How does one HS produce so many of the top HS runners in the country (Crater & Newbury Park)? Don't say it's luck

It Truly is A New Era wrote:

It’s not that hard. What sets Crater and Newbury Park apart is three things:

1. A positive culture that values challenge, excellence, and the process of reaching the top.

2. Knowledgeable coaches willing to take risks. While not advocating that you break kids, too many coaches play it safe or dumb it down for varied reasons that keep their athletes mediocre.

3. Selling something bigger than winning league or qualifying for state. This gets both the runners and their parents fully engaged. These kids want to be full time runners, not half-azzed participants in multiple sports.

Training is simple: build the aerobic engine and train for the demands of racing. More kids can handle 60+ miles than coaches want to think. Too many coaches are still stuck on methodologies from the last century. Far too many coaches want to keep collecting their stipends or keep parents off of their backs by playing it safe. The common thread between Brosnan, Loftus, Soles, Mostert is that they understand the science and that the sport is changed. They don’t baby their charges. Do kids get hurt? Sometimes. Then again, kids get injured on low miles and only running in season.

Kickers usually win wrote:

It Truly is A New Era wrote:

It’s not that hard. What sets Crater and Newbury Park apart is three things:

1. A positive culture that values challenge, excellence, and the process of reaching the top.

2. Knowledgeable coaches willing to take risks. While not advocating that you break kids, too many coaches play it safe or dumb it down for varied reasons that keep their athletes mediocre.

3. Selling something bigger than winning league or qualifying for state. This gets both the runners and their parents fully engaged. These kids want to be full time runners, not half-azzed participants in multiple sports.

Training is simple: build the aerobic engine and train for the demands of racing. More kids can handle 60+ miles than coaches want to think. Too many coaches are still stuck on methodologies from the last century. Far too many coaches want to keep collecting their stipends or keep parents off of their backs by playing it safe. The common thread between Brosnan, Loftus, Soles, Mostert is that they understand the science and that the sport is changed. They don’t baby their charges. Do kids get hurt? Sometimes. Then again, kids get injured on low miles and only running in season.

1) That’s typical LRC lingo that doesn’t mean anything. Valuing excellence and challenge doesn’t help anyone out perform their natural ability. There is no process that will improve a runner from 9:00 to 8:40.

2) HS runners typically avoid injuries so there are no coaches taking risks. If anything, the volume of training has decreased over the years.

3) Talented runners are usually self-motivated and are not buying anything.

Your last paragraph is nonsense and the sport has not changed. There is no knowledge of science that has changed training methods. Unless parents have a running background, and most don’t, they will not interfere with how the coach is training their child. Are you claiming that under performing maintains or increases a stipend? The coaches you listed don’t do anything significantly different from what’s been done in the past.

Kickers usually win wrote:

It Truly is A New Era wrote:

It’s not that hard. What sets Crater and Newbury Park apart is three things:

1) That’s typical LRC lingo that doesn’t mean anything. Valuing excellence and challenge doesn’t help anyone out perform their natural ability. There is no process that will improve a runner from 9:00 to 8:40.

2) HS runners typically avoid injuries so there are no coaches taking risks. If anything, the volume of training has decreased over the years.

3) Talented runners are usually self-motivated and are not buying anything.

Your last paragraph is nonsense and the sport has not changed. There is no knowledge of science that has changed training methods. Unless parents have a running background, and most don’t, they will not interfere with how the coach is training their child. Are you claiming that under performing maintains or increases a stipend? The coaches you listed don’t do anything significantly different from what’s been done in the past.

CoachB wrote:

Kickers usually win wrote:

1) That’s typical LRC lingo that doesn’t mean anything. Valuing excellence and challenge doesn’t help anyone out perform their natural ability. There is no process that will improve a runner from 9:00 to 8:40.

2) HS runners typically avoid injuries so there are no coaches taking risks. If anything, the volume of training has decreased over the years.

3) Talented runners are usually self-motivated and are not buying anything.

Your last paragraph is nonsense and the sport has not changed. There is no knowledge of science that has changed training methods. Unless parents have a running background, and most don’t, they will not interfere with how the coach is training their child. Are you claiming that under performing maintains or increases a stipend? The coaches you listed don’t do anything significantly different from what’s been done in the past.

Based on my 30+ years of coaching experience, almost everything you wrote here is false, except for the fact that some of your best runners will be those who are self motivated. Talent, however, has nothing to do with that.

The point that I think you might have been trying to make is that sound coaching methodology does make a difference. I can agree with you on that. But to suggest that advances in the ability to monitor the efforts of top athletes and make sure they are not overcooking workouts.....Or to keep their threshold efforts at or slightly below threshold, so they can do.....more threshold. That is pretty new.

To be sure, the knowledge is not new. So, I guess we can agree on that point as well.When writing my Master's thesis, I came across an article from 1981 from Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise that more or less supported what became known as the Norwegian Method today: The greatest development of capillary beds comes from longer exposures to moderate tissue hypoxia. Somehow in the 80s, the training philosophy shifted and we all started wanting to create severe tissue hypoxia with all of our VO2 max type intervals and then we all saw the resulting crash of North American and European distance running