About Us

Franklin Elite Athletics Track Team (aka FEAT) is a Track Team for You!

Our Principles

My wife, Janeth, and I are passionate about coaching and dedicated to helping athletes achieve their full potential. Check out our article on ‘Operating Concepts’ for more detailed information. We are excited to collaborate with you!

Respectfully,

Dan and Janeth

The photo you see is of Janeth Caisalitin Alder an incredible athlete who has a wealth of running experience. When she was a little girl growing up in the small town of Pastocalle, Ecuador she dreamed of going to the Olympics and representing her country (which she did at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics competing for Ecuador).

These are the key principles guiding our operating concept

Speed is the Master Principle

We practice a non-linear periodization scheme, which is a fancy way of a saying that we don’t just focus on one thing at a time, but we cover a spectrum of training (both speed and strength) during a two week micro cycle.
One of the two weeks of the micro cycle is a ‘speed week.’ This means that over a 30-day period, we focus on speed half the time. Speed, in our minds, is the master principle of running. In a later article, we will describe in detail the specific workouts included in our speed weeks, but for now, understand that we are big proponents of year-round, constant speed training.

Strength is Speed’s Best Friend

After speed, the concept of strength comes in a close second. Strength in this case does not mean muscular strength for lifting or moving weight, but rather running strong. Running strong means being able to run well enough for your speed to be useful.
To unpack this principle a little more, if you are fast but not able to stay close to the leaders or lead yourself during a race, then your speed is not ‘useful,’ and therefore you need to run strong to bring your speed into play.
To complement the speed week in our two-week cycles, we include a strength week. This means that each micro cycle has a speed week and a strength week, so two weeks out of the month we are focused on speed, and two weeks we are focused on strength.

Proper Programming and Recovery

Running successfully requires speed, strength, and the proper application of rest/recovery. If you were to run hard every day, eventually you will not make any progress. Those athletes who make the incredible mistake of running hard every day plateau quickly or get injured, leaving them tired and frustrated.
With good programming that applies the principles of speed, strength, and recovery, you can achieve your goals as long as you are mentally able to compete well.
Another key aspect to successful programming is understanding the principles of adaptation and specificity. Adaptation basically means that your body will adapt to higher stresses placed upon it (like keeping a faster pace) over time. If you don’t continue to stress it after a while, you lose the adaptation; or if you don’t give yourself enough time to adapt, you can overtrain, so it is a delicate art to manage adaptation.
Specificity means that you will adapt to specifically what you train. If you train for a specific pace over a specific distance, then you will adapt to that specificity.

Competitive Mindset

All of the best training in the world without a competitive mindset will not allow you to be successful as an athlete. To compliment the physical training and programming a competitive mindset gives an athlete a platform for continued progress and the ability to learn and grow as a competitor.
To have a competitive mindset requires a good amount of self awareness, intelligence, and tenacity. It is the X factor of being successful because being mentally competitive doesn’t play by the same rules as physical factors.

Proper Nutrition and Hydration

Proper nutrition and hydration are often neglected, but represent extremely high pay off activities that are invaluable to an athlete’s success. In our Track Club, we place a premium on your hydration plan before and after workouts and competitions, making it a deliberate part of our training plan. The same can be said of proper nutrition. We accept that there are many theories about proper fueling, but the best fueling plan is the one that works for you, regardless of what works for the masses. In short, we personalize our fueling/nutrition plan to the needs and specificities of each individual athlete.