"Doc" DuWors Workouts

Ralph suggested at the reunion that Dad was ahead of his time. I think he was, although the basic principles he followed can be found in a book he gave me in 1964 (Ken Doherty’s Modern Track and Field) which you can still probably order (updated, re-edited with a new title) from “Track and Field News”. The fact that “Doc” was possibly more competent or experienced, or just more motivated than some coaches may possibly have resulted in resentment and even lesser historical coverage of our group than our “glory days” deserved, as has been suggested (not by Ralph) , although I am not too comfortable with this claim myself.

All would agree Doc did not suffer fools gladly, but I think in a sense he earned a lot of respect on our behalf. Finally, both Doherty and Dad admired Bill Bowerman, who proved to be the greatest college track coach of our time, basically because he was creative and intelligent, as well as tough-minded (just ask Don and me!), and, most important, because he rejected the very popular pain-oriented pseudo-science of over-training of the day (endless hard interval training, Eastern European coaches, grimacing faces, or totally unrealistic aristocratic standards for “amateurs”, and, of course, racist ideas like Negroes just naturally exceeded in only very short races due to some peculiar “natural” structure of their bodies). Dad was also an old-fashioned Sociologist, trained to observe more than measure, and many of his track ideas probably came from observing in areas like Community and Social Mobility. I remember as a kid his complaining that he could not turn it (the sociological viewpoint) off.

He believed in rest and recovery between hard workouts, for both physiological and psychological reasons. He probably thought the latter as important as the former. Generally he advocated three hard workouts a week (M, W, F), and two easy ones (T, Th), and a long gentle one on Sunday. If there was a meet, then Friday was very easy as well. If there was no meet, Friday was often a time trial in your distance.


He advocated running year-round (track, corners, cross-country, field house), his most obvious innovation for Sask. He was not against cross-training often citing Paavo Nurmi’s cross-country skiing. I also spent a winter doing hard callisthenics on wrestling mats (courtesy of Bill Orban senior). Gregg and Al and myself lifted weights. I remember a medicine ball and hard basketball (rarely). There was also some isometrics. And some running in winter on snow. In Spring Gregg and ran many repeats of sand hills.

He used both Fartlek and interval training. Fartlek was mostly along the river. I remember running Devil’s Dip many times. Intervals were usually 8 x 220 on the track or grassy edge of the track with a half lap walk between 220’s. I am guessing, but I think we ran about 26 seconds. It was a hard workout. Another interval was three quarters of a mile x 2 (with recovery) on the corners. It was hard too.

He began cross-country season--at least for new people- with 100 yards jogging and 100 yards walking--total distance unknown (less than around the plots). You can find this kind of beginners’ workout on the Web today (even sponsored by Notre Dame). They also advocate never running (hard?) two days in a row. History seems to have caught up with him.

Dad might have argued his ideas were objective and scientific---everybody did back in those days But I think a lot of their appeal was and is that they were humane and humanistic, as Doherty’s ideas are now seen to be by T & F News.