New topic in the same general category
High School boys (Not to exclude high school girls but I will plead ignorance because i had only a brother, and three sons, and my wife is a 4;39 miler who is not a good data point) are a bit more prone to injury since they are growing, but have unbelievable recovery skills. They need a lower training load since their bodies are less experienced, and more coaching since they have less context, retraint, focus, and judgement. That said, I see coaches now back off way too much on kids, particularly Jrs and Srs. What is the right level of:
1. days per week of training in season?
2. months per year of training for those who are really into the sport (those that run both xc and track)
3. peak miles per week
I would love input from HS coaches who are out there, and have it be specifically for 800/1500 kids. I personally believe that boys this age can handle a watered down version of the intensity (about 65-75% of the quality load at the appropriate paces) and more of them should be running alot faster. I went to a giant meet in the northwest last year and saw 4*400 relays with literally 100 kids splitting between 48-51 for the 400, and there was only one kid the whole meet who ran under 156 for the 800m. Now, clearly you can the 400m on a decent amount of natural talent and some basic training and you cant run super fast in the 800m without some specific training, but I guess this proves my point. Any thought for how we as a coaching pool encourage more kids to move up? In the UK and Ireland the culture is the opposite -- you start out trying to run the mile and move down if you dont have the lungs...