Right. A true "Stotan" guards everything they do like national secrets. Give me a break. And how in depth can workouts get?
Thanks AMA.
Right. A true "Stotan" guards everything they do like national secrets. Give me a break. And how in depth can workouts get?
Thanks AMA.
The secretive nature of FM's program seems to fly in the face of Percy Cerutty's approach, which was to share knowledge and raise the level of the sport. Cerutty was noted for his speaking engagements, large group demonstrations, and promotion of his philosophies--including the specifics of his training programs.
I am not insinuating that there is some sort of sinister plan at work here. I just find it odd that FM calls themselves Stotans but fail to operate in the spirit of the creator of the approach.
Back to how they do it. One factor has to be the size of the school. I coach at a NY State school with 1/4 the population as FM. I have, usually, 2 or 3 boys who can break into their top 7. Now, if my school was 4 times it's size I might have 8-12 boys and now my teams would be competitive with FM.
They work very hard, the coach motivates the athletes to be great, and they have a large pool of students to choose from. It's also an affluent community.
Find a specific workout that Percy Cerutty ever gave out on Herb Elliot's training, or any other Stotan of his day. Percy Cerutty's demonstrations were public, and were general. He spoke of motivation, proper form, barefoot running, training at Portsea, strength training. Nothing specific about workouts. Sorry, know your mark before you accuse.
Another comment. Bill Aris speaks all day long and does demonstrations during summer training programs. He does it for his program, or for people wishing to join up. Why should he speak to any of you through a message board about his years of learning and knowledge? You criticize him for speaking in general terms at seminars, and you don't realize that he is being 100% honest about how to build a program. If it was as easy as you're making it out to be, we'd never have to exert any effort at all, or learn from experiences and mistakes, or take pride in accomplishments. Gems of knowledge just given away via Letsrun message boards? Cheap and easy, that's the way to do it. Get yourself some books. Coach some runners. Put in your twenty plus years and maybe you'll have it right by his age. Hey coach, I know you always taught us to stay off of these boards. I know you always jump on to defend us when we're being criticized. Just doing the same thing for you and John. Don't give them a thing, they wouldn't get it anyway!
Brute, Bill didn't take over in '04. Closer to mid to late 90's so you might want to check your facts before you start freaking out on a message board...and you couldn't be more wrong about your profiling of me.
FM is on the smaller side of AA, I don't know why people assume they are this monster powerhouse school with 200 kids on their team. They have a notoriously small roster year in and year out. We had maybe 15-20 kids my senior year of xc. Barely a dozen of those were actually serious.
Bill did not have full control until 2004. This proves that you don't really have the inside scoop. From his mouth, he did not have the power to run the FM program fully the way that he wanted until 2004. Ask him. Actually, there may be some interviews saying this somewhere. He was technically the assistant coach who did most to all of the planning and work prior to that. John joined him that year also. I remember this all because I was there and lived it while it was happening.
et tu brute? wrote:
I remember this all because I was there and lived it while it was happening.
It is because: you are he.
No you didn't
runn wrote:
Back to how they do it. One factor has to be the size of the school. I coach at a NY State school with 1/4 the population as FM. I have, usually, 2 or 3 boys who can break into their top 7. Now, if my school was 4 times it's size I might have 8-12 boys and now my teams would be competitive with FM.
They work very hard, the coach motivates the athletes to be great, and they have a large pool of students to choose from. It's also an affluent community.
WHAT HE SAID!
Just when I thought the thread was dead. Thanks AMA!
I have a couple questions.
How was weight training structured?
How fast were recovery runs?
What was winter training like with New York weather/how did it differ from summer training?
Nutrition has been talked about a lot. What diet did he encourage?
Thanks again.
AMA wrote:
I don't think Et Tu Brute ran for us. I could be wrong, but he seems like a troll.
I understand I could clear things up with little writing, but I'm lazy and don't feel like writing without direction.
A huge proponent of Aris training is that he changes his training plan yearly. He says at the end of every track season that he is throwing out the training logs and starting over, so that makes it somewhat difficult to give a blanket training week for all the successful teams they have had over the years. Summer/xc training is very different than track. Summer training starts at the end of June where you're expected to be close to max mileage. That mileage is held through out the summer and into fall as workouts are slowly mixed in. Summer workouts are all tempo type stuff. Tempos, progressions, fartleks, etc that increase in frequency and intensity as the summer goes along. Once the season gets started, workouts are still strength based but still very spontaneous. Lots of threshold workouts based off of time, loops, hills, etc that can be up to 2 hours of total work. Track is much more structured. Once the snow clears they do pretty standard stuff. If I had to label a staple of the training program it would be time trials. Both in xc and track the aris's implement tt's often.
Mileage varies a ton by gender and age. The 04, 05 guys who had been training consistently since they were freshmen hit around 90 the summer of their senior year. But the Aris's had been grooming them since they were 14. Runners like Alex Hatz and the more recent guys team top out around 60-70. Girls are fairly similar but a lot of supplemental exercises have been added to replace running. So a girl might run 30 to 50 mpw but puts a considerable amount of time in on the bike, in the pool, or running easily on grass.
July: Base training with two tempo type workouts and one long run, maybe a few doubles if you're a senior. A workout that sticks out is a 45 minute progression run.
September: Similar to July, workouts become more structured...or as structured as an Aris workout can be. Basically he has a time and goal in mind and keeps you on your toes. Run this loop, that loop, this hill until he is satisfied. He does a great job of explaining the point of the workout beforehand. Whether it is to get stronger at hills, work this physiological system, or improve speed. But rarely gives you the complete details of the workout beforehand.
November: Workouts begin to resemble more traditional type efforts. 2 mile or 1 mile tt's are common. Ladders going up, down, or both from 1 to 5 minutes were something we did a lot. Rarely hit the track except for time trials. The peaking phase was something Aris preached on end. I don't know if it was mental or if it was the training, probably a combination of both, but anyone who is very familiar with FM knows how they improve at the end of the season.
AMA this is fantastic. Thanks so much. I'm dubious as to who this "et tu brute" character is, as it seems like a real teammate wouldn't go anonymously bashing other kids as "back of the pack" runners on LRC.
Anyways, getting back to their training program, it sounds VERY much like (at least philosophically speaking) what Percy Cerutty advocated for. I don't always agree with his theories and methods, but it's refreshing to see FM "re-imagining" a once-forgotten coach like Cerutty in a highly successful manner. I've read "Why Die?" (a biography of Cerutty) and "Athletics: How to Become a Champion," which was actually written by the man himself. By the way, for the doubters out there, Cerutty DOES actually detail individual workouts that he has his runners do in Athletics: How to be a Champion.
Allow me to quote from p. 128...
With what energy we may muster on occasion we go out for a long continuous run of upwards of twenty miles. This may happen once a month. And for a miler, three-miler type, we build up to around 