Good coaches tailor workouts to their athletes strengths and weaknesses
Does tailoring workouts to each athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, mean a coach has his runners simultaneously running 10 different workouts? My experience is everyone runs the same workout but at different paces.
My opinion is that you’d be far more successful looking at what the best highschool and good college teams are doing.
Pro athletes get all day everyday to focus on stretching,recovery,nutrition etc. While scholarly athletes better simulate what it’s like training as a normal person. You have class/work and other non running related things you need to attend to. This alters your workout schedule and recovery time a good deal.
Pro athletes are also 0.1% talents, who have coaches that understand their exact biomechanics/vo2max/etc. I think the 800m is the event that highlights how this can cause issues the most. Clayton Murphy runs 70-75 mpw, lots of 3-5 mile tempos, 1k repeats, mile repeats, 400m repeats with short rest etc.. Will Sumner runs 10-15 mpw, lots of 100-150m repeats, 300m repeats with long rest, and plyometrics like sled sprints, doing the majority of his aerobic work on a bike or elliptical. These two athletes will both be in a 1:43-1:45 range this year, but they train completely differently and neither would be fast enough to be relevant if they picked up the other guys training.
You can also look at longer distance guys like Galen Rupp, who ran LOTS of miles and almost all of them were under 6:00, many under 5:00. When one goes to copy this kind of training they assume they should push their easy pace as far as possible and also push their mileage as far as possible, it works for galen so it’ll work for me right? Your achilles’ tendon will be donezo in 2 weeks.
I really like this point. I think it is also important to think about the goals of a high school/college program. They are much more general and especially a high school program is meant to take kids from a novice runner up as high as they can go. I have always thought it was interesting that good high school programs can regularly turn average freshman running sub 20 5k type times into 15 minute guys (I believe there was a thread after Herriman won NXN this year detailing how they had a few guys like this). Obviously part of that is maturing physically and gaining the all benefits of being an untrained 14 year old to a 18 year old runner but still a more replicable.
I think there is a bit of ego when it comes to a runner making their own training plan too. It sounds a lot better to say you're training like the reigning Olympic champion rather than you're doing tweaked version of a high school/college program. There is a great coaching talk with Jack Daniels where he mentions training like a champion and details the insane 40x 400 that Jim Ryun did or the crazy mileage of Jerry Lindgren. Obviously they can do it but the point was it is not for everyone.
My opinion is that you’d be far more successful looking at what the best highschool and good college teams are doing.
Pro athletes get all day everyday to focus on stretching,recovery,nutrition etc. While scholarly athletes better simulate what it’s like training as a normal person. You have class/work and other non running related things you need to attend to. This alters your workout schedule and recovery time a good deal.
Pro athletes are also 0.1% talents, who have coaches that understand their exact biomechanics/vo2max/etc. I think the 800m is the event that highlights how this can cause issues the most. Clayton Murphy runs 70-75 mpw, lots of 3-5 mile tempos, 1k repeats, mile repeats, 400m repeats with short rest etc.. Will Sumner runs 10-15 mpw, lots of 100-150m repeats, 300m repeats with long rest, and plyometrics like sled sprints, doing the majority of his aerobic work on a bike or elliptical. These two athletes will both be in a 1:43-1:45 range this year, but they train completely differently and neither would be fast enough to be relevant if they picked up the other guys training.
You can also look at longer distance guys like Galen Rupp, who ran LOTS of miles and almost all of them were under 6:00, many under 5:00. When one goes to copy this kind of training they assume they should push their easy pace as far as possible and also push their mileage as far as possible, it works for galen so it’ll work for me right? Your achilles’ tendon will be donezo in 2 weeks.
I really like this point. I think it is also important to think about the goals of a high school/college program. They are much more general and especially a high school program is meant to take kids from a novice runner up as high as they can go. I have always thought it was interesting that good high school programs can regularly turn average freshman running sub 20 5k type times into 15 minute guys (I believe there was a thread after Herriman won NXN this year detailing how they had a few guys like this). Obviously part of that is maturing physically and gaining the all benefits of being an untrained 14 year old to a 18 year old runner but still a more replicable.
I think there is a bit of ego when it comes to a runner making their own training plan too. It sounds a lot better to say you're training like the reigning Olympic champion rather than you're doing tweaked version of a high school/college program. There is a great coaching talk with Jack Daniels where he mentions training like a champion and details the insane 40x 400 that Jim Ryun did or the crazy mileage of Jerry Lindgren. Obviously they can do it but the point was it is not for everyone.
I doubt there are HS programs turning average, 20:00 freshman, into 15:00 runners. Statistically, and including the faster freshman, such a program should win NXN every year.
So say I copy a training program from a 3:50 miler and they do 12x 400 in 56 off 90 seconds rest. So that's a little less than 12 minutes at mile pace range. That, to me, is the important training stimulus, so rather than having a novice runner (5:20 miler) run 12x 400 off that rest, you can have them run 9x 400 in 80" and achieve the same time at pace.
I would think to run 12x300 in 56 rather than 9x400.
