intervista a Peter SNELL: news dal passato

Peter SNELL nel 2012

Peter SNELL: Gentleman, Athlete, Scholar

To track fans, Peter Snell is a triple Olympic gold medalist. To his native New Zealanders, he's Sir Peter Snell, OBE. In the academic community he's Dr. Snell, Ph.D., director of the Human Performance Laboratory at UT Southwestern Medical Center in his hometown of Dallas, Texas .

Why should a middle-distance runner be doing 22-mile runs? Why is rest and recuperation important? What role does a coach play in a runner's development? What's more important to an athlete, psychology or physiology? Snell's search for answers to these questions has taken much longer than his rather brief athletic career, ...

Quattro pagine @runningtimes, circa 20'000 battute, molto più discorsive di quelle di Christopher McDougall. Chi ha superato l'impatto della presentazione può continuare con la lettura completa. Per chi mastica un minimo di inglese, si sforzi negli estratti che riporto. Ne vale la pena.

Ho chiuso il precedente post 20/01 ricordando l'esperienza neozelandese, di cui l'allenatore Arthur LYDIARD fu fondatore e anima, Peter SNELL fu la più bella e famosa espressione. Arthur non c'è più, ma Peter parla ancora al mondo dell'atletica sia con la sua storia sportiva che risale a mezzo secolo fa, sia con la ricerca scientifica applicata allo sport, che crebbe molto attorno alla loro esperienza. Non è difficile ripetersi su queste storie, tanto che una rivista prestigiosa e ben diffusa come Running Times torna ad aggiornarci il riassunto con nuove puntate.

Peter SNELL vince gli 800m alle Olimpiadi Roma 1960

Parlo ancora di Peter SNELL perché alcuni episodi della sua carriera sono interessanti per aggiungere elementi di valutazione sui piedi e la loro protezione. Mio padre è all'incirca suo coetaneo, quattro anni più giovane, e il Veneto rurale a cavallo degli anni '50 non doveva essere dissimile dalla Nuova Zelanda dello stesso periodo: anche a lui capitava di andare a piedi nudi, a volte per liberare il piede dalla rigida calzatura con la base in legno, a volte per risparmiare le calzature stesse (= sgàlmare, in dialetto).

Nell'articolo ho trovato un aneddoto in cui si parla anche di scarpe (vd. a metà di pag.3 @runningtimes). Già nel 1959 Peter aveva ottenuto le prime soddisfazioni atletiche nella sua isola e aveva cominciato a gareggiare molto, anche quando Arthur consigliava di costruire la condizione che avrebbe dovuto sostenerlo sulla via delle Olimpiadi di Roma. Dopo una gara su strada Peter sentì uno strano dolore alla tibia: "frattura da stress" fu la diagnosi, per fortuna in fase iniziale. Dopo un mese con le stampelle, Peter cominciò a innervosirsi e a cercare altri consulti, quando tutti gli ortopedici locali gli prescrivevano "riposo", finché un chirurgo inglese lo consigliò "non perdere altro tempo! comincia a correre sull'erba con scarpe ammortizzate". Poi sappiamo come è andata a finire.

Così prende un'altra dimensione l'episodio narrato da Arthur nel libro già citato (vd. post 26/08/2011) in cui spiegava la sua preoccupazione per la pista dello stadio di Roma, molto più dura rispetto ai percorsi in erba normalmente utilizzati da Peter nei suoi allenamenti. Conosceva la forza dirompente del suo atleta e la splendida condizione di forma, combinazione pericolosa per la fragilità che si era già manifestata. Fece così preparare delle scarpe speciali, con un rialzo in gomma che proteggesse meglio le preziose gambe. Allora i mezzofondisti veloci (e anche quelli prolungati!) erano soliti utilizzare le scarpe piatte dei velocisti. Mi fermo qui e lascio alcuni riferimenti dall'articolo: poco più di 5'000 battute, un quarto delle originali.

il passo statuario di Peter SNELL

Pagina 1 # "I grew up in a sporting family," says Snell of his athletic roots. His mother played tennis, his father golf. Solidly built and muscular, Snell began his athletic career in "ball games"--rugby, cricket, golf and tennis. "If you're good at something, it's motivating. You do certain sports because of the recognition factor."

"Who's coaching you?" Nobody. "You've got to go and see Arthur [Lydiard]." Macky set up a meeting, and Snell joined the running club coached by Lydiard. "I decided to drop my other activities and become a runner," says Snell.

