I hope to god that Paavo training has been exterminated from the face of the earth, but I know there's probably more than few coaches in Texas still committing malpractice
Two days before last month’s Nike Cross Nationals, when the country's teams arrived in Portland to begin a weekend of festivities on the sprawling Nike campus, the first thing on the agenda for the Southlake Carroll boys of T...
I recall back in the 2000s the Paavo method was all the rage with Christian Wagner being the poster boy for its success.
There was talk that it produced quick high school success but many runners who followed it suffered burnout and got injured and/or quit.
Has it died out completely or are some top high school programs still adhering to it?
What am I missing? They run every day, with moderate mpw and do relatively slow 400m repeats, 3-4 days before a big race. The Paavo method shouldn’t result in any more burnout or injuries than other training methods.
I recall back in the 2000s the Paavo method was all the rage with Christian Wagner being the poster boy for its success.
There was talk that it produced quick high school success but many runners who followed it suffered burnout and got injured and/or quit.
Has it died out completely or are some top high school programs still adhering to it?
What am I missing? They run every day, with moderate mpw and do relatively slow 400m repeats, 3-4 days before a big race. The Paavo method shouldn’t result in any more burnout or injuries than other training methods.
I recall back in the 2000s the Paavo method was all the rage with Christian Wagner being the poster boy for its success.
There was talk that it produced quick high school success but many runners who followed it suffered burnout and got injured and/or quit.
Has it died out completely or are some top high school programs still adhering to it?
What am I missing? They run every day, with moderate mpw and do relatively slow 400m repeats, 3-4 days before a big race. The Paavo method shouldn’t result in any more burnout or injuries than other training methods.
I mean yeah, if you follow it literally as you stated it, then it wouldn’t burn anyone out.
Don’t forget to include the weekly time trial, PPM runs for easy days, long tempo runs where you go out as hard as you can the first mile and try not to die, goal pace workouts, long runs, and racing.
What am I missing? They run every day, with moderate mpw and do relatively slow 400m repeats, 3-4 days before a big race. The Paavo method shouldn’t result in any more burnout or injuries than other training methods.
As somebody who raced against and interacted with a bunch of Paavo-trained kids while in high school in Texas, I don't think the burnout element was due entirely to the physical rigors of the system.
Paavo teams tended to have a cult-like vibe to them, with the coaches really playing up the "these are your brothers, and this high school cross country races will forever be the most important moment of your life" angle. Paavo as a system was held in the same reverence that a person's religion might be to a lot of these kids - they were incredibly defensive of it.
For a lot of them, when they got to college, the standard incoming freshman training felt impossibly easy, so they immediately doubted what they were doing and often tried to assimilate aspects of Paavo into a new, incompatible system. Obviously not a great way to make the transition to college - lacking belief, feeling like you aren't working hard enough, and constantly comparing everything to high school.
Plus, Paavo kids were never able to relax or be "normal" in high school. They had brutal summer training schedules and then multiple all-out efforts every week during the competitive season. Even if the body was willing to keep it up at the next stage, oftentimes the mind was not. Once they got their first taste of college social life, they decided they wanted to partake in that instead - they'd basically compacted an eight year competitive career into four years already.
"followed it suffered burnout and got injured and/or quit."
Without fail someone brings this up every time. Imagine that, kids in High School growing really fast getting injured?? What?? Kids going to college and finding out there are other things to do rather than run? What?
I hope to god that Paavo training has been exterminated from the face of the earth, but I know there's probably more than few coaches in Texas still committing malpractice
I used to talk a lot of trash about PAAVO too when I was in High school and was getting destroyed by minutes by a lot of the runners doing it. I was simply jealous, and back then in the late 2000's/ eary 2010's everyone jumped on the hate bandwagon. We all would call it a cult, say it burns people out and all the other things people repeat on this message board.
I ended up going to college with a lot of PAAVO runners and they explained it to me, and I realized it's not as crazy as I originally thought. I was lucky enough to attend one of the camps and learn a lot about it. I even went on to do the program myself with relative success.
The training program is like any other program, specific and hard, but not too hard if done correctly. I would not by any means say implementing the program is malpractice.
What am I missing? They run every day, with moderate mpw and do relatively slow 400m repeats, 3-4 days before a big race. The Paavo method shouldn’t result in any more burnout or injuries than other training methods.
It is still very popular in Texas. Honestly it fits the culture down there.
i went to the high school coaching clinic and multiple coaching did presentation saying it is the only way to win.
I think a number of programs have their own spin on it but here were the basics I saw.
1. massive teams training really really hard equals success. It is spread sheet training, easy to hand out to 100 plus kids.
2. Very few good places to train leads to a lot of small loop repeats, easy to track Paavo times. One school had a loop around school, every day you were prescribed how many loops and the pace. All PPM Paavo crap.
3. Texas is so competitive you have to be very fast to make the state meet. XC teams have made Nike that didn’t make state!
4. it fits the culture. It’s like football for distance trainings. Success comes from struggle, obey your coach overlord, follow this highly structured system. Ignore how you feel, do what is prescribed. Honestly makes sense in the Bible Belt. Believe that system and never doubt.
Lastly I think the transition it college is a struggle not because of the training but now everyone is training hard. These Paavo programs are used to kicking everyone’s ass. Once everyone is good success is a lot harder
Han Solo, I think we've had discussions about PAAVO before in another online forum. I'm curious where your info about it has come from and why you're so ardently opposed to it. You got some of that right but "PPM for easy runs" is inaccurate.
