Let's talk about Jane Hedengren's professional approach to training from a young age.

Just because someone is running well, doesn’t mean her advantage over others is due to anything more than talent and certainly not for being a better dresser. Is she the only HSer that enjoys running?

the question is not can you take some kid with talent and drill them into something at least d1. the question is will they get hurt or burn out.

i played select soccer on a 2 time state champ team. we had future pros, d1s, all-america d3s. i was my college team's co-MVP one year and not even close to the most successful. there was stress from competing to start on that team. i realized at a point in HS how absent i had been from local social life. we played in a select league both weekend days, for years. all fall, all spring.

you had better enjoy what you are doing and not just be playing along with some browbeating dad. i did. and even i was like wow, this is what i have done every weekend for half a decade, god knows what all the neighbor kids got up to while i was gone. you're so busy and full of what you're doing in your bubble, then at some point, you realize there's life outside the bubble. movies, car trips, doing stuff out in the woods.

that and my experience some of those kids started to pick up chronic issues in HS. bad ankles, stuff like that.

it's a tradeoff.

Wait, I thought coaching form was dangerous and just leads to injuries. Just coach quality drills and form will naturally adjust.

Which is it?

Btw, it isn’t surprising she gets form coaching because BYU, which I believe literally is adjacent her high school boundaries, has been doing a study on running form. I almost signed up when I saw one of the flyers asking for people to upload treadmill videos.

They are a running family, her dad ran at BYU and works there currently, brother goes there. It is ok to take running seriously in high school

Running is big time in Utah right now, very popular.

You just need to hope your genetic talent aligns with your passion. Plenty of kids love running, plenty have talent but she has both together.

This is no different than say a girl from Oklahoma having a dad that played college baseball and a hitting coach for softball in high school and dreaming of playing for the Sooners.

just talent mate

lot of talk on early specialization

it's a great question and in the end depends on the kid.

the odds are nothing will work...most girls will peak in HS and never get any faster. Boys are a little better but not a whole lot.

So do you just push the throttle in HS because why not and you teach the kid how to excel in something? Maybe.

Interesting piece here on a VT town that has had great success with the opposite - no specilization until relatively late.

nytimes.com

What Parents Can Learn From a Town That Produced 11 Olympians (Published 2018)

By Karen Crouse

The secret to happiness and excellence in Norwich, Vt., can be traced to the way the town collectively raises its children.

Open link

talent=99.9%. Im sure her training isnt that much different. I also think form can only be tweaked a tiny bit, you can't change bony architecture and limb length etc...

I have a lot of thoughts about this post. Many are mixed.

1. There is waaay too much emphasis and advice to elite high schoolers not to do too much, to a point where I can't see it being anything but detrimental. I understand not overtraining, but listening to some of these people talk it's almost like you want kids to just not run at all and eat McDonalds every day! It's okay to work hard and focus and love your sport. You can train hard as long as you're fueling properly and your body is responding.

the truth is distance running in this country is at a major disadvantage compared to other sports. mostly, kids only have access to teams exclusively through their high school. Whereas with soccer, swim, basketball etc, there are travel teams and regional club teams, you are really working with your fellow high schoolers and high school coach who probably doubles up as the history teacher. Majority of kids are undertrained or badly trained. They don't get good competition. I think it's fine to take a more serious approach, and we can stop discouraging it when kids do! Not everyone burns out.

2. With that being said....We can't necessarily throw out advice of runners who found success. Shalane Flanagan, Courtney Frerichs and Emma Coburn are Olympic medalists who competed in multiple sports in high school, and weren't exactly polished as high schoolers either. Flanagan and Frerichs both collapsed at major high school meets (Flanagan never was a footlocker finalist btw), and Emma Coburn spoke of crippling anxiety before races in high school where she would cry and throw up. Slower approaches to a very taxing sport as you mature can and does work and they are proof of it.

3. "She wore the attire that professional track runners wear (no baggy shorts, rag-tag singlets, hair juggling all over the place). Then you compare that with the other runners in that race (mostly from the northeast), they looked like they just discovered running." This part of the post annoys me. Lots of teenagers wear "baggy shorts and rag-tag singlets" because that's what their school provides them, or because they aren't comfortable wearing sports bras and spanx, yet. "Hair juggling all over the place"--come on. These are kids you're talking about, Jane included.

Remember that while Jane's performance was outstanding, the other runners mostly ran in the 4:40s-4:50s range. That's not a "just discovered running" time. The average high school mile time for a US distance running Olympian in Tokyo was 4:53. And Dakota Popehn's fastest high school mile time was 5:35.

