World-class athletes must begin training before the onset of puberty or they almost certainly won’t be great

I don’t worry about this sort of thing. Whatever will be will be. There is some truth to what you say but too much too soon can also be detrimental.

Nonsense. The great athletes are genetically pre programmed to be great athletes if they do the right training post puberty.

Pre puberty, general all round conditioning is all that is required.

A counterpoint: Dennis Kimetto, who started running in his mid 20s allegedly.

I don’t know, it’s hard for me to think of an athlete who didn’t take up his/her sport until they were 18 or so, who became really really great.

I looked him up, and that does seem remarkable. He started training at about the age of 24? I’ve never heard of anybody like him. I wonder if he had a background in some other sport?

You're absolutely wrong. You need to sit down and _ _ _ _

Ok, in what way? What is your view?

Each and every paragraph is a false premise.

Super-legend Henry Rono didn't start running until he was 19. wasn't world class until age 26.

OP’s point is probably correct about some sports like gymnastics, figure skating, maybe tennis and some sports that require either high skills or youth. But I guess that is rather obvious. We can never know whether Henry Rono reached his potential but he was so damn good that it is sort of pointless for me to question it.

His Wikipedia page says he ran in primary school. Is this incorrect?

Yes, at 19 years old. That's Kenya, not the USA.

OK, that makes sense, I think. Does he represent the norm? I mean, are there a lot of world-class runners, or athletes in other sports, who don’t take up their sport until after they are finished with puberty and fully grown?

That's true for skill sports, like tennis, gymnastics, soccer, basketball, etc.

But it's not true for running. If someone starts running in 9th grade and they have world class natural ability, then they can still become a world class runner in their 20's.

If they didn't start running until after high school, then it would probably be too late at that point.

I'm one of them. At 22 (top 10 in the world) I didn't look a day over 17.

Whoa - you never ran before 22?

Even in soccer, apparently GKs do not have to start early to become world class. Matt Turner, the starting GK of Team USA, did not start playing soccer until age 14. He walked on to a college team in mid-major (Fairfield). He was not drafted by an MLS team and later signed with NE Revolution and was loaned to a USL1 team where he spent the first two seasons. NE eventually called him up, and after four seasons in MLS, he was signed by Arsenal. He didn't join the National Team until last year at age 27.

I learned all this while watching USA-Netherlands this morning, and thought "how is that even possible?"

And in track & field, we have Donald Thomas.

en.wikipedia.org

Donald Thomas (high jumper)

Donald Thomas (born 1 July 1984) is a Bahamian high jumper from Freeport, Bahamas. Biography Thomas initially played basketball at Bishop Michael Eldon School in Freeport Bahamas, before taking up high jump in January 2006 wh...

Open link

I made this post two years ago but I think it’s pretty spot on for this topic. I totally agree with you OP, except what you say is true for slow twitch type runners but runners with a lot of natural speed won’t need what you’re saying. That’s why you see a lot of 800/1500 runners who didn’t do much training as teenagers become really good but you won’t see an all time great 5k/10k runner who didn’t play A LOT of aerobic sports during his development.

The post was an answer to someone who was talking about some « African genetic superiority » :

[1/2]

OK ? Then take a slow twitch kid, make him run 10km from and to school everyday from his early youth, put him on altitude training, and almost no intense and fast work. That's what most of the fastest ever east Africans distance runners did as youngsters (Barega, Bekele, Kipchoge etc).

Just take 10 white slow twitch kids, put them on the same thing, and if they can handle it you'll end up with some world class runners, and that's what Jakob did, and I'm sad that there are not more western kids doing the same.

If you look at the stats, the most important thing in running is by far being very active from an early age.

You have a lot of type of activities which can achieve this same goal, but you'll find being very active from an early age is the common point in 95% of world class distance runners (this does not include the 800m which rely much more on natural speed).

You can have a lot of type of activites which achieve this goal :

- Jakob, structured training program from his early days, with focus on developing his aerobic base and his running technique

- Jimmy Gressier, grew up in the streets, coming from another sport, 3 hours of football (soccer) everyday his whole life, it builds a big aerobic base (think about it, a 12 years old playing 3 hours of soccer everyday runs a way bigger weekly mileage than a typical middle school runner who runs 2 to 3 times a week for 45 min), and it even develops sprint speed as a bonus. This insane training made him good at soccer (semi finalist at the world school championship 2014), but even better at running, so he eventually choosed running when he was 17. I think Grant Fisher did the same.

- El Guerrouj type, very few peoples know it but El Guerrouj did something which can be similar to Jakob (but with way less resources obviously). He played soccer his early days, then switched to running because he used to ruin his clothes playing soccer, loved it, and ran everyday, just because it was the most logical thing for him to improve, without knowing that peoples say that you shouldn't train a lot if you're young. By the time he was 15 (freshman in highschool) he was training 13 TIMES A WEEK, if an American kid was training as much as a freshman in highschool, most of you would say burnout and other BS on letsrun. At 16 he moved to Rabat to stop school and get a structured training in the national institute with the best coach in the country. (How can you think you'll be better than this type of guys, Jakob, Hicham if you're focusing mostly on school and only rely on your natural talent to eventually be competitive at the world level, while they're running twice your mileage and literally living to become good at track.)

- The "east African" type, young slow twitch runners, running/walking a lot of miles everyday, before even reaching teenage years. A lot of aerobic base building, allowing them to handle a lot more training and improve much more when they start structured training. It might sound a little « cliché » but the fact is that Kipchoge, Barega, Bekele and a lot of others who became all time greats ran from and to school everyday.

- Henrik type, similar to Gressier, building his aerobic base without running, but by doing a lot of XC skiing (was a youth national champion in norway) He then choosed to focus entirely in running, and this big aerobic base gave him an unfair advantage over the others.

