Why is it wrong to train high school kids ambitiously?

I'm all for training high school kids more. I was unfortunately part of the "less is more" thinking of the mid 80s in high school, so we ran 15-20 MPW max, and I never really "trained" in the summer...I ran a little and ran some road races, but I didn't really train.

The upperclassmen at my daughter's high school run 60 MPW while the lowerclassmen run about 40. If I had my way, that would be bumped up a little. 70-75 MPW isn't too much for juniors and seniors who have been running for several years and have shown they aren't injury prone.

You know what drives me crazy? Is when people say "Do A and you will succeed, do B and you will burn out". That is craziness. Very few things in this world are a perfect cause and effect relationship, and running is not one of them. There are so many factors that determine a persons level of success. Many of them are uncontrollable. It is good to debate, but when you argue that there is a perfect way to coach everyone, that makes people sound very ignorant.

I say, train kids ambitiously if they want to be good. Desire is the biggest determiner if a kid is going to reach their highest potential in running. If a kid is happy with what they are doing or don't really care, you can't do anything in the world to make them want to run more or faster. All you can do is be patient and hope they come around. I agree with more long runs and tempo runs than intervals for HS distance. Only the most dedicated runners can handle a heavy load of intervals AND races concurrently. All about individualizing.

People on here seem to assume that when a runner runs fast in high school and doesn't get much faster in college, they have somehow hurt their long-term potential by running hard early. Say a guy runs 4:03 in high school and then ends up with a collegiate PR of 3:58. People will say that he should have spent his high school years focusing on long-term development instead of throwing down a really fast high school time.

I don't get this. Would the guy have run faster than 3:58 if he'd focused on long-term development? How does anyone know? Maybe 3:58 is just the guy's upper limit. It would look like better progression to a lot of people if the guy gradually went from 4:20 in high school to 3:58 as a college senior, but is this really a more desireable outcome than running 4:03 and progressing to the same eventual PR?

What if the team goals are ambitious and a few guys "just want to do it for fun". Keeping those guys around "for funsies" may hurt the team if you have to take time away from the serious athletes to work with the guys just doing it for their academic transcript.

Just because the coach can't force a kid to have high goals and ambition, by the same token the coach shouldn't have to foster a kid with the same intensity just because he shows up everyday but doesn't have any desire.

I hate that people try to make cross country and track out to be the "inclusive" sport. You think football, baseball, and basketball are keeping kids around who don't want to work? The school I coach at has practice at least once a week that lasts 4+ hours for football. They are also the best in the state. The "let's just get the kids out" mentality is hurting the sport. You should train a kid to maximize his potential while under you because if you don't do that there is a 90%+ chance he won't continue anyway.

Flagpole wrote:

I'm all for training high school kids more. I was unfortunately part of the "less is more" thinking of the mid 80s in high school, so we ran 15-20 MPW max, and I never really "trained" in the summer...I ran a little and ran some road races, but I didn't really train.

The upperclassmen at my daughter's high school run 60 MPW while the lowerclassmen run about 40. If I had my way, that would be bumped up a little. 70-75 MPW isn't too much for juniors and seniors who have been running for several years and have shown they aren't injury prone.

I think this is exactly correct. I have a very similar tale in terms of my brief prep career. Very similar summer, didn't start training in earnest (55 mpw) winter before senior track, and then ran an altitude converted (by NCAA standard from 5,500', which I think is conservative) of a sub-9:20 3200. As a result, I was on nary a radar screen for recruiting because of starting late.

That's why I think the "1000-mile" summer is a good idea if the athlete has built up to it. That's the max I would do however, but at least a kid can discern his/her potential, perhaps get recruited, and have a fairly smooth transition to a college career.

This is a good discussion. The development of young athletes is a hot topic because there are so many different opinions. It's like talking about politics or religion.

I think the 'burnout' that is being discussed happens when young runners train and race for short term performances, with very little thought going into what their long term goals are. They race and train week to week, with no plans for where they may want to be in the future, and how they are going to get there. If you have a girl, let's say, who is capable of running elite times at a young age, then she should not be held back. The key is to make sure that she is on a long term plan so that she is always improving, and not getting injured. It would be a quadrennial plan of sorts, with clear goals and cycles. If done properly, there would be little risk of burnout and injury. Boys tend to mature later than girls, but the same guidelines would apply if you were working with a young elite male runner.