The biggest adjustment that I actually make is trying to hit 10-12 hours a week rather than X distance. Their 110-120 is my 90-100 time-wise. My "CV" intervals are more like 5 mile pace rather than 10k pace. My 40 min tempos are a mile+ shorter. I do 30s hill reps instead of 200m. I do still run 4x2mi even though it takes me ~8 minutes longer in total, maybe I should go down to 1.75.
The other big adjustment is if I'm running less I know I have to cut the total workout distance. 3x2mi might be more appropriate off 60mpw whereas 4x2mi would be for 85mpw.
Not that I purposely copy training but I try to incorporate the aspects I believe make sense for me and adjustments are needed.
While it is very interesting to read what the elites are doing there is one thing to always keep in mind, and one mistake most of make. The first is that elite (I mean really elite not some joker winning the local 5k) would be really good no matter how they trained. That's why you can read about one guy, let's say Ritzenhein. He was crazy successful with BIG BIG miles. Then you have Webb, very successful on lower miles but higher intensity. I contend that both would be great runners even if they switched HS coaches.
The other issue is to read through the training of super successful runners, then you pan out the one or two jewels, and focusing on those workouts while ignoring ALL the stuff that came before them. So you read that UofM does "The Michigan" and think "Ah HA!- that is why they are good!" while you forget about all the hill reps, the bulk mileage, and typical 6x8, 5x1k stuff they did the rest of the time.
Good coaches tailor workouts to their athletes strengths and weaknesses
Does tailoring workouts to each athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, mean a coach has his runners simultaneously running 10 different workouts? My experience is everyone runs the same workout but at different paces.
A HS coach should tailor it to the athlete meaning, different pace goals, and varying the workload. A newbie freshman generally cannot be expected to handle the same workload of a senior runner. Cut back a few reps, or a few miles to make it appropriate.
A lot of the logs we have from elites are the 6 weeks or so leading up to a WR or gold medal performance (though this is changing now with Strava where we can see year round). The mistake is to think that the workouts they do when they are in fantastic shape are the same workouts that got them in fantastic shape.
Pay attention more to their principles they adhere to vs. the methods they use. Methods are important for sure, but they are many, principles are not. I know this is a quote, but it is so true. The methods they use may not work for you, but may in the future. Really it comes down to how dedicated and immersed into the sport you really want to be.
A lot of the logs we have from elites are the 6 weeks or so leading up to a WR or gold medal performance (though this is changing now with Strava where we can see year round). The mistake is to think that the workouts they do when they are in fantastic shape are the same workouts that got them in fantastic shape.
Yes! Another important factor is to note what the training period is. There are actually a number of very comprehensive training logs posted on older threads here but I think even those need context. A thread on Steve Scott's training has some of the most complete training information I've seen but it is also important to remember that at the points detailed, Scott was at the absolute peak of his fitness and had 10+ years under the training program of Len Miller.
Also it is understandable to focus in on the eye-catching "super sessions" before peak races but I think it is sometimes interesting to note the days when things are clearly not going so well. Scott's log notes several days that felt like sh!t and wasn't shy about noting how hard some days were with travel or getting the work in. So as much as the efforts can seem super human, even the elites have those days when the legs just don't have it!
And a lot of them were garbage. There was some 32:30 chick who was doing all her easy runs at 5:30. In general it was also hard to get a view of the whole program. But yeah they were fun to read if you realized the might not be 100% accurate. I do remember eyestone doing like 130mpw. In 6 days….
Well, if you thought a lot of them were garbage you'd ignore those and incorporate things from the ones that weren't.
As a 13 year old it wasn’t as easy to know what was garbage and was realistic. How was I supposed to know when you read an article about Sydney maree running 10 miles at 4:40 every morning that either he couldn’t measure a course or was straight up lying? what about little details like when Seb coe was running his 6x800s in 1:54 that it was downhill?
Good coaches tailor workouts to their athletes strengths and weaknesses
Does tailoring workouts to each athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, mean a coach has his runners simultaneously running 10 different workouts? My experience is everyone runs the same workout but at different paces.
Dellinger had guys doing a variety of diff workouts at Oregon back in the day sometimes, it depends. Even on my little DIII team we'll run 3-4 workouts during track, but will usually run 1-2 workout types in XC
Do use critical thinking and consider general principles.
Don't blindly copy the specifics.
Example
Jakob is the best in the world and does double threshold. Everyone: I need to start doing 2 threshold workouts 2 times per week. I think a better approach is to look at that and say "what are the training principles I can take from this?" and my takeaways are that 1) you can get good results by taking some high intensity training and replacing it with a greater quantity and frequency of lower intensity training 2) lactate threshold training is a key in events 1500m and up and 3) finding way to quantify training intensity (like lactate testing) can be useful in determining proper intensities.
My opinion is that you’d be far more successful looking at what the best highschool and good college teams are doing.
Pro athletes get all day everyday to focus on stretching,recovery,nutrition etc. While scholarly athletes better simulate what it’s like training as a normal person. You have class/work and other non running related things you need to attend to. This alters your workout schedule and recovery time a good deal.
