Soccer coach says, "Cross country running ruins explosiveness"

XC is horrible for athletes.

No supplementation of speed and agility will make up for that endurance training.

Having athlete run XC is detrimental to there sport.

Different energy systems are being taxed and you cannot progress with speed while training your slow twitch muscles and aerobic systems.

First of all, soccer coaches are idiots, second, soccer is an overated game, 3rd, club soccer coaches are ego maniacs and also idiots, 4th, soccer flat out sucks.

Any questions?

No one has actually explained the muscle fibers correctly. You have three types. Fast, slow, and intermediate. The fast and slow twitch are set in stone but the intermediate can be recruited to act as either fast or slow based on training.

I coach and have my athletes when they are young run almost entirely mileage and very very little speed. This could slightly change their explosiveness and agility a bit. If you are training the athletes properly than yes he has a little bit of an argument. At the same time though you are correct in that the endurance that they gain will help them late in a soccer game that they probably will not have otherwise. Not to mention the fact that if they run cross country and then start practicing for soccer most of those intermediate fibers are going to switch back and they will regain their explosiveness.

Lee Evans (most /almost all soccer coaches wouldn't know him) ... would run between 5 to 10 miles with some regularity. He was known to have 'decent' speed. What 'seems' logical in this case, isn't. Add a huge dose of ignorance and propaganda and 'poof' and urban myth is born.

I'll line up my fastest XC kids vs. the fastest kids on the soccer team in a sprint any day. Easy win for my kids. The soccer kids usually slow down and fake an injury anyway. We have multiple girl distance runners that run 25-26 second 200m, and 57-58 400m when needed (sometime the sprinters can't take care of their own business and I have to move the real athletes over to score points).

Elite Program wrote:

I'll line up my fastest XC kids vs. the fastest kids on the soccer team in a sprint any day. Easy win for my kids. The soccer kids usually slow down and fake an injury anyway. We have multiple girl distance runners that run 25-26 second 200m, and 57-58 400m when needed (sometime the sprinters can't take care of their own business and I have to move the real athletes over to score points).

A few years ago, I had a whinny group of "sprinters" made up of soccer and football kids who thought they were pretty hot stuff and argued with my training constantly. At a small, midweek meet I loaded a up two 4x200s. One made up of the lazy, whinny football/soccer kids, the other with my #1, #3, #4, and #5 runners from cross country. Guess who got their asses kicked?

XC doesn't ruin speed or exposiveness. All of my school record holders in 400m (boys and girls) ran cross country the year they set their records.

High school soccer coaches overemphasize speed and route 1 type play, and are enamored with pushing the pace of the game while substituting massively.

Tell the coach he is doing a diservice to his players. they should work on overall fitness (which xc would improve) and technical skills. You can explode all day long on the soccer field, but if you have no touch and no endurance, it's just kickball baby.

As much as I love XC over soccer, there is some truth to losing explosive speed. You can't run fast if all you are doing is training to run slow (5K pace); however if your XC program includes hills and some sort of speed work, the soccer players will be ok and they will have much greater endurance. At my high all track athletes that weren't playing football had to run XC. My H.S. had some of the best sprinters in the nation, who were actually pretty decent XC runners. Although they did a lot of hill sprints during the XC season, I don't think XC made them faster, but definitely didn't make them slower. My high school had 2 10.4 100m sprinters and LBP type sprint relay and most of them ran XC.

So to answer your question, it all depends.

I get so tired of hearing this argument from people. Unfortunately, so many uninformed people perpetuate this myth that it is accepted as fact and posted here by people who think they 'know'.

First, read the research. To keep it simple, there are fast twitch, slow twitch, and in between fibers. The in between can be recruited for the activity they are trained for, but will never be fully fast or slow twitch fibers. The idea/belief that endurance running does not work the fast twitch fibers and that as a result you lose them is like saying if I did not use my thumb for a couple of months it will fall off. Likewise, we don't lose explosiveness or agility because of running. Because I am a distance athlete, I can never be explosive or agile? I have lost that ability FOREVER? How does that even make rational sense?

Second, how many xc programs are just running miles? As has been said by several here, many aspects of xc involve development of fast twitch fibers. The research even says that endurance running involves fast twitch fibers and that sprinting involves slow twitch fibers. Nothing works in isolation. Case in point- look at Michael Johnson's training in college. There are distance days and hill days. Also- Maurice Greene ran early season college cross country races while he was in junior college. By the rational posted here, those guys could have run much faster had they never done that. Really??

Third, what exactly is it that soccer players/practices do that develop explosiveness? Dozens of our athletes go on to play soccer in college at a variety of levels and I have observed their summer training. The most explosive it gets is shuttle runs and sprints- apparently those are a staple of college soccer programs. That develops explosiveness? That is making them a better athlete and keeping them from falling into the perils of the endurance athlete? No way......

Fourth- and I think most important- is this: there is a time and a place for everything in a training program. I think most soccer coaches do not understand a year long training cycle, which is unfortunate for a sport that relies upon endurance. A soccer kid is not going to be hurt by running xc. They aren't stepping off the xc course and going right to their first game. Any idiot can see that some endurance training should be part of a soccer training program. The xc season can serve as a nice base/launch into more soccer specific training while maintaining the endurance gains made during xc season (which in my experience, very few soccer coaches do). The endurance gained from xc will help that soccer athlete better train to be explosive and agile because they will be stronger. I have a friend that played professional soccer and 5 - 8 mile runs were a regular in their training program.

