What am I missing? They run every day, with moderate mpw and do relatively slow 400m repeats, 3-4 days before a big race. The Paavo method shouldn’t result in any more burnout or injuries than other training methods.
As somebody who raced against and interacted with a bunch of Paavo-trained kids while in high school in Texas, I don't think the burnout element was due entirely to the physical rigors of the system.
Paavo teams tended to have a cult-like vibe to them, with the coaches really playing up the "these are your brothers, and this high school cross country races will forever be the most important moment of your life" angle. Paavo as a system was held in the same reverence that a person's religion might be to a lot of these kids - they were incredibly defensive of it.
For a lot of them, when they got to college, the standard incoming freshman training felt impossibly easy, so they immediately doubted what they were doing and often tried to assimilate aspects of Paavo into a new, incompatible system. Obviously not a great way to make the transition to college - lacking belief, feeling like you aren't working hard enough, and constantly comparing everything to high school.
Plus, Paavo kids were never able to relax or be "normal" in high school. They had brutal summer training schedules and then multiple all-out efforts every week during the competitive season. Even if the body was willing to keep it up at the next stage, oftentimes the mind was not. Once they got their first taste of college social life, they decided they wanted to partake in that instead - they'd basically compacted an eight year competitive career into four years already.
Did Dan Green, the longtime coach for the dominant program at The Woodlands, follow Paavo? For some reason I had it in my mind that he did or something similar. If so then Southlake Carroll and The Woodlands, the two best programs back in that era, were both built on it. Columbus North in Indiana had a great team during Wagner's time as well.
Lake Zurich IL, just outside of Chicago does. Solid chance that Paavo training is the reason their top guy hasn't signed anywhere, I'd imagine most college coaches would view that as a kid whose gonna burn out
Like similar programs, it is about getting as fast as you can in the shortest possible time. Both kids and coaches are in a hurry. Programs see the weekly micro-cycle as sacrosanct - that real recovery is for the weak, and so only the strong shall survive.
That's the trade off, right? Any coach worth their salt will know that Paavo and similar approaches will get you fit very fast, but your risk of injury or overtraining skyrockets. It sacrifices long term development for short term gains. Its completely antithetical to sustainability over the course of a high school career or even throughout a season.
As somebody who raced against and interacted with a bunch of Paavo-trained kids while in high school in Texas, I don't think the burnout element was due entirely to the physical rigors of the system.
Paavo teams tended to have a cult-like vibe to them, with the coaches really playing up the "these are your brothers, and this high school cross country races will forever be the most important moment of your life" angle. Paavo as a system was held in the same reverence that a person's religion might be to a lot of these kids - they were incredibly defensive of it.
For a lot of them, when they got to college, the standard incoming freshman training felt impossibly easy, so they immediately doubted what they were doing and often tried to assimilate aspects of Paavo into a new, incompatible system. Obviously not a great way to make the transition to college - lacking belief, feeling like you aren't working hard enough, and constantly comparing everything to high school.
Plus, Paavo kids were never able to relax or be "normal" in high school. They had brutal summer training schedules and then multiple all-out efforts every week during the competitive season. Even if the body was willing to keep it up at the next stage, oftentimes the mind was not. Once they got their first taste of college social life, they decided they wanted to partake in that instead - they'd basically compacted an eight year competitive career into four years already.
Did Dan Green, the longtime coach for the dominant program at The Woodlands, follow Paavo? For some reason I had it in my mind that he did or something similar. If so then Southlake Carroll and The Woodlands, the two best programs back in that era, were both built on it. Columbus North in Indiana had a great team during Wagner's time as well.
The Woodlands/Dan Green did not follow PAAVO. SLC does, and from my understanding still does, but not to a T.
If you're doing full-on PAAVO training exactly as it's written, it's going to be about the hardest training regimen you can do. Hard days are brutal, lots of 4-8 mile hard runs, and calling them 'tempo runs' doesn't do em justice, you're meant to be damned close to flat out by the end. What really gets you though are the 'easy' days - my high school team had prescribed paces each day, about 1:50 over your timed mile SB. For reference, I was like a 4:45 guy, and my easy days were 6-9 miles at 6:39 pace. You ever blow up the day before an 8-mile tempo?
What PAAVO does well is teaching kids the toughness you need to be successful - that's why most of the teams referenced here may not always be the top in their state, but they're almost all super deep. Higher level runners can easily run themselves into the ground, but it's pretty tough for most FR/SO to run so hard in practice that they burn out, so PAAVO can be a good fit for them.
That said, basically all of these teams have largely abandoned the crazier tenets of PAAVO. Source - I've been weaning my team off of PAAVO training for the better part of a decade, and other programs nearby are doing so as well. We've got some hardware to show for it now, too
The passing of PAAVO founder Marshall Sellers a couple years ago made some difference too. He was a great man who had genuine, deep passion for kids becoming the best people they could be, but he certainly wasn't a methodical, data-driven coach.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
Quick contrast to the “PAAVO doesn’t make college runners” is I met with a Division 1 coach, he said he didn’t believe in it, but knew his recruits that had done it could handle anything he threw at them.