Soccer coach says, "Cross country running ruins explosiveness"

Ain't nobody talk no hurt to cross country.

Weird. Soccer made me a better runner. I was a middle distance runner in indoor/outdoor track and played soccer during XC season. My coach for track had me running with the distance guys. It was mostly easy and long runs with speedwork sessions thrown in every other week or so. My soccer coach on the other hand had me warming up with 3-5 miles followed by things like hill sprints. suicides, and other conditioning drills. Following that we played small, fast games like 3v3 or 4v4. The biggest benefit to running by playing soccer was the constant gear changing, whether you were playing a game or practicing. You were always running but at different speeds. All of my times went down dramatically after my soccer coach was hired for my junior year.

The distance coach was a good running coach who produced some state champion runners but my soccer coach was much better at elevating overall fitness which in turn helped my running. He was a great fitness base builder. After my first soccer season I could not only crush all the distance guys at their own races during track season but I dominated the other middle distance guys too. YMMV.

IS he right?

of course he's not

AND his teams continue to be cellar dwellers.

Some geek, a while ago, said: that "Insanity (is): doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

I think his sanity is suspect.

SoccerCoach,

We are not talking about pro soccer players, were are talking about high school kids who are still developing. I do not agree with specializing in high school with any sport.

The workouts I give my kids for CC work lateral, speed, stamina. We also do tons of body weight stuff. Not one soccercoach I know and I know quite a few, do any strength training. The reason is most only coach the way they were coached. I see so many of these guys yelling, swearing and carrying on like they are in the military, this proves that these guys have no clue. If you are a coach in todays world you will research methods and be a TEACHER not some overbearing, arrogant, insecure coach. (not saying this is you just what I see) The old school coach of" you will respect me cause I am in charge" is a joke and does not motivate kids, teaching, teaching, teaching, and showing kids you believe in them is the key.

I am sorry to say, not sure you really know what is going on a CC practice, it is more than just easy miles.

Have your club soccer guys knock out 100 bw squats, bet very few can do it.

I also work on plyos during our practices. The kids that run for me and play soccer kick arse in soccer cause they are in such great shape. The knuckleheads that play club are the whiners and out of shape kids who are lookin for ways to get out of the soccer workout.

Club ruins kids and spoils them, too much entitlement, especially when the coach tells you your the next World Cup soccer star cause sugar mommy and sugar daddy are paying the coach 1000 dollars.

yes I am ranting for sure. Soccer is a great sport as long as coaches, parents and players have a balance but I really do not see this in my area.

Monty

Just do anaerobic work while in xc, then it won't ruin it. eot.

slow twitch (type I) fibers generally don't change to another type, but fast twitch fibers can become more oxidative (type II to type IIx), which is generally a good thing if you're not a 100m runner or a football player

I played varsity HS soccer and was pretty decent but stuck with XC through college mostly because I was too small to play with the big boys. (ie I got knocked on my ass at every challenge header or just pushed off the ball with possession). At the end of XC season we used to "scrimmage" the girls varsity team (whoever wanted to come out to play). I noticed that my ball skills MUCH worse and I had little power in my shots on goal. Not to mention my left foot shot was GONE. Sure I could dog anyone on defense because I never got tired but once I got the ball I was not the player I once was. All my lateral movement felt awkward and uncoordinated.

Oh, and I was sore as hell the next day. Soccer players could use XC but they need to keep playing/sprinting/lifting.

Soccer=best team sport there is.

Lots of sprinters make the mistake of running cross counry. Huge no no in my book. Cross might be better for soccer players who are constantly running. I truly feel running distance's does affect your sprinter / explosive power.

COACH BEE wrote:

Lots of sprinters make the mistake of running cross counry. Huge no no in my book. Cross might be better for soccer players who are constantly running. I truly feel running distance's does affect your sprinter / explosive power.

I beg to differ...

Here is a certain runners XC HS times

Here is his HS Track times

Here is his college times

Granted its one case...but I have a feeling that the strength you gain from running HS XC will almost certainly benefit you down the road, especially when it comes to the 400

monty wrote:

I do not agree with specializing in high school with any sport.

Monty

Umm.... so its your career not theirs? What if they want to specialize?

A very good read about youth players at Ajax in the Netherlands:

How a Soccer Star Is Made

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/magazine/06Soccer-t.html

Some key paragraphs:

The Ajax youth academy is not a boarding school. The players all live within a 35-mile radius of Amsterdam (some of them have moved into the area to attend the academy). Ajax operates a fleet of 20 buses to pick up the boys halfway through their school day and employs 15 teachers to tutor them when they arrive. Parents pay nothing except a nominal insurance fee of 12 euros a year, and the club covers the rest — salaries for 24 coaches, travel to tournaments, uniforms and gear for the players and all other costs associated with running a vast facility. Promising young players outside the Ajax catchment area usually attend academies run by other Dutch professional clubs, where the training is also free, as it is in much of the rest of the soccer-playing world for youths with pro potential. (The U.S., where the dominant model is “pay to play” — the better an athlete, the more money a parent shells out — is the outlier.)

***

Through age 12, they train only three times a week and play one game on the weekend. “For the young ones, we think that’s enough,” Riekerink said when we talked in his office one day. “They have a private life, a family life. We don’t want to take that from them. When they are not with us, they play on the streets. They play with their friends. Sometimes that’s more important. They have the ball at their feet without anyone telling them what to do.”

