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It has become clear to me that we must view a training program as a balance with the aerobic phase, the Fulcrum, and the anaerobic phase

Coach Joe Vigil

Coach Joe Vigil is a living legend. He is a scientist and coach whose unique combination of physiology and sports science with motivation and decades of experience have produced incredible results.

Here is a shortlist of his coaching accomplishments:

• Coach of Meb Keflezighi, Deena Kastor and Brenda Martinez to name a few famous American runners.
• 20 different medalists at the World Cross Country Championships
• 19 NCAA and NAIA collegiate team championships
• A perfect score at the NCAA Cross Country National Championships which means that the runners on his team finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th
• A meet-winning percentage of 94.2 percent with over 3000 wins
• Coach of the US Olympic Team, twice. And was named to the coaching staff of the World Cross Country Championships, the Pan American Games, and numerous other international coaching staffs

If you’d like to learn more about Coach Vigil, Spartan Life did an excellent profile on him which you can read HERE. If you’ve never heard the name Joe Vigil before today, make sure you read the profile!

The focus in this post is how Coach Vigil transitions his runners between the aerobic and anaerobic phases of a training program. In earlier posts, we learned about the methods used by Arthur Lydiard and Jack Daniels. Coach Vigil calls this phase the Fulcrum, and he describes the concept in his book Road to the Top.

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