When Farah joined Salazar, a three-time winner of the New York marathon, at his training camp in Portland, Oregon, in February last year, he was far from a world beater. So what has been the secret of his transformation?
“When Mo came to me 18 months ago, he was a skinny distance runner with a great engine but no upper body strength,” said Salazar. “At the end of races, he would tire and his head would bob around and his arms would flail. He was the weakest athlete I’d ever trained — in terms of core strength and being able to do push-ups, sit-ups and single-leg squats, he was a 90lb weakling.
“The number one thing that has helped Mo is not the 110 miles a week he puts in on the road, but the seven hours a fortnight he does in the gym.
“I got him lifting weights with Galen Rupp [his American training partner], and that was when Mo saw how far behind he was. You can’t win races at this level without upper body strength. Until he came to me, he was floating between coaches and doing a mishmash of things. Now he is focused and when Mo takes off his shirt, coaches he worked with can’t believe how ripped he is.”
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