Coach Scott Christensen

I purchased a video course of Scott's training a while ago, and while I enjoyed it and found it interesting, really the only thing I implemented were the 30 meter sprints. I have had a lot of success with a more moderate, stamina- based approach, and I am pretty sure I would have quite a few injured kids if we did that much fast stuff. We rarely even work at VO2 max pace, because I think almost weekly races during the season plus VO2 work are just too much, and VO2 max paced work is just a huge part of his training plan, as I recall.

I still use a basic 24 week approach with 4 six week phases that I began based on Daniels for most athletes that run indoor/outdoor track. We begin in January. (In December they get together to run, but we don't have any structured workouts. For those that run Footlocker, they may take a couple weeks off. )

The first phase consists of two hard days (hills & tempo/steady state) along with a long run. We add a leg workout (Gambetta) on those days as well. The hills (60-90 sec @7% grade) are run hard but with generous recoveries. The other days are basic aerobic days with core strength work.

We race every other week (a total of 4 meets). On weeks without races we also do 8 sec all-out hill sprints @7% grade, providing the roads are in good shape (no ice).

The next three weeks we drop hills and begin long intervals (1 mi @5k pace or 1k @VO2max pace) providing the roads are in good shape.

One change I did make during the first 9 weeks based on Christensen's courses is that even for 1st year runners I will have them go 5 mi at 80-85% of VO2max. With younger runners I had always had them begin with cruise intervals (interrupted tempo) until they could run all of them at the same pace or with negative splits and doubted they could handle the longer (slower) tempos. To my surprise they actually handled them well. I call them "Stillwater Tempos". We don't do them every week - probably every 3rd week.

The next three weeks of the Pre-Comp phase (which also corresponds to the 1st three weeks of our official Outdoor Track season) I transition my top 3-6 kids to Christensen's 9 or 12 day cycles. I add in his 4-minute hills (@2-3% grade. Our track is still usually covered in snow at this point, but if it's available I do have the kids do the flying 30s. The long intervals are done exclusively at 3200m date pace (from an indoor race).

Once we're in the Comp Phase, middle distance runners are running sprint-type workouts that I had never done before (7 x 120m max effort, 5 x 500m at 97% of 400 speed, etc.) I'm still not completely convinced that this is the best long term path for a kid that will eventually be running college XC, but I'm not as against it as I was just a couple years ago either.

As a disclaimer, I should say that one of the reasons I don't try to begin with Christensen's workouts earlier than this is weather related. We don't have an indoor facility and and usually training in snow/ice through the middle/end of March which is a problem for sprint-type workouts.

It's too hard to plan out an entire season for more than 3-6 kids. The 12 day cycle for 800/1600 runners is brutal do workout when you live on repeating 7 day cycles. I try to pick out 3-4 races during the regular season where I expect the very top kids to have great competition. Other than they I set their races to meet the workout goals for that day and add stuff before the meet if necessary. It's not perfect and requires quite a bit of creativity. My interpretation of his work says that his paces are much faster than what I had used in the past and the volume of intense work is much lower.

My experience had been that newbies just don't bring the intensity and focus to hard days necessary to get sufficient benefits from his workouts. I find they do better with Daniels-based workouts. This is true even for older kids that haven't decided to fully-invest themselves - another reason I only attempt to put together a "Christensen Schedule" together for just a handful of my top kids.

I have always adjusted training volumes on hard days to an athlete's weekly mileage (tempo runs - up to 10% of mpw, intervals (5k pace) - up to 8% of mpw, repetitions (1600 pace) up to 5% of mpw), but Christensen doesn't have any such guidelines. Until he published his most recent work that had complete workouts for a season, I had lots of trouble determine how many, paces, rests, etc. for each of my athletes.

I don't follow his plans day-for-day, but I try to understand the key objectives each 9 or 12 day cycle and then lay out the workouts for one athlete at a time. When it makes sense I try to have similar workouts on the same day so the kids can workout together, but that's not always possible.

