Several of my friends have gone into coaching. They have no idea what they're doing.

lydiard daniels coe wrote:

. . . it IS critical to at least understand the basics of training methodology such as . . . "train first for endurance and only later for speed."

Different things work for different people, but for a large number of mid-/distance runners this is absolutely incorrect.

Even Lydiard's original schedule had some speed throughout, including a day of fartlek every week during his base phase, and a considerable volume of "wind sprints" (so called) during his hill phase.

The Summer of Malmo has a significant fraction of faster work. So does the base training of Daniels.

The key is to have volume and intensity--of *any* kind of work--vary appropriately over the course of a training season and training year.

As anecdotal evidence piles up, it more and more appears that Brooks Johnson was--at least for a lot of runners--correct: (some) speed should be present throughout training, and the late introduction of faster work toward the end of a season results, for many runners, in injury and/or declining performance. (It's not speed per se that "kills" them; it's the introduction of a new stressor at a time when their adaptation reserves are low.)

Your friends may indeed be clueless--there are plenty of clueless coaches--but they may also have a decent instinctive grasp of training, even if they can't articulate it in terms that we "educated" folk can.

Bad Wigins wrote:

[quote]

isn't a technical term. If your friends say "good form" or "smooth running" they are saying the same exact thing.

Running economy doesnt have anything to do with form idjet. Try to keep up.

I guess I didn't really make the distinction, but what I meant is that you don't do exclusively hard fast workouts at faster than mile pace in July if you're planning on running fall cross country. While it's good to do at least some form of speed maintenance, it's not good to blast 400m reps at mile race pace until you pass out and only be running 20mpw. My friends don't understand this. What you're talking about is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about that eludes them.

look it up dummy wrote:

Running economy doesnt have anything to do with form idjet. Try to keep up.

It has everything to do with form, anonymous unregistered piece of crusty pigeon-shit. There is no better way to improve energy usage than with efficient form.

I suppose you're snide enough to say that increased aerobic fitness is a way to improve "running economy." But in that case, why bother using the term at all, just say "aerobic fitness" instead.

Now register a name, you weak-livered, cringing, nameless lump of festering sewer filth.

Jane, you ignorant slut...

JimRyun wrote:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110405194101.htm

That study dealt with school children, not trained runners. There is a danger in extrapolating results from one pool of subjects to another.

But some high intensity stuff is a good idea.

Lactate threshold does exist. Graph out blood lactate response to increasing intensity and you will be able to find a point at which it increases exponentially. Or you can use a fixed point. All of this correlate well with endurance performance. Yes, lactate is not the evil substance it is often made out to be, but that does not change the relationship with endurance performance.

Running economy is the amount of oxygen needed to run at a submaximal pace. It is a widely accepted term although the units can be expressed in a couple of ways.

Bad Wigins wrote:

look it up dummy wrote:

Running economy doesnt have anything to do with form idjet. Try to keep up.

It has everything to do with form, anonymous unregistered piece of crusty pigeon-shit. There is no better way to improve energy usage than with efficient form.

I suppose you're snide enough to say that increased aerobic fitness is a way to improve "running economy." But in that case, why bother using the term at all, just say "aerobic fitness" instead.

Now register a name, you weak-livered, cringing, nameless lump of festering sewer filth.

I would say that you cannot always tell the more economical runner just by watching a person run. I believe data from Eastern Michigan shows this. Here is an article with a quote from someone who knows a bit about running.

luv2run wrote:

Lactate threshold does exist. Graph out blood lactate response to increasing intensity and you will be able to find a point at which it increases exponentially. Or you can use a fixed point. All of this correlate well with endurance performance. Yes, lactate is not the evil substance it is often made out to be, but that does not change the relationship with endurance performance.

Running economy is the amount of oxygen needed to run at a submaximal pace. It is a widely accepted term although the units can be expressed in a couple of ways.

Or you could look at lots of graphs of the same runner that show different results and realize that you need to re-evaluate your opinion?

Running economy? Your definition refers specifically to oxgyen economy, but what about anaerobic economy?

And how to train economy?

Of course I know you don't get involved in training discussions do you luv2run?

lydiard daniels coe wrote:

I guess I didn't really make the distinction, but what I meant is that you don't do exclusively hard fast workouts at faster than mile pace in July if you're planning on running fall cross country. While it's good to do at least some form of speed maintenance, it's not good to blast 400m reps at mile race pace until you pass out and only be running 20mpw. My friends don't understand this. What you're talking about is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about that eludes them.

Why isn't it good to do hard reps in July?

Bad Wigins wrote:

look it up dummy wrote:

Running economy doesnt have anything to do with form idjet. Try to keep up.

It has everything to do with form, anonymous unregistered piece of crusty pigeon-shit. There is no better way to improve energy usage than with efficient form.

I suppose you're snide enough to say that increased aerobic fitness is a way to improve "running economy." But in that case, why bother using the term at all, just say "aerobic fitness" instead.

Now register a name, you weak-livered, cringing, nameless lump of festering sewer filth.

I AGREE "there is no better to improve energy usage than with efficient form"! The question is "what is the best form?" The smoothest, easiest, and one of the fastest runners with the best form I have seen was Steve Prefontaine! What did he do that most runners don't? He ran with his head leaning BACKWARDS! When you run with your head back your hips,chest and legs go FORWARD and that makes running FAR easier (IMO). Sprinter Michael Johnson runs that way too. Try it!

What are you, 17?

JimRyun wrote:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110405194101.htm

Did you really just provide that link to support the following statement?

