Gold Rush by Michael Johnson

by Michael Johnson

Hardcover

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Michael Johnson, 43, is one of the most pre-eminent athletes of all time. He has four Olympic and nine World Championship gold medals to his name. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, he won both the 200m and 400m (the only athlete in history to do this at the same Games), and his world record for 200m of 19.32 stood for 12 years until Usain Bolt broke it at the Beijing Games of 2008. He still holds the world record for 400m – 43.18 seconds.
Johnson voluntarily returned his 4x400m relay gold medal from the Sydney Games of 2000 after a team-mate admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs earlier in his career.
Following his retirement, Johnson became a sports pundit with the BBC and has since established himself as one of the most popular and renowned sports broadcasters in the UK. The BBC's coverage of Olympic Games and World and European track-and-field Championships is hinged around his contributions.
He writes a regular column for The Times and owns his own sports training facility, the Michael Johnson Performance Centre, in Texas.
In 2002, he was awarded the Television Pundit of the Year Award by the Royal Television Society.
He lives in San Francisco, California.

Reviews

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting book from a psychological and work ethic perspective from one of the few people ever to win two goals in the 200 m and 400 m at the same Olympics. Anyone from the 90s will remember this guy because of it is a very vertical running technique. He also breaks this technique down to explain from a mechanical perspective why it was so effective. Lots of hints and tips on how to run faster so if you play football or rugby or any sport with speed is important this is definitely worth a read: here are the best bits:

On race day I ordered breakfast through room service and began to lay out my uniform, competition number, socks, spikes, music player, headphones, and everything else I would need at the track. Then I sat in my room for the rest of the day visualising almost every scenario that could possibly happen in that final and devising a plan for what I would do in each scenario.



Seb also talked about the importance of being a student of one's event, including learning how those who came before you won or lost. i'd pretty much read most of the good athletics biographies and autobiographies by the time i was 20.



Throughout her career Sally Gunnell also visualised herself reacting differently depending on how the race unfolded. She ran her races so often in her mind that when she had to race with a cold during the World Championships in 1993 she was able to go on to autopilot. 'With the hurdles, I always knew American Sandra Farmer-Patrick would be way ahead at 200. I also knew that if I was coming off the eighth hurdle in the lead, it was mine. So I had to work with that in my mind.' Sally did that so often that for brief moment she wasn't sure whether the gold medal she had just won despite not feeling up to par physically was real or imagined. I remember crossing the finish line and thinking, "Am I in a dream or has that really happened?" Because I'd done it so many times in my mind!'



I knew that Mom would tell me to do my homework and chores, but Dad was sure to grill me about my assignments and how I did my chores.

Don't get me wrong. I love my father and I looked up to him. He was - and remains - my role model. I thought there wasn't anything he couldn't do. I wanted to be just like him.

He was certainly not a wealthy man, but as a natural planner he was always in control.



This often comes as a surprise to people because they don’t understand what our strength has to do with sprinting and certainly can’t understand what having good shoulder strength has to do with leg stride frequency. The arms drive the legs, and when that arm strength starts to go because of fatigue over the last 100 metres, the arms don't swing with the same power or velocity as they can, and the legs, which are already heavy from fatigue themselves, respond to what the arms do. To counter this issue, my strength coach and I developed a programme that included developing the shoulder, chest, bicep, triceps, deltoid and trapezoid muscles - all muscles related to the arm, shoulder, neck and torso area.



At about 270 metres into the race, the inside of my leg near my groin felt as if I had pulled a muscle. Just as I was starting to slow down because I thought the race was over for me, I felt the pain release and let go. So I started running again. No longer in contention for first place, I was back in the second half of the field by this point. With 120 metres to go, I was probably in about sixth place. If there was ever a time to quit this was it. But I never even thought about quitting; it was not an option.

The only thing I thought - and it was instinctive - was, I'm not injured. I can still run, so run? And run I did. I put myself back into the race, passed the other athletes and ran away from them, finishing first and winning the gold medal.





