Get the inside scoop on Drew Hunter's training - LetsRun's feature on Tom "Tinman" Schwartz

fred wrote:

The Dirty Duck wrote:

My God, the guy is coaching the #1 HS runner in the country and is sharing his training philosophy, and a dozen LRC malcontents need to spout off about his lack of originality. Please try to be constructive.

Is he really coaching the kid, or are the parents?

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=688037&page=4

In the article his mother states that Tom is coaching him

Tinman coached me for a couple of years, and here is my experience. Prior to Tom, I was following Jack Daniels training, and had pretty good success with it. After going through Daniels different phases for a couple of years or so, it started to become mentally and physically draining. I remember thinking the paces were just to demanding to accomplish month after month, year after year. I would take a 3 week break after the end of the last phase as Daniels recommended to recharge, and then start rebuilding through the phases again. Starting over in the first phase was always very difficult for me, as it felt like I had to climb the big hill again to get back in shape. As I began to feel drained, I naturally started to adjust (slow) my training intervals paces, to a more moderate pace as time went on. Then I ran across some of Tinmans posts on LetsRun, and what he described started to click with me. I went to his web site and read more about his training. I began to reflect over the years, different runners I knew, who were average, in high school and college, but later become very fast runners. I remember one guy told me, that he just did a lot of moderate and easy running (unlike college) and over the course of several years he just kept improving. I remember visiting a college that was recruiting me, and how slow they ran on their easy days... I don't remember how slow it was, but it seemed like they were just jogging (maybe 7:30 pace?). They ran more mileage, and most of it was at a moderate pace. I chose not to go there because that just seemed like a bad way to train and I couldn't imagine performing at a high level with workouts that slow. But later I observed the runners on that team were running at a very high level. Anyhow, I decided to give Tom the reins for six months and see what would happen. The focus on endurance and more moderate intervals approach, made sense in a lot of ways, but in some ways it didn't make sense to me at all. I thought it could possibly make me faster in the 10k, half marathon realm, but what about my mile and 5k times? So he prescribed a lot of CV pace, tempo's, both with striders at the end. Sometimes a few short uphill striders at the end of CV workout. Those workouts seemed pretty easy compared to what I was used to. My comfort level wasn't very high. I often felt I wasn't in shape to race. Most of the time, I felt I wasn't running nearly hard enough to become my best. I wasn't doing the traditional 12 x 400 at mile race pace. I was doing limited 5k race pace training. I wasn't tapering much at all before a race. I was running more easy mileage, and a lot of moderate intervals. I always wondered, when the "hard" stuff would come. Anyhow, before a particular indoor track meet, some of the guys were asking what I thought my mile time would be (I was age 50 at the time). I thought between 4:45 and 4:50, if I ran well. I ended up running 4:35! Based on how I used to train, I would have tried to run many repeat 400's under 70 to get enough speed/endurance to run that fast. A few weeks later, I ran a 3k in 9:04, on a Friday, Saturday came back with a 4:33 mile, and Sunday ran a 2:07, 800 meters. I was shocked. The strength and endurance I felt during those races is something I had never experienced before. You think your tired, but you legs just keep churning! Toms focus on CV training as a foundation, and then doing some touch up training on either side, worked incredibly well. It seems to me, many coaches today, see this kind of training, just as a "phase" you do, before hitting the really fast hard stuff for a phase or two in order to peak. Some coaches skip it all together, and just do "hard" stuff all the time. I do know this, with Tinman's approach, your always eager and excited to train. You don't have to "get up" for the big workouts. If things get stale, you just take a day or two off, or just do some easy running for a few days, and keep the ball rolling.

The kid is genetically gifted. You could do cross fit, run every other day and take weekends off and he still would have won the state meet.

When your talented training at 90% is great. You get fit without really going to the edge.

But if you ever are going to take it to the next level you aren't going to do it never challenging yourself.