For the not yet elite young runners, they need to be developed in the same way as the elite runner, but the mileage and intensity would be different. The basics are the same. Every runner needs a goal oriented plan, even if they only intend to run during their school years.

There is nothing wrong with training "ambitiously" as long as it is done intelligently.

But that means lots of focus from the coach and lots of responsibility from the kids (ie not racing easy runs). I'll use my former HS as an example of why this can be tough. 1 head coach, 3-4 assistants and almost 300 students. That makes it very hard to have the focus necessary to train at 70-80+ miles/week safely.

300 kids? What school?

Look, with HS records being set on 40-70 miles/week, this isn't, or shouldn't be, a conversation about mileage. Consider Derrick, who ran moderately in HS like many other kids, 50-60 miles/week tops, but he also learned to hammer. What really sets him apart is that he had something close to 51-52sec 4x400 capability in HS -- most distance runners don't. of course he stood out. Some have speed, some have stamina, but relatively few have both. On many HS teams they'd plunk him in the 400m or 800m with that speed but at his school they pointed him towards his greatest strengths, leaving ample room for improvement.

Now we just had a runner win a medal indoors in the 800m. Was she missing out in HS developing her speed to run a great 400? How much faster would either of these kids be now had they trained "ambitiously"? The truth is ambitious means recognizing there is more to the sport that mileage totals.

Everyone assumes training ambitiously means running high mileage. High mileage at the HS level is much safer and better for long term development than frequent high intensity. So, if you want to run more, then run more, don't get caught up in running anaerobically 3-5 days per week, that is where you run into more problems.

Be ambitious, just be smart and think about how what you do will affect you over time.

Just curious as to whether the OP has ever actually coached in a high school.

My kid was a very successful high school runner with a couple of great coaches, but it was a small program at a small school, and it was a struggle just to get enough kids to round out a varsity and jv cross country and track team. 90% of the kids were there for something to do after school. Virtually none of them were good runners, most were quite overweight, and most started walking as soon as they were out of sight of the coach.

Maybe your approach would be to just kick all those kids off the team, not sure. My kid trained hard, but because he wanted to, and he worked with his coaches to help him. His motivation was internal.

You might luck into coaching at one of the big high schools that consistently produce top teams and runners - the ones that are at NXN year after year - or the perpetual state championship teams - but distance running is not too popular in most schools. I know - everybody talks about Joe Newton. Most schools are not like that. We currently have about 20 guys on our track team, and 18 of them want to be 'sprinters' because they don't have to run much.

So I'm just curious as to how you would propose handling real world situations like this. Theoretical discussions about pushing high school kids to the max are all fine and good, but all these kids are there by choice and most of them are just not going to do your killer workouts. They will either quit or just not do them. If you say "just let them quit" you are not going to have a team and parents are going to complain. Reality sucks sometimes, but that's just the way it is at most places. Take a look at these typical high school meet results and tell me how many national champions you are going to get out of this group -http://www.arizonatrack.com/arizona/2012_Results/2012_Track/2012havasumulti1results.pdf

Here is the website of the Nequa Valley High School XC team, where Chris Derrick ran in HS. A number of other excellent runners have come from this program. They have a history of developing successful runners in HS without having many burnouts in college. Worth a read to see what their general principles are.

I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth, but I interpreted the OP somewhat differently. I thought this was important: "I would contend that more athletes would decide to run after HS if they were trained up, shown they could be national class, and guided to a collegiate career." [emphasis mine]

I could understand reading the OP another way, but I don't think s/he was really against starting newcomers off light--bear in mind that Joe Newton's frosh (at least those not previously in the summer program) run a total of 400m a day, for their first several days of practice!--but rather *keeping* things light for all four years. There are some coaches who do that--who consider "keeping it light" the proper thing to do--even though they do *not* face limited numbers.

I think the OP is just in favor of progressing through the four years of high school. That kind of progressive training load can be a badge of honor, as it is for Joe Newton's kids. I'm in favor of it, too.