My suggestion is always this- if a kid wants to run, he should be able to run. If they are worried about year round training that involves fast twitch/explosive/agile movements, then they should be in a strength program that targets those things- which will help make a better total athlete anyway. It is the lack of that that hurts the athlete, not distance running.

Have to agree with hscoachmidwest.

What I see is kids, mostly h.s. girls, who play club and their coaches have no training, they coach how they were coached, it is their way or the highway. CC does not hurt a kids speed or explosiveness. This is scientifically not true

The reason club is so controlling:

The coach is making money from the parents.(this is the bottom line)

The parents have nothing to do but live through their kids.

The whole family goes to different states to watch little Jenny play soccer, it is a family time outing. Like a party.

CC is the best thing for a soccer kid due to all the hill sprints, pace-work, speed-work, and mental toughness.

Most of the club coaches I know are total control freaks who are brainwashing the 30 something parents and kids to just specialize in soccer so they can quit before college because they are sick of the travel and high demand the crazy coaches put on them. Burn out is high with club soccer in my area.

Being on a CC team will never compare to soccer when it comes to team unity and team building.

Monty

There is one factor that most people here have missed. Training and racing in cross country do little to strengthen the lateral-movement muscles that are so important in soccer (and basketball). Although this isn't what the coach-in-question told his players, it should be considered.

Southern California wrote:

There is one factor that most people here have missed. Training and racing in cross country do little to strengthen the lateral-movement muscles that are so important in soccer (and basketball). Although this isn't what the coach-in-question told his players, it should be considered.

Come do a 7.5 mile loop of my local trail and then we can discuss lateral training in running.

I'm a little in between. You are right that its BS that XC ruins explosiveness.

That said. There is something to be said for the idea that the best way to become a better soccer player is to play more soccer. Not run XC.

But either way, all of it is healthy for soccer. And keep in mind that if some of those kids come out for XC in a later year, their soccer background should have them prepared well for XC.

ryan foreman wrote:

That said. There is something to be said for the idea that the best way to become a better soccer player is to play more soccer. Not run XC.

Quoted is correct. Soccer is a skill sport, that requires a baseline fitness to be competitive depending on the level of play. The list of extremely well conditioned athletes who are basically useless due to their poor touch on the soccer field is long (almost the entire USMNT).

The notion that a HS student with limited practice time looking to maximize their soccer ability would be best served spending the majority of that time running XC rather than playing soccer is absurd.

There's no right answer to this question, because we know nothing about what these kids WANT to do and what might make them happiest, nor do we know anything about how the kids are trained in the respective soccer and XC programs.

I agree that most soccer coaches don't understand much about the theory and methodology of athletic training, but fortunately they don't need to. Macrocycles and microcycles are not very important for a teenage soccer player. It's a sport that requires a modicum of fitness and a very high level of skill. If they're playing all the time and doing a few windsprints after practice, then they're going to be plenty fit enough.

Soccer is a skill sport. If kids want to be good at it, they shouldn't be playing other sports; they should be kicking the ball around 3-5 hrs/day.

An anecdote about soccer development: My club coach was a former international player from another nation. He never, ever had us do specific fitness. All we ever did was 1v1, 5v2, skill exercises, pass-and-move, etc. At this time, the other teams in the state were obsessed with fitness. All of their running never paid dividends. When we were U12s, we were one of 4-5 solid teams in the state. By the time we were U17s, there were two great teams left. We were one. The other team was a consolidation of the best players from most of the other good teams. Only the most naturally talented players had made it to that team because nobody else had developed. In contrast, almost everyone on our team played NCAA soccer, and we were not a select team. We were just the neighborhood kids who happened to show up for a no-tryout club team when we were 10.

Believe me, if I were to do it over, I'd have done XC instead of soccer in college, but I can't pretend that XC is a good use of a serious soccer player's time.

Keep two things in mind. 1- the question was really whether Xc kills explosiveness, not if it's better for a soccer player than soccer.

2- the choice that these athletes had was to either run xc for the school or play soccer with the club team only twice per week.

I understand that playing a lot of soccer is great for a soccer player, but I can not fathom that 2 days of soccer can be more beneficial than a season of XC, especially when the entire winter remains for them to practice skill for their spring season.

Right, so the qualities of the respective programs will determine whether they lose explosiveness, as others have noted.

But the underlying issue is more generally if it's good for soccer players to run cross country in the off season. If they are very concerned about losing explosiveness, then they're probably also concerned with being highly competitive as soccer players.

If the trade-off is as you've described (2 days/week of soccer practice vs. a season of XC), then I think a decent XC program would be better for them. But if they're only playing soccer 2x/week, then I don't know why the hell they're worried about their explosiveness. They have much bigger worries.

[quote]800 dude wrote:

Soccer is a skill sport. If kids want to be good at it, they shouldn't be playing other sports; they should be kicking the ball around 3-5 hrs/day.

/quote]

But the problem is that intense soccer training year-round leads to a much higher risk of injury. It's hard to improve your skills when you've blown out your ACL.

Let me tell you all a true story:

One day, an Ethiopian schoolteacher was observing her students playing soccer. One boy stood out to the teacher for his speed, strength, and endurance. The teacher encouraged that boy to take up running.

Inspired, that boy hit the roads, improving steadily, and by age 18, became the world junior cross country champion, winning by 33 seconds. He became the most decorated cross country runner in athletics history.

On the track, he has acceleration and speed unmatched by almost everyone of his era, perhaps of all eras.

The boy's name is Kenenisa Bekele.