HS coaches, do lots of intervals with your newbies

abcrunning wrote:

My daughter just finished her freshman year. She just started running and I would say that her training was much tougher than I ever expected she was injured once unable to run for couple of weeks and I’m pretty sure at some point every single kid from freshman to senior was injured.

During the track season they would do 2-3 interval sessions depending of the kids running experience and then race every single weekend I thought that her coach was nuts but it seems like most HS coaches follow this type of training.

Now that the season is over the team was told to take 2-3 weeks off from running to start all over again in mid June apparently they will build up for 8 weeks before they start training for XC.

She's probably running her easy days too hard. Sounds like she has 3-4 recovery days out of 7 in a given week. That's where you stave off injury.

Or slow the intervals down

CoachB wrote:

Lenny Leonard wrote:

She's probably running her easy days too hard. Sounds like she has 3-4 recovery days out of 7 in a given week. That's where you stave off injury.

Or slow the intervals down

Bad idea.

CoachB wrote:

There, I said it.

Flame away

Sort of a troll headline but it is probably right. Let's say you have a newbie. You can send them out and have them run for say 20 mins or you can do an interval workout of say 15*2 with 60s walk at the same pace and get closer to 30 mins of work in.

For the more advanced guys things like 20*400 at 10k-hm pace gets you a nice amount of volume in a pretty tolerable workout. Or even things like 3 mile warm up, 8*30s hills(call it like 15mins with walking down the hill) 3 mile cool down is something a lot of kids find more tolerable than just running 7 miles and you get a bit of working on running fast in.

People have some adversion to intervals cause their first thought is 8*400 as hard as possible with 90s rest. Intervals doesn't have to mean some huge anaerobic session.

CoachB wrote:

Lenny Leonard wrote:

She's probably running her easy days too hard. Sounds like she has 3-4 recovery days out of 7 in a given week. That's where you stave off injury.

Or slow the intervals down

This is the likely problem. Kid was probably running 400s at like 2400m pace instead of 5000m. I know it took me a while to figure out as fast as possible wasn't the best training strategy. And my easy runs were probably 20-30s too fast.

For what it's worth, I always started fall swimming season with shorter repeats as I coached at a non scholarship college and the majority of my team arrived without much summer training. Short repeats with short rest helped maintain integrity of stroke technique and reduced "intensity injuries".

For the post-grad adult runners I coach now, I find the same is true for getting them back in shape effectively and safely.

I was coaching mostly elementary school kids and did drills, hurdles, cones, and short sprint races. They'd want to come back to keep racing the sprints. Plenty started dropping out when I tried to get more serious by having them do 8-10x300 (approx), but one thing that got them running happily for as much as 40 minutes were 3-4 person relays with a baton where they just ran a lap down the soccer field and back, about 32 yards out, maybe about 70 yards each lap with the turns. I wasn't able to get some of the best to actually do the races, as they had soccer or other sports, but I'm hoping this fall to get more. I expect my son to build on a strong performance last year when he was doing only about 4-8 mpw but added about 1 1/2 of novice swim team most weeks.

Added 1 1/2 hours of novice swim team practice, I meant to say.

Really important for the hs kids in programs just starting out not to just be left to their own devices on the weekends and to send them out unsupervised for 20-30 minute runs around the school where they have a tendency to walk or dog it.

the clear answer wrote:

Sham 69 wrote:

EXACTLY!

We already did 3 interval workouts last week!

Intervals are GREAT for high school runners.

Today we are doing our very first fartleg! Yay!

#TrainingEnthusiasm

#Luv2Run

#ChristianityRocks

Hi Shamin!

fartleg

I played on the basketball team all 4 years of high school. I never ran cross country. Played basketball from June thru the mid/late January. Started training for track towards the end of January. My highest mileage week was probably 8 miles. 800 meter personal best in high school was 1:56 and I never had an injury. Walked onto a D1 track program. Began running 40 plus miles a week and cross country. I developed every injury in the book and only got down to 1:54. I'm grateful I was able to walk on but that mileage was horrible for me.

How do you determine whether a kid has developed into enough of an athlete to start "real training"? Is there a certain time they should be able to break for the 800m or 1600m?

If they haven't developed over the course of a season to athlete status, how do you modify your plan to get them there?

it worked for me freshman year

Ping Pong Prince wrote:

How do you determine whether a kid has developed into enough of an athlete to start "real training"? Is there a certain time they should be able to break for the 800m or 1600m?

If they haven't developed over the course of a season to athlete status, how do you modify your plan to get them there?

The interval method is considered "real trsining" to those who use it.

Nevertheless, If you send a kid out on a run and they can't hold a pace with decent form and mechanics then they're not ready for steady mileage. It's also why some kids wont be given "I pace" work that lasts longer than 3 minutes while others might be given bouts that last 4+ minutes ie....6x800 vs 5x1000 vs 4x1200

CoachB wrote:

There, I said it.

