After Temora sprinter and jumper Grace Krause's three gold medals and a stunning 200m win at NSW Juniors late last month, not to mention Wagga jumper Daniel Okerenyang's brilliant start to the year, Wiencke has opened up to The Daily Advertiser about some of the secrets behind his squad's success.

The former talented jumper has removed the focus on times and distances, shifting the emphasis to their mental approach.

"They always say to get to the top level it's 90 per cent hard work and 10 per cent talent. Then to be the best of the best, it's 90 per cent mental and 10 per cent physical," Wiencke said.

"We're very feelings-based and emotions-based... it's not chasing a time or distance, but chasing the feeling around what we did. And we're seeing the guys smashing their PBs by half a metre."

Wiencke says the key is that the feeling - the joy of success, or feeling you're in the zone - isn't measurable and is therefore unlimited.

"When they do those performances, they're chasing a feeling and they can excel well past expectations," he said. "Grace's time was a whole second better... If we had a goal to run sub 25 (seconds) or maybe 24.5, she would've said, 'there's no way I can run that.'

"By focusing on a feeling, and focussing on that massive rivalry with Holly Rea, we came up with a strategy that let her run her own race."

Athletics NSW officials have taken note of the performances coming out of the Riverina town. Wiencke says the philosophy works particularly well in a country town, without regular top level competition.

"It's hard to do a PB running by yourself on an oval," Wiencke says.

When his athletes head to the higher representative carnivals, they relish the opportunity to test themselves, approaching the events as a welcome opportunity to get outside their comfort zone.

Of course, the mental focus comes on top of the physical training to get to that level for starters. To that end, Wiencke says he's "gone berserk" with his research in the last couple of years.

HIs squad has been working on a few key areas: improving reaction times and training reactivity; building accelaration in two different phases of sprinting'; and there's relaxing the fascia system - the tissue that surrounds the muscles and bones in the body.

The athletes are loving learning about the new techniques.

Okerenyang, the state under 16 long jump and triple jump champion, won two golds but Wiencke says, taking into account narrow fouls or taking off early, the distance he's flying show he's capable of producing Australian-bests.

Kippy Langat withdrew from the triple jump after a minor ankle injury on his first jump and his bronze in the under 20s boys long jump qualified him for national juniors. A world juniors qualifier is the target.

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