Genuinely how is this possible for a HS girl to accomplish this in the US? Same goes for all the insane HS performances in the last 5 years. Just crazy amounts of success. What are these kids doing now? I need to know bc it’s drastically different
They are doing everything the pros are doing. Everything.
Genuinely how is this possible for a HS girl to accomplish this in the US? Same goes for all the insane HS performances in the last 5 years. Just crazy amounts of success. What are these kids doing now? I need to know bc it’s drastically different
They are doing everything the pros are doing. Everything.
The poster before you gave an informed answer. You, as always, stuck to your ignorance.
They are doing everything the pros are doing. Everything.
The poster before you gave an informed answer. You, as always, stuck to your ignorance.
The ignorance is those like you who believe doping isn't present in the sport despite WADA saying it is in schools. High schoolers have trained rigorously since Ryun's era. They haven't only just discovered hard work.
The poster before you gave an informed answer. You, as always, stuck to your ignorance.
The ignorance is those like you who believe doping isn't present in the sport despite WADA saying it is in schools. High schoolers have trained rigorously since Ryun's era. They haven't only just discovered hard work.
Read coahc's post and try to learn something today.
The ignorance is those like you who believe doping isn't present in the sport despite WADA saying it is in schools. High schoolers have trained rigorously since Ryun's era. They haven't only just discovered hard work.
Read coahc's post and try to learn something today.
50 and 60 years ago high schoolers trained like professionals. We saw that with Ryun, Decker and later Webb. High schoolers and their coaches haven't only just discovered modern techniques. But they have probably realised there is one thing they haven't been doing that the elites and pros do. So that's why there is a sudden and apparently inexplicable surge in performances.
Read coahc's post and try to learn something today.
50 and 60 years ago high schoolers trained like professionals. We saw that with Ryun, Decker and later Webb. High schoolers and their coaches haven't only just discovered modern techniques. But they have probably realised there is one thing they haven't been doing that the elites and pros do. So that's why there is a sudden and apparently inexplicable surge in performances.
Read coahc's post and try to learn something today.
50 and 60 years ago high schoolers trained like professionals. We saw that with Ryun, Decker and later Webb. High schoolers and their coaches haven't only just discovered modern techniques. But they have probably realised there is one thing they haven't been doing that the elites and pros do. So that's why there is a sudden and apparently inexplicable surge in performances.
Read coahc's post and try to learn something today.
It's called confirmation bias. That's all you've got.
Read coahc's post and try to learn something today.
It's called confirmation bias. That's all you've got.
On the accomplishments of high school runners discussed here . . . “all you’ve got” is . . . nothing. No evidence of PEDs . . . zero. Just your asinine, uniformed, biased speculation backed by nothing. Your butt hurt biased comments add nothing . . . go away.
This post was edited 13 minutes after it was posted.
I have a sense that the emphasis on threshold training is better for staying healthy and bringing more runners closer to their limit. Training programs arent doing the aforementioned epic workouts that also serve as throwing eggs at the wall and seeing which don’t break. The best were never going to break, but now we’re rolling the egg down a slide and a bunch more are capable of making it down. At the sharpest end adjusting for the shoes we aren’t across the board faster; I’d take Jim Ryun, Alan Webb, Jordan Hasay, and Mary Cain and many more over the fastest kids today. The depth is outstanding at all levels, though.
This post was edited 27 seconds after it was posted.
Specialization and year round training at an earlier age is also driving this. Many of the better kids selected running as their sport in middle school. As a coach, I am seeing fewer talented kids also trying to be soccer and basketball players.
This is kind of fascinating... In the 1970s our track/CC coach said he looked for skinny dummy holders in football, skinny benchwarmers in basketball, skinny benchwarmers in baseball, and lower weight guys who couldn't make the wrestling team... and try to get them to come out for cross country.
He then said he would try to talk the basketball and wrestling coaches to let their guys come out for cross country to get in shape for their sports because back then they couldn't start practice until mid-late October for those sports.