Rest in peace, Marshall Sanders, you crazy Indiana borderline cult leader
The program is insane BUT it did motivate keeping in mind so did Jeff Galloway when I was 15. The mere mention of PPM made me twitch but as a poor kid of middling talent it gave me something to focus on. Sometimes whatever gets you out the door
The PAAVO camps are just a low protein diet away from Divine Madness :)
Like similar programs, it is about getting as fast as you can in the shortest possible time. Both kids and coaches are in a hurry. Programs see the weekly micro-cycle as sacrosanct - that real recovery is for the weak, and so only the strong shall survive.
In a similar vein, I see programs that treat the Long run as a recovery day, because it is slower than a tempo run. Jargon (PPM) creates a false sense of relevance. But it does cater to those who want this defined structure, who are inflexible and so poor at reading their own bodies. Where a training program is tantamount to the 10 commandments - you shall follow this to the letter, or be damned. It also says that physiology is secondary to marketing - sell a product, regardless of the potential for harm in the wrong hands.
I knew a few coaches who implemented versions of this program quite well - but only because they were knowledgeable enough to adjust when necessary - and not limited by its structure - to a given individual, and not see the program as the final arbiter, but the athlete and how they reacted to the program. That isn't easy in a program of 100 kids. But then these coaches also had the foresight to limit their programs to a smaller number of participants or engage other coaches for a better/smaller coach-athlete ratio. I never coach more than 20 at a time, and even that can be daunting on occasion. I would rather let others coach (bury the ego) and let them make their own decisions. It creates better coaches who take responsibility for the program they implement, not just follow cookie-cutter approaches.
I'll get downvotes no matter what as Paavo is a bad word, but whatever you want to call the type of training Southlake does is mostly good. Consistency is the key, starting as Freshman (no feeder running programs) daily training that carries through the entire year and even all of High School. The school is supportive, the parents are supportive, and the kids buy in to the program. There are coaches at every practice year around never late and staying 30 minutes after to be there for the kids that want it. The coaches aren't forcing any of the kids, but when you have 80 girls and 80 boys from Southlake on the team, you will end up with plenty of self motivated hard workers. Very receptive coachable kids. The coaches just set the foundation with the fixed structured practices, weekly "classroom", multiple summer camps, and travel to big competitions.
Yes kids get injured and burn out, but I never saw this as a fault of the coaches, the kids were just self motivated to move up on the team and maybe pushed too hard too soon. Division 1 rosters are full of Southlake runners right now that are doing well. You can’t criticize Southlake if you don’t see them scoring at NCCA nationals. There are over 25,000 High Schools in the United States. The top 10-20 runners in college will need more than a great High School program, it comes down to having elite talent too. Southlake is great at taking 80 kids on the roster and being a top High School team with OK to good talent. There are plenty of 3:50 milers out there that never reached their potential or never even ran, but a 4:15 miler will never be a 3:50 miler even if they did train perfect in High School.
I’ll bite as someone who trained way harder than he should have using Paavo in high school in the early 2000s.
It was the first training system I ever knew existed and I spent my first year only following it with about 50% commitment (frequently lying to my coach, along with 75% of the team) about how far and fast I’d done my “medium pace” runs, for starters. I didn’t climb up the “steps” very fast either and thus my weekly mileage stayed in the 20s and 30s, meaning my “long fast tempo” runs weren’t yet ridiculous.
Then I realized I was pretty good and wanted to be great, something clicked and I bought in 100%. Thus commenced a vicious cycle — I religiously did my all-out timed mile every Saturday and used that to base my “medium” (100 seconds per mile slower than the timed mile) and “fast” (54 seconds slower per mile) paced training run.
Say I had run a 5:00 timed mile by myself on Saturday morning with my watch. I would then go out and run, say, 8 miles @ 6:40 pace. Since I was now up to ~40 miles a week, I would run 3 miles on Tuesday afternoon at 5:54/ mile and then on Thursday I’d bust my ass to run 6 miles at 5:54 pace. Monday was the easy long day — 10 miles at whatever pace I wanted and over time I began pushing that to try to eke out more aerobic benefit. Everything else was 6:40/mile.
At some point my coach recalled a top star of his from years earlier who ran 80+ miles a week at sub-6 pace. This became the North Star in my head and as I got faster, I pushed my medium paced runs faster and faster to try to get to that. (Thus I pushed Paavo even harder than Paavo intended to be pushed and was lauded for my efforts!)
The truly brutal point came when I’d finally reached Step 6 and thus was expected to knock off 8 miles every Thursday at sub-6 pace.
How did this play out? I was among the best in my conference but never could win a conference title in XC or track. Always out kicked or having fallen behind.
I’d thrive mid season and set PRs. In fact, the whole team seemed to peak halfway though the season. By championship time, other teams using Jack Daniel’s would suddenly BLOW by us and we’d be utterly confused. Over time I started betting surpassed by people at other schools that I knew I was better than.
By senior year I and my buddies had lost faith in the system and our coach. We tried various other approach we read about on these forms (Hadd etc) and realized about Jack Daniel’s only when it was too late — outdoor track senior year.
Anyway, I can’t say that Paavo was completely destructive. But I would say it’s far far far from optimal and there’s no point in going with the program, unless perhaps you have a coach capable of keeping everyone in check…but such a good coach would no doubt reject Paavo for something better in the first place
