How does Fayeteville-Manlius do it?

I've heard Bill speak and I have spoken to him about his training and his philosophy. It is very similar to the Kranicks style and philosophy. The kids buy into the lifestyle at a very young and influential age. Does it work and produce great high school teams? Absolutely ..yes! Is it in the best long term interest of those kids participating? My opinion? No, but hey that's just me. The Stotan philosophy was not developed for 12 year olds.

I do know that Bill spends far too much time on here and worries too much about the criticism for someone that truly believes in their program. That's not opinion, that's fact.

Ray wrote:

I do know that Bill spends far too much time on here and worries too much about the criticism for someone that truly believes in their program. That's not opinion, that's fact.

I don't think that word means what you think it means. That is an opinion.

Really. wrote:

Ray wrote:

I do know that Bill spends far too much time on here and worries too much about the criticism for someone that truly believes in their program. That's not opinion, that's fact.

I don't think that word means what you think it means. That is an opinion.

No Bill, that's fact.

Thanks to Bill Aris for the information that he has provided. I always appreciate that he is willing to come on this board to provide thorough responses on these threads. “Consider FM” has given a good summary of the **physiological** aspect of the program which appear to have received the stamp of approval from Bill Aris.

ENOUGH FLUFF!, I used to love reading “How they Train” books when I was starting out. I enjoyed reading the workouts that others were doing and dreaming of matching them. In reality, however, there was rarely anything remarkable in any of the schedules. Seeing a “typical two-week block of training during the summer, early season, and late season” might be entertaining, but it won’t give you a secret of success. Without knowing your athletes, what value can he add by posting Alex Hatz’s running log from December 1-14 or June 1-14?

There is a wealth of published information available on how to train. Very little of it is really new and groundbreaking. If you are a coach or a self coached athlete who is serious about improvement, you read as much as you can, try what makes sense to you, keep what you or your athletes respond well to, discard what doesn’t, and build your training program upon that.

Arranging all those known tools in a way that works for the individual is the key. I think Aris has indicated previously that he has implemented the concepts of many great coaches in his program and that the key was how the concepts were arranged for each individual. His success has been in getting a decent number of boys and girls and their families to commit completely to the lifestyle (Rest, nutrition, strength work, aerobic base, and a shared commitment to the process.) He teaches the kids why they are doing everything, how it fits into the process, he gets them to understand HOW perfecting the training process itself should be the goal, shows the history of the success that others F-M runners have had in committing to the process…

Part of the Track Talk session from last year explains “How to get the kids to buy into the program”. The podcast / text of the training talk is here if you haven’t heard it:

http://www.letsrun.com/2010/tracktalk041301.php

Take the time to focus and really listen to (or read) what he is saying and forget about “when will he tell me their training schedule?!” He is not going to tell you the magic number of miles to run or how many 1k intervals you should run, but it certainly reveals How and Why they are a successful program.

This is exactly the rhetoric I'm tired of. It doesn't matter whether kids buy into your program or not if you don't do the training. It's not about the "lifestyle" and whathaveyou. It's not Eating leafy green vegetables that makes 16:00 5ks, I can tell you that much. Training, and ONLY training, is what makes great athletes. Without training, there is nothing. So don't feed me the same crap about ab workouts, nutrition, rest, etc. Anybody with half a brain knows that stuff helps. What I am interested in, and what many others in this thread are interested in, is the choice of specific workouts at various points in the season.

Give me a complete two-week schedule from July, September, and November and I can tell you virtually everything about that coach's training philosophy and coaching style. I can learn far more from a schedule, even considering that it's adapted to a particular team and a particular season, than I can learn talking vague theory. I'd rather have ONE training log from ONE FM runner than six pages of blather about "buying into the program" and "team spirit."

You say "aerobic base" is important. Well most any coach will agree with that statement, but you'll find a million different opinions on what constitutes "aerobic base." One coach will say long continuous easy runs. Another will say say 20-minute tempo runs. A third will say intervals at 5k pace. All of this talk about "strength" and "base" isn't fooling anybody: we all know these are intentionally vague phrases to preserve some mythical veil of secrecy.

