Suicidal PAAVO training cult

I've been a victim for 3 years and now as a high school senior have seen the light and moved over to Jack Daniels...talk about not getting your bang for your buck..if you enjoy training your ASS of and seeing minimal results, then PAAVO is for you

then you are doing it wronge. race shocking is only to be practiced in the early stages of the season, to test what kind of pace you can go out in. you never race shock when you intend to run a personal best or qualify for states or win a race, race shocking is a tool to learn more about yourself as a runner and to prepare yourself for going out at fast speeds in big races. paavo works great, but its a very specific system, and if you or your coach are not paying good attention at camp, or you are to lazy to follow the rules, then yes you wont see much success. go figure.

Van, did you happen to go to one of their coaches clinics? Or am I the only coach who ever went to one of their camps and smelled bullshit?

happy little paavo is right. If you do the training methods to the T, they will work out. Look at Columbus North High School in Columbus Indiana. One of the top Cross Country teams in teh nation. A bunch of nobodies who run under a coach who uses the PAAVO system and uses it correctly. It takes time. Pennsylvania's state champ uses it too. But, like any training method, it doesn't work for everyone.

I ran paavo to the T for 10 weeks one summer. I did every run as well as can be expected meaning that I was a high school runner who was expected to run a perfect pace for 5 miles. Well my story is that one week I ran a 15 second pr for 3 miles and then two weeks later I ran 2 minutes slower then I had. I then had to take a couple days off and weeks of easy mileage to try to get where I was. That is my story and I am staying with it. As a guy on my team once said paavo sucks.

Who or what in the bejesus is PAAVO? What is his/her/its major malfunction?

There's nothing wrong with running an all-out mile or 3000 early in the season when not at peak fitness, its a quick way to get in shape. I know nothing about this program but I suspect that its just a little like reminded the body how to run fast again without the long drawn-out gradual approach.

I did something like that one year training on my own, once a week for about 8 weeks. Went from running 4:36 and 9:20 3000 to 9:10,9:00, 8:55 , 8:45, 8:38. Once a week time trials. Once I got to that point I felt I could begin more conventional training. Maybe an unusual approach but I pr.d for 10,000 later that year.

Doesn't sound like you ran it to the T. Were you doing the PPM Program for 10 weeks? or did you try and move into Slow Intervals?

ol' "marsh" is quite the salesman isn't he? i actually incorporated aspects of it into my track program years ago with some success, but in general, it is not specific enough to do what needs done for each individual event.

but yeah it is more like a religious revival than a clinic sometimes...although i have ssen the same effect on a room when joe newton speaks.

i think it will only work with athletes who won't question anything you tell them to do...no matter how insane it sounds!

The rigidity probably what turned me off about PAAVO more than anything. Shouldn't we as coaches be encouraging our athletes to listen to their bodies and think for themselves?

To answer Jason, PAAVO is a training philosophy compiled by Marshall Sellers, an Indiana HS coach. It's a high-intensity program that works well in the short term, but could very easily get out of hand. There are a lot of coaches in the midwest who swear by the method. One aspect is time each distance run (called PPMs for Pace Per Mile, these are like tempo or threshold runs). There is little or no "down time" in the PAAVO program, and an individual who breaks down easily could be in big trouble.

If Marshall Sellers really wants to do the world of distance running a service, he would publish the PAAVO program rather than sharing the knowledge through this cult-like series of clinics and camps. I went to the one-day camp and was told I'd have to go (and pay for!) another camp to really understand how things go together. I'd seen enough.

Three questions:

1. Athletes who've been through a PAAVO program, I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts on how PAAVO promotes long-term development.

2. Coaches who use PAAVO, something has to be right about it because a lot of coaches get very good results. But, as Quentin Cassidy says, "there are no secrets". How does PAAVO relate to established training principles known to most coaches?

3. If PAAVO is as revolutionary as many HS coaches seem to think it is, how come NO ONE outside of the limited world of American HS running uses the program?

My first question:

What science is PAAVO based on?

My second question:

Who are long term successes of PAAVO?

Usher...like you, I am a HS coach. I am not an apologist for the Paavo system; I think it has major flaws. It does, however, have some "good" points. I spent some time a few years ago trying to wade through the junk they pass out at clinics; I found their material poorly organized and their presentation circular (minus the questionable pace charts, a description of the system can be condensed into a single page). Their clinics could easily be presented in an hour. Looking at examples of a season's workouts was valuable, however, and show at least a little logic and some redeeming features to the system.

Positives:

1.Progression on several levels(it uses a leveling system based on performance tests; this is a trait advocated by Frank Horwill, who designed the style of training Coe used throughout his career).Adjustments in quantity and speed are based on performance, experience, and having successfully completed similar workouts.

