What do elite HS teams do for training over the summer?

100 MPW, 13 workouts a week, no coaches.

Seven 17 year olds, month of july. All sub 15:55 xc 5k.

Monday- AM 6 miles easy/ PM 4 mile tempo (20:10-21:40)

Tuesday- AM 4 miles easy/ PM 8 miles easy

Wednesday- AM 4 miles easy/ PM 6 mile tempo (30:56-33:00)

Thursday- AM 4 miles easy/ 4-10 miles easy

Friday- AM 4 miles easy/ 4 miles easy + barefoot strides

Saturday- AM 8-10 easy/ PM OFF (some run 20 min)

Sunday- 13-17 5:40-6:20 pace/ PM OFF

Total: 73-87 mpw (includes warm up & cool down from tempo)

note: Most "easy" runs included AT LEAST 14 min. of barefoot running around soccer fields. Tempos were race pace simulation, and are run time trial style on a neighborhood loop. Easy runs were 6:40-7:00 min pace. Cant get enough of aerobic running. Right now all 7 guys are seniors and their state meet is in 9 days. This is an average week that these guys would have ran from early june to early september.

Dan,

Depending on your state regulations, you may not be able to hold practices where the coach is present. In the state I attended HS it was against the rules to have formal training during the off season. Our coach would give us a training guideline (hardly any workouts, just run x miles each week) for the summer, but he couldn't contact us, nor be at the track when we met. Needles to say, due to the lack of organization imposed by the state, very few ran over the summer.

Hopefully your state doesn't impose such useless rules upon you and you can meet with your athletes during the off season.

My only suggestion is to make your summer program fun and get some milage in. Our coach used to brag about the "1,000 mile club" which were past runners who logged 1,000 miles over the summer. He had a list of all runners and the year they did the "K" in his office. Great motivation. Of course he was the coach for 27 years before I got there, so he had quite a bit of history on that list. I never made the list (one of my sisters did though) although I did want too. The most I got was 750 or so, I was a pretty low milage guy and always thought it would be cool if he had levels to the list (800 club, 900 club and 1,000 club like a bronze, silver, gold type of thing.) That way you reward more people even if they can't crank out 80 miles a week all summer long.

Hope this helps.

Go look at Magness blog. He posts the exact training of a nationally ranked HS XC team. Not sure if he's posted it yet, but at the end of the season he posts every workout his HS team did, so you can take a look at what they did last year at least.

You can also pick up Joe Newton's book "Coaching Cross Country Successfully" in which he details his summer running program, which is fairly intense. And note the comment about when you can meet with your runners, since there will be times when you cannot.

My gf has a Whooty! wrote:

The most I got was 750 or so, I was a pretty low milage guy and always thought it would be cool if he had levels to the list (800 club, 900 club and 1,000 club like a bronze, silver, gold type of thing.) That way you reward more people even if they can't crank out 80 miles a week all summer long.

This is the problem with kids these days.

"This is the problem with kids these days."

What is the problem with kids? That they tend to react better to positive reinforcement by having a coach provide them with achievable goals and recognition to reaching those goals? I had no problem not being a part of the "K" club. I left the school with three school records. I knew what training I had to do (actually my father did) and a bunch of junk miles wasn't what worked for my body.

I was simply suggesting a reward program through recognition to motivate his athletes to work harder over the summer. So you think the oly games should only give out a gold? No silver or bronze? After all those runners should be ashamed of themself for not achieving the ultimate goal, right?

It's called positive reinforcement. Most kids respond to that better than a black and white win/fail envirnoment. Take a psychology class. And it was just a suggestion, the coach doesn't have to take it.

And according to my suggestion, I still wouldn't have made the bronze level. So it's not like I was suggesting lowering the standards so I could have achieved it. I still would have come up short. I had a specific plan of 60 miles per week and was not going to deviate from it.

New HS Coach wrote:

What do elite HS teams do for training over the summer?

I’m ready for my team to take the next step and already making a program for next summer.

Anyone know what some of the top programs do over the summer? Mileage? Workouts? Weight Training? Do they meet together (do the coaches go?), two-a-days?

If anyone is willing to send attachments It would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dan

they run

Summer of Malmo

1000 miles.

fjdaigfa wrote:

Seven 17 year olds, month of july. All sub 15:55 xc 5k.

Monday- AM 6 miles easy/ PM 4 mile tempo (20:10-21:40)

Tuesday- AM 4 miles easy/ PM 8 miles easy

Wednesday- AM 4 miles easy/ PM 6 mile tempo (30:56-33:00)

Thursday- AM 4 miles easy/ 4-10 miles easy

Friday- AM 4 miles easy/ 4 miles easy + barefoot strides

Saturday- AM 8-10 easy/ PM OFF (some run 20 min)

Sunday- 13-17 5:40-6:20 pace/ PM OFF

Total: 73-87 mpw (includes warm up & cool down from tempo)

note: Most "easy" runs included AT LEAST 14 min. of barefoot running around soccer fields. Tempos were race pace simulation, and are run time trial style on a neighborhood loop. Easy runs were 6:40-7:00 min pace. Cant get enough of aerobic running. Right now all 7 guys are seniors and their state meet is in 9 days. This is an average week that these guys would have ran from early june to early september.