Flame away

High school coaching in this country is absolutely the worst. Its crap

What do you expect when the goal is an extra stipend?

A HS coach could do nothing and beyond getting them to meets by bus and they'd run faster each week. Instead they flog the kids and the majority have little technical knowledge they can pass on.

Only the best ever care about developing the athlete. Most of the time they equate that to meet wins and times. I'd be surprised if a HS athlete understood anymore about the sport from the beginning of their HS career to the end.

Certainly only a very few ever really benefit from their HS experience

coach wrote:

Ping Pong Prince wrote:

How do you determine whether a kid has developed into enough of an athlete to start "real training"? Is there a certain time they should be able to break for the 800m or 1600m?

If they haven't developed over the course of a season to athlete status, how do you modify your plan to get them there?

The interval method is considered "real trsining" to those who use it.

Nevertheless, If you send a kid out on a run and they can't hold a pace with decent form and mechanics then they're not ready for steady mileage. It's also why some kids wont be given "I pace" work that lasts longer than 3 minutes while others might be given bouts that last 4+ minutes ie....6x800 vs 5x1000 vs 4x1200

This is about right. With the newbies, I periodically will have them run 20 minutes continuous on the track, this way, I can keep an eye on their mechanics, see if they're dying, slowing significantly, etc.... When a kid gets to where they can run 20 minutes fairly comfortably, maybe covering 9.5-10 laps for boys and 8.5-9 laps for girls, they get to do a bit more road running. The transition is often to run out to the canal and back (about 1.8 miles round trip) and keep track of splits. They should be able to come back in the same time as they went out. A "long" run might be a 2.75 mile loop that the varsity kids use for a warm up. So, as we transition, a harder day might be 2.75 miles comfortably followed by 4 x 200 @ about 6 minute test pace. An easy day might be Canal and Back with a bunch of core and other ancillary exercises.

There really is no timeline for these steps. Some kids spend only 2-3 weeks doing the most fundamental stuff, some spend 6-8 weeks. Some never transition out (these are mostly the kids who are extremely out of shape, overweight, having biomechanical flaws, etc....They will often spend a lot of time on our bikes and ellipticals).

For the kids who are adapting well, we next will extend the "long" run out to 3.2-4.4 miles (just a couple of loops we have around town, nothing special about those distances). We'll also introduce the concept of tempo running. I used to try and use a pace chart for the newbies, but now I just have them go out 10 minutes slightly faster than a normal easy run and then try to make it back to school in 10 min or less. They have to continue for the full 20 minutes, so sometimes they'll have to tack an extra minute on the track.

Around this time, the "Canal and Back" runs get replaced with the 2.75 varsity warm up loop as the base level of running on easy days.

We try to keep the strength / core / circuit stuff pretty high. The experienced kids will always do some sort of: Core, agility, general athletic stuff before heading out on whatever run they're doing for the day. It's really only on the hard workout days that we scale the ancillary work back significantly.

luckylucky lucky wrote:

CoachB wrote:

There, I said it.

Flame away

High school coaching in this country is absolutely the worst. Its crap

What do you expect when the goal is an extra stipend?

A HS coach could do nothing and beyond getting them to meets by bus and they'd run faster each week. Instead they flog the kids and the majority have little technical knowledge they can pass on.

Only the best ever care about developing the athlete. Most of the time they equate that to meet wins and times. I'd be surprised if a HS athlete understood anymore about the sport from the beginning of their HS career to the end.

Certainly only a very few ever really benefit from their HS experience

Hahaha. Mission Accomplished

Didnt read through the whole thread but there's nothing wrong with intervals for newbies. It gives you a chance to actually watch the kid run, and it keeps the kid dialed in. Can you think of anything less appealing than going out for a sport, and being told to go do a distance run every day?

Too me that would make me thing I had joined a jogging club, not a track team. You have to keep their attention, and track work, hills etc.. do that.

luckylucky lucky wrote:

CoachB wrote:

There, I said it.

Flame away

High school coaching in this country is absolutely the worst. Its crap

What do you expect when the goal is an extra stipend?

A HS coach could do nothing and beyond getting them to meets by bus and they'd run faster each week. Instead they flog the kids and the majority have little technical knowledge they can pass on.

Only the best ever care about developing the athlete. Most of the time they equate that to meet wins and times. I'd be surprised if a HS athlete understood anymore about the sport from the beginning of their HS career to the end.

Certainly only a very few ever really benefit from their HS experience

Easy to be a jerk when you are anonymous. Next time, explain what you think they need to incorporate, or you are just a whiny brat.

I like repeat 1600s out in lane 3, really try to turn over and get that SPEED going so you can feel in in the race.