Help me phrase my expectation to Runners and Parents that XC will train year-round

Ask them their goals. If their goals are to just plod along for a 5k, don't waste your time. If they want to be good, show them what it has taken for other successful kids/programs. I'd shy away from making some statement/requirement, it might seem like a desperate plea from a fledgling girlfriend for a guy not leave.

Make track a place they want to be! Show them the benefits to running track (can't run a fast 3.1 miles if you cant run a fast 2 mile, can't run a fast two mile if you can't run a fast mile...). Build up the idea of this being a fun place to be and that it will help them achieve their goals.

Thanks for this!

I hope I already do this. We actually have a really good core of runners already established. The issue here is that we actually have so MANY runners, we don’t have enough coaches to supervise them all. It is a great problem to have, but it is still a problem... and I don’t want our resources spread too thin for the sake of kids who aren’t serious about improving. Trying to get a commitment on the front end, if that makes sense?

your whole approach seems to be geared towards making them produce something for your team. you want them to compete for you and if they play ball and do indoor/outdoor track for you, you will let them run x-country. the team comes first, and the coach decides who gets to run on the team. in this philosophy, the athletes serve the needs of the team.

whereas, in my opinion, the coach should be helping the athletes to achieve their goals. to run in races they need a team, so you create a team for that purpose. the team exists solely to provide the athletes with a competitive opportunity, and when sufficient of them do well, the team does well. in this philosophy, the team serves the needs of the athletes.

I took over a club that suffered from exactly this problem, and had suffered to the point that five athletes turned up for matches and tried to cover all the events between them because other athletes had left due to being pressured to compet in events they had not trained for. a guy doesn't spend all winter learning how to throw the discus so that he can turn up at matches and "do the triple jump, for a point." you are not in that position, but that's where that philosophy is headed. it puts the team ahead of the individual and uses the athlete as a pawn in service to the team.

I changed the philosophy, and made it known that no one would be asked to do an event they didn't want to do. I made the team a servant of the athletes, and in four seasons we were promoted three times and won division 1 of the league.

my advice, then, as iowafarmer said, is to make practice a place they want to be. track practice has to be something that gives them what they want, rather than something that gives you what you want. you can't twist their arm into running indoor races if they want to run x-country. they will just go somewhere else. in my view, any policy that says "you have to compete in x if you want to do y" will fail, right out of the box.

if a kid wants to come to practice and train, and only wants to run x-country, then you should encourage that, not punish him by making him run indoor races as well. Alain Mimoun won three olympic silver medals, was winner of and runner-up in the world x-country championship, and seven times French x-country champion and he never ran an indoor race in his life.

cheers.

I can't really help you with your dilemma. Lol I just wondered why you can't make any policies requiring the kids to do x,y,z? At our school you are required to do one fall and one spring sport to be in athletics. You are also required to be in off- season workouts when not in a sport. Off- season lifts and runs 2-3 miles per day. It isn't really fast but.. everyone in athletics is also required to do track workouts in track season. So, why not run track and get to miss school if you are already doing the workouts?

Thanks for the perspective. Well taken.

That is basically my thinking.

1. If you want to run distance, you need to train year round.

2. If you train year round, you may as well run track (or compete in another Varsity Sport).

To answer your question, we just have different school policies. Students are not required to do X number of sports to be considered an athlete here.

Check yourself. You are a high school coach, not the Stanford coach dealing out scholarships.

Your intent isn’t even admirable. If kids want to run XC, and train all summer and fall, thats enough. If you can cut based on performance, fine, but if you attempt to control 15 year old kids year round training you’ll end up with two hardcore guys and a few dorks. Everyone else will be chased off.

Its HIGH SCHOOL. Calm down.

Clear Expectations wrote:

I hope I already do this. We actually have a really good core of runners already established. The issue here is that we actually have so MANY runners, we don’t have enough coaches to supervise them all. It is a great problem to have, but it is still a problem... and I don’t want our resources spread too thin for the sake of kids who aren’t serious about improving. Trying to get a commitment on the front end, if that makes sense?

Surely, some of these kids already enjoy the sport enough that they'll want to train all year round.

So just set up session through the offseason and invite them to participate. Leave it as optional. If you get 2 or 3 kids turn up they get lots of attention and training. Find a way to make those sessions particularly fun (time trials, team relays, parlaufs, race vs coach, handicaps) - all out of the ordinary stuff that they'll go back and tell their mates how much they enjoyed.

Make a point of verbally inviting along your top talents and the kids who are influential with their peers. Speak to them indivdually to let them know it would be good to have them along.

When next year rolls around the kids who've been doing offseason training will have (hopefully) benefited and you can use that as leverage (carrot) to the kids who didn't come along.

Eventually it will become the standard to train all year round.

Everybody is always impatient to get stuff NOW rather than letting it gradually evolve and grow organically. Think about what you practice to look like in four years time and work patiently towards achieving that. It will probably arrive sooner.

It's fine to encourage your athletes to train all year, it's another to start requiring it. Make yourself available to the kids that want to run in the off season, but please don't make this drudgery or some how keep kids off the XC team because they don't want to run in the summer.

ChadBrad wrote:

Check yourself. You are a high school coach, not the Stanford coach dealing out scholarships.

Your intent isn’t even admirable. If kids want to run XC, and train all summer and fall, thats enough. If you can cut based on performance, fine, but if you attempt to control 15 year old kids year round training you’ll end up with two hardcore guys and a few dorks. Everyone else will be chased off.

Its HIGH SCHOOL. Calm down.

This.