By age 15, the boys are practicing five times a week. In all age groups, training largely consists of small-sided games and drills in which players line up in various configurations, move quickly and kick the ball very hard to each other at close range. In many practice settings in the U.S., this kind of activity would be a warm-up, just to get loose, with the coach paying scant attention and maybe talking on a cellphone or chatting with parents. At the Ajax academy, these exercises — designed to maximize touches, or contact with the ball — are the main event. “You see this a lot of places,” a coach from a pro club in Norway, who was observing at Ajax, said to me. “Every program wants to maximize touches. But here it is no-nonsense, and everything is done very hard and fast. It’s the Dutch style. To the point and aggressive.”

***

The Dutch style (indistinguishable from the Ajax style) even has its own philosopher-king — Johan Cruyff, an Ajax star in the 1970s, considered just one step down from Pelé in the pantheon of playing greats, who can sound like a more erudite Yogi Berra. “Don’t run so much,” he once said, meaning that players often cover lots of ground but to no effect. “You have to be in the right place at the right moment, not too early, not too late.”

***

Versloot, with his spiky hair, longish sideburns and black-framed glasses, has a sort of hipster-geek look. In November, I observed him putting boys through some of their regular fitness tests. In one, a training group of 16-year-olds ran 30-meter sprints as sensors registered their times in five-meter increments. Versloot was most interested in their performances in the first 5 and 10 meters. “That’s football distance,” he said. “It’s an acceleration that occurs multiple times a game.”

***

Dylan at first spoke to me on the condition that I would not use his name but then insisted that it be included, reasoning that he had related his “personal thoughts, and people should know the name behind the thoughts.” We spoke at a delicatessen in his neighborhood in central Amsterdam, where a picture of him in his uniform hung on the wall. (The contrast between his introspection and the unrevealing interviews given by most American athletes was striking.) He said he guessed that probably only two or three of the boys he began with when he was 7 would have pro careers in their sport. “I would feel very bad if I’m not one of them,” he said. “I have tried everything I can do to make it. I haven’t done as much in school as I could. I would feel like I’ve been wasting my time all these years. I would get very depressed.”

I asked if some of what he learned at Ajax — focus, perseverance, the ability to perform under pressure — might benefit him no matter what he ends up doing. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re training for football, not for anything else.”

Another one:

There are two ways to become a world-class soccer player. One is to spend hours and hours in pickup games — in parks, streets, alleyways — on imperfect surfaces that, if mastered, can give a competitor an advantage when he finally graduates to groomed fields. This is the Brazilian way and also the model in much of the rest of South America, Central America and the soccer hotbeds of Africa. It is like baseball in the Dominican Republic. Children play all the time and on their own.

The other way is the Ajax method. Scientific training. Attention to detail. Time spent touching the ball rather than playing a mindless number of organized games.

The more thoughtful people involved in developing U.S. soccer talent know that we conform to neither model. We are a much larger nation, obviously, than the Netherlands. Our youth sports leagues, for the most part, are community-based and run by volunteers rather than professionals. They have grown organically, sending out tendrils that run deep and are difficult to uproot. Change at the elite levels is more possible than at the stubborn grass roots.

Kind of makes me think of the African model vs. the American model... lots of miles and few races vs. fewer miles and lots of pointless racing (respectively).

I truly hate the level of specialization that has come to youth and HS sports. Year-round soccer, JO volleyball, AAU basketball--and every one of those coaches sells young kids and their families on doing just one thing. Hogwash. I was fortunate to have two teammates who were All American in HS (one in FB, one in track). Both played three sports (actually, the FB guy played 4 senior year). Sam Bradford, who won the Heisman and was picked #1 in thee NFL draft, played 3 sports in HS. I've had XC kids who were MVPs in soccer, and soccer kids who were MVPs in XC. With the exception of a few very rare phenoms (and when you've got one, there's very little doubt--if you have to ask, you don't), there is no need to keep a kid from dabbling in a little bit of everything. If they are really good enough to become a specialist, it will become obvious in plenty of time for them to do move up.

There's only one way to be good at any sport, and that is to do it. Some sports do not require year-round practice, but others, for example, soccer, do. If a player is not good on the ball at age fifteen, that player will never be good. And one doesn't get good only by playing high school soccer--one really has to play most of the year. In Illinois, X-C takes place at the same time as boys soccer, so one can't do both. One can, however, run girls X-C in the Fall and play soccer in the Spring. However, if a girl wants to be good, she plays club in the Fall. An earlier poster who says those in HS should not specialize in a sport, and should try out many sports, is an advocate of mediocrity--a jack of all trades and a master of none. As for the question the OP originally raised, I don't know the answer, because the kinds of running soccer requires--starts and stops, cuts, sideways running, some sprints, many strides, some jogging, etc.--doesn't correspond to anything in track and field or X-C.

I wish my state could have had boys soccer in the fall. I picked track over soccer, but I would have picked soccer over cross country.

Question for you guys: Do you know of any outstanding athletes who did soccer and track in the same season? Is that possible?

quack wrote:

"...As you run purely for endurance, fast twitch fibers will be converted to slow twitch fibers and this conversion cannot be reversed."

You are an idiot. Fast twitch and Slow twitch are what they are and cannot be changed. They can be trained, but not changed. Try taking a physiology course.

There is a difference between SPEED (what we do in track and field) and quickness (what is important in sports like soccer or basketball)...cross country and long distance running will ruin your quickness/agility (ie: lateral movements) and how fast you react in other very short movement situations i'm talking about the difference of a fraction of a second from here to the other end of my desk. In those sports that makes a huge difference.

That being said..it takes a lot of mileage and a lot of neglect of agility for that process to actually take place...usually years..and most of the loss comes from not continuing to practice QUICKNESS.