Items22The creator’s order
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Woldemar GerschlerBorn 14 Jun 1904Athletics, Germany. Gerschler was one of the pioneers of interval training, working at Freiburg with the cardiologist Herbert Reindell to set repeated fast runs with timed recoveries measured by heart rate. The method is well recorded in coaching literature, and its results came through athletes…0 - 2
Franz StampflAthletics, Britain and Australia. Stampfl set out his system of interval training in his book Franz Stampfl on Running (1955), written for ordinary club athletes as well as stars. His best-known result was Roger Bannister's first sub-four-minute mile in 1954, a plan that relied on the pacing of…0 - 3
Percy CeruttyBorn 10 Jan 1895Athletics, Australia. Cerutty ran a training camp at Portsea, near Melbourne, where athletes ran up steep sand dunes, lifted weights and followed a strict natural diet, a regime he called "Stotan" and described in his own books. His best-known pupil, Herb Elliott, never lost a mile or 1500 metres…0i - 4
Arthur LydiardBorn 6 Jul 1917Athletics, New Zealand. Lydiard built his method on a long aerobic base of around 100 miles a week, followed by hill work, speed sessions and a taper, a sequence now standard in distance running and set out in his book Run to the Top (1962). Peter Snell, Murray Halberg and Barry Magee all won…0i - 5
Bill BowermanBorn 19 Feb 1911Athletics, University of Oregon. Bowerman followed Lydiard's example in promoting running for everyone, co-writing the best-selling book Jogging (1966), and coached on a "hard-easy" principle of alternating heavy and light days. His athletes included Steve Prefontaine and dozens of Olympians, and…0i - 6
Bud WinterAthletics, San José State. Winter taught sprinters to run relaxed, with a loose jaw and hands, a technique he had first developed to help navy pilots stay calm during the Second World War and later described in his book Relax and Win. His "Speed City" athletes included the Olympic champions Tommie…0 - 7
Forbes CarlileBorn 3 Jun 1921Swimming, Australia. Carlile, a physiologist by training, brought laboratory testing, interval sets and tapering before competition into swimming, and wrote about his methods in Forbes Carlile on Swimming. Working with his wife Ursula and assistant Tom Green, he coached Shane Gould, who in 1972 at…0i - 8
James CounsilmanSwimming, Indiana University. "Doc" Counsilman filmed swimmers underwater to analyse stroke mechanics and published the results in The Science of Swimming (1968), long a standard text for coaches. His Indiana teams won six straight NCAA titles, his swimmers included Mark Spitz, and he was head…0i - 9
Bob Bowman (coach)Swimming, North Baltimore, Michigan, Arizona State and Texas. Bowman coached Michael Phelps from the age of 11 to 23 Olympic gold medals, and later coached Léon Marchand to four individual golds in Paris in 2024. His book The Golden Rules describes the methods behind them: long-term planning,…0i - 10
John WoodenBorn 14 Oct 1910Basketball, UCLA. Wooden won ten NCAA titles in twelve seasons and planned every practice to the minute on index cards that he kept for decades. Psychologists Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore sat in on his sessions in the 1970s and found most of his coaching was short, specific instruction rather…0i
