Best HS Training Philosophies?

I’m not sure you should be coaching

keeping it simple for the most part

Long Run + Tempo + Vo2/race with easy days (teach good habits and have them run at a sensible pace) + strides

trying to stay aerobic focused but include some pure speed like 30m flys and hill sprints (not only will help speed but form and efficiency in my experience)

source: self coached myself through all of high school

i have found myself leaning towards a norwegian/tinman hybrid during cross season and indoor. during outdoor, I gravitate more towards Horwill/Coe type training, though once all the racing starts, it's difficult to sprinkle anything beyond mileage and very short, very fast.

I loosely base things on Daniels.

Summer is just easy mileage to build aerobic base.

During season, long run every 10-14 days. 2 workouts and 1 race per week. Younger athletes do more racing into shape. More experienced athletes will skip some races and keep up mileage and do another workout instead. Body weight strength training with lots of core. Do strides and hill sprints, but more of that during the track season.

Winter is easy mileage plus heavy lifting and lots of strides.

I don't think I really understand what you're asking in terms of training systems, mostly cause I don't think YOU know what youre asking. but as far as what I would do, pretty much exactly what whatithinkworks said. I think max speed development is heavily under utilized in high school running. most coaches think doing 200s at mile pace is enough, or else go the other direction and only train hard reps year round which also ruins athletes. basic framework would be

- one threshold type session, usually run slower than they think they should be running

- one faster session, mostly 3k-5k paces, sometimes 800/mile/10k paces

- one top speed dev session, either 30/40m fly ins or 6-10'' hill sprints both with a ton of rest and in the 4-6 rep ranges.

- fill the rest in with easy mileage, hopefully longer run of 8+

this would be geared towards XC or mile/2 mile training in track. for 800 I'd do things a bit differently

races can count as a faster session, and may push the speed work out if you're racing twice a week. strides, often. basic core stuff. no need to get too in depth on training philosophy when the basics really do work best for the young.

I think it’s good to build a good mental foundation in your athletes as to how to approach training. First and foremost they should learn that you should not be at race level exertion at the end of every workout, and that easy pace isn’t a strava contest, and that fast easy pace doesn’t = fast runner.

You can have a cutting edge training program with perfectly designed workouts and still have it all go to crap because your athletes are running every easy run at threshold effort and positive splitting their workouts because they almost PR on their first split. You can have your team running double threshold, fancy jogging rest mixed stimuli speed sessions, and high mileage.. and you’ll still absolutely get spanked by the team doing a 3-4 mile tempo and 8x400m once a week with 3-5 mile recovery runs if they are running the workouts correctly and your team isn’t.

That being said, you are training athletes to run well 800m, maybe even 400m to 5000m, and you won’t know what event is their best until they’ve been at it for a few years. I think during XC, you want one workout a week at threshold to 10k pace, and another workout at vo2max pace. Tacking on a few speed reps at the end of these sessions builds confidence and also helps the kids to not overdo it during the meat of the workout. You can do 8x800m at threshold/10k pace and it’s a great base building workout, but you can also do it at vo2max to 5k, and you only get a session like that once every couple weeks while keeping it productive or you’re doing more harm than good, so again, you need to emphasize that your athletes are doing their workouts in the right zone. Many athletes will want to push workouts as hard as they can, and while it’s a good sentiment it’s not good for your overall training.

Here’s what I have my Varsity boys group doing. For reference we are ranked top 10 on dyestat so far this year.

Sunday‘s: 60-90 minutes with 40-60min steady state (5:40-6:10)

Monday’s: Double threshold, stay closer to 2.5mmol/L

AM: 2-3xmile w/70s rest

PM: 10-14x400 w/45s rest

Tuesday: easy really slow 40-50 minutes

Wednesday: Double threshold, stay closer to 2.5mmol/L

AM: 2x2mile w/ 90s Rest

PM: 5-7x800 w/ 60s Rest

Thursday: easy really slow 40-50 minutes

Friday: 12-16x200 meter hills @40-44 seconds w/ slow jog down

Saturday: easy really slow 40-50 minutes

On race weeks they theoretically have more recovery, especially if they race on a Saturday, where they’ll just have an easy slow long run on Saturday, same amount of time.

I'm calling BS. Double thresholds taking lactate readings on underage athletes? I don't think so bro

Best HS training system: Paavo

Is that still around?? From my experience, for young runners the most important thing is to develop a great team culture and to install system wherein the kids have pride in their team. Young athletes are physically developing so fast that almost any well planned and thoughtful system will work, as long as you don’t fry them.

It worked for Jakob and hundreds of other European athletes, it worked for mine as they have all improved drastically.

We signed waivers with the parents this summer. Their best interests are to see their kids get scholarships into accredited universities.

Based on what you just wrote I don't have half a brain cell and neither does anyone else on LRC. Where did you get this stuff? (L, E, T, E, T, E, X) ???

I am 66 she is 30. She is the girl of my dreams and says that I am the boy of her dreams. It's also a long distance relationship. Should the age stop us? Why or why not?

This is real folks, except for the Username.