Cole Hocker: A key to my success was that I barely ran in HS (30 mpw)

Sham69 is the true evidence for not going over 30 mpw, he ran 4:27 off that

Hocker who

Thousands across the country are running 25-35 mpw in HS. Only a few (if that) per year are running under a 4:10 or 9:00 3200m. This comes strictly down to talent.

Very talented runners can always get away with less because their talent is so far greater. The risk with a talented runner is always injury. So for Hocker, it makes sense, but not for most.

There is a lot of truth behind his statement, especially boys since they physically don’t stop growing until later. It’s easy for coaches to push mileage on growing kids and get an immediate result, unfortunately this often causes the kid to plateau in high school and not improve in college. Berryhill was a similar athlete (low mileage in high school, played multiple sports) and improved dramatically in college as he gradually increased mileage over time.

Life would be easy if we could just train kids up to 30 miles per week and let them land where they land. But when you have that 4:20, 4:30, 4:40 kid, guess what? They are gonna want to work harder to beat the kid who is 5 or 10 seconds faster than them. There parents are going to expect it. They are going to ask questions and wonder why you are working their kid as hard as athlete x from school y.

If that kid is running 4:05/8:55 off the low miles, dominating every meet and winning states, less questions are asked and people are satisfied.

But really driven kids usually want to improve to be the best in the league, section, region, on and on. Most kids are not going to show satisfactory improvement on 30 mpw.

If you actually read the article, the point that Hocker is trying to make is he was able to developed into the runner he is today because he didn't overtrain and it probably helped prevent injury. I think that he knows his natural talent is an important part of the equation, but the low mileage allowed for plenty of development in college and kept him injury free so he could keep improving. We are seeing a lot of fast high schoolers, but how many of them are on high mileage, college level training, or have a private coach? How detrimental is that to their development after college.

I can speak from experience that high mileage for talented high schoolers is a bit of a meat grinder. The top runners ran over 60 miles/week in the heart of the season. I was able to get through it myself, but every year we had talented runners get injured or quit because we were encouraged to push through it. In retrospect, some more pool days or easy days probably would have help. We used to run doubles almost every week day, and do 4 hard days a week (1 or 2 race days, 2 or 3 workout days). In the end, few actually survived after four years.

runningram wrote:

It’s easy for coaches to push mileage on growing kids and get an immediate result, unfortunately this often causes the kid to plateau in high school and not improve in college.

They plateau because they reach their potential sooner, not because the high mileage at a young age has reduced their ceiling. If you have two years of pretty consistently hitting 90 mpw, you're going to get close to your potential. Improvement beyond that, particularly at shorter distances, is typically quite marginal after that. Americans have this weird idea that it takes years and years and years to get good at running, but that's just not true.

There are two reasons to keep mileage moderate for younger runners. First is avoiding injury, as aerobic fitness can outstrip the strength of one's bones and connective tissue (which does get stronger in response to training, but slowly). For most runners, however, 30 mpw is WAY fewer miles than necessary to avoid injury. The second reason is psychological. A slow progression keeps the athlete engaged because they continue to make incremental improvements. The athlete also has more opportunity to develop an intrinsic love of the sport and of training, so that he hopefully adopts a professional level of dedication on his own, vs. being pushed to adopt that approach early on, before he decides it's what he want.

I suppose we could add a third reason, but it's not really ideal from a training perspective: College coaches love low mileage runners. A low mileage runner is like a scratch-off lottery ticket; the runner just might be a superstar once you build up the mileage. Plus it makes the coach look really good if the runner improves after joining the program. A high mileage runner, by contrast, is closer to the finished article.

He ran1:50, 4:07 and 8:56 in high school and I would contend what got him a scholarship to Oregon was the 1:50 800m. Had he run 50-60 miles a week in high school I don’t doubt he would of gone sub 4. He basically got the free ride to the big school because of his speed. As Brazier has shown you don’t need much mileage to be great at the 800.

Plenty of kids will never end up running in college, or doing the best they could've in high school because they were 4:30-4:40 milers off 15-20 mpw.

I think somewhere in the middle, doing 40-60 with a focus on putting down a base of aerobic development for the future and speed work that doesn't kill you would produce the best results, with modifications from person to person.

StravaStalker wrote:

Can be summed down to one word: Talent

If he would have ran more in high school, he would have had faster high school times. And he might be slightly faster now if he had gotten himself faster in high school.