Pagina 2 # The speed was there, but what was missing was the endurance, the foundation of Lydiard's training system. "Arthur got me involved in endurance running," says Snell. A cornerstone of the endurance program was a regular 22-miler on the legendary Waiatarua Circuit near Lydiard's house in Auckland. Lydiard didn't throw Snell into the 22-milers right away; he built up to it. "[Lydiard] paired me up with somebody whose pace I could handle," says Snell.

"I came to the conclusion that it was all about the conditioning," says Snell. "Spend as much time as you can on the conditioning and you'll eventually get yourself into, as Lydiard liked to say, a 'tireless state.' In practical terms, you could run the Waiatarua course and feel like you could go out the next day and do it again. You recovered rapidly. Once you got there it was a very heady feeling. You could do a great volume of training, get your intervals down to race pace, and do more faster than race pace."

Pagina 3 # Lydiard, who worked in a shoe factory he co-owned and moonlighted as a milkman while not coaching, didn't read this in a book. Long before the scientists proved it, Lydiard discovered by experimenting on himself what would be essential tools for a distance runner's training kit. While the temptation is to think that coaches merely study the scientific literature in an attempt to find out how to train their runners, the reality is that, for the most part, coaches innovate through trial and error what a scientist later proves is effective.

Lydiard's Boys Peter Snell, Murray Halberg,
Barry Magee e Alan McKight in allenamento
sul circuito di 35km a Waiatarua NZ (da sx a dx)

Lydiard broke the year up into phases, loading the endurance onto the front end, blending in hills and cross country, and finishing off with the speed and sharpening work.

There was little, if any, sports science backed up by research, just conjecture derived from examining the training programs of runners who were successful on a national level or at the Olympic Games. Lydiard had approached his coaching as a scientist would, using himself as a human guinea pig, and his athletes as test subjects. Scientists and coaches go through a similar process of trial and error. They start with a theory, test it, and the results of those tests determine if the theory/training method is effective.

Another valuable lesson Snell learned from Lydiard was that training, like science, takes time to get results; adaptation isn't an instant process. Lydiard gave his athletes valuable advice on patience and peaking, telling them not to worry about results in the buildup phase of their training, that the real rewards would come in the spring and summer track season.

Peter SNELL vince i 1'500m alle Olimpiadi Tokyo 1964

It was also a valuable lesson in critical thinking. Snell would utilize the same lesson later when he began reading the sports exercise literature: Don't believe everything you read. "I was surprised at the amount of stuff I read that was just plain wrong," Snell says. Just because it's published or comes from an authoritative source doesn't make it gospel, he learned. You have to see if it works for you, Snell says; that's the essence of the training process. Science doesn't lead in this process, Snell adds, it follows. Coaches figure out what works, and the scientists tell them what the mechanism is. Another thing Lydiard discovered was that high-intensity training was something one had to use sparingly and judiciously because it could as easily break down an athlete as build one to a peak.

Pagina 4 # All this would seem to be common sense, but as Snell discovered, common sense is often ignored by highly motivated individuals, which is an accurate description of the psychological makeup of an elite runner. This is where a coach can play a vital role, says Snell, holding back these human thoroughbreds to save them from self-destruction. Snell learned this the hard way, as even Lydiard couldn't hold him back from the success-fueled rush for more racing rewards and recognition that led to Snell's pre-1960 Olympics stress fracture.

Peter SNELL negli 800m alle Olimpiadi Tokyo 1964

The injury may well have been a blessing in disguise, as Snell recognized that it almost cut short his career before it had begun. Having dodged a bullet in that instance, Snell and Lydiard were wise enough not to make the same mistake twice. But as Snell looks back on his experience, as well as the training and racing patterns of others, he concludes, "It's quite possible that the majority of top level athletes are overtrained." The drive for success, winning, that motivates top athletes and coaches plays into this potentially counterproductive behavior.

"It's a relatively simple formula," says Snell. "Develop endurance as early as possible. Developing endurance is difficult and time consuming. Developing speed is a relatively short process with a fairly strong genetic component. "Try and understand the need for adequate recovery," he says, "a balance between hard training and recuperation. That's part of the art [of coaching/training]. I came away with the feeling that psychology was a more important discipline than physiology. If you're interested in finding talent, look into the psychology of the individuals. Look for people who have a high need for achievement. All this doesn't mean exercise physiology or other sports science is irrelevant. Information on nutrition, heat regulation, and other practical knowledge can educate a runner to avoid some of the errors that become the failures in the trial and error process.