My name is Brian Smith, you can call me Smitty. I am a sprinter for the University at Buffalo.
PRs: 100m 10.60 200m 21.09 400m 48.12
I've been to the first round of NCAA Nationals twice, NCAA East Regionals, Penn Relays four times, the Florida Relays and the Texas Relays. I am a pretty consistent scorer at the Mid-American Conference Championships for the squad. I've taken silver twice, bronze four times and was the 2011 Mid-American Conference outdoor 200 meter champion.
My coaches are the best in the area. The man who started me into track and who will always be my coach is Willie Burnett. He is one hundred percent the reason I got interested in track and has been a major influence is my training as well as in the shaping of my training philosophy. If you are looking for sprint training in the WNY area my suggestion is to go to the Burt Flickinger Center downtown and hang out upstairs on the track and ask for Coach Burnett. Someone will know who he is and I promise you he'll be around.
The next biggest influence on my training is Paul Childress. He runs a gym out of the Eastern Hills Mall called Absolute Performance. The man is a genius and quite the athlete himself. He's held several powerlifting world records. In one sentence; Paul has squatted 1165 pounds. Since I started training with Paul I've gotten significantly stronger and it has paid off on the track. If you are a high school athlete in the area I highly recommend training with Paul and his staff.
Perry Jenkins is the head coach at UB and is also the sprint coach. He has been involved in the sport a long time and is highly respected. I haven't always agreed with his training but this season he has really turned it up and I'm excited to see how it translates to my times.
Nate Harvey is one of the strength and conditioning coaches at UB and when Paul left to start his gym Nate took over as my strength coach. Both Paul and Nate follow a weight lifting philosophy called Westside Barbell which is based out of Columbus, OH and led by a powerlifting legend named Louie Simmons. Since Nate took over as my coach I have continued to get stronger.
Onto some videos.
This is a 200 from the Blue and White meet back in 2009 I believe. It's an innersquad meet in the fall just to see where everyone is at. I went 21.56.
This is a 400 from the spring of 2010. It's actually the only open 400 I have ever run outdoors. I went 48.12. Enjoy my friend Connors' commentating.
This is an indoor 200 from January 2011. It's 22.14 which was actually at the time my PR for a 200 meter track. You'll notice my strength is on the straight aways in races and when you take those away from me I run slower and slower. Still a good race though.
These next two races are from the Empire State Games. The first one is the prelims where I walked a 22.3. I'm not kidding either, watch the video. The second is the finals where they ran us into a crazy headwind and I worked to go 22.15 and won by a hundredth.
I am always looking for ways to test my speed. That is, after all, eventually going to be what this blog is about. So I thought I would post this video of a loss of mine. I challenged a high school girls' 4x100, a very good one, to race 400m. The four of them vs me. I could make excuses, but I won't. They ran a hand time of 48.5, which I am very capable as shown in an above video. But I lost.
I'll leave you with these last three videos. I mentioned before how influential my strength coaches have been so I thought I'd give you three lifting videos. The first is me squatting 405, the second is me dead lifting 475, and the third is me not benching 275. Enjoy!