He said if he didn't do this he would only have about "five guys from the chess club" that came out for the team.
He was joking of course, but he ended up being perhaps the greatest coach in Oklahoma history and literally coached cross country for 50 years. Many of his best runners in those early years were guys he recruited who weren't successful at other sports.
Former fast-ish HS runner from the mid-90s here (from a program that was good, knew what it was doing relative to other schools at the time, etc), and I now have a fast-ish kid, so I've seen the differences up close. I think the majority of the difference is in training approach. In the mid-90s, VO2 max was considered the most important thing. At least once a week, we would do a workout where we would see god - stuff like 20 x 400m, 5 x mile, etc. at race pace. We also had a weekly long run, and usually something faster / shorter. But almost nothing at tempo / threshold, besides some occasional stuff in the summer. We raced well when it mattered in championship races (relative to the performance level at the time) but it took a big peak to get there and we were tired often throughout the season.
Now the training is almost all threshold / tempo, and rarely touches race pace. And, from what I observe with my own kid and others, they feel fresher on a daily basis, the training is much more cumulative - it builds and builds and builds - and because of the emphasis on threshold year round, they're ready to race well much earlier in the season. It also seems to keep kids mentally a lot fresher as well, because they don't have nearly as many 'epic' workouts that are as mentally straining as they are physically straining. Running at threshold is kinda fun for kids...it feels fast but not too fast, so they don't mind doing it often. My kid, at least, enjoys threshold workouts most of all his runs, so beyond that it happens to be the right thing to do physically, it seems to also keep it fun / enjoyable, which is just as important to running fast in HS.
Throw on top of all of this a) access to knowledge / inspiration from what others are doing - Strava, YouTube, etc, b) improved shoes, c) improved nutrition, and d) increased specialization across all sports, and it's easy to see why HS and college kids are so much faster now than they have ever been.
The training you’ve described above is Jack Daniel’s and has been around for a while. Even if it is different, what you are basically saying is that the sandbagging runners from the 90s were the runners training correctly and would have been the standouts. Obviously, this isn’t/wasn’t the case.
From 2010-2020 there was 0 (ZERO) improvement is US runner times (pro, collegiate, HS). Let me reiterate, zero overall improvement based on top 100 averages from 2010-2010. In 2021/22, season, times went off the charts. US pro 10000m top 100 average times improved 30 for men and 40 for women in one year. From 2010-20, if you ran sub 4 mile, you were top 50-60 time in the US. From 2021-22 that number jumped to 99 and 116 in 2023. In two years sub four meant going from top 60 to barely cracking top 120. More US HS runners have broken 4 in the last 4 years than in the previous 60 combined. More US HS runners broke 4 in 2023/24 (8) than in years 2010-20 (7). In just this year alone, 5 US HS runners have broken 4.
Everyone walking around with their head in the clouds, point to everything from the internet to electrolytes when the answer has always been super shoes. Super Shoes is the number one reason for the times we are seeing. If you don’t believe this, have your runners ditch the super shoes on race day and you will immediately see a major decline in performance overnight.
Former fast-ish HS runner from the mid-90s here (from a program that was good, knew what it was doing relative to other schools at the time, etc), and I now have a fast-ish kid, so I've seen the differences up close. I think the majority of the difference is in training approach. In the mid-90s, VO2 max was considered the most important thing. At least once a week, we would do a workout where we would see god - stuff like 20 x 400m, 5 x mile, etc. at race pace. We also had a weekly long run, and usually something faster / shorter. But almost nothing at tempo / threshold, besides some occasional stuff in the summer. We raced well when it mattered in championship races (relative to the performance level at the time) but it took a big peak to get there and we were tired often throughout the season.