You say FM "incorporates elements from many of the great coaches." Well guess what, you can't have your cake and eat it too. How am I supposed to know if FM ascribes to high mileage/low intensity, or does long tempo runs, or threshold, or VO2 max, or critical velocity, or whatever, just by reading work from other coaches? Many coaches advocate ideas that are diametrically opposed to those of other coaches.

All I want to see are schedules. It's a tall order, but as others have indicated, do you really have THAT much to lose when Renato Canova, the greatest living coach in the world, is posting schedules of world-beaters on letsrun?

What does it matter? If you have your own system you should believe in that system. If you don't believe in your system you haven't done enough research and you are trying to find the shortcut. What FM is doing as far as workouts is nothing you can't find at other schools. How do I know? Because there is no way to train that hasn't been tried already and every school is doing some variation of what others have already found out works. Actually, we gain a lot more insight from Bill Aris than any of the other coaches I've listen to. He's given everything but the workouts. He's told you how to build the program and no one is listening! I tried to watch a Kranick interview and went to sleep. I can listen to Aris interviews all day and still learn something new. And it has helped my program! Not because of his workouts, but I realized what I needed to do to get kids to buy in. My training regime is probably diametric to FM but it doesn't matter because the fundamentals are there. Get a kid to commit to 50 mpw for 4-5 years and youll have a 9:30 guy even off of minimal talent. Sell the program. Believe in what you are doing.

Dasgermans wrote:

What does it matter? ... If you don't believe in your system you haven't done enough research and you are trying to find the shortcut...

I don't understand why you think this can't be considered research also. I like to see how coaches put to together seasons and then, based off previous research, try to understand why that works and tweak my training accordingly, not copy it exactly like you seem to be implying here.

My training has been influenced by generous coaches like Canova, Magness, Daniels, Vigil, Hudson, Simmons, Lydiard and others who have publicly communicated their training. It is this open discourse that helps advance the sport. We all know this.

Clearly, no one is going to come forward with any useful information, and unless the Arises say something about training, we can only assume they are afraid of being dethroned.

Bill Aris has done clinics and has explained a lot about the mental side of training, and for that, I thank him. Of course that is important, but he obviously avoids talking about training. If there wasn't anything to it, why hide it?

Look, you can't just say "it's all the same" for workouts. Different coaches do VERY DIFFERENT THINGS. Some run 30mpw, some do 80+. Some only do continuous tempo-style work, some only do short repeats. Some only do long repeats. Some do track work, some do not. How you can possibly think that the actual workouts you do DOESN'T MATTER baffles me beyond comprehension.

Really. wrote:

Clearly, no one is going to come forward with any useful information, and unless the Arises say something about training, we can only assume they are afraid of being dethroned.

Bill Aris has done clinics and has explained a lot about the mental side of training, and for that, I thank him. Of course that is important, but he obviously avoids talking about training. If there wasn't anything to it, why hide it?

Probably a lack of confidence in their training program.

Practice,Practice,Practice. thats how I made it to Broadway.

To those that have spoken with their runners, what did they say about training?

Like I said before, I ran for FM but I don't want to write an essay rambling about training. If you have a question I'd be more than happy to answer it.

I know a D1 coach of a team that has qualified for nationals and he is hesitant to recruit the FM kids.

AMA wrote:

Like I said before, I ran for FM but I don't want to write an essay rambling about training. If you have a question I'd be more than happy to answer it.

ok. Do you think you worked harder than other teams? What is an example of a workout that you think was very hard?

longlongruns wrote:

There are only 800 kids in North Shore HS. They have had 4 8th graders move up since 2004. I think Cali has the advantage here with sometimes 3000+ students in some of their schools (I don't know the exact number, just know it's way more than North Shore). To be fair, maybe their should be a small school race for schools like North Shore and Tatnall.

Some cali schools have 5000 kids. Like long beach poly. Ofc they are going to be better. Not just because of a larger talent pool, but because you can find more motivated kids when you have more and therefore build a program easier than a school of 1500 or 2000.