We're always telling our children/students that hard, intelligent, consistent, sustained work will pay off. Why not give high school kids a chance to experience that payoff? This lesson (commitment + effort ==> success) is one of the most important that anyone can learn; why not "reinforce" the lesson with a training load that's likely to make it come true?

Intradasting wrote:

The school record holder at my high school was trained with the "save for later" mentality. He ran 15:55, 9:26, and 4:25 his senior year.

Colby Lowe, who ran an 8:47 two mile (more than twice as fast as my friends 1600 PR in high school) in high school, was trained hard as a prep, he has run 8:03 (~8:41 2 mile) for the 3000 but has never really been able to compete with the big dogs.

My friend? the 9:26 3200 guy? He ran 8:04 this year, has been improving rapidly since graduating, loves running, and will probably end up faster than Colby Lowe. DId I mention my friend is a junior in college? (Lowe is a senior).

The comparison only looks valid because you're cherry picking the event. Sure your friend has run 8:04 for 3k, good for him, maybe someday he can score at conference. Lowe may have only run 8:03 but he's run 13:4x and 28:4x and been a multiple time all-american and has been top 10 at NCAA cross. By any reasonable standard Colby was a lot better and still is a lot better than your friend. Its great that your friend is doing well but let's not get carried away.

I would personally advocate for running higher mileage but skimping on the high intensity interval work in high school. It won't burn you out and it will give you a great training base so you can handle college training and racing schedules. But we all have our biases.

This is just blatantly false. I ran at Neuqua and the top guys were doing 75mpw over the summer.

long term ? wrote:

High mileage at the HS level is much safer and better for long term development than frequent high intensity.

Do you have any evidence for this?

Intradasting wrote:

The school record holder at my high school was trained with the "save for later" mentality. He ran 15:55, 9:26, and 4:25 his senior year.

Colby Lowe, who ran an 8:47 two mile (more than twice as fast as my friends 1600 PR in high school) in high school, was trained hard as a prep, he has run 8:03 (~8:41 2 mile) for the 3000 but has never really been able to compete with the big dogs.

My friend? the 9:26 3200 guy? He ran 8:04 this year, has been improving rapidly since graduating, loves running, and will probably end up faster than Colby Lowe. DId I mention my friend is a junior in college? (Lowe is a senior).

I will make you two guarantees.

1) You friend has less NCAA appearances and less all-Americans and will finish his career with less of each than Colby Lowe.

2) Your high school, with the 9:25 3200 school record, has less kids running in college, getting to NCAAs and getting All American honors than SLC.

So what I get from your post is that your high school is less effective at making kids fast in high school or beyond than a place like SLC. For the record, I could never train my kids like SLC does but I'm not going to say how much better another program is that because one kid managed to come withing 12 seconds on an NCAA mark in the 3k after going there.

I have a situation where I have a freshman who has run 12:56 for two miles after a year of training which is a decent time for a freshman but wasn't even in the top 7 for the JH team this past year. I trained him exactly the same as the other runners and some of them have taken off and really excelled while he has improved marginally. He wants to be good fairly bad and is getting frustrated with his lack of movement in the team ranks. I'm thinking the only thing I can do is increase his workload relative to the other kids. We won't be doing 100 mpw or anything, but I suspect I will have to give him a fair amount of volume (probably 50 over the summer) to match his mates.

Two advantages to training harder younger:

1. You get to compete and learn to race at a higher level as a 4:12 miler than as a 4:25 miler. By the time you get to college you'be been to the state meet and the national invitationals and have a greater confidence in your limits and abilities. The 4:25 is in new territory.

2. The 4:12 guy is going to a much better program than the 4:25 guy. The team will have better coaching, training group and facilities which will bring additional advantages.

A top youth girl I coached as a club coach had parents that were insistent that she run low mileage to save for college. She went to a small division high school, ran 3-4 days a week and never improved. She graduated and went to a local college to finally start her career and is still chasing her middle school times. Another girl I coached took the opposite approach and is a state champ with lots of college opportunities. Even if they bothe end up running 16:20 in college I'd say the second one got much more out of her experience.