Every athlete I had on these plans set big PRs this year, including one that set a state meet record. Would they have done so if we stuck with my modified Daniels' approach? Hard to say. I was fortunate to have two Footlocker finalists with the modified Daniels approach during XC and both ran sub-9 for 3200 in the spring. I think Christensen's approach is better for 800/1600 runners, but there's no way to know for sure.

The kids like the lower volume, higher speed stuff more than they seemed to like the longer 3200/1600 pace-intervals that were the foundation of my Daniels plan.

What qualifies Scott Christensen as an expert?

Having a good but not great high school coach leading USATF coaching education shows how amateurish our sport is. What a load of shit.

seriously though? wrote:

What qualifies Scott Christensen as an expert?

Having a good but not great high school coach leading USATF coaching education shows how amateurish our sport is. What a load of shit.

This comment is opinion and shows how little you know little about the structure of the USATF coaches education and its background.

I actually don't care much for Scott's style of coaching. I don't use it. But, I did Level 2 with him as an instructor many years ago and found him fair and reasonable. His resume is more than solid to qualify him as someone that knows what he's doing.

If you don't like it, don't bother with it.

But considering how many coaches I've seen paid to get up and regurgitate stuff from a Human Kinetics textbook as training theory, I'm glad he at least has his own opinion on the matter.

Another Option wrote, in part:

5 x 500m at 97% of 400 speed, etc.

Doesn't seem possible. Maybe 79% of 400 speed?

Opinion, well no kidding. As opposed to what? How would one prove "factually" that he is under-qualified?

Is regurgitating warmed over Peter Coe and Frank Horwill, propped up by lame research studies any better? He's trying to single handedly drag us back into the 1990s and it's laughable.

SlowFatMaster wrote:

Another Option wrote, in part:

5 x 500m at 97% of 400 speed, etc.

Doesn't seem possible. Maybe 79% of 400 speed?

Nope. An athlete with a 400 PR of 58 (6.90 m/s) would run 75 for 500, coming through 400 in 60 (6.66 m/s), about 3% slower than her PR pace (speed). 15 minute recoveries, meant this workout took an hour to complete.

Btw I totally agree with the poster who asked "who is this guy and what gives him any credibility?" That being said, I wouldn't attempt to adopt the ideas of someone based just on who they were, either. He happened to be the coach at my nephew's school, and I had the chance to listen to him at a coaching conference. What he said made sense; though there were plenty of gaps to fill moving from what I had done for 20+ years to his model. I tried bits and pieces initially, couldn't understand how he was establishing paces, recoveries, volumes, etc. Over the last couple years, he has added many hours of instruction on line that have reinforced and clarified his ideas.

I still wouldn't use his approach for everyone on the team. This spring I coached nearly 50 middle distance runners. Logistically, I just can't design workout plans on 12 day cycles for that many athletes and for reasons mentioned in my previous posts, I don't believe any but the most elite athletes will reap more benefits than they would through a more Daniels based approach.

Didn't this guy coach Luke Watson and his brother, Ben Blankenship and Sean Graham, who all went on to at least run sub4, if not much better.

Did he just get lucky by getting really talented athletes, or is he that good at developing talent?

You Know Me wrote:

Didn't this guy coach Luke Watson and his brother, Ben Blankenship and Sean Graham, who all went on to at least run sub4, if not much better.

Did he just get lucky by getting really talented athletes, or is he that good at developing talent?

There's no way to know for sure, but I think his XC teams are among the best in the nation every year for the last 15+ years. I think he's had 4-5 guys go on to run sub-4. A couple years ago he had 3 guys go sub-9 for 3200 at the MN state championship, including a freshman. There's certainly some good fortune involved, but it would be hard to argue that his training isn't laying the foundation that enables success when opportunity is present.

