How should I coach elementary (3rd and 4th grade) runners?

Thank you all for your amazing responses!

1. Easy runs - 1 to 3 miles - ideally on a trail or cross country course

2. Speed work - I mean true speed...not intervals. It should be 100 meters or less with an emphasis on running fast with good recovery....not on building race-pace endurance...that should be done with older runners.

3. Form drills - learning to run efficiently is important

I don't believe in assigning paces to workouts for kids this age. Anaerobic work is probably overused with kids this age in club track situations. Build endurance with easy aerobic runs and top end speed with short sprints. Mostly avoid the stuff in the middle. They don't need to be world-beaters in 3rd grade.

BigTex wrote:

I don't believe in assigning paces to workouts for kids this age. Anaerobic work is probably overused with kids this age in club track situations. Build endurance with easy aerobic runs and top end speed with short sprints. Mostly avoid the stuff in the middle. They don't need to be world-beaters in 3rd grade.

I actually do timed workouts with the kids towards the end of the season to push them. A lot of them tend to get stuck in a pace rut and have a hard time improving. I know their standard paces and I try to push them to a slightly faster pace.

Most of the kids like to do it and really get into hitting the timing zones right on time. I also hide pace drills in things like catch the leader. But most of my workouts are just based on effort.

Please, keep it fun. If it is boring or you try to kill them, they will leave the sport.

One tip is to work on physical literacy. Google it. The Canadians at Sport For Life have some information.

Teach them the basics of sprinting and running. Do things that require lateral movement and change of directions. Make them "movers" first, then athletes then runners.

Play games like Ultimate to make intervals more fun.

Utter crap in here.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. There is no burnout. If a kid wants to run, he'll run. If he doesn't run, it's because he wants to do something else.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. You are the people who created the millennial disaster.

Give them all a medal at the end of each practice.

Rule 1: Are they having fun?

Rule 2: Refer to Rule 1.

et tu brute wrote:

Utter crap in here.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. There is no burnout. If a kid wants to run, he'll run. If he doesn't run, it's because he wants to do something else.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. You are the people who created the millennial disaster.

Give them all a medal at the end of each practice.

And you are the kind of person creating the American obesity epidemic with this kick ass or go home mentality. Most of those kids would rather sit on their butts and play video games. I know way too many people who would be a whole lot healthier today if they hadn't been permanently turned off from sports when they were kids by overly competitive people who sucked the joy out of everything they did.

et tu brute wrote:

Utter crap in here.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. There is no burnout. If a kid wants to run, he'll run. If he doesn't run, it's because he wants to do something else.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. You are the people who created the millennial disaster.

Give them all a medal at the end of each practice.

Precisely - You rock !

Crap for crap wrote:

And you are the kind of person creating the American obesity epidemic with this kick ass or go home mentality. Most of those kids would rather sit on their butts and play video games. I know way too many people who would be a whole lot healthier today if they hadn't been permanently turned off from sports when they were kids by overly competitive people who sucked the joy out of everything they did.

It's one of the reasons why I HATE football as a sport. Every single football coach I've ever seen is an abusive a$$hole. From a young age too. I've done some track workouts while the pee-wee football team is practicing (probably 3rd-4th graders, I'd guess by size) and all the coach does is yell at them, saying they don't get to leave until they get it right, etc. Almost NEVER positive. It's verbal abuse.

There's a time, age, and place for being straight-lined with your athletes. Age 9 or 10 is not that age. And positive encouragement always outweighs negative 100x over.

et tu brute wrote:

Utter crap in here.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. There is no burnout. If a kid wants to run, he'll run. If he doesn't run, it's because he wants to do something else.

"Keeping it fun" is crap. You are the people who created the millennial disaster.

Give them all a medal at the end of each practice.

Volunteer with this age range once and see what happens when you do not make it fun. You will have a team full of kids that are only showing up because their parents shelled out $50-100 and do not want to "waste" their money. Enjoy watching kids chase bugs in the grass and not listening too you.

Keeping it fun does not mean they are not working hard. It means you are making drills that do the same stuff you would do with older kids. You trick the brains that something is fun and they perform better. If I did the same drill I would do for a kid 5 years older, they loose interest. I found out the hard way years ago.

Cat Herder, you're absolutely correct. I would be lucky if you were to coach my kids. OP, listen to Cat Herder.

it's right that if you make the running into a game, the kids will run like crazy and have a lot of fun and want to do it again, whereas on some days they'll act as if they can't run at all after a block or two if it is just out for a run. One thing that gets my children out running is saying they're doing the twelve tasks of Hercules where they have to, say, climb a wall, go up and down all the parts of the playground, run a certain number of laps around the playground in a certain amount of time, do a long jump, find something, run around the trees, etc. But getting them on the track is also more fun than doing a continuous run off the track. And you can have them go to the long jump pit to jump, and so forth, as well. There are a lot of South and Central American games involving kicking a ball and running after it that date back to the Pre-Colombian era and would be as good or better than soccer to get them running. The point here is that you get kids running and liking what they are doing and they will get better at it and continue it, because without the desire to do it, they'll never work at it.

Kenyans run 10-20 miles a day as 7 year olds and they are beating us 🤔

-Uncico Coleman 😘

Elementary runners should only do 200s fast on the track.. Make sure they know that the great one are ones that push every workout hard.