I have 3 girls on my team who ran all summer and are in good shape but the rest of the team is far behind and none of them ran over the summer. I don't want to hold the top 3 back but I don't want to treat them differently or seemingly give them more attention. Should I have them follow a different training plan or just adjust whatever is on the schedule for the day like have them run an extra mile or two or do an extra interval.
You should train all the runners on your team according to their ability levels. So yes, you should have the top three runners do more miles and some more intervals.
I am a coach
The answer is yes.
Towson exile wrote:
I have 3 girls on my team who ran all summer and are in good shape but the rest of the team is far behind and none of them ran over the summer. I don't want to hold the top 3 back but I don't want to treat them differently or seemingly give them more attention. Should I have them follow a different training plan or just adjust whatever is on the schedule for the day like have them run an extra mile or two or do an extra interval.
You can compromise. So perhaps you have most of the team do 500m repeats, but have the top 3 girls do 1000m repeats (two of the same loop). Or do cut-down style workouts where they can run with the rest of the team but keep going once everyone else is pooped.
Also, it does sometimes make sense to have them do different stuff. Just don't make it every day, lest the rest of the team get jealous that they are getting "special" treatment (you know how girls get with that stuff...).
They put in more work, therefore they deserve more attention.
Lynn Jennings trained with the boys. That didn't work out too badly.
I have never believed in one-size-fits-all training. The training plan should bend to the needs of the athletes, not the other way around. If three people on the team have more talent or more work ethic (or both) than the others, that's how you train them. In my mind, the primary objective of a coach is to help people reach their potential...and holding people back for the convenience of the coach or others who won't work as hard is something that I have an ethical problem with.
Absolutely train them differently - they need more attention / work. Maybe they trained harder over the summer. Many HS girls XC teams are composed of mostly un-athletic girls trying to lose weight, and really don't care about the competition aspect.
I was blown away in the different mindsets of track/xc runners (female) compared to peers who did mountain biking ... two completely different groups of thinking. Most of the female runners were in it for the fitness, while the mountain bike ladies were in it for the competition.
From the Bill Aris "Training Talk":
Towson exile wrote:
I have 3 girls on my team who ran all summer and are in good shape but the rest of the team is far behind and none of them ran over the summer. I don't want to hold the top 3 back but I don't want to treat them differently or seemingly give them more attention. Should I have them follow a different training plan or just adjust whatever is on the schedule for the day like have them run an extra mile or two or do an extra interval.
The top high school coaches don't even have to ask this question or think about it. Of course they train the better girls differently and don't even give it a second thought. They are able to communicate to the team why they are doing this so there is no jealousy or confusion. It is so frustrating to see coaches train everyone on the team the same exact way, either because they are too lazy to individualize the training or they are afraid of hurting someones feelings. Coaching is as much about communicating as it is writing workouts and the best ones do both things very well.
I hope you're really not a coach.
I never stop someone who wants to do more from doing more. So offer to let the slower people run with the top people. Frame it as a choice for the out-of-shape people to step up, not as an opportunity for the in-shape people to do more. Six in one hand, half-dozen in the other. Everyone's happy and every once in a while someone steps up!!
"If I see 5 people running together, I know 4 of them are running at the wrong pace" - I forget
You'd be a fool not to and you'd do a disservice to those athletes.
It shouldn't just be your top 3 who get pulled out of the larger group to do different workouts. Your whole team should be split up into groups based on current ability. We always had 5 or 6 different groups for workouts. For distance runs, the faster 2 or 3 groups would run together and the slower 2 or 3 groups would do a shorter/slower run together.
You have got to train folks differently. I train my kids very differently. I do have them usually run the same time on distance days, but we run by minutes, so they don't run the same actual mileage. Workout days are different depending on who it is. Last week I had 3 groups do 300m repeats, one group did 16 straight, one did 2x8 and another did 3 sets of 5.
You can't train everyone the same. If anyone complains, tell them it's their fault for not putting in the work in the summer. You'd be doing a disservice not to train people differently.