Here's the deal,
Last year my son skipped the winter season because the coach at his school is not very knowledgeable about training. He consistently makes them hammer track workouts while doing very low mileage. He has no flexibility in training and expects everyone to do the exact same mileage and quality workouts even though one kid may be 10 minutes slower than another kid. My son first got me interested in the sport and I learned about training to encourage him. I have read a lot of literature on this site and in books and have also talked to my father who was a decent runner back in the day. My son does not feel the coach is helping his training and does not want to do winter. My only problem with this is that last year he was sort of not a part of the team during the winter and it her the team morale. My son has tried to talk to his coach before about training but he gets defensive and all he says that the team where he graduated from had very many successful runners but I have researched their training and it does not resemble his in any way. I am not an expert in training but I do beleive my sun knows way more than the coach and he can do a great job at coaching himself.
For reference the coach's training really goes against a lot of principles:
1) He does not think recovery days are necessary
2) He does Vo2 max workouts with very short rests (he does not know about specific endurance or stuff like that) ex. 4xmile with 60 sec rest @ 5k race pace.
3) He focuses on short interval workouts that are very fast with short rests even early in the year
-There is more but I think the point is made
Also my son is a sophomore who is the fastest runner on the team who consistently runs 15:4x on xc courses. He thinks the coach is a good guy and really likes him just not his training
Do you guys have any suggestions about how they could establish a good working relationship?