Scott is a great coach but please get your facts right. He had ONE guy go under 9:00 at the state meet in 2013 (two others under 9:10). Three PEOPLE broke 9:00 in that race but only one of them was from Stillwater. His XC teams have been good, but have only made NXN once. Other MN schools have fared a lot better in cross. Four Stillwater alums have broken 4 minutes.

Maybe you can volunteer to teach instead. Tell us about all the sub-4 milers you've coached.

OK, the world record for the 400 is 43.18 and the world record for the 600 is 1:12.81, so the average is almost exactly 58 seconds. So, the world record for the 500 if people ran it outdoors would be around 58.

43.18/.97 = 44.52

So Michael Johnson would do this workout by going through the 400 in 44.52 and continuing at the same pace for another 100.

44.52 x 1.25 = 55.65

So Michael breaks the world record for the 500 by over 2 seconds, takes a 15 minute break, and does it again 4 more times?

Even with a running start, no way this workout is possible.

There are many problems with extrapolating the workouts for a high school middle distance runner to a world class 200/400 specialist, but I was mistaken. I was writing from memory and merged two different workouts.

The workout was only 3 x 500, not 5 x 500. The suggested goal time was the athlete's 400 PR x 1.29, which is 3.2% slower than their PR pace. The suggested recovery time was 13 minutes, not 15 minutes.

My point in listing the workout was to illustrate the fact that many of Christensen's workout designs are much higher intensity than I had ever used before and far more intense than all but the most elite high school kids will even come close to executing.

Is the workout as specified possible? I dunno. We did miss goal times by a bit, but in the effort to achieve them I think the kids appropriately challenged their physiological systems and developed confidence in their speed and strength. They commented that they were surprised to run as fast as they did.

I train girls and guys, 7-12th grade. I have used his training even for the most youngest of my kids. I rarely have kids injured. Even though we are a small school (250 kids 9-12), we have had a number of girls sub 19 and guys sub 17.

My challenge is finding the balance between mileage, speed, and strength. (Don't we all struggle with that?). I find it difficult to get more than 40 miles a week during school which means the summer base deteriorates fairly quickly. I am tempted to lengthen the 9 day cycle a few days to allow for some additional strength endurance.

I thought his material was great. It made sense from a science point of view.

Some people need more rest and I'm fine with a 12 day microcycle being lengthened to 14 days. Peter Coe in his book Winning Running has examples of 12 day and 14 days 5 pace systems.

It doesn't matter whether he has coached great runners or not. I read it, I think about it and try it out and see what happens.

Just lengthening the microcycles if there is a problem.

Scott has won 10 state titles and over 50 section titles. In addition four of his athletes went on to break

four minutes for the mile in college. He only coaches boys.

How much more qualified do you want him to be???

What's true in Minnesota is that people are jealous of Scott Christensen and his success. I think he might be the most successful XC and Track & Field Coach in the history of Minnesota. He is not always right, but he is so confident, that no one can tell him when he is wrong. Lately, that has been hurting his teams. But I admit to jealousy.

Everyone says his techniques are so modern. To me that funny because many high school coaches over sprint their distance kids and have been doing that for decades.

I meant "that is funny" not that funny.

Jed Clampett wrote:

What's true in Minnesota is that people are jealous of Scott Christensen and his success. I think he might be the most successful XC and Track & Field Coach in the history of Minnesota. He is not always right, but he is so confident, that no one can tell him when he is wrong. Lately, that has been hurting his teams. But I admit to jealousy.

Everyone says his techniques are so modern. To me that funny because many high school coaches over sprint their distance kids and have been doing that for decades.

sure. i coach against guys who sprint their distance guys too much, but they don't have a method to what they are doing. It is just to race every rep as hard as you can go, and rest is typically too short.

At least Scott gives appropriate rest.

I have had some luck implementing his stuff, but on a lesser scale. Usually less reps, and a bit slower. The time goals for his program are incredibly ambitious for all but the most devoted and experienced runners.

I do love the idea of the multiple paces used over a 2 week period. This and the adequate rest periods on the highest intensity days are the biggest things I take from him.