Chris Royster - 2021 Season: A Case Study

13 Pages·2021·4.505 MB·English

by  Altis

CHRIS ROYSTER 2021 SEASON:
A Case Study
WELCOME
INTRODUCTION
This case-study is a review of the 2021 competitive season for American
100m sprinter Chris Royster.
In it, I answer the question “how did Chris get so good this year?”
I’ve been asked by people to put this together almost from as soon as
the season began — he opened up the season running a windy 10.0, and
kept things rolling throughout a long season.
There are a few things that made this breakthrough year pretty unique
for Chris:
CHRIS ROYSTER
1. Chris is 29,
2021 SEASON:
2. He works full-time, and
A CASE STUDY
3. He’s ran about the same for the last 4 years — making a few
jumps each year on either his PR or his consistency — but nothing really By: Stuart McMillan
to show that he would be capable of dropping his season average by
almost 2/10ths of a second over his last competitive season.
Hopefully, through reading this, you don’t only get a better idea of who
Chris is, but you can also pick up some of the lessons that we learned
— as well as some of the mistakes we made.
I cover some of the reasons why Chris had such a good year — but also I
hope to provide some ideas for you on how to go about your own training.
One thing before we get started, however: while we are detailing this
past season specifically, overnight success is a unicorn; although his
race times were staying at a similar level for the last few years, we could
clearly see improvements in training, mechanics, race understanding, etc.
I cover some of the reasons why Chris had such a good year — but
also I hope to provide some ideas for you on how to go about your
own training.
Page 01
CHRIS ROYSTER
4X DIVISION I NCAA ALL
AMERICAN 100M
SPRINTER
MEET CHRIS
Chris is 29 years old. He’s an American sprinter who Over the last 3 seasons, his season average has
went to college at the University of South Carolina, improved from 10.35 and 10.37 in 2018 and 2019
from where he graduated in 2015. He joined ALTIS to 10.18 this past season, while his wind-adjusted
for the 2016-17 season, where he worked with first average improved from 10.37 and 10.41 to 10.25.
Coach Dustin Imdieke, and then Coach Jason Hettler,
before I took over his training in 2019. He worked
full-time at Roadrunner Sports as a Manager of the
Scottsdale branch, and — like all athletes who try to
juggle working and training full-time — has struggled
to find the right balance
His season’s best in his first year after college was
10.30. He dropped that to 10.22 - a new PR - in
his first year with ALTIS, and then ran similar times
over the next two seasons — leading into the Covid
season, and finally this past breakthrough season.
So that’s the context — let’s get into some of the
reasons why I thought he improved, as well as some
of the things that he attributed it to.
Together, Chris and I identified the following 8
influences:
1. Racing opportunities
2. Covid year — macro recovery
3. Increased emphasis on work capacity
4. Improved rhythm
5. Better competition mindset
6. More individualized coaching
7. Better recovery
8. Lower body weight
Page 02
REASON ONE
OPPORTUNITY
So many of the reasons why elite sprinters run elite times is because they have the
opportunity to do so.
They run on fast tracks, with good winds, against fast people, a lot.
This is one of the reasons why being a sub-elite sprinter is such a grind — you simply don’t
have those opportunities — especially in the US.
One of the good things that has come from Covid is because the competitive opportunities
in Europe were limited, due to travel restrictions, some great people came together to put on
a high-quality US-based circuit.
I don’t think the community of track & field in America realize just how much they owe people
like Paul Doyle and Jesse Williams for their efforts these past few years — especially in 2021.
For Chris, especially, he got to race against high-level competition almost every time out —
rather than just once in a blue moon.
Many of the meets also put on rounds — which, if you ask any sprinter — is always a plus!
Chris ran in meets that had rounds 6 times this season — running faster in the final than the
rounds in all but one of them.
Page 03
REASON TWO
COVID
The other thing that Covid provided is one of the reasons why results seemed to be so good
across the board in the sprints this year — 2020 was a down year for almost everyone — so
whether athletes used this year as a mental break, or a physical break — whether they used
it to get healthy, to work on their mechanics, or maybe they even used it to train harder for a
season — whatever the reason, it seemed like most T&F athletes had a really good season
in 2021.
With Chris specifically — we trained as
a group up until the middle of March of
2020, and then he was by himself for the
remainder of the year. He trained solo 3-4
days a week, on the grass — so probably
had a nice mental and physical break from
the stress of working so hard over the
previous few years.
Page 04
REASON THREE
WORK CAPACITY
Often the work we do with an athlete is influenced The Jeshua story was a big influence in something
by what she or he looks like. that underpins my own training philosophy now —
always start with the athlete’s ‘unique abilities’.
Chris is 6’0 / 195lbs — a really strong and muscular
guy — so there is an assumption that he would What makes them good in the first place? And train
respond better to more power-speed work. More them towards that!
intense work and less volume.
Jeshua had amazing work capacity — we should
This was the case with American 400m hurdler have prescribed our training to take better advantage
Jeshua Anderson - who first came to us in the of that - rather than spending so much time filling in
2014-15 season. Jeshua was - and still is - tall, the gaps.
powerful, and muscular.
Chris is good not because he is strong.
He had come from a pretty high volume program, Nor because he is elastic.
and had trouble staying healthy — so our thoughts And not because his technique is great.
were “let’s de-load him / keep him healthy / get him He is good — partly — because he has really good
faster, and he’ll roll”. The important thing here is capacity.
that we were influenced here not only by what he He is a ‘grinder’. And so he needs those opportunities
had been doing, but also by how he looked. to grind.
It just looked like he would respond better to that So even though this sits outside of my own
type of work. philosophy — rather than fighting this — I needed to
come to terms with it. So I had to program in these