"in recent years, studies have shown that short, intense, infrequent bouts of exercise do as much to improve aerobic capacity and endurance performance as steady-state activity ."

That's funny that you provide an unrelated link to support a statement.

Bad Wigins wrote:

look it up dummy wrote:

Running economy doesnt have anything to do with form idjet. Try to keep up.

It has everything to do with form, anonymous unregistered piece of crusty pigeon-shit. There is no better way to improve energy usage than with efficient form.

I suppose you're snide enough to say that increased aerobic fitness is a way to improve "running economy." But in that case, why bother using the term at all, just say "aerobic fitness" instead.

Now register a name, you weak-livered, cringing, nameless lump of festering sewer filth.

How would anyone call that running economy?

I don't know about official term, but to me running economy is basically efficiency, how much oxygen it costs to run a certain pace. If your running economy improves it now requires less oxygen to run at a given pace than before.

The Animal Within wrote:

Wait, they are your teammates who ran in college with you?

If they ran in college they should know something and can at least base training off their experience. Sometimes experience and experimentation when combined with motivation and a caring coach goes a long ways.

In my experience I have found the first part of this to be true but the second half lacking greatly. Most former runners only know their perspective of what they did to be good but know nothing of the organization, timing, and why of what they did. They blindly go about trying to recreate the things they remember, thinking those are the important elements. Frequently they drive these ideas to death because that is what made them successful and they refuse to turn their backs on what they believe is the right path regardless of the outcomes or how bad they are being beaten by others. They are missing much of the whole picture their coaches had.

The rare ones are the ones who see their early outcomes and then alter their methods or beliefs to get the results and outcomes needed to be successful.

Most people are to stubborn to change.

quote of the day wrote:

"All you need is a decent base, some leg turnover work and a lot of the scientific stuff is bullshit." --Marty Liquori

Liquori?...Liquori???......Oh right, right... Guy who ran great while being coached by Jumbo Elliot, then after college was often ranked #1 but was always injured and never came close to an olympic podium..... Hmmmm maybe all that "bullshit" stuff is what some other people use to become consistent?

This thread epitomizes why letsrun sucks so bad.

There actually could be a good discussion but you have a bunch of naysayers and negativists badmouthing everything while adding nothing to the discussion.

How about a little bit of focus?

OP, what level are these coaches working at? What do you know about their training philosophy?

What are your (anyone able to craft a cogent paragraph or even a few sentences) what are your philosophies? What is needed to coach athletes successfully?

Me I'm kind of old school, and probably way behind the geniuses here (so smart that they can't even articulate anything other than a cut down--but god damn they can do that well!).

Base/build up phase (10-15 weeks). Run consistently and increase volume. Include long runs. the running doesn't all have to be slow--do runs that are faster than comfortably easy, tempos, marathon pace (even for non-marathoners), hills (not necessarily reps) on a regular basis; fartlek or pick ups once in a while.

Pre competition (3-6 weeks). Keep up the volume and long runs. Mix in some progression runs, ending close to race pace. Add in workouts at race pace, usually reps of 2 to 5 minutes with recovery of 50% to 100% of duration of reps. Mix in some faster than race pace reps--but not too many (45 sec to 1.5 min with full recovery). Pick ups once a week.

Competition (4-6 weeks). Cut back on the volume. The emphasis becomes racing, sharpening, and recovery.

Recovery (2-4 weeks). Take some time off, cross train.

Repeat, and if you're a younger athlete (say under 30), plan on increasing the training load every year.

That's how I approach it.

It's really important to know what level of athletes your coaching and what the environment in the school is like.

Perhaps the one thing I've learned from coaching HS kids over the last 7 years is that a good coach for a team isn't always a good coach for getting the most out of every runner. Knowing the finer points of periodization, etc. is necessary to really develop good runners over a long period of time, but that has little to do with getting good results on a high school team.

The best high school coaches have two things, one they bring, the other they inherit:

1. A school with enough kids who will run instead of play another sport, and when they run will be dedicated (INHERITED)

2. An ability to influence kids to work hard and an ability to build a culture where kids WANT to work hard and do well (BROUGHT)... which more or less translates into not jogging around every day but really RUNNING either LONG or FAST.

Without both of those things you won't coach great high school teams.

I think another way to think of it is this:

The margin of return you get on smart training is important to coach great individual runners. But you can still get 80% of the way there with just hard training, not necessarily smart training. Furthermore, there's little benefit to smart training if the kids never work hard. And in a sport like XC, you want a high mean and a low standard deviation to win meets. A good way to accomplish that is to have a lot of kids work hard together and beat each other up every day. It's hard to accomplish that with the long view, smart approach to training -- most HS kids aren't focused enough for that. They don't get it. They do understand "RUN HARD AND YOU WILL IMPROVE."

I'm in my head a lot thinking about this or that better way of training. I've had some pretty good individual results that I attribute to reading, seeking advice from smarter people than me, and really working closely with the few athletes on my small team who really want to train hard and get it right. That's rewarding. But no matter how smart I train my top guys, my team will get trounced by larger schools with kids who go out and run hard and/or long several times a week.

Those teams usually don't send a lot of kids to college. But they do well in HS, which is what the kids want, what the principal/athletic director wants, what parents want, and what the coaches typically want. If your jacka** friends have a way to motivate kids to run fast and long, a lot, they'll make solid high school coaches.

I have little insight into college coaching. Totally different to work with athletes who nearly all care about the sport and doing well.