Even though the argument is always about whether an athlete should place more focus on technique or physical training, the issue is really at what stage in an athlete's development and at what stage in an athlete's training cycle should you place more focus on technique rather than physical training. At Michael Johnson Performance we have found that the early stages of an athlete's development - the years berween the ages of 12 and 15 - are the prime physical development years. These are the years when an athlete's body goes through its natural changes and development, and also when it is ripe for physical development. However, most parents helping their kids and most coaches working with kids tend to focus mostly on skill during that period, figuring that the athlete's physical development isn't as important because the athlete has the speed, power and strength that he has and there is no real improvement to be had here. That is simply not true. And it's a shame, because in many cases the focus placed on skill and technique to the detriment of physicality deprives athletes of reaching their full potential in their sport.



Just as I sought perfection in every race, I looked for perfection in practice.



Just imagine looking from above at a sprinter in action. Do you see one foot land within the plane of his body and then the other foot land in front of his body as well? That's good, efficient technique. If one foot lands out to the right of his body, the next foot is going to land out to his left, and then he's zigzagging down the track, however slightly, as opposed to straight.



I must be careful about what I don't do, what I do and how I do it. I have to adjust how live my life because I've become a celebrity.



As a runner, how you use your upper body is equally important. The legs are like the engine that runs your body.

In your car you've got an engine but you don't crank the engine; you don't turn that engine with your hand. You use an accelerator. Your arms are like the accelerator. They drive your legs. They also determine the efficiency of your legs.

So now if you're looking at a sprinter running directly at you down the track with his arms pumping up and down, you should see each hand coming up just to the side of his head or right in front of his nose. If one hand comes across his shoulder, then the other is going to come back across the other shoulder the other way and that's going to pull his body over that way.



The to succeed extremely important, but it’s easy to want to be the best in the world. Drive is more important. It's easy to commit to being the Olympic gold medallist, but not as easy to commit to training 50 per cent harder than you did the year before and to making sacrifices to achieve that goal. It is that drive that causes an individual to work for what he desires.

I never felt Id done enough or gone quick enough, says Tanni Grey-Thompson. 'So I was quite driven and quite focused. It was never a problem to make myself go out and train. You could probably count on one hand the number of times in all the years that it was like, "I just can't do that" [because of fatigue or injury]?



If I could change one thing about many of today's athletes, it would be to instil in them the focus and the will to push themselves to the limits of their ability and then find a way to improve from there.



The easier it is to be good the more difficult it is to be great



The belief must be that you can take the talent that you have, and that many other world-class athletes have as well, and support it with the hard work that is required. It must include figuring out how to work and train yourself most effectively to get the absolute best performance possible from your body.



And it wasn't just my efforts at practice that I wanted to be perfect. I wanted my practice environment to be perfect and I wanted my coach to coach me perfectly. I wanted my training partners to want a perfect practice and to approach practice with all of the seriousness that was required for the practice to be perfect. Because I believe that perfection in practice will lead to perfection in the race.



That kind of planning down to the smallest detail came easily to me. My father was a planner. When you’re in control and have a plan, you're less likely to be surprised.

As someone who is easily embarrassed, having a plan for every eventuality meant that I would be less likely to be surprised. Fewer surprises meant less embarrassment.

Naturally, I wanted to be just like him. So I learned to plan and manage the details that derail others.



very few things I was aware of that could make me feel fear-ful, not too confident and unable to think positively prior to a race was if I had not prepared properly in the days, weeks and months leading up to it. Preparation is every-thing. And I dealt with that every day.



While sitting in the call room with my head down, thinking only about my race, I would periodically glance up and catch one of my competitors looking at me. When looked back at them, they always looked away. They would eventually look back at me, only to find me still staring at them.

That scared them. Mission accomplished, race won.



Since the end of my career I have continued to devote a significant amount of time and energy to preparation when it comes to accomplishing any goal, because of how well that worked for me as an athlete. Nowadays, as the owner of a sports performance training company that hosts several events each year with professional sporting teams like Arsenal FC and the Dallas Cowboys, along with individual athletes, I am constantly stressing to my staff the importance of understanding every potential problem. In pursuit of my goals of winning and maintaining business, we need to have a plan to address any issue that could come up, and eliminate potential problems or obstacles to a successful event before they occur.