How to Support a Champion: The art of applying science to the elite athlete

by Steve Ingham

Steve moved through the gears. “Generally, it pisses me off,” he shot. “You lot tend to come in and tell me what I should be doing and how I should be doing it, but you don’t realise I’ve tried it all before. For 1984 [the Los Angeles Games], our coach, Mike Spracklen, got us doing a lot of high-intensity interval training and we won. For 1988, he got us to do the same, but in added some weight training and we won. When Jürgen came in [in 1992], he changed it all around and we did a lot of low-intensity mileage with some weights, and we won. For 1996, we still did a lot of mileage but with more weights. We still won. “Scientists come and tell us we should have this special system, but we know it’s based on some half-bent study on students. It probably doesn’t matter a great deal about how we train; we just need to do a lot of it and with plenty of variety.