An interesting article by P. Kyprianou (decathlon coach extraordinaire)

As you certainly know I am following closely the site Décapassion and I stumbled upon a reference to a (somewhat old) article by Petros Kyprianou. For those for whom the name does not ring a bell, Kyprianou (a Cypriot) is the current Director of Track & Field and Cross Country at the University of Illinois. Previously he was head coach of the University of Georgia. He is a specialist of combined events and he has coached many of the Estonian athletes who live and train in the US (Uibo, Erm, Tilga etc).

The article in question had appeared in Decathlon2000 and after reading it I looked for other articles of the same author. And I found a more recent one entitled Developing the Decathlon Technical Model. Kyprianou is a great technician and one things is for sure: he knows the decathlon. In his article he starts with a very interesting comparison. Suppose one aims at a 8000 points performance. Were these points to be uniformly distributed among the events one would have ended up with the following set of performances

However, when one analyses the average scores in each event among ten random decathletes who scored 8000 points the performances are quite different.

Kyprianou concludes that the decathlon is mainly a speed/power event and that sprints/hurdles/jumps appear to offer the best opportunities for point accumulation. And while great performances would be clearly helpful, excessive 1500m training could turn out to negatively interfere with the performance in other areas.

He goes on to formulate his theory of commonality. Instead of teaching all the different techniques in a restricted amount of time it is preferable to try to identify skills and features that the decathlon events hold in common.

I will not attempt to summarise (or plagiarise) Kyprianou's article. Suffices it to say that in just a few pages he not only presents his theory of decathlon coaching but he also outlines a training program that would be useful to everyone who is beginning to coach athletes for combined events. 

But I cannot resist, before concluding this post, to point out this small gem:

"It is ineffective to separate any biomotor development from the technical model. Everything you perform in track and field has a way to be performed. That is called technique".