Frank Horwill

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Frank Horwill, 2005

Frank J. Horwill MBE (born June 19, 1927 in London ; † January 1, 2012 ) was a British athletics coach . He is considered the trainer of the most successful English middle distance athletes and founder of the British Milers' Club .

Life

After voluntary military service at the end of the Second World War , Horwill initially worked in agriculture before he received all four trainer licenses from the English Athletics Association and initially worked as a volunteer trainer since 1961 . By the end of his coaching career, he had trained over 50 medium and long distance runners who started internationally for England. In 1963, Horwill founded the British Milers' Club (BMC), an association of high-performance medium and long distance runners with the aim of reforming medium distance running in Great Britain through more cooperation and to regain the top spot in the world. 17 years later, the members of the BMC held all world records in middle distance running for men. Horwill remained on the board of directors of the BMC until his death. He trained on behalf of the British government in Canada, Ireland, Poland, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Bahrain, Portugal and South Africa. He was a legendary coach for the IAAF . In 2011, Horwill was named Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his volunteer work in sport .

Training theory

While modern training was physiologically or biochemically oriented in the period after the Second World War, for Horwill it was about training as a learning process . He assumed that you cannot learn to run more than five different speeds economically. He let learn these speeds with optimal style . At first he was ridiculed for this relapse to the still runs of the 1920s and 1930s, but the successes of Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett proved him right. Modern block training also uses elements of massed learning. His training includes such a large number of high-intensity runs because it is at racing speed. Many African runners followed his plans, including Saïd Aouita and Noah Ngeny . With Denis Watts and Harry Wilson he wrote The Complete Middle Distance Runner (1972), which laid the foundations for the success of British middle distance runners. His 1991 book Obsession for Running was named The athletics book of the year by the Daily Telegraph .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.iaaf.org/news/iaaf-news/frank-horwill-coaching-legend-passes-away
  2. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Many roads lead to Olympia. The Changes in Training Systems for Middle and Long Distance Runners (1850-1997). In: N. Gissel (Hrsg.): Sporting performance in change . Czwalina, Hamburg 1998, pp. 41-56.
  3. ^ David E. Martin and Peter N. Coe: Better Training for Distance Runners . Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL 1997, ISBN 0-88011-530-0 , p. Xvi
  4. ↑ Arnd Krüger : How does block periodization work? Learning Curves and Super Compensation: Special Features of Block Periodization. In: Fd Snow. Volume 32, No. 2, 2014, pp. 22-33.
personal data
SURNAME Horwill, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Horwill, Frank J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English athletics coach
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH London , UK
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 2012
Place of death London