Son has no speed, how to improve

you just said it yourself, "it appears neither of our genes made it to him", both of you are/were athletes and can immediately tell who's cut and who's not for competitive running

if it wasn't your son and another dude instead, what would you say to him for this kind of advice?

now, if we are talking about providing opportunities that's where you could seek advice on here. we all know the pack mentality aspect of running, so if he wants to partake in competitive running, perhaps help him align with a program with scholarships for his talent range and start filtering out schools.

or lastly, you could just be happy with him joining the xc/running club of whatever big school offers the education and degrees that do matter once running is no longer a priority, and let him be. club programs are not as unimportant as some folks on here make it out to be.

I got to the point when you said he was in 6th grade. Just be patient. Around his sophomore year he will likely grow a ton and get a lot faster. Kid likely has a lot of growth physically to do.

The kid is still so young. I would have him to 4-8x 50 meters once per week. You can absolutely improve foot speed. Too many coaches and athletes think you can’t.

Have you not heard of puberty? It's this magical thing where bodies change and boy bodies get lots of testosterone and muscles grow and after it's done you end up with a very different physiology. You don't need to do *anything* to help your son other than step back and make sure he's having a good time.

Have him do some short sprint, acceleration work once a week during his base training to improve his sprint speed. His mile is way better than his 800 likely because the mile is more aerobic than the 800, so it's a totally different energy system (obviously some overlap, but much more speed endurance needed for the 800) and he seems more inclined to long distances. I'm sure his 800 would improve if he incorporated more anaerobic and speed endurance work throughout his training cycles, but honestly at his age, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you want, have him do some short sprints or speed hill work during the off season once a week and add in some accels after his easy runs a few times a week.

What did your parents do to encourage you to get faster as a kid? You get faster by training to run fast, and at his age, by hitting puberty.

Good pool workout here:

Mommie Dearest (4/9) Movie CLIP - Racing A Child (1981) HD (youtube.com)

Get him some different genes

For most kids at that age, lack of speed is more mental than anything else. Kids that age don't go faster because they haven't experienced going faster yet and so they don't know that they can even increase their speed. When I coached soccer to boys about that age, I would try and give them drills where they would be forced to run faster, such as a defender chasing down someone dribbling a ball where the attacker had a slight head start. With that being said, given your son's age, I would let him just find joy in running. Instead of focusing on speed, I would focus on form. Most boys that age have terrible form and waste a lot of energy with side to side upper-body motion. As he gets older and builds some muscle that comes with puberty, if he has good form, then it will help him to improve his speed.

The times he ran demonstrate talent. I don't know what he is doing for training now, but adding in drills, agility drills, strides, and basic body weight strength will imorov

Darn it...my thumbs!!!

...will improve his fitness and speed. And letting him just have fun in the running and training process.

He may also benefit, especially as he is developing, from doing another sport, like soccer, basketball, or even dance (if he is interested). He will learn how to move differently in these sports and probably have a lot of fun in the process.

He really just needs to start running faster

Take a piece of hair from his comb and run a DNA test. Something sounds off.