I had a coach a while back who started cramming in workouts into our week. He thought we needed to work on speed, but he didn't want to sacrifice a tempo run, so we'd just do back to back workouts (sometimes b2b2b). The thing that made it so bad was that every workout was supposed to be as hard as you could go (even tempos). Needless to say, shortly after we all ran like crap.
I had another coach that did a similar thing. Each week we'd have 3 HARD workouts and a long run. This wasn't nearly as bad as my previous coach, but most everyone felt tired most of the time. Sometimes we'd get run down and several people would have bad races, and my coach thought it meant we weren't training hard enough, so then we'd just train harder yet.
Now I finally have a coach who understands that running hard doesn't make you faster. RECOVERYING from running hard makes you faster. We usually have two hard workouts and one light workout a week, and sometimes we have two light workouts and only one hard workout. I have improved a lot and just feel better all around.
Maybe some people can handle pounding workouts 3 times a week (plus a long run), but I know laying off a little has helped me a lot, and I've read about multiple elites who only do two workouts a week plus a long run.
My main frustration is with coaches who think more workouts = better runner regardless of how little recovery time there is.