The kid is genetically gifted. You could do cross fit, run every other day and take weekends off and he still would have won the state meet.

When your talented training at 90% is great. You get fit without really going to the edge.

But if you ever are going to take it to the next level you aren't going to do it never challenging yourself.

LetsRun.com wrote:

Jonathan Gault has written a piece focused on the coaching philosophy of Tom Schwartz and the training philosophy powering Drew Hunter. It definitely is LetsRun approved as Hunter is running many of his easy days at 7:00 min per mile.

http://www.letsrun.com/?p=101889

Take a look at it and tell us what you think.

7:00 per mile is fast. Ryan Hall in that GR interview claimed he did easy days at 8:30!!!!

8:00 to 8:30 to be exact, but still!

The Donger wrote:

The kid is genetically gifted. You could do cross fit, run every other day and take weekends off and he still would have won the state meet.

When your talented training at 90% is great. You get fit without really going to the edge.

But if you ever are going to take it to the next level you aren't going to do it never challenging yourself.

That's a very good thing for Hunter then. You appear to be stating that Hunter will run crazily fast this year, and is only training at 90%. That means he can up the intensity and volume and take himself to the next level when it starts to matter. Good.

Great post runfastolman!

Q: Did you do CV sessions each week, year around? Also any links to his training stuff?

The Donger wrote:

But if you ever are going to take it to the next level you aren't going to do it never challenging yourself.

I understand the reasoning behind this, but part of Tinman's philosophy is to save it for races, not workouts. He doesn't believe in "peaking", but rather sharpening for a key race. This is done, by either scheduling a tune up race, or doing a hard time trial before a key race. It seems to only take a few weeks to make a slight shift in focus in training to sharpen for a big race.

Pangolin wrote:

Great post runfastolman!

Q: Did you do CV sessions each week, year around? Also any links to his training stuff?

I would say "most every week". He is very creative at working in CV work along with other types of running. Sometimes the CV work would be repeat1k's, sometimes repeat 1200's, some times repeat 800's. The CV work is often mixed with a secondary system. He tries to cover the various systems in three week cycles, but always focuses on the endurance side of everything. The thought is you can increase the endurance side at a very large percent, and the speed side a very small percent. So the workouts are based on that concept.

His web site is

While I think people are overreacting to the not talented quote (he did say he's one of the 15 most talented people in the country", i'll just say calm down people.

No runners want to think they are talented. Since the beginnig of time, we've all wanted to think there is something special about what we are doing. But think of it this way, "There are a ton of people on drew's team that do the same training" but aren't very good. It's that thought that got David Epstein to write Sports Gene.

You are correct. I've never met Tinman but know for a fact that Tinman wants to give credit where credit is due. 10 years ago, there was a thread on letsrun entitled " tinman bashes wejo coach". The whole point of the thread was Tinman was upset that John Kellogg (our coach) wasn't citing the scientists and coaches behind the ideas he believed in.

You can read the thread here.

But this is the opening lines.

So basically,10 years later, history is repeating itself but now Tinman is being ripped which is very ironic as he's always cited his sources. The criticism he is getting on here is the same reason why John stopped posting on the boards. THat and the fact that he felt like 'it had been solved' and all of the info put out here.

John Kellogg (and Tinman) never claimed to have invented this stuff. People just get irate though for some reason when either one of them says their stuff is better than anyone elses.

I called John up today and said, "Hey do you remember this thread from 10 years ago? Why didn't you site the excercist phys studies?"

John replied along the lines he was posting on amessageboard, not writing a scientific paper. Many of the things he used are scientific facts and many of his beliefs he figured out from basically trying every training program out there. I've always said the thing about JK is how well he knows his body. He could run 14 workouts, 150 miles a week and then somehow realize it was the snickers bar on thursday that was the key (if that was the case, which it's not).

JK came to his conclusions from basically ruining his body and trying everything when he was younger. Tinman couldn't do this stuff so he went mroe into the lab to figure it out.

