With that said, the following is my synopsis of what I learned from going to the 1st European Race Walking Coach’s Conference in Leeds, England. The conference was a packed few days of lectures and workshops that were incredibly informative and enlightening. While many topics were covered, my personal interests were on the biomechanics and training philosophy, so those areas are covered in much greater detail. While many statements were made that suggested certain ranges for key parts of the stride, the caveat that the individuality of the walker may require walking outside that range. As an objective observer, if people came in with biases looking for certain beliefs to be reinforced, they could use this caveat to contradict the accepted norm.

While I walked away with great knowledge, I was saddened by how far behind America is in relation to the world’s best race walking programs.  While we can learn from them, without the level of support given to other country’s athletes, it is doubtful we can compete unless things change. Efforts to create a center of excellence with full-time athletes are essential to our forward progress and should be pursued as the highest priority. Oh and one very import revelation for Tom and all the other racewalkers, no one gave a presentation on racewalking, they were only on RACE WALKING! ;)

Preparation of Ivano Brugnetti
Antonio La Torre – Coach of Ivanno Brungetti talked about preparing Brugnetti for his 2004 Gold Medal performance at the Olympic Games. While he gave specific examples of workouts, what was more important to learn were the ideas behind it. They are summarized in bullet fashion:
1  Brugnetti trained at a high level. Much higher than most including his teammates. This ability allowed Brugnetti to push harder in training than many. In my opinion, that makes the examples of workouts that Brugnetti did less applicable to the masses. Importantly, to La Torre’s credit, unlike some other coaches I have seen, he acknowledged this and did not prescribe the same level of workouts for Brugnetti’s teammates. This is very wise and shows great insightfulness.
2)  Brugnetti was able immediately able to walk at altitude at the same level of intensity as at sea level. This is not normal, especially for athletes that are new to altitude training. Brent Vallance (Australia)  said for the typical athlete it can take 6-8 years to achieve this.
3) La Torre feels you build a strong base by training/walking for the 50K and then can step down to the 20K. At least that's what he felt worked well for Brugnetti. (Some of what he said was difficult to understand due to the language barrier).
4)  Strength training can be achieved with hill work on mixed courses of up and down. There was high intensity on both the up and down. This was surprising to me. I don’t think we prescribe hard on the down. However, the concept of using hills for strength training is not. This is part of Stephan Platzer's philosophy and therefore part of Tim Seaman's as well.
5) They target preserving stride (both amplitude and frequency) in training.
6) They used a sleep high train low altitude philosophy. Hiked up to the hut. Pointed out sleep initially was an issue and the mental fatigue of living at altitude was also an issue.
7) It seemed like from La Torre was stating that Brugnetti’s inconsistency was mental not physical.

The story continues