So you never know.

This is the way elite track is headed, the pattern is pretty clear. The Ingebrigtsens, Mondo Duplantis, Ryan Crouser etc. all coached by their parents from a young age. Parents that have both pretty good genetics (ie competed at a high level in college or internationally) and have the know-how or connections to get world class coaching are going to produce children that break records. Yeah I guess it doesn't seem fair compared to the average kid, but it is what it is. There never really was a level playing field, it is just more obvious now.

Jane’s dad (John) has done everything with an eye towards long-term success. I don’t know that we’ve ever seen a high school girl like Jane before. I would be shocked if she didn’t continue to improve throughout college and beyond (barring injuries, of course).

What sets the Hedengrens apart over most super running families is that John Hedengren is very much like the lanes on the road, rather than the cruise control (Gjert Ingebrigsten).

His roadrunner track club is exactly the opposite of what you expect out of a youth running club that has created and is creating, stars. If you watch the videos of their races, literally a good 1/4 of the kids are walking in the end of a mile.

It looks to me like John has his expertise, and certainly tries/tried to get his kids into running, but has been pretty hands off. For example, Jane is pretty much exclusively coached by her high school coach, and while John is giving the time and money to help her be great, he doesn't have a monopoly on her success.

Contrast this with a kid I knew who's parents were XC coaches at a D1 program: After he ran a 9:17 3200 (Pretty good all things considered, and just a few seconds off his PR at the time) his parents called him to the sideline, berated and lectured him for a good 5 minutes, and then started screaming at his high school coach for failing him as an athlete. This was despite the fact that this kid was almost exclusively coached by his parents because they didn't trust anyone else.

Also, one thing that is very important to point out is John's work on AI.

There's a video on his YT channel detailing a program that he helped create which analyzes a runner's gait and stride using cameras and an AI program, highlighting potential injury hot spots and places for improvement.

I imagine that for someone like Jane who seems to be fairly injury prone, a tool like that does a whole heck of a lot.

Jane's dad knows what he's doing. He's coached some exceptionally fast (for elementary and middle school) kids. Jane is just one of many coming down the assembly line of fast runners from his stable of runners.

That's where I don't believe it's talent as much as the program. I mean...he has some of his 6th and 7th graders doing 6-7 mile long power runs on dirt trails at higher altitudes. His program is the main reason for so much success. He does it in a way that doesn't burn them out but also hitting the important parts of running at a young age.

We need to get rid of the school of thought that 5th, 6th graders can't be trained. They can. Shoot, one of his 6th grade girls ran a 4:57 mile with goo's training.

Step 1 be talented enough to run a 4:26 mile

well the thing is: she's likely to improve only say 30 seconds over 5k the rest of her life, and that only if she is that 1/100 girl who doesn't slow down as her body changes. That's the problem here...keeping someone interested in working so hard for a decade for small potatoes improvements.

That's why so many college runners quit...they fight like heck and only some improve their HS PRs. They get bored and burned out and injured and walk away to do something else.

the argument is that if you REALLY wanted to develop a girl in HS to be a pro at 26, you'd just do aerobic development, not much intensity, keep it fun, just keep her legs and mind fresh and get her through that 19-24 year old downturn problem until she has the mental and physical tools to be a pro.

Succeeding this much in HS is not a help to 'long term success.' It is showing a young person how to excel at something, which is of great value as a life lesson to be used in any career. But it will ultimately be a problem to her pro track career, not a help.

This kind of speed in HS is very unlikely to be there when she is 26 and in her potential professional prime years. The girl who will make national teams in 10 years is now running 4:50 for the mile and you'd never pick her out of a lineup to be on a national team. She has that space to improve, which will keep her mind in the game. Without that space to improve...you don't keep fighting for ten years.

Swimming has been doing this forever to great success. It has always baffled me why people think runners should only start training in 8th-9th grade for some reason.

That’s an old way of thinking. Times have changed, drastically (and literally).

John is a legit genius. He has the mind of a scientist and the experience of an all-American runner. He knows what has happened to girls in the past who peaked early. Jane has ample room to improve. She isn’t like girls that have come before.

Yep, he’s reinvented distance running all right.

Curious why she has been injury prone with all these tools, etc. Isn’t it a little contradictory to say she’s great because she’s finally healthy because of the great coaching and resources when those same resources and coaching were there when she was injured so often?