Does the FIRST ‘Run Less, Run Faster’ Method work for High School Athletes

No...that type of program is for old-timers.

Single best thing for majority of people is to increase their volume more than speed.

majority

ok but an old timer is lighting up college records right now

It's the best method. Learn how to properly sprint then adjust from there.

Do we tell 13 year old golfers, start playing 72 holes then we'll do some puts at the end of practice.

Do we tell Little League baseball pitchers, pitch 9 innings while throwing plenty of sliders then we'll work on throwing fastball for strikes at end of practice.

Do we tell 13 year old swimmers to start by swimming from Cuba to Key West then at end of practice we'll work on 25 yard freestyle?

Only in U.S., athletes 1600m 3200m, speed is the least priority.

If they will become pro, only then there is an argument to be made. If they are an average high school distance athlete you only have a few years with, much more productive to focus more aerobic development and distance specific stuff than pure speed. Most athletes in this sport don't start at 13, and your examples of other sports compare apples to oranges.

You wouldn't teach a 13 year old soccer player how to swim properly, or a hockey player how to shoot a basketball. You would start with what is specific to their competition.

If Johnny shows up to his first day of practice untrained with 2 years left before he graduates and wants to place top 10 in xc at state, your time is not best spent by teaching him sprinting form.

In response to the original question, Parker Valby is the exception, not the rule. Should everyone focus on rock climbing because Hobbs Kessler came from that background?

If they turn pro!

It takes years to alter muscle fibers. Explosive movement muscles need to developed young, younger the better.

Do you want to be the proud coach who developed a future elite 800/1500 athlete? Have them play soccer &/or baseball &/or U.S. football as children, middle school &/or age 12 or so T&F club, have them sprint 200m & 400m, high school, 400m & 800m. List of former teenage 800m or 1/2 mile runners: Mar Decker, Mary Cain, Herb Elliott, Peter Snell, Steve Ovett, Steve Scott, Steve Holman, Filbert Bayi, Thomas Wessinghage and many others. Swimming coaches in U.S. correctly make all 50 yards freestyle swimmers then go from there.

This might be the single dumbest response I have ever seen and that’s saying a lot.

The principle works for every age group and you have to adapt it to the target distance. Elliot Giles ran 800m in 1:43 with three runs per week and lots of cross training.

The idea is to see how you can design the three workouts so that you get the most out of them and prevent injuries. Reasonable for high school kids. You can even do doubles and achieve a lot of overall volume if you cross-train in the afternoon after your morning workout. I clocked a 10 miler PB with something like this, sample week:

Three days of running (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) with AM: crosstraining, 30-40 min MTB, most of it at high cadence; PM: workouts, intervalls (6-8 x 800 or ladder) or tempo run or long run.The long run was always a progression run (about 90 min) and the tempos according to the principles of FIRST, quite challenging.

The other days of the week: three filler days with 30-60 mins of MTB by feel and some core work, one rest day.

True IF they have a background in speed/strength sports (socker, basketball, tennis & football). A background in video games you must develop some speed strength.

Do you know what what the FIRST method actually is?

+1 to this and how much can the average coach actually get a high school runner to meaningfully cross train? It’s like pulling teeth to get a lot of these kids run like 12 mpw in the summer before the season starts. Now you want to tell them to go bike for 2+ hours on a Sunday after the meet?

The choice you have as a hs coach is what is best for MOST of the kids vs what is better for a select few.

Best practices would say that you start slow over months and months, build a big base, lots of easy miles, then hills, then fartlek, then tempos, then eventually race pace reps. That is the long slow deliberate increase in aerobic fitness, and strength needed to compete. The Crockpot method.

HS coaches do not always have that luxury. Many kids do not come out for track or xc until the actual start of the season. That's when you have to go to The Microwave method. Lots of short fast reps, 2-3 days on the track, a few distance days that you can squeeze in between races. Not the best for long term development, but who really cares about that? 99.9% of these kids will never spike up again after HS. THIS is their one chance to run fast, do what you have to do to get them there.

Why would you use discreet exercise examples to relate to a continuous exercise?

This is absolutely the opposite of what happens. All youth swimmers and all but the very very sprintiest adult swimmers train in a similar way, and that training style is much more like distance runners than sprinters. Substantial volumes, mostly aerobic. A fair amount of sprinting too, but in the form of short-rest intervals, nothing like the way sprinters usually train on the track.

This is the case even for most swimmers whose best event is the 50m. Definitely true for every swimmer who swims the 100m or longer.

It makes a lot of sense for swimmers since the stroke is so important and impact injuries are so much lower. Those thousands of meters per day are necessary to refine the subconscious aspects of one's stroke, which makes a difference even for short events.

The one exception is some (but not all) drop dead sprinters train more like track sprinters. Google "USRPT" for one version of this training. No one would expect a 200m guy to train like a 1500m guy, but in swimming this training style is controversial. See the comments in this article:

swimswam.com

Michael Andrew Honing In on 50 Free, 100 Breast/Fly for Olympic Season

Coleman Hodges

After not racing the 200 IM this season so far, Andrew confirmed that heading into Trials his primary focus events will be the 50 free, 100 breast, & 100 fly

Open link

FIRST is a marathon training method. By definition it's not going to be applicable to running track.

thats why I was wondering how to modify it to track. the reason for me wanting to try this approach is because I want more quality workouts and not just running 9 miles and ending up trying to get it done as fast as I can, i want meaningful track workouts that translate to success, as well as recovery days where I can actually RECOVER.

There's a 5k plan right in their book.

No. If i would prescribe a running program for high school students i wud just have them jog or run easy 30 min a day. Building up to twice a day. some days run by feel so they can push it. But keep it simple.

Every other week i might have them do something harder. Maybe a cross country race of say 2-3 miles, a time trial or 3-5 x 1 km at comfortable effort. I wud emphasize long term development and building stamina.