I ran for FM also. First the Arises are masters at motivating and inspiring and bringing teams of runners to individual/team greatmess, in incredible fashion far beyond comprehension. shows in every runner and team they coach. The second thing I can tell you is that the sessions are far too complex and different, on so many levels that there's no way youd ever get it by hearing a few workouts. Everything was periodized, but different for every single runner there was a different plan. I never understood much of it, couldn't tell you most of it because their workouts were so diverse, and every single workout was slightly or majorly different from the next and last. Im sorry to tell you that you'd be making a mistake by doing one or two workouts and shooting at your own runners. Their plans went years deep, not weeks. If you wanted an idea of how to do it right, I'd suggest you move to the FM district, raising a family and getting your kids to these guys as quickly as possible. The more time to work with them you have, the greater you get. The most crucial part was that we all improved almost every single major time we raced. I remember watching my teammate Owen Kimple jump from a 4:14 to a 4:07 in the 1600 for the state championship just by listening to an insane plan that worked so well it was literally beyond sanity. You want to improve by reading some workouts? Dude, youre missing out on the truth of their coaching program. Can't duplicate personalities.

AMA wrote:

Like I said before, I ran for FM but I don't want to write an essay rambling about training. If you have a question I'd be more than happy to answer it.

Well there were many questions throughout the thread. Just maybe not direct questions. You don't have to write an essay. A lot can be learned about a program from a few lines. Things like:

Mileage. We understand there are individual variances but were most really high mileage (90+) or was it more around 60 mpw?

Longest run?

How many workouts a week?

Was it a threshold/aerobic style or fast intervals style program? Example workouts?

What was summer training like?

What do you consider staples of the program (things you did daily, weekly, monthly and annual workouts/time trails)?

Is it similar to Saratoga where it is workout after workout or are there more simple easy running days?

Or if you feel inclined enough "a complete two-week schedule from July, September, and November".

Not much writing but would clear up so much.

I don't think Et Tu Brute ran for us. I could be wrong, but he seems like a troll.

I understand I could clear things up with little writing, but I'm lazy and don't feel like writing without direction.

A huge proponent of Aris training is that he changes his training plan yearly. He says at the end of every track season that he is throwing out the training logs and starting over, so that makes it somewhat difficult to give a blanket training week for all the successful teams they have had over the years. Summer/xc training is very different than track. Summer training starts at the end of June where you're expected to be close to max mileage. That mileage is held through out the summer and into fall as workouts are slowly mixed in. Summer workouts are all tempo type stuff. Tempos, progressions, fartleks, etc that increase in frequency and intensity as the summer goes along. Once the season gets started, workouts are still strength based but still very spontaneous. Lots of threshold workouts based off of time, loops, hills, etc that can be up to 2 hours of total work. Track is much more structured. Once the snow clears they do pretty standard stuff. If I had to label a staple of the training program it would be time trials. Both in xc and track the aris's implement tt's often.

Mileage varies a ton by gender and age. The 04, 05 guys who had been training consistently since they were freshmen hit around 90 the summer of their senior year. But the Aris's had been grooming them since they were 14. Runners like Alex Hatz and the more recent guys team top out around 60-70. Girls are fairly similar but a lot of supplemental exercises have been added to replace running. So a girl might run 30 to 50 mpw but puts a considerable amount of time in on the bike, in the pool, or running easily on grass.

July: Base training with two tempo type workouts and one long run, maybe a few doubles if you're a senior. A workout that sticks out is a 45 minute progression run.

September: Similar to July, workouts become more structured...or as structured as an Aris workout can be. Basically he has a time and goal in mind and keeps you on your toes. Run this loop, that loop, this hill until he is satisfied. He does a great job of explaining the point of the workout beforehand. Whether it is to get stronger at hills, work this physiological system, or improve speed. But rarely gives you the complete details of the workout beforehand.

November: Workouts begin to resemble more traditional type efforts. 2 mile or 1 mile tt's are common. Ladders going up, down, or both from 1 to 5 minutes were something we did a lot. Rarely hit the track except for time trials. The peaking phase was something Aris preached on end. I don't know if it was mental or if it was the training, probably a combination of both, but anyone who is very familiar with FM knows how they improve at the end of the season.

I was on the team for three years, ran in every championship season, and scored. And everything I said is fact from personal experience.

The material you've shared is similar to many other successful programs out there. And if this is what you did for training (some of it close to what I did but things got far more in depth and serious once Bill took over in 2004) then I'll assume you ran for FM prior to 2004, or were a back of the packer who never really saw the real magic.

I can say this, anyone close to Bill or John would never be trying to give hand outs for attention. You may have been on the FM teams, but you are no Stotan.