2. Individualization (Speed and volume).

3. There's a sequence that build from one cycle to the next: First "PPM runs" (basically, AT runs); then slow intervals (400's to start, with 4 min jogs - sounds like a Daniels rep workout); then pace, fast intervals, Etc.

From that standpoint, there are some sound principles at work. Pulse counts for recovery, individualized, progressive workouts (with at least some connection to reality) - these aren't bad things.

Negative:

1. The Pace chart system they use creates unequal workouts for different ability levels. These should have been done based on a percentage of the test time. If you use %of time as a guide, 4:30 milers are doing RELATIVELY easier workouts than 6:00 milers, who are running at a far higher % of max (which is what you get for saying "a minute slower than PR mile" for every athlete. Rewrking these would make the system sounder physiologically, and more productive.

2. A peak system unlike any other. The quantity and quality of workouts in the last week is imposing. Certainly unlike what most championship teams do throughout the country, Paavo has kids doing more - and faster - the last week than anywhere else in the cycle.

3. Race shocking. Enough said.

Honestly, there are a number of other systems out there that do the same things. I love it when people play that game of "look, I'VE got the SECRET training formula for greatness". Paavo is another example. There are some decent principles involved; in the hands of a good coach (like our esteemed colleague from Columbus North, IN), you could make this work. But there are simpler - and just as effective - programs out there. There are many roads to Rome; Daniels, Coe, Lydiard, Vigil, Bowerman...all are effective if you use them correctly.

past paavo runner:

Ten weeks is about the time it takes to do summer base training. The paavo program call's for different phases of training, alot like lydiard. so to use paavo for ten weeks and say it doesnt work, well thats to use one phase of the lydiard method and say it sucks when things dont work out, or to say ANY method of training can be properly evaluated in ten weeks. success in distance running, no matter how you approach it, paavo lydiard hadd jk, requires dedication and long term planning. so if you failed to reach your goals, it was not because paavo is flawed, but your dedication was. its one thing to be dedicated to running, its another to be dedicated to success, and you cannot simply give up every time things get tough.

also, paavo is no secret. runners are encouraged to return to their home teams with all of their notes and stories and encourage there teams to take advantage of this experience. there is no hiding the log book and saying "paavos only", instead we are encouraged to be team leaders and help others to gain from what we have learned. sure marshall doesnt come on here and leave long posts describing how to become a better runner, to be honest im not sure he would even know how to get on here. the man is very busy, and as a result he makes available his coaching and expertise at clinics and camps, you want it, you can seek him out. so is he being secretive by not going about pushing his knowledge down your throats? no he is being a buisness man and a human being, he can only do so much, and its not his responsibility to seek out each runner and make sure we are educated, he has done as much as he can to help as many as he can.

tmk says that there are simpler programs that can accomplish the same thing. to that i would say these camps are meant for the high school runner. more simple programs might help the established runner, but to sit the average high school runner down with a book by lydiard and say "read this and improve" is expecting alot of understanding and experience with the sport that the average high school kid does not have. so while paavo may be complex, it is that way to properly approach its intended audience.

The logic of that last paragraph completely escapes me. To be a more advanced runner is to use a simpler system? Yet a high school runner...aw, the heck with it. Lydiard is 500,000 times more understandable. I read it in HS and had NO problem understanding what he was saying (unlike, my friend, the 2 Paavo clinics I went to); If your point is to say the Paavo system works, great. My point - as a coach - is that the Paavo principles have many common threads with other programs. A gifted coach can use any program that gets the basics right to produce successful teams. It's about coaching kids, not running a system into the ground. That's not coaching by a long shot.

the paavo ruined me my sr yr of high school, and probably my sr yr of xc, too. it's psuedo-science that accidentally hits on some good training principles, but if that gets some kids to really run that otherwise might not, i suppose that's good.

it did give me the opportunity to break a YMCA treadmill improvising an all-out mile during a blizzard, though.

van wrote:

Even the training runs call for "running an all-out mile" and then settling in to steady pace.

Is it just me, or does anyone else have issues with the habit some people have of saying do an all out Xdistance and then... ?

And then what????? Seems to me, if you go "all out", then you're done for a little bit.

This is not directed at Van as I know he is quoting, but I am just saying, it bugs the HECK out of me when people say that.

I know a number of runners who went through the PAAVO system in high school, and there is one surefire thing that they all possessed: alot of injuries. I know there are a number of schools that used this program a few years back in Indiana and may still be doing it, with the coach from Elkhart Central being one of the big pushers of it. I don't think there is a team that has consistently been good that uses this system. From what I know of it, you run real hard until you get hurt, recover, then repeat until you hate to run.

JEH, I am fond of calling "running all out for x distance" a race, but that is just me... and you are right, when I do that I am done for a bit.