I keep claiming I'm going to start a training section or website with JK if I can get him to move down to Baltimore with me. JK still is as confident as ever.

runfastoldman wrote:

The Donger wrote:

But if you ever are going to take it to the next level you aren't going to do it never challenging yourself.

I understand the reasoning behind this, but part of Tinman's philosophy is to save it for races, not workouts. He doesn't believe in "peaking", but rather sharpening for a key race. This is done, by either scheduling a tune up race, or doing a hard time trial before a key race. It seems to only take a few weeks to make a slight shift in focus in training to sharpen for a big race.

For the record I'm with you and agree. Perhaps it came across a bit critical but I think this kind of training is perfect for high school. I was referring to the future, college, Olympic, etc.

The training now is right on.

south dakota wrote:

I think Tinman is a very good coach. But the claim that Hunter is a normal/good/unexceptional talent, and the associated idea that all of his success is due to his great coach, and supportive family, and complete buy-in to the program... I don't buy it at all. Hunter is clearly very, very talented, more talented than almost any other US HS runner. And, yes, he is well-coached too, and everything else. But ff every FL finalist was somehow hypothetically world-class coached too, then (I think) Drew still wins the race, maybe not by twelve seconds, but don't pretend he would be fifteenth. If they all really believe that, fine, maybe it's good psychological ammunition, but certainly not right. So, certainly a great coach, but don't pretend that stumbling upon a sub4 HS miler was inevitable.

I agree. If the kid had just done 5 days a week of easy running and 2/3 track interval sessions straight out the book, I think he would be very close to where he is now. Running mostly comes down to talent. If Tinman had another kid follow this exact plan, I doubt he would be running 7:59 3ks.

SlowFatMaster wrote:

To Blah Diddy Blah:

Jack Daniels threshold pace = pace you could hold for about an hour.

Tinman CV pace = pace you could hold for about 40 minutes.

Similar but not identical. My own experience is that CV pace rocks and CV intervals do not beat me up as bad as VO2 max pace intervals or straight tempo runs.

Running repeats at or slightly slower that 10k pace with a shortish jog rest is nothing new. I have a running training book written by Anders Gärderud in the 1980s where he advocates just that, so "tinman" didn´t invent that - he just gave it a new name.

Can someone explain what 90 percent of VO2 max means? What pace is that and how do you figure that out. Sorry im a noob.

mathemagician wrote:

I was coached by Tinman for a couple years directly out of college. A few things:

1) Tom is a humble person and has never tried to take credit for "inventing" anything new with respect to training. His system builds upon what other (successful) coaches and athletes have already done, and Tom will be be the first one to tell you that. He is a true student of the sport.

That is absolute BS. I remembered when he stirred up a controversy a few years ago when he claimed that many well-known coaches, including Jack Daniels, had stolen a lot of training concepts from him.

"If Tinman had another kid follow this exact plan, I doubt he would be running 7:59 3ks."

There are about 2.2 million guys in the US that are the age to be seniors. Tinman believes that only 15 of them would respond as well as Drew.

Only 7 guys in a million could possibly do it. With gifts like that, you have the possibility of being amazing in many sports. For example, you would be in say the top 500 swimmers in the country or the top say 1000 soccer players, easily good enough to convince you that you were meant to do those other sports. You might never even run more than say a 5:38 mile like Jim Ryun did in his first mile.

Runninnn wrote:

Can someone explain what 90 percent of VO2 max means? What pace is that and how do you figure that out. Sorry im a noob.

It's about halfway between 10k pace and half marathon pace.

The Donger wrote:

The kid is genetically gifted. You could do cross fit, run every other day and take weekends off and he still would have won the state meet.

When your talented training at 90% is great. You get fit without really going to the edge.

But if you ever are going to take it to the next level you aren't going to do it never challenging yourself.

Those are exactly the points that Tinman seems to disagree with. Who is right, you or him?