Two seasons later, and we had had mixed results “opportunities to grind”.
— he had remained healthy, and had ran faster
than he had in the previous 3 seasons — but still The other side of this coin though — is the fact that
nowhere near his lifetime best. an athlete’s greatest strength is often their greatest
weakness.
We had probably neglected what made him so
good in the first place — his incredible work While Chris’s greatest strength is his work capacity —
capacity. and his ability to push himself in practice — to grind
— too often in the past, this became the primary
This is where coaching gets really challenging — focus, and he’d lose any sense of the importance of
how to push right up to edge of the load required, rhythm.
without falling over (and getting hurt).
He’d just end up muscling everything.
Page 05
REASON FOUR
RHYTHM
I’d spoken to Chris about the importance of
rhythm a ton over the last couple of years. He’d
continuously ask me — “how do I get faster?” —
and I’d tell him:
“Just keep doing the things you are doing now Now of course, you do have to run fast eventually.
— and you’ll get better and better at doing them.
More and more coordinated. Your mechanics are You have to run as fast as you can in races —
solid. You’re powerful enough. The better guys just and we spoke about using those competitive
do what you are doing in a more efficient way — opportunities to stress-test the rhythmical work
they are more rhythmical than you. While you are we had been doing in practice.
still muscling things a little bit, the other guys are
smooth. Just keep working at smoothing things He raced 16 100s over the course of 5 months —
out!” so he averaged 3 true max velocity sessions each
month over the course of the season — which might
But this is hard to do when you’re trying to run as not be enough, and is one thing we will probably
fast as you can — so I deliberately looked for ways look to increase a little this coming season.
to slow him down — in essence, we went all-in on
sub-maximal work, with a huge focus on being In competition, the focus was on the same things
smooth and rhythmical. we were working on in practice — building high
pressure over the first part of the race, and then
I asked him to do most of his speed work in what releasing it, and running with freedom at the back
we called ‘pretty rep’ speed — where the focus is half.
to look pretty — not necessarily run super-fast.
The focus was only on the execution of the race,
We kept him under 95% intensity in training all allowing the increased arousal of the competition
year. to be the intensifier — not to necessarily try to run
fast — but to run smooth.
In fact, we did not run one single session at
maximum velocity during the 2021 training season We talked about being much more calm at races
— of course, he still ran fast, and he competed — just sticking to the strategy, and not chasing
quite a lot, so he did have opportunities to run at times.
max speed — but, if I didn’t ask him to go to the
well in practice, he found it easier to be smooth! This is easier said than done, but it was a
breakthrough for Chris this season, for sure.
Page 06
REASON FIVE
BETTER AT COMPETING
Each training session was an opportunity to work on specific things that he would need in
his race — and as I wrote, this is something we spoke about a lot over the last couple of
years: everything we do in training is a rehearsal for the race.
If we don’t want him to grind through a race, why would we want him to grind through a
training session?
In the past — his mentality at training was exactly the same in races — he’d try to muscle
his way down the track, losing all sense of mechanics or tactics.
It was generally a mess.
This year was much better.
Page 07
REASON SIX
‘THE GUY’
In 2016, when Chris first joined ALTIS, we had over 40 short sprinters.
This was way too many, and we worked to reduce our numbers over the next few years.
In 2020, the group size was just about right — we had 8 in the short sprint group, 7 in the
hurdles group, and 8 in the long sprint group.
But then Covid happened, and our groups shrunk to the point where at times this past year,
the short sprints group consisted only of Chris, South African sprinter Anaso Jobodwana,
Jamaican sprinter Schilly Calvert, American Masters sprinter Shagg Makino, and British
sprinter Jodie Williams — who was training with the short sprinters, but at this point was
really training for the 400!
Anaso headed back to South Africa for the early competition season, and then Chris was
pretty much training by himself from that point onwards.
Many might see training by yourself as a negative — but for Chris, I really think this was a
good thing.
He no longer felt the pressure of having to run with guys in training — he didn’t feel the need
to win training every day.
He was better at this already — but now, he had no choice! He was by himself — and he got
really good at it!
If I asked him to do cut-down 120s from 13 seconds, he’d nail it. His first rep would be 13
flat, then 12.8, then 12.6, then 12.4, and then 12.2. Over and over again, he proved that he
could focus on himself, and himself alone.
Again — the focus was on pretty reps — not necessarily running FAST!
Page 08
REASON SEVEN
BETTER RECOVERY
Chris is one of the 99% of T&F athletes who lack the sufficient support which would allow them
the freedom not to work. He also had a job which kept him on his feet for 8 hours/day 5 days/
week.
This is his reality — and has been so since he moved to Phoenix in 2016.
This past season, Chris made the gutsy call to take a 3 month leave of absence from his work —
with the hopes that this time off would allow him to focus not necessarily on training more — but
on recovering more effectively.
It’s is tough to say if this made a significant contribution to be honest — as he opened up the
season running about the same time as he did at the end — so maybe it led him to be more
consistent throughout. It definitely afforded him the opportunity to run in more competitions,
which allowed him to work on all of the other things I’ve mentioned.
This might be something I need to take into account going forward.
As I wrote, he opened the year running a windy 10.05, which converts to 10.18 — which was
actually his 3rd fastest run of the season, and faster than his season average.
But that said — I do think better recovery was a factor — if not in the big drop in PR — at least in
his consistency.
Although we have previously adjusted his loading in response to this additional workload, it wasn’t
until he dropped it out entirely that he really put a solid full season together.
Page 09