Pro athletes are also 0.1% talents, who have coaches that understand their exact biomechanics/vo2max/etc. I think the 800m is the event that highlights how this can cause issues the most. Clayton Murphy runs 70-75 mpw, lots of 3-5 mile tempos, 1k repeats, mile repeats, 400m repeats with short rest etc.. Will Sumner runs 10-15 mpw, lots of 100-150m repeats, 300m repeats with long rest, and plyometrics like sled sprints, doing the majority of his aerobic work on a bike or elliptical. These two athletes will both be in a 1:43-1:45 range this year, but they train completely differently and neither would be fast enough to be relevant if they picked up the other guys training.
You can also look at longer distance guys like Galen Rupp, who ran LOTS of miles and almost all of them were under 6:00, many under 5:00. When one goes to copy this kind of training they assume they should push their easy pace as far as possible and also push their mileage as far as possible, it works for galen so it’ll work for me right? Your achilles’ tendon will be donezo in 2 weeks.
Agree, but with a caveat. Make sure to select programs for inspiration that share the same sort of developmental timeframe that you are dealing with. Some HS and college programs do a great job of getting great results now while developing their athletes in a way that sets them up well to keep developing after they leave the program. Others have similar (or sometimes better) "now" success, but do so more in a "squeeze it all out while you're here" sort of way. Some people only see themselves training/racing for a few years, others envision doing it for decades. Choose your inspiration so that it fits your running horizon.
Does tailoring workouts to each athlete’s strengths and weaknesses, mean a coach has his runners simultaneously running 10 different workouts? My experience is everyone runs the same workout but at different paces.
Dellinger had guys doing a variety of diff workouts at Oregon back in the day sometimes, it depends. Even on my little DIII team we'll run 3-4 workouts during track, but will usually run 1-2 workout types in XC
It doesn't mean a completely different workout for everyone. You can take multiple components and blend them together in different proportions. For example, on a given day I might have some runners doing 400s at 1600 pace while others are doing 300s at 800 pace. There also might be some athletes doing some of the 400s then finishing on 300s, and maybe even a few doing the 300s then finishing on fast 150s.
I haven't read it in a while, but Nick Symmonds published his training and I remember it being interesting. If you read here often, you'll see so many pros ran these insane workouts that you could never fathom attempting. And inevitably some go and attempt those workouts, even with adjusted paces, and it's just overkill. I sometimes think that we assume that these insane workouts are great to build fitness, but the elites and their coaches can still fall into the same trap of training too hard just like the average hobby jogger can.
Then, if you read Nick's log, it's certainly impressive, but it's much more, how do I say, within reason? He rarely did anything that made my jaw drop, but he was one of the best to ever do it. Just lots of consistent, medium efforts, showing up ready to roll, and executing.
I would say probably trying to mimick the pros is probably the biggest mistake a lot of guys make.
Take the Norwegian on lower mileage thread on this forum. Arguably the best thread in LRC history , yet half the people in the thread casually posting think it's about Jakob or Bakken when it's a absolutely not. I hit lifetime PRs in that thread and there's a Strava group with PRs galore spawned from it. Yet the success is by following absolutely non elites, who we can relate to, in case being a random Brit sirpoc84 and Jakobs hobby jogger brother. This was an eye opener for me, trying to replicate those who are absolutely getting every ounch of their limited/ OK talent out, rather than replicating pros who would be elite no matter what. Just by 2 cents. A lesson I had wished I had learned in my prime.
I would say probably trying to mimick the pros is probably the biggest mistake a lot of guys make.
Take the Norwegian on lower mileage thread on this forum. Arguably the best thread in LRC history , yet half the people in the thread casually posting think it's about Jakob or Bakken when it's a absolutely not. I hit lifetime PRs in that thread and there's a Strava group with PRs galore spawned from it. Yet the success is by following absolutely non elites, who we can relate to, in case being a random Brit sirpoc84 and Jakobs hobby jogger brother. This was an eye opener for me, trying to replicate those who are absolutely getting every ounch of their limited/ OK talent out, rather than replicating pros who would be elite no matter what. Just by 2 cents. A lesson I had wished I had learned in my prime.
Actually thought of that thread the second I clicked on this title. Not much to add, other than I agree it's simply an amazing and informative thread, out of character for LRC. My only caveat being I think it should be worth noting it's not for everyone, it's probably those who maybe have 4-8 hours a week window to train. If you have more, then maybe you can start thinking more like a pro.
And a lot of them were garbage. There was some 32:30 chick who was doing all her easy runs at 5:30. In general it was also hard to get a view of the whole program. But yeah they were fun to read if you realized the might not be 100% accurate. I do remember eyestone doing like 130mpw. In 6 days….
Well, if you thought a lot of them were garbage you'd ignore those and incorporate things from the ones that weren't.
HRE, WeJo, Lydiard, and Dixon seem to agree on twice a day running for as long as possible. The most difficult questions are with how much interval and speed training to do, and how to back off for the big races. I do not like to ever get too far away from speed during any part of the year, but I've found that is where many coaches argue.