Now the training is almost all threshold / tempo, and rarely touches race pace. And, from what I observe with my own kid and others, they feel fresher on a daily basis, the training is much more cumulative - it builds and builds and builds - and because of the emphasis on threshold year round, they're ready to race well much earlier in the season. It also seems to keep kids mentally a lot fresher as well, because they don't have nearly as many 'epic' workouts that are as mentally straining as they are physically straining. Running at threshold is kinda fun for kids...it feels fast but not too fast, so they don't mind doing it often. My kid, at least, enjoys threshold workouts most of all his runs, so beyond that it happens to be the right thing to do physically, it seems to also keep it fun / enjoyable, which is just as important to running fast in HS.
Throw on top of all of this a) access to knowledge / inspiration from what others are doing - Strava, YouTube, etc, b) improved shoes, c) improved nutrition, and d) increased specialization across all sports, and it's easy to see why HS and college kids are so much faster now than they have ever been.
The training you’ve described above is Jack Daniel’s and has been around for a while. Even if it is different, what you are basically saying is that the sandbagging runners from the 90s were the runners training correctly and would have been the standouts. Obviously, this isn’t/wasn’t the case.
From 2010-2020 there was 0 (ZERO) improvement is US runner times (pro, collegiate, HS). Let me reiterate, zero overall improvement based on top 100 averages from 2010-2010. In 2021/22, season, times went off the charts. US pro 10000m top 100 average times improved 30 for men and 40 for women in one year. From 2010-20, if you ran sub 4 mile, you were top 50-60 time in the US. From 2021-22 that number jumped to 99 and 116 in 2023. In two years sub four meant going from top 60 to barely cracking top 120. More US HS runners have broken 4 in the last 4 years than in the previous 60 combined. More US HS runners broke 4 in 2023/24 (8) than in years 2010-20 (7). In just this year alone, 5 US HS runners have broken 4.
Everyone walking around with their head in the clouds, point to everything from the internet to electrolytes when the answer has always been super shoes. Super Shoes is the number one reason for the times we are seeing. If you don’t believe this, have your runners ditch the super shoes on race day and you will immediately see a major decline in performance overnight.
This, the internet didn't get invented in 2021 or an amazing increase in knowledge during COVID.....it is the shoes 100%.....remove the shoes and injuries increase and times start to decline....don't believe it, have your athlete train and only race in traditional trainers/flat for a year and see how they do.
This is clearly the most obvious explanation, and the rest is grasping at straws. We know that the best high school sprinters dope because they have been caught. (The PEDS they use are easier to detect). The issue in high school distance running is whether the incentives have now caught up so that doping makes financial sense. I would say it has. The idea that new training methods have been discovered is smoke and mirrors.
This is clearly the most obvious explanation, and the rest is grasping at straws. We know that the best high school sprinters dope because they have been caught. (The PEDS they use are easier to detect). The issue in high school distance running is whether the incentives have now caught up so that doping makes financial sense. I would say it has. The idea that new training methods have been discovered is smoke and mirrors.
No new training methods? That’s not true, one training method that’s not new is lactate testing, most hs kids did not do that but in last 4 or 5 years more and more are. Then there is the stryd power meter which if used properly replaces lactate testing all the time and is very effective. I’ve asked before on these threads what is considered a 3200 time or 5k time for hs boys where in some of your heads are going oh well he’s using ped’s? And no one ever answers because at end of day your all just assuming.
This is clearly the most obvious explanation, and the rest is grasping at straws. We know that the best high school sprinters dope because they have been caught. (The PEDS they use are easier to detect). The issue in high school distance running is whether the incentives have now caught up so that doping makes financial sense. I would say it has. The idea that new training methods have been discovered is smoke and mirrors.
No new training methods? That’s not true, one training method that’s not new is lactate testing, most hs kids did not do that but in last 4 or 5 years more and more are. Then there is the stryd power meter which if used properly replaces lactate testing all the time and is very effective. I’ve asked before on these threads what is considered a 3200 time or 5k time for hs boys where in some of your heads are going oh well he’s using ped’s? And no one ever answers because at end of day your all just assuming.
So you think that because of what you might attribute as new methods in training that more than half a century of doping will have miraculously ceased? The ambitious have always looked for an edge and they can always find it.