rhythm and cadence.

I first started with a Brower timing system to monitor velocity, but now I tend to use Freelap as it’s so easy to set up. I’ve also used the Jenoptik laser to track instantaneous velocity, which is more useful for tracking acceleration. I’ve also used Optojump, which provides additional information such as stride length and ground contact times and helps to determine how an athlete has achieved their velocity. The next step is integrating AI and video analysis, something a few companies, such as Vue Motion, are currently developing.

Finally, I’m not sure if this falls under the category of technology, but I’m a big advocate of using the pool (deep water) to assist in recovery. In the vertical immersion domain, I advocate for using the Complete PT Aquatic Therapy Belt to allow for the pressure differential between the lower and upper halves of the body and assist with venous return to the heart. I also have my athletes use flotation sandals, such as the Exersandal, and there are other upper-body tools to enhance aquatic recovery and therapy.

It would be remiss of me not to mention Hydroworx as well, as they have some great equipment in the hydro-recovery space, including a pool with an adjustable floor so the depth can be varied and an underwater treadmill. The purpose of the pool recovery tools is simply to increase the density of training so we can elicit favorable adaptations at a greater rate. An athlete’s capacity to adapt is dictated by their recovery status, so by increasing the recovery rate, we can apply the next training stimulus sooner.

Freelap USA: While I’m sure it can vary depending on many factors, how do you typically set out your weekly training cycle for your sprinters?

Randy Huntington: My athletes’ training cycles may vary. Su was already 28 when I started coaching him and had a family, so these were all factors that were considered when prescribing his training. This meant he probably saw me less than he may have done if he was 21 and single and I was coaching him. Typically, he’d train as follows:

• Monday – Acceleration

Tuesday – Lower body lifting

Wednesday – Speed or speed endurance

Thursday – Upper-body lifting

Friday – Acceleration, lower-body lifting, and easy pool tempo

Saturday – Speed endurance

I often use 9- or 10-day cycles, as sometimes seven days doesn’t allow for adequate recovery. I mentioned Omegawave earlier, and the data that technology can provide will influence the duration of a cycle.

For example, right now, Su hasn’t trained for 18 months, so he is in the following, less dense cycle:

• Sunday a.m. – Six sets of diagonal runs across the infield and hurdle mobility

Sunday p.m. – Circuits

Monday a.m. – Lower-body max strength

Monday p.m. – Off

Tuesday a.m. – Mobility drills

Tuesday p.m. – Running drills and bounds, including Exogen

Wednesday a.m. – 6x200m (31- to 33-second pace, 60 seconds’ recovery)

Wednesday p.m. – Off

Thursday a.m. – Six sets of diagonal runs across the infield and hurdle mobility

Thursday p.m. – Circuits

Friday a.m. – Throws, upper body lifting, and core

Friday p.m. – Running drills and bounds, including Exogen

Saturday a.m. – Off

Saturday p.m. – 4x3x100m (93% of best pace for that day, 60 seconds recovery between reps, 6 minutes recovery between sets)

Sunday a.m. – Off

Sunday p.m. – 4x4x50m straight leg bounds including Exogen (walk-back recovery between reps, 6 minutes recovery between sets)

Monday a.m. – Throws, lower body power training

Monday p.m. – Off

Tuesday a.m. – 2x6x50m (5.75- to 6.00-second pace, 60 seconds’ recovery between sets, four minutes’ recovery between sets)

Tuesday p.m. – Off

When I first got to China, the recovery tools were basic, and not much beyond sleep and massage were available. I mentioned I was an advocate of using the pool for recovery, and they started implementing hot tubs, cold plunges, and saunas throughout my time there, so it became easier to run a more traditional seven-day cycle.

In China and South Korea, the athletes did not want to rest, and it took Su a while to learn it’s okay to rest—but it was a battle. In part, they may have been right in this approach, as a good volume of moderate-intensity training elevated their testosterone levels and supported their development. However, they often weren’t training as intensely as required in the key sprint sessions to elicit the adaptations they wanted to improve their acceleration, speed, or speed endurance.

A Russian study investigating what was required when creating an Olympic champion found two crucial factors: staying healthy and keeping the same coach. It all comes down to consistency. Share on X

Ultimately, it’s a balance; if you want to run fast in competition, then it’s something that must be rehearsed in practice, but if you only train with intensity, you end up just getting a two-year athlete. Lower-intensity sessions, therefore, allow for more sustainability and consistency to be developed, and a Russian study investigating what was required when creating an Olympic champion found two crucial factors: staying healthy and keeping the same coach. It all comes down to consistency.

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