Why are so many HS coaches stuck in the 90s

Sorry that the data contradicts with your bias.

I'm a younger coach. this is kind of it. The majority of the kids are not trying to run in college and just doing this as a participation sport. The coach will cater to the majority and that's where you see the top talents go get private coaches or run on their own. I know serveral athletes that run 5am workouts before school and then go to their afternoon practices as a secondary jaunt. Most the kids won't run the mileage you specify even at 20-30 mpw. Intervals over 800m are a death sentence to them (even if you slow them down). Maybe it's my team but they'd rather blast 8 x 400m reps any day over an easy 5-7 miler.

its crazy to me there is schools running this low of mileage there isn't a kid on my team including freshman girls running less than 45 MPW if your a senior on my team your anywhere from 60-80 MPW and that's how it works, we do our double T we get our deeper workouts in and we love it because we have an amazing coach, if you are a coach who can inspire your athletes it makes all the difference and that shows in our team success.

I coach children and they think winning is fun so we put in work. They appreciate being pushed.

Because that’s what they did when they were in high school and college and they’re too lazy to put effort into learning.

I agree with you for the most part. Most HS runners don't need an overly complex program and could benefit from added volume.

But I actually think a weekly threshold/tempo run/workout would be a better decision than a "basic interval workout."

I agree with OP that more volume rather than a low-volume high-intensity approach would be good for a lot of HS runners.

What doesn't make sense to me is ~80% of the replies, like this one, suggesting that a low-volume high-intensity program is not "work" or "being pushed."

Sure, I think most kids would run very well off a long block of 50-60 mpw featuring mostly easy running, a weekly tempo, daily strides, and some carefully applied race-pace sharpening.

But I disagree that programs with 35 mpw, 3-4 hard workouts a week and loads of 400s at mile-to-5k pace work are the "lazy" way. I've done both, and the higher-volume approach is in many ways much easier!

That’s a great suggestion, but is it ok if he ONLY volunteers at a (likely affluent) large HS with a well-established distance program that gets dozens and dozens of kids each season? Then, he’s gonna knock it out of the park!

…until it suddenly ISN’T that kind of school one day.

As a coach who is presumably stuck in the 90s, have a go at asking a group of 15 year olds to run 80k per week.

Let me know how it goes.

Good luck and God’s speed.

A great counterpoint to every douchey HS coach (and message board poster) who is determined to look down their noses at every program that doesn’t have their kids (99.99% of whom have far less talent than the list above) struggle to ramp up to fairly high mileage in a very short season.

Coach here from a top Illinois track team. My distance athletes cap at 65 mpw and they run 9:00-9:30s in the 3200m. I'm 25, not stuck in the 90s but stuck in double threshold.

If you’re running 80mpw in high school, where are you supposed to go in college? all the runners who improve a lot run lower mileage and take time to improve on that mileage. Id say it’s better for high schoolers to have their form and anaerobic ability developed because then when they go to college they will be set up to improve since you can improve your aerobic ability a lot quicker and easier.

The easy answer is that these guys and gals are just coaching off of personal experience (they probably ran HS track in the 90-00s) and the occasional highlight workout they see on YouTube. Most either don't know or don't have enough time to learn the science of running since they are often teachers first and coaches second. This was the case in our local league until recently, with maybe one or two HS having really dedicated coaches. Only one of those coaches had previous college running experience so his team would dominate XC and distance since everyone else was training sub optimally. I do think it is getting better though and was much worse a decade back.

I found the issue to be that kids constantly have excuses. The years I coached it was one complaint after another. The kids just didn't have fun putting in the work. My son was the most consistent runner on the team and he averaged about 50mpw his senior year. No one wanted to run with him. If he did 8 miles. everyone else would do 6. If we went 7:00 pace they would go 8:00 pace. He would do 1000s, they would stop after 800 and say it was too hard. I found it very hard to motivate these kids.

I come from a wealthy suburb of a large city and the major sports have sucked away anyone willing to work hard. The promise of scholarships and private teams is just too big of an allure. Our school has everything too and everyone is type A. Basically means if running is not YOUR thing, it quickly becomes very part time.

What was most frustrating is that the kids that showed up wanted to be good. They just didn't want to work at it. Incredibly incredibly soft.

All the excuses that the high school coaches in this thread are giving is bs. High school football coaches can get their kids to practice 90 hours a week and wouldn't care about a job, church, stress, excuses,complaining etc. There's many current or former college coaches in this thread. Instead of making excuses, just listen. High school coaches level of arrogance is astounding!

coach at a small rural school here, limited participation, lots of multi-sport athletes, very minimal offseason work.

the long and short of it is that I'd love to have kids who can handle 40+ miles a week, but they're impatient. they want to take the quick route, and rather than build their aerobic engine with the boring stuff (long runs, aerobic runs, etc) they try to speedrun it, push all of their mileage too fast and then end up hurt.

You can coach them until your blue in the face and tell them to slow down, put in some easy work over the summer, etc. but they read something on chatgpt about double threshold and think thats the way you get fast while ignoring the fact that everyone running double t has YEARS of the boring stuff under their belts.

trust me, before I started coaching I thought I had all the answers and would be able to turn the ship around immediately. you gotta take what the kids give you and meet them where there at, hope that you find a couple of motivated kids who are willing to learn, trust the process, and understand you don't PR every race.

Sam's dad describes him running up to 17 km (~10.5 mi) on long runs. Even if his talent didn't make him exempt from those who I describe in my original post, who are aerobically underdeveloped runners who will continue to struggle on low milage, I strongly doubt that he's running 1/3 of his weekly milage during his long run. I think even he runs more like 50-60 MPW.

A lot comes from the administration as well. In my school cross country and track and field is very much viewed as a participation sport and 75% of the athletes I get view it that way. Its very very hard to not only change the culture of the team, but to change the culture of the administration. Below 25 degrees? Can't run. No running without a shirt off campus even when its 90 and humid. At one point we had to create a sign-out sheet with the route noted before you could run. We have a head coach who mandated 2 lap warmups and dynamics and a team meeting before runs and then lifts after and practice couldn't go past 5:00 (started at 3:15). That's a tight window to run a decently long run or a 2mile warmup, 2mile cooldown and longer intervals during. Organized AM runs were not allowed by the admin (though offseason football practice 2 a days were).

If you admin doesn't buy in and give the kids and staff some freedom, its very hard to change culture.