Fully recognizing that the subject of this thread is "elite" high school runners, and while I have no problem with seniors running the "1000-mile summer," please do not think it at all necessary to go sub-15:55 in the 5k in cross. That can be done with the 250-mile summer or less. In any event, summer is the time to do doubles, if you're going to do them. If sleep, health, and/or academics are sacrificed during the school year, ditch the doubles.

The future of this country is, well, let's just say, unknown, and you'd do well to be focusing primarily on getting into the best college you can, and, once there, obtaining the required skill sets to find yourself employment.

The subject is "elite HS teams" not elite HS runners.

at my school 1st couple weeks are conditioning not mandatory during taht time we didnt do any workouts but the varsity guys did about 70 mpw us jv guys did about 45 to 55mpw. Then when official practice started we went to altitude and started to doing workouts

Surf

this is our summer training for our top 10-15

M- 8 miles easy

T- AM- 5x1 mi PM-4 miles easy

W- AM- 4 miles easy PM-8 miles moderate

Th-AM-6@threshold PM-4 miles easy

F- 6 miles easy

S- 15x30 sec hills

S-15 mile long run

about 75-80 miles per week

repeat miles are at 5:10-5:15 with 200 rest

threshold runs are done at 5:25-5:30 pace

hills are done at approximate 3k pace, recovery is jog down

easy runs are done at 6:30

moderate runs are done at 6:00-6:05

our top 7: 15:12, 15:25, 15:32, 15:48, 15:51, 15:54

our next 7:16:02, 16:08, 16:12, 16:15, 16:27, 16:32

I come from what I think would be considered an elite HS program and we considered a 400 mile summer, approx. 100 days, to be excellent. That is for a junior or senior. 300 for the younger runners. It seems to me that you would have to have some very naturally efficient and talented runners to see HS kids hitting 600 to 1000 miles without getting injured, burned out, anemic, etc. Not to say that can't be done, but if you have a large group (50 or so), as we did/do hitting 400 miles, you will have a great team that is mentally and physically fresh when the formal season starts.

Snatch wrote:

I come from what I think would be considered an elite HS program and we considered a 400 mile summer, approx. 100 days, to be excellent. That is for a junior or senior. 300 for the younger runners. It seems to me that you would have to have some very naturally efficient and talented runners to see HS kids hitting 600 to 1000 miles without getting injured, burned out, anemic, etc. Not to say that can't be done, but if you have a large group (50 or so), as we did/do hitting 400 miles, you will have a great team that is mentally and physically fresh when the formal season starts.

Your elite guys team averaged 4 miles a day for 100 days?!

What are your definitions of elite HS program?

My HS team averaged double that. If you only count the top 5 guys they averaged a cumulative mileage of 1100 miles. I'm not saying mileage is everything but they got some good work in there.

And I"m not trying to insult your team either, I believe we had an above par group of blue collar kids, I'm just curious as to how your team was defined "elite:? I define it as NXN, yes we went a few times.

The training info/outlines for Chris Derrick's former team, NTN champions, and recent state champions/NXN qualifiers Neuqua Valley is posted on nvxc.net, very good plan for high school kids...Vandersteen knows what he's doing.

greenliner wrote:

You can also pick up Joe Newton's book "Coaching Cross Country Successfully"

Trash. Newton applies broken-egg coaching and hopes for five intact runners by the end of the season. It works pretty well for him, but plenty of elite HS teams do more with less.

Here's the general program for a NXN regional champion team:

*minimum of 400 miles over 10 or 11 weeks (36-40 mpw), including one 10-miler a week. Most of the top runners end up doing closer to 50 or 60 miles a week with a long run of 12-14 miles on trails, but it's really an individual matter.

*One workout with coach every week (per the coach contact regulations), typically a hill workout, anaerobic threshold work (cruise intervals or ~20min tempo runs), or relaxed intervals/fartlek on grass.

*two "captain's practices" a week. Everybody meets up for an easy run.

*two road races over the summer. Generally a 5k and a 10k.

*Some of the top guys meet up for a longer, high-end aerobic run (progression-style) once a week.

This leads in to the standard first two weeks of early-season training, a few two-a-days during those first few weeks, then hard hills and interval workouts, yadda yadda yadda.

This brings very good results, very few injuries, and very good progression year-to-year. A lot of the alumni are running (quite well) in college. Did I mention the exact same program is used for the girls' team? It works equally well.

Really, it's not as much about the mileage and workouts as it is about building a team dynamic. A lot of the top guys train together five days a week! This is one area where I really admire Joe Newton. He's created a great team culture at York where everybody is valued, and the team will get through anything. I disagree with his training principles, but with the attitude his team has, I think they could do just about any kind of training and still be pretty good. Don't think that every HS team at NXNs is doing thousand-mile summers. Very few are, because it's simply not necessary or smart, given a 10-week summer. A week or two off after track, then straight into 100 mile weeks? Yeah, sounds like a great program to me. Remember kids, there's no medals for the most impressive running log.