- Sebastien Coe type (not comparable to the others because he's much more gifted in natural speed, so it could make up the gap even without a huge aerobic base, but that's still interesting) Trained by his father, who didn't know much about the " holy principles" of running in Europe and America, but rather testing everything and focusing on what works with his kid, and not what is recommended by a scientist who has never run a mile in his life.

Commons points between these runners :

- They all got the most out of their natural talent.

- They all did what they wanted and thought was the best, without caring about what a so called expert said is good for long term development (the exemple of Peter Coe and Seb) Some even built a huge base WITHOUT knowing it, like Gressier, if they started running earlier with a coach, they likely would not have been world class because the coach would have regulated their training and therefore prevented the building of the huge aerobic base they got thanks to playing other sports.

- They all had an insanely active youth, I believe there's a golden age when you're young, in which your body reacts a lot more to training, and they got a "super body" thanks to being active at that age, allowing them to handle an insane load of training without being overtrained and getting injured, once they become adults.

[2/2]

Now what peoples often get wrong :

- A coach should NOT have a low or high mileage only, philosophy of training. Their coaching should rely only on the individual and their natural qualities, some will benefit more of high mileage low quality, others from low mileage, high quality, and intermediates of theses 2 type of training. I think coaches often believe in one thing, which is for one athlete the key to success, so they put every athlete on the same training, neglecting that every door has a different key.

- An athlete should work on his qualities rather than his weakness, you can't make a bird with a fish, but you can always improve the swimming of the fish. A lot of people's here believe that someone with, for exemple, a 1500m runner with a good 800m and a bad 5k, can just run more miles and he will be a better at 1500m, that's false, if he relies on mostly speed, his speed can only suffer if he starts training like a 5k runner. What he should do is run an appropriate mileage for him, focus on improving his speed and speed endurance so he can sustain more of his 800m speed on a 1500m, knowing that he cannot be and will never be a slow twitch type runner, and therefore cannot train like one.

(Obvisouly this point is relative, you cannot neglect your weaknesses, but what I'm trying to explain is that you cannot work on your weaknesses the same way as someone for whom that's the strengths.)

- People should not discourage young kids from running high mileage, and even humiliate them for that (In Europe that's very common to mock someone doing that, instead of helping him). The biggest cause of burnout is mental, if a kid want to run high mileage, he loves it, and he thinks that he can handle it and that it will help him to improve, just let him do what he wants, that's his life and if he enjoys it you should not try to convince him otherwise ( I saw that a lot in European kids). Instead of impede him to do his thing, you should accompany him and help him to make sure he does it the right way and keep him out of "harm's ways", because then it will only result on him still running his high mileage but hiding it and maybe doing it the dumb way (easy runs too fast, giving too much in workouts to recover from the high mileage he's doing, etc... ) And, my friends THAT'S WHAT RESULTS IN BURNOUT. So you forced him to not run a lot so he doesn't burnout, but by doing that, you just pushed him to hide it, do dumb stuff, and finally burnout.

And the final thing is the biggest misconception in running :

- A lot of easy mileage (we're talking about slow twitch people's here) does not reduce the margin of progression at all, it increases it. Someone who runs let's say, 15 miles, in 2 workout a weeks, will likely have a smaller margin of lifetime improvement than someone who's running 2 workouts and 4 easy runs.

That's hard to believe but think of it like a tank :
- Easy runs increase the capacity of the tank
- Workouts fill the tank

To run fast you need to have the biggest volume of fuel in your tank.

A youngster running a lot of easy miles will not necessarily see big improvements in the moment, but he is building an insane tank, which will allow him to handle a bigger workload later and improves a lot more once he starts intensity.

On the other hand, the typical high-school guy, running less mileage, but more workout, will see quicker improvement, fulfilling his tank faster, but he will eventually reach a plateau because he made the most out of the small aerobic base he has.

Then he will increase his mileage, increase the capacity of his tank, see some improvement, and think that he did it the best way, and upping his mileage, he will eventually get a lot of injuries and think that's the max mileage he can handle, he could even think that he already has made the most out of his talent. But while he's doing that, the other guy who ran a lot of easy miles during his youth already has an insane tank with twice the capacity and just has to start some intensity work to improve significantly with a smaller risk of injury (thanks to the high slow mileage he did, he got a super tank, and can now handle very hard training without breaking down).

You often confuse high mileage low intensity and high mileage high intensity, Jakob, when he was a 3:48 1500m runner, was running his easy runs at 12kmh (8:03 min per mile).

But you see a lot of highschool studs who are running a lot (more than 60 miles a week) running their « easy miles » way too fast with no real easy days, and that's why you see Jakob improved years after years while they don’t improve. Instead of increasing the capacity of their tank with their easy runs, it’s almost like they’re trying to fill it, so they have great fast results, but then they just don’t have more space to fulfill.

That's sad but young kids running high mileage should absolutely not do that, and it has nothing to do with what Jakob was doing, and you guys on letsrun always fail to understand that.

I realise it does not have much to do with the original subject, but I wanted to clarify things for once, if someone has read the whole thing, understands what I'm trying to say, and has the knowledge or experience to give a pertinent opinion, then feel free to tell me what you think about it. If not, then just ignore my big message.

It just makes me mad when people use the excuse of high mileage in youngsters to say they can't improve, that's the opposite (you all saw it with Jakob when he was young, El Guerrouj etc...)

Or even when people say that east African are only superior because of genetics and doping, but that's funny when you put another guy on the same training, he almost always end up being nearly, or even as good as them. Now just think about what would we get if we put a million kids on this training regimen like the east Africans are doing without knowing it.

Sorry for any grammatical error, English isn't my first language and I honestly don't have the courage to reread the whole message.