459: Laurent Meuwly on Strength and Speed Concepts in Dutch Sprint Development

Today's podcast features Laurent Meuwley. Laurent is the Head Coach for sprints, hurdles, and relays for the Netherlands. A former Swiss national coach and European Athletics Coach of the Year, he’s known for guiding world-class athletes like Femke Bol and Dutch relay teams, pioneering the “Flyers vs. Diesels” sprint-type analogy and his comprehensive approach to training. Often in sprinting and speed training education, we get a small piece of the equation based on our social media algorithms or our immediate training culture. To fully understand speed training, we must look at both speed and environmental coaching concepts that span cultures. On today’s podcast, Laurent discusses speed building on the level of the weight room, overspeed, speed endurance, and individual training factors. Laurent also talks about building a relay-based culture and a powerful training environment, along with many more nuances of building elite sprinters. 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(https://www.just-fly-sports.com/podcast-home/) Timestamps 2:31- Team Dynamics and Specialties in Athletics 21:15- Enhancing Speed with Rear Leg Propulsion 24:43- Efficient Cluster Training for Hypertrophy Goals 29:54- Explosive Training with Kaiser Machines and Variations 31:59- Individualized Sprint Training for Speed Development 35:12- Speed Reserve Optimization in Sprint Training 41:44- Individualized Training Approaches for Sprinters' Profiles 52:37- Aerobic System Impact on 400m Running 54:38- Optimizing Nervous System through Training Schedule Quotes (4:50) "In the second phase of the preparation, athletes are working more on individual exercises. And those are based on a test they do called the tensomeography test, where we check all the muscles individually and see how fast or slow they are, how strong or weak they are, how quickly they react, they can be activated or not." - Laurent Meuwly (13:14) "Because a lot of strength program are thought in terms of which muscles are specifically used for the movement. But we also have to think in which kind of muscle contraction, what kind of Muscle contraction is then used and for different muscle groups it's a different contraction. It might be concentric for some, eccentric for others, isometric for some muscles. So in the specific work this needs to be taken into account." - Laurent Meuwly (16:37) "If I take a hamstring exercise, when someone has struggled to activate the hamstrings quick enough, they might have an exercise where they are standing, laying on their shoulders up, one leg on the skateboard, the other leg in the air and they have to bring the skateboard back and forth under their butt as fast as possible." - Laurent Meuwly (22:07) "The propulsion phase is really important in running and especially in sprinting." - Laurent Meuwly (23:43) "The individualization in the gym is more to the way athletes are reacting in terms of hypertrophy. Some athletes would go a bit quicker away from max strength exercises, hypertrophy to be more in a velocity-based training, more in power than in strength development." - Laurent Meuwly (33:00) "I think in Europe we are using overspeed quite more than in the US at least in track and field, I would say every 10 to 14 days." - Laurent Meuwly (42:20) "A “flyer”, an athlete who is more speed based needs to be fast. And because speed is his or her strength, they also are going to recover from speed or even strength or whatever stimulates highly the nervous system quicker than athletes who are more endurance based and who are less talented for speed." - Laurent Meuwly (55:10) "We train two times on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and one time on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and the Sunday is off. So it's a 21212, 10 rhythm. And the days with two training sessions, they are very demanding for the nervous system because we combine speed or speed endurance with strength or acceleration with strength." - Laurent Meuwl About Laurent Meuwly Laurent Meuwly is the Head Coach for sprint/hurdles and relays for the Netherlands. Before this, he held the same position in Switzerland for 10 years. He has been named Coach of the Year by the European Athletics Coaches Association. With a reputation for blending science, biomechanics, and individualized coaching, Meuwly has played a key role in the rise of Dutch sprinting on the international stage. Originally from Switzerland, Meuwly began his coaching career with Swiss Athletics, where he developed Olympic and World Championship-caliber athletes. In 2019, he joined the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation (Atletiekunie), where he now oversees the country’s top sprinters and hurdlers, including global stars such as Femke Bol, Lieke Klaver, and Nadine Visser and the success of the Dutch 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams (silver in Tokyo and Eugene). Under Meuwly's guidance, Femke Bol has become one of the most dominant 400m and 400m hurdles athletes in the world, capturing World and European titles and setting indoor and outdoor records. His coaching philosophy emphasizes long-term athlete development, advanced motor learning, and the integration of sport science into everyday training. A sought-after speaker and contributor to high-performance coaching education, Meuwly is also known for his "Flyers vs. Diesels" framework—an insightful classification model that helps tailor sprint training based on individual athlete profiles.