How many mpw should a middle school girl run?

That sounds great! I wouldn't have her do anything more while she's playing soccer. I don't work with our middle school programs, but I doubt they run more than 15 mpw from what i know of their training. We try to build our incoming freshmen up to 20-25 mpw over the summer, so I think that's fine for a 7th grader who is also playing soccer 3x a week.

There are a lot of people who equate soccer with running. I would disagree with that. Not all running is the same.

There is warmup, recovery between repeats and cool down. So, you do that at a pace of 10-12min/mile. Some people add it to the total, others don't. You have the repeats which are definitely harder miles. Adding easy and hard miles together and coming up with a number can be confusing. Say your daughter runs a total of 35 mpw and she does not have the results she needs. I would not necessarily increase the miles to get better results.

Playing soccer, you are likely to develop one larger leg and bigger calf muscles than pure runners (unless you are a #9). That modifies your running mechanics and, during running practice, you may have to unlearn certain things.

I think there is a lot more wear-and-tear in soccer than in running. So, you run about a 5miles over a 90min game at a competitive/academy level. That takes a toll. Doing a 5mi run at an average pace that is faster than the soccer game average pace, you end up with a much more reasonable recovery.

30mpw running is not equivalent to playing 6 soccer games per week regardless how hard you run those 30miles.

I have coached my kids to multiple national medals and I can tell you that they run less than that. I have also seen kids who run more and have not gotten hurt so the # of miles is not really as much as people make it to be. So, my advise is to use your judgement as to what works for your own daughter. Don't just go on a formula at the expense of monitoring her. If you see something wrong, then change the approach. There seems to be this broad obsession with tracking miles and ignoring everything else. Don't fall into that trap.

This reminds me of one of my favorite movies "Better Off Dead" and a character named Bugger: "Go that way really fast. If something gets in your way, turn." Oddly, he did not advise to "stay on course".

Perfect! That's great info. Thanks for sharing.

That was a good response because it made me think about soccer versus running for cc and t&f. It makes sense that there is a difference.

100 mpw

Get the book by Mick Grant. It addresses all of this. Great book. I wish I read it when my daughter was in middle school.

The Youth and Teen Running Encyclopedia

It answers your question and explains why and how.

Fencing. Curling. Racquetball. Softball. Bullring.

Those are all sports that are different than xc and track. I just thought it would help to have me mention them all.

OP: I think your daughter is at the upper end of what I think is acceptable for a 7th grade girl. It is great she is also doing other sports, and I think it is important that she continue to do other sports and not run on those days.

When she is in high school, maybe then it becomes appropriate to specialize on only running. But if she enjoys soccer too, nothing wrong with continuing soccer as well. Mileage can come up during xc and track seasons in HS though. But ideally, she doesn't play soccer at the same time as xc and track seasons during high school.

Girmarian wrote:

Get the book by Mick Grant. It addresses all of this. Great book. I wish I read it when my daughter was in middle school.

The Youth and Teen Running Encyclopedia

It answers your question and explains why and how.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll get it today. I need guidance!

Thanks. Very good advice. She's been running with some of her xc team mates after school. They've been getting competitive with each other on their runs and running too fast on their longer runs, in my opinion... (5-6 miles is as far as they go on a long run right now) I can see an injury coming if they don't tone it down a bit.

Clueless parent wrote:

My 7th grade daughter just finished her first season of xc. She's been strictly a soccer player. She ran a 12:20 2 mile pr. this season. She wants to break into the 11s next xc season. She's probably running 20 - 25 miles plus 2 soccer practices and 1 soccer game per week. Does this seem right?

20 to 25 mpw is plenty if anything you might want to reduce it because she is probably running 5-10 miles in soccer as well.

Buy a running watch and track exactly how much she is running per week and make adjustments.

More teenagers have been chased out of the sport due to too much training at too young an age.

With middle and high school runners, the emphasis should never be mileage. Mileage is a completely arbitrary measure of training that tells you about as much about a runner as the mileage on a car tells you about the condition of a vehicle. It is much more important to teach young runners to be aware of how they feel and structure training on their feedback as to when they felt good v. tired for races and workouts. Kids can learn very quickly that pushing the pace too much or racking up too many miles on off days can torpedo workouts. But if you are just counting up miles, they get too focused on miles. Running easy days based on time is a good idea if possible.

Thats a lot honestly.

Having 3 soccer workouts a week is complicating the running.

I would not worry too much now about running. During the summer, get ready for XC, for now play soccer and do some running but keep it reasonable. I like consistency so a few miles a day for 3-4 days, then a day off, repeat, running, an odd 5k or speed workout is fine.

Is this indoor soccer? Who plays soccer in Jan?

At 12min, she is obviously talented but she has all of HS ahead of her and a summer build up for 8th grade is adequate for now, imo.

Let me jump in before the expert morans on this board come out and tell you she should not run at all so she can improve a lot in college. I wouldn't focus on mileage and instead focus on # of days per week and time run. So, during soccer season maybe it's a weekend run + 2 other days at 30-40 minutes each run. Off season, 4 or 5 days and progress the duration of the run depending on how she reacts.

Thanks. That sounds reasonable.

In Texas we can play soccer in Jan. It's typically warm all year where we live. But the official season won't start back up until early feb. Her Select coach still has non mandatory practices during the off season that she always wants to attend. and her team plays in an indoor league with games on sat and Or sun. So she's still getting about 3 soccer practices a week. But when feb starts the games will be back on the regular field 11 v 11. So the running will increase then.

+1 on the mick grant book. I agree with the person who suggested 3-4 days running, 40 minutes or less. No more than 6 soccer or running days per week, unless one of the soccer sessions is just technical and not conditioning.