How do I tell my coach about this

I think a lot of responses to this are missing a huge piece of advice and that is : having integrity.
you absolutely need to talk to your high school coach and be honest with what you have been doing . Do not keep secrets and hide anything - that’s bad for you , bad for the team and bad for both coaches involved .
I am a HS coach and we have plenty of kids use private coaches , play 2 sports etc . You need to be at practice doing the workouts with your team - that’s part of being on a team - but talk to both coaches openly and find a way to integrate what you have been doing into the team . Maybe your coach will even be willing to make some changes . You are not giving them much of a chance.

If coach is god-like but don't enjoy his workouts, you won't improve tremendously. It has to be a synergy between coach and athlete to have the grounds for improvement. You don't even have to judge which one is the better coach, but you could do that, too, high schoolers are supposed to know how to read and understand a text and information is one click away.

Get your parents to write to the school coach saying you have a clash in schedule, with personal appointments conflicting with your school training. Attend sessions occasionally, be respectful towards the school coach, and be an encouraging team mate. When you perform well on race day, everyone will be joyous. Win/win.

Talk to your school coach about it.

Tell him/her basically what you've stated here, but be respectful about it. Honesty is usually appreciated, and if you let your coach know that you like, feel more confident, and respond better to threshold and fartlek, he/she may make a compromise - and allow you to carry out these workouts while still being on the team.

If not, then at least you tried, and I'm sure you'll feel better knowing that you didn't deceive anyone, and you can continue with the private coach.

These conversations may be hard, but it'll make you a stronger person.

You don't have to run for your school. Stay on the private coach's program and run unattached. Any time that you run will count as an official time no matter if you are in a high school uniform or not.

As a former long-time high school coach, here are my thoughts: you are either on team you or your high school team. Every scenario I’ve ever witnessed where an athlete tries to saddle two different programs ends in either failure, injury, sadness, regret, drama, etc. There is nothing wrong with doing your own thing, putting together your own slate of races, and training like a semi-pro. If you really like your non-school coach and feel good about that training program, go for it. The problem with doing both is that you are undermining the esprit de corps of your high school team. Even if the training isn’t ideal under your high school coach, there is something much bigger going on, which is your bonding with your teammates, creating an unforgettable experience that will translate into real life skills down the road. Your chances of making it as a professional athlete are near zilch (just being honest), so the benefits of playing along with a less than perfect school team situation means you get a fun, memorable time with your peers, you get the team racing experience, and (perhaps most importantly), you get a solid extracurricular that can help you get into a good college. The last thing a college coach wants to hear is that you ditched your high school team for a private coach. Being a team player, especially through adversity, is a big seller for colleges. So, my advice: choose one or the other. Doing both will likely lead to a less than ideal outcome, and possibly a disaster. Good luck.

Some good responses here about actually talking to your HS coach rather than trying to hide it. I agree. I can't speak for all coaches, we're all quite different, but I'm open to suggestions from my kids. Why when I should know best? When I listen to them, they listen to me. Plus I know I can be hardcore on workouts whereas they may not be, so I need to engage with them to keep their interest up, keep it fun. So I'd listen to what you have to say; I may be willing to alter a practice to try it out. I'm not too old to learn. But if you're sneaking around and not doing what I ask, I will notice. Don't train with that weight on your self. Talk to your coach. If it's too big, bring in a parent.

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Downvoted by mistake, sorry.

Yeah, this is a mess and is going to get worse. It comes down to your priorities.

If integrity matters to you, then you need to tell your HS coach what you've been doing and what you would like to do and then be prepared to make a choice - train with your private coach and give up being on a team, or be part of the team and give up your private coach.

It sucks, but not being forthcoming - sneaking in secret workouts etc - is slimy. Are you seriously prepared to lie and deceive just to keep this private coach? Does the end justify the means? Have you thought about how this will affect your teammates? You basically are sending them a message that you are more important than they are.

Here's the thing. Whatever your private coach is prescribing for you isn't rocket science. If you believe it is, then they have likely got you fully under their spell. Learn. Read. Listen. Watch. Become more invested in your training, share your ideas with your HS coach, and be a good teammate. You'll come out the other side feeling a lot better about yourself.

I agree with this. The first thing i say is keeping it secret is very tricky and generally a bad idea. Even if you try it's going to come out anyway and then there can be drama plus it'll be stressful before that prob.