Yes, he was able to 'develop' so much in college because he FINALLY started running more. He could have been doing this early in life and be slightly above where he is now. Maybe if he ran more in high school his indoor mile time would have been 0.2 seconds faster.

If the key to success is not running very much then there should be a crap load of fast people. But it seems to be those who run more are generally faster than those who do not run very much. These articles are stupid, just getting people excited who don't work very hard that 'hey, I don't run very much so maybe I'll be really fast too!'

This is a key to improvement/not having fulfilled his potential in high school, not success now

I don't get all the praise for hs coaches who undertrain their runners when 99% of the kids they coach are never going to accomplish anything on the next level.

Why have a crop of 4:45 guys running 30 mpw and not doing intense workouts? Maybe they could be 4:15-20 guys and run in college if they were doing real training...

This is the best answer. It's rubbish to think that mileage is bad. If someone is running fast off of 30 miles per week for a mid distance or distance runner, they are going to run faster when they run 50 miles per week with everything else the same as long as they don't get injured.

Nearly every top American ran low mileage through HS and continued to develop later. Data doesn't lie. There is something about higher mileage in HS that seems to plateau runners earlier which limits their ultimate ceiling.

go nude wrote:

Nearly every top American ran low mileage through HS and continued to develop later. Data doesn't lie. There is something about higher mileage in HS that seems to plateau runners earlier which limits their ultimate ceiling.

Show your work.

The "As long as they don't get injured" provision is a huge reason not to train young kids at that mileage. Boys don't typically stop growing vertically until about 16, which means if you are a high school coach desperate to win a cross country title and you are pushing growing kids to run 50, 60, 70 or more miles per week, you can cause them to have low bone density that will subject them to injuries for the rest of their life. It is better to build slowly over time, work speed when they are younger and pile successful, injury-free season on top of injury-free season. No coach should ever sacrifice the health of an athlete in an attempt to win a championship for their own glory.

This is a little silly. Plenty of kids get injuries at 30mpw. Plenty of kids never have an injury at 50-60 or even 70+ mpw in high school. It's not the volume that gets people injured. It's the lack of balance in their training. Lots of kids get injured less once they've carefully built their mileage. They can handle the strain of their workouts and races more easily. Especially considering the hectic racing schedule of high schoolers.

Very kind of Hocker to give credit to his high school coach though.

It's a myth that mileage is the primary cause of injuries. More often, it's improper recovery between hard workouts, failure to take the time to create a foundation in the offseason, and lack of sleep for the body to repair.

Following up an intense workout too soon after another intense workout is a recipe for disaster. I've coached plenty of high mileage kids that had few injuries and continued to develop during their college years. I've also seen many kids in low mileage programs stay constantly injured because their coach believes in "quality over quantity" so they never develop a base and they don't recover between track sessions.

Most of my high mileage kids never got injured if they followed the plan and were consistent with their offseason training. The ones who neglected the offseason training and showed up at the beginning of the season to start training were the most likely to get injured. They also were on fairly low mileage.

There is much more to the equation than high mileage equals injuries and low mileage equals success. We didn't see a resurgence in American distance running beginning in the early 2000s because everyone switched to low mileage plans. In fact, it was the opposite. American distance running was trash in the 1990s because everyone believed that "quality" training was superior to "quantity" training. Everyone went to low mileage and frequent track workouts. That began to change with the advent of the internet and people learning that the best runners were putting in mileage. I remember the 2004 documentary "Five Thousand Meters" that followed the runners attempting to make the Olympic A standard of 13:21. Ultimately only 2 athletes were able to do that in 2004. The US currently has 21 men under 13:20.

We have experienced a resurgence in US distance running because the majority are putting in the mileage. Cole Hocker is an extreme talent and could excel on low mileage in high school but you do a disservice to all of the other athletes who require significant training to reach a level of relative success. Hocker's former high school only produced one sub 4:40 miler this year. Those kids are nowhere near their potential by running 30 miles per week and most will never get the chance to continue their careers to find out what is possible.

go nude wrote:

Nearly every top American ran low mileage through HS and continued to develop later. Data doesn't lie. There is something about higher mileage in HS that seems to plateau runners earlier which limits their ultimate ceiling.

Proof of this other than just saying it? What is this data you're talking about? I've never heard of such a study being done.

Clayton Murphy ran about 25 a week in HS

Right around the time Runner's World came out with front page articles like "15 minute workouts to improve your PR's."