There is more to life than running. There are other sports and activities for kids to be in. Some kid may be in a "chess club" or have other activities he enjoys. Kids should be well rounded.

You are the reason there are rules against prohibiting you from doing what you want to do.

Your approach is the reason many kids hate running or give up doing a sport - be it soccer, tennis or running.

Ideally, in my opinion, you ought to be about encouraging healthy lifestyles and long term fitness.

The real truth is that you should encourage them to be "hobby joggers" for life.

when I was in HS, our CC coach organized the "Polar Bear Running Club" which was open to anyone at the school. It was a voluntary running club. It started as a winter running club for times between CC and indoor track. As time passed it became active in the summers.

Essentially what we did was meet in the mornings, go for a run that often ended at a basketball court where we played basketball for an hour, then ran back. Sometime we ran somewhere and played touch football.

The club kept people together and was fun. A core came very regularly and others off and on.

The key was nothing was too serious and the focus was mostly on maintaining fitness and having a good time. We met a few times a week in the summer.

I think this loose approach had the effect, or at least some of it, that you want.

The fact that you are talking about requiring kids to do run outside of XC season shows that your head is in the wrong place. Your job is to establish a positive culture where kids feel compelled to work hard on their own. Get them to set high goals, and then instruct them on how to achieve those goals.

Not directly on topic, but a thought.

When I was in HS I was a reasonably good runner, I enjoyed CC and (less so) track. I was also a kid that had a harder time making friends and so being involved in a sport forced/helped me meet other people and find friends. Many years later I am still friends with some of those people.

I was truly blessed with a wonderful coach during HS. He was a man who was always striving to learn more about the sport and was also a very decent man as a person. I was also blessed with being from a good family and having a wonderful father.

Having a second great father figure in my life was a great help. I am grateful to this day that this coach was in my life. He was a man that had an impact on my life in a long lasting way. He encouraged honesty and being a person of integrity, he had a way on gently guiding you to do what is right.

My coach's longest lasting impact was not getting my times down, but in helping to guide the person I would become. I offer this only to make mention that a coach wears many hats and the ones that matter most in the life of a kid may not be about getting someone's 5k time under 17 minutes (or 16 or ...).

So Lee Johnson of Rich South High School in Illinois, wherever you are today, Thank You.

I think this man probably had no idea what an impact he had on me and MANY others.

I am really glad a few other people pointed out what I consider to be your misguided philosophy.

Maybe ask the kids who are not playing other sports or are not in other activities (do these kids play in the band or are they in a play during the off season?) what they would like to do.

Not every kid is going to love XC like you do. Get over it.

As others have noted, make the runs something they want to come to. Unless you really love running, coming to morning practice in the winter (most places) and doing runs might not be the most exciting thing to do. Break it up. Can you run a few days a week and do other conditioning activities the other days (ultimate is a fun way to condition)?

Lots of diverse insight on here. Glad I posted the question, even if the response wasn’t exactly what I expected. I assure you all that even the views I don’t initially agree with are giving me pause to think and reevaluate. So thank you.

As I said, we have a large group of committed runners who are already training year-round. My concern is the ones who see XC as a way to work on their tan in the summer with no real interest in improving. I am not trying to institute a “If I require it, they will come” system as a way to get more numbers, but as a way to streamline the numbers we have so that the folks that come are committed to improving. I also want to clarify that expectation is that they do SOME varsity sport year-round. That may be XC-Indoor-Outdoor, but it may also be XC-Basketball-Tennis. I just don’t want kids to run for 7 months, sit around for 5, then complain to their friends that they get injured or don’t improve.

Clear Expectations wrote:

I also want to clarify that expectation is that they do SOME varsity sport year-round. That may be XC-Indoor-Outdoor, but it may also be XC-Basketball-Tennis.

I was the top runner on a very good high school team, and I would not have been a fan of this policy at all (either the requirement itself or the authoritarian nature in general). The best decision I made for my running in high school was to start skipping indoor season to use the winter as a second base phase. I didn't really like racing three seasons per year, and I loved coming into outdoor with big mileage under my belt. If my coach had required me to do a winter sport, I would have been disappointed to not be able to do the out of season training that I preferred, and I would have felt infantilized by the whole idea that I needed to be forced to work hard.

I know you're trying to get more out of your underachievers, but don't alienate the kids who are already working hard in the process.

JustAnotherRunner2001 wrote:

I can't really help you with your dilemma. Lol I just wondered why you can't make any policies requiring the kids to do x,y,z? At our school you are required to do one fall and one spring sport to be in athletics. You are also required to be in off- season workouts when not in a sport. Off- season lifts and runs 2-3 miles per day. It isn't really fast but.. everyone in athletics is also required to do track workouts in track season. So, why not run track and get to miss school if you are already doing the workouts?

The rules aren't the same for public schools and reform schools.

@JustAnother wrote:

JustAnotherRunner2001 wrote:

I can't really help you with your dilemma. Lol I just wondered why you can't make any policies requiring the kids to do x,y,z? At our school you are required to do one fall and one spring sport to be in athletics. You are also required to be in off- season workouts when not in a sport. Off- season lifts and runs 2-3 miles per day. It isn't really fast but.. everyone in athletics is also required to do track workouts in track season. So, why not run track and get to miss school if you are already doing the workouts?

The rules aren't the same for public schools and reform schools.

Just to be clear... are you saying this coach runs a reform school or are you insinuating that I attend one?

I tell them it is "optional" to train in June and July - unless they want to be good.

What I've noticed is that after about 2-3 years the athletes begin to see that the year-round or nearly year-round training yields a much better improvement rate than the part-timer.

Keep preaching it and they will come around.