Fred Duncan (@Fred__Duncan)

Usain Bolt didn’t have poor acceleration. His max v was just so much better that it made everything before it look average. By 30 meters, he was right there with the best in the world. He wasn’t in the lead, but he wasn’t separating yet. Taller athletes often face greater ...

Muscle damage from eccentrics is context-dependent. Repeated exposure rapidly reduces soreness. And high force can be produced eccentrically with a lower metabolic cost than concentric work. In other words, eccentrics aren’t a special stressor. They’re a normal contraction ...

There’s always a debate about the effectiveness of drills… My stance has always been this - coaching is teaching and drills are tools. Unless a drill closely matches the bioenergetic, biodynamic, and biomotor demands of acceleration or max velocity sprinting, it’s not ...

“Punch the ground” or “strike the ground” is a cue you hear all the time in sprinting. On the other side, Tom Tellez used to tell athletes to press the ground, not strike it…emphasizing force transfer over contact time rather than impact. Neither cue is universally right or ...

Sometimes I use box squats. Sometimes I don’t. They’re a tool, not a doctrine. No exercise is magic, and no single variation deserves lifelong loyalty. What matters is why you’re using it, when you’re using it, and what it’s meant to support in the broader program. If you ...

Early success is loud and sexy…long term development is quiet and boring. Across sport, science, music, and chess, large scale analyses show a consistent pattern, early standouts are rarely the ones who reach the highest adult performance levels. What separates world class ...

This reel is based on a study comparing quarter, half, and full squat training and their transfer to sprint performance. (Rhea et al., Human Movement, 2016). In that study, quarter squats produced the greatest improvement in 40-yard sprint time, while the full squat group ...

There’s always pushback when speed comes up. People rush to tell you that speed is genetic. Funny thing is, you never hear that same argument when someone is trying to get stronger or build muscle. Every physical quality has a ceiling. Strength does. Muscle does. Power does. ...

Most sprint drills isolate parts of the sprint cycle. A-skips, butt kick, etc Each emphasizes something…posture, knee lift, rhythm, ground contact, but rarely do they start to link multiple pieces together. That’s where the single leg cycle fits in. ...