The following comments from the legendary Henk Kraiijenhof are the reasons why we are excited about the potential the program has to help many athletes and coaches:

When asked about the biggest limiting factor in performance, Henk noted the following:

“It’s a number of things.  I think one is knowledge of recovery—we still don’t have a clue.  But that’s not all.  Originally, I thought I had more success than my colleagues because I understood biomechanics better and was good at biochemistry, but looking back I think it was that I was a good psychologist.  I knew how to motivate people to make them run fast and pushed the right buttons in each individual.  That’s my gift, not being able to study a lot of biomechanics.

Secondly, why do athletes run 5X1500 in training rather than 6 or 19?  We don’t know.  Its trial and error and the problem is that there aren’t too many people challenging world records.  So coaches that are at that level don’t like to share what they are doing because if they help people they might come back and beat their athletes.  But, I never thought there were secrets in track and field.  It’s a lot of myth making that there are any secrets.  Anything I can read you can read too, if I can find it out so can you.”

Henk calls much of conventional training “trial and error.”  Barry often refers to it as guessing.  Regardless of the how we describe it, the point is well taken:  what does the coach say when asked why he or she has chosen a specific number of repeats?  Also, what does the coach say when he or she is asked how to determine the speed in meters per second for the repeats that are done within a specific training session?

These issues have bothered me, as they do Henk, for a very long time.  The ASR charts have accomplished two wonderful things for the athletes I’ve used them with for the past four years:  it gets them highly motivated to run fast, which is what Henk mentions as very important, and it gives them very specific goals and logical repetition speeds and termination points, which alleviates the “trial and error” problem Henk has mentioned.

Most important, it’s something that we’ll soon be able to share with our colleagues!  As Henk noted, with a slight addition:   Anything I can read—and understand-- you can read—and understand, too!

Ken Jakalski