It depends on the hs coach obv I mean practically ur prob talking about 1 to 2 wos a week really. As others have said if you go to them and say this training has been working for me etc can I try it once a week. Possibly U could pace with one group down in a wo to help them and take less rest to turn a hard interval session into threshold. Obv don't go in and be like your training is dumb etc that's insulting and won't be productive. Also if u get good results then everyone will be happy.

If the coach can't be flexible at least u tried then u could always run oyo. If ur desperate to both be on the team and do online coach then ull have to modify one obv.

Also it's more impressive and I'd be more receptive if it comes from the kid than the parent esp initially. If it was a kid i trusted i might be like why didnt you tell me sooner lol.

Here’s what I suggest.

Be with the team and do the team’s workouts. Do not do anything outside that without your team’s coach’s approval, unless the volume is objectively low and you have built for more. Too many workouts will just get you hurt.

However, feel free to occasionally suggest workouts you think the varsity kids can be doing and use your private coach to get those ideas. Our coach was open to ideas and often implemented them since he could tell when they were good ideas.

Agree. Well put

To add, I unfortunately doubt your private coach can do a good job of meshing his/her own ideas into someone else’s plan. Recipe for an injury disaster.

You should handle your situation in a mature and honest way. No matter what you may think of your high school coach's training s/he deserves your respect and honesty. So you tell him/her what you've been doing and that you'd like to continue doing it during the season. This is the honorable way and it allows your coach to decide how s/he wants to respond. There are coaches who will tell athletes in their team that it's okay for them to coach themselves or have someone else do it if that athlete thinks they'd get better results that way. And there are coaches who'll say that if you're going to be part of his/her team you need to do what the team does. In either case your coach deserves to know what you're doing or want to do. If your coach turns out to fall into the second camp you can decide if you want to be in the team enough to do the training it does and nothing else, do the training it does and "supplement" it with sessions from your private coach, or leave the team entirely.

This is the best option. If this coach is as good as you think, he’ll be able to plan supplemental training around your HS coach’s “system” that will get you the benefits of his program without risking injury (the biggest issue with combining programs).

Ok I’m back. Thank you guys for all the responses.

My HS coach has us hammering intense intervals 3 times a week and racing hard/trying to win as many unimportant races as possible from August onward. We get stale and worse throughout the season, injured, and burnt out. This is very unsustainable. We never build base, do threshold, or anything. It’s constant repeats that leave people throwing up on the track year round (cross, indoor, outdoor).

I know I won’t ever be a pro, but I do want to run in college, so my training is important to me. It’s not about being a pro, it’s about running in college. This coming year matters a lot. I need solid times and following my HS coach is not going to get me there.

I have decided based on the replies that I do not want to deceive. You guys are right. That would cause an insane amount of drama and is not worth it. I want to be there for my team and upfront.

I will tell the truth. I do not actually respond well at all to my HS coach’s training, I have had many many injuries, so that is a good starting point for my talk. I could tell my HS coach that over the summer, I used a private coach for some structure, and was feeling good and responding well to his type of workouts. I could say that I think I respond better to threshold-type work and less intense intervals right away, and my main goal is to stay healthy, which hard intervals all the time will probably not help me achieve.

I could then propose that I continue to use my private coach’s workouts, and line them up on the same days that the team does workouts, and also do easy runs with the team. So, I would be at practice running with them, but on workout days doing the workouts that work best for me and my health. And again easy days would be completely with them.

All of it is true so it feels much better to completely tell the truth and not lie and deceive. Thank you guys for waning me up to that.

Does that sound good?

I appreciate your advice, but I don’t think this is the way to go. I’ve heard college coaches don’t like seeing this.

What some of you aren't getting is there is no shortage of terrible teams out there. They aren't being coached to be competitive. They're basically school social clubs that meet for jogging and the coach might suggest a workout once a week. "Hill repeats."

The coach could probably care less that athletes skip practice or have better coaches or do their own workouts. Being part of a weak team doesn't teach you anything.

Most here clearly don't seem to know how it is with HS teams and coaches and their egos and possessiveness of their athletes. It seems the worse the coach, the bigger the ego.

The possessiveness- going and telling the coach - mainly the not great ones with the huge egos-that you've been working with another coach is akin to going and telling your wife that you've been having an affair. How would that go?