Here is the unabridged version of Tom Crick’s interview with Dan Pfaff seen in the September 6, 2008 (63-36) edition of Athletics Weekly. Photos courtesy of Joe Cebulskis.

Dan Pfaff is widely regarded as one of the world’s top track and field coaches, having coached 33 Olympians to seven medals and 45 World Championships performers to ten medals – across sprints, jumps and throws. In this third part of our exclusive interview Dan discusses preparing for the Olympics and Coach Education.



The Olympics will be starting shortly, how do you go about tapering an athlete for a major competition?

Tapering is a very ambiguous term. I know how to get an athlete ready to compete at an incredibly high level for 4-6 weeks but I wouldn’t call it classical tapering. During our “taper period”, we do quite a bit of work and we probably work a little harder and at a little higher intensity than a lot of people might but our athletes are conditioned and they need that amount of work to maintain the various strengths they have already developed.

If I had to define our taper I would say that the volume and intensity stay fairly similar but the density decreases. This is because volumetrically with some things you are trapped as you don’t get any learning effect unless you do enough work for the athlete to develop timing, awareness or positive chemistry. Also, when it comes to practicing the event the attempts need to be pretty high intensity for you to feel those things. So the nature of what you are doing has to stay the same (as in competition). Therefore, the only other variable you can alter is the training density – how often you work on a quality in any given time frame.

Another thing that is often overlooked is that as you introduce more rest some entities will be climbing while others are declining or stabilising at best. I think it is a myth that all systems are at a really high level when great performances happen. Going back to the time when Obadele Thompson had a nerve entrapment in his foot shortly before setting a PB in the 200m, he only did bike workouts for three weeks prior to that! So was his timing and his technique optimal going into that meet? How could they be? He hadn’t been on the ground in three weeks! But his chemistry was probably super optimal because of what we had been doing on the bike, the therapy was spot on and his general strength was really high because he didn’t have anything else to do since he couldn’t run. So a lot of those things were generally higher than what we would classically like before we send someone into a meet. So it really got me thinking what dose of technique is really needed for someone to stay on top of it once you have already learned a skill? Did the cyclic motion of the bike keep his technical timing going? We don’t have the technology to answer that but something did!

Ideally what should an athlete be doing six weeks before the Olympics?

Six weeks before a major games the work is done. You had better be stabilising and actualising at that point because if you haven’t got the training done by now then you simply won’t be ready in time! The stress levels are so high and the demands are so great that all you can do is polish rather than improve.

In the run up to the games you have to decide how you will freshen the athlete up while keeping control over the psychology. For example, with some people if you start to taper and introduce more rest six weeks out they feel like they are detraining even if they are not, so you need to deal with that. The perception of the athlete needs to be managed because they must be confident going into big meets. Those athletes that feel guilty when they don’t do a large amount of training are the ones where you will keep a few more things in to calm their nerves.
So how long can an athlete hold their best form?

I think for power speed people you can be in very good competitive shape for maybe twelve weeks if you have done your homework. Within this time period there will then be a second window of around 3-6 weeks where you can really achieve your best performances.

That’s a very long time, so you think it is possible for an athlete to be in good shape for most of the competitive season?

The way IAAF season is set up, athletes have to go out and drop some times in March and May to get on the list and get invited to meets. Then they have their national champs in June or July so they have to perform well there and finally they have to come to Europe and be on the circuit from July to September and keep doing it year on year or they won’t get paid! So we have already proven that people can compete at a very high level for at least twelve weeks and the whole professional athletics circuit has been going on long enough now for coaches to figure out how to do this. If you are careful with how you choose meetings you can perform well when it counts almost the entire season, although some athletes are certainly more durable than others.

So do you have any tips?

In my experience with 100m runners if they compete regularly for 2-3 weeks then they will need 10-14 days of down time to get away from racing and let their bodies recover. We have a rule in my squad; if you PB you come home because it takes about ten days for the body to adjust to that stimulus. With power speed athletes when they hit a PB effort everything gets screwed up for 7-10 days and it isn’t safe to keep competing. You can do some training but you just need to be careful.

Like when Suzy Powell set the US record in the Discus last year she had a follow up meet and still threw at a real good level living off that high but that night after that meet she got sick as a dog and the next ten days she couldn’t train at all. You see the problem when athletes peak is that they are doing things at a higher intensity or if something important is coming up, like a major games, then their arousal is up, their attention is up and the detail is up so they burn energy faster than normal.

Classic problems that we see in first year athletes include the issue that they hydrate at a normal rate during training but they will go to a meet and hydrate like crazy because they are nervous drinkers and suddenly the electrolytic environments are dilute and so they may get a muscle cramp or tear because they are OVER hydrated! I see a lot of times kids who usually don’t do static stretching before workouts, or they usually do it at night, suddenly start stretching at big competitions. They are doing stretches you’ve never seen before and doing them a lot deeper than normal, which is dangerous because they are not adapted to that kind of routine.

So when an athlete gets ready for that kind of event you need to monitor all this kind of stuff. An interview at a preseason meet may not cost them anything but an interview before the Olympic final might just drain them, especially if they have to get in a car and drive to the interview. That single interview could provide enormous amounts of stress and lower the athletes’ performance level, something which you obviously want to avoid just before the most important race of your life. So every entity needs to be looked at and you need to realise that going into a major games all systems are through the roof. You need to plan and prepare for that.

Turning to coach education, what parts of the coaching process do you think are under developed within the literature?

Maybe I’m not up to date with the current literature but a lot of what I see is cardiopulmonary and energy system based type training theory. I think that when you work with power speed people those are important markers but they are just some of many markers and I’m more interested in the neurophysiology, neuropsychology and skill acquisition associated with training. With this in mind, I think the new frontier in training theory is learning how to integrate all these sub categories in a more complete way.

What do you suggest is necessary to improve the transfer of sports science literature to coaching?

I think experienced coaches who have great networks and diverse knowledge, need to step forward into a leadership role to sort the ‘nice to know’ from the ‘needs to know’. Only then can they develop a route to disseminate that kind of information amongst new coaches.

Owing to my scientific background I am a good interpreter and can listen to the experts and break it down into language coaches can understand; I can explain pretty complex topics in an accessible way. Now there are plenty of people like me out there who can do this but they are not asked to serve in those roles or given a platform to speak from. Instead we have coaches who are basically fending for themselves, sifting through tons of data, research and programs and not really understanding how they should apply this information. I’m glad I grew up when I did because my input of information was controlled by the availability of information. Today with the internet and the virtually unlimited availability of information it’s almost impossible to decide what to listen to and this is where having a great network becomes invaluable – to do the filtering for you.

Without such a network information overload becomes a very big problem because it distracts you from the real task – making athletes better. I have colleges that are brilliant and know a lot more about everything than I do. Problem is, they can’t make a decision about what to use, when to use it or how to use it. As a result, they are constantly changing what they do and so how are they able to stimulate, adapt, stabilise and actualise? How is the paradigm going to exist if you are constantly changing everything?

Mentoring is also underutilised, under appreciated and underdone in almost every country I’ve worked in and I’ve worked in over 100 during my career. With this in mind, I think we need to develop solid mentoring programs. I use one myself; I have five guys who I think are the best soft tissue experts in the world and if I get a unique injury I can’t figure out then I phone them and present what the injury is, what we did, the athlete and the environment we are training in and list the treatments these experts suggest I need to do. Then from the list of treatments I will develop another game plan to address the issue at hand. So as a global answer to the question I think we need to continue to develop good networks so we can work together in a more integrated way.

Once you’ve found something you think is good how do you put it into practice?

It’s pretty simple; I identify people in my training group that are open to trying new things. These are usually first year athletes who are already adapting to my system or those athletes who are always looking for the “holy grail”. We then sit down and discuss the pluses and minuses and what we hope to get out of it to make sure the athletes can become part of the feedback loop.

However, when doing this you have to be careful to avoid those people who can’t handle change or failure in case something goes wrong. These kinds of people are fragile and so I think it is dangerous to say, ‘here’s a cool idea, the research is great on it, everyone in the group we are going to try that’ as you can lose athletes confidence that way.

And finally, to date what is your greatest achievement?

My greatest victories are not gold medals on a podium. They are changing peoples’ lives in a productive and positive way so they can go on and touch other people. That is why I teach and coach. At the end of the day that is really what drives me – helping people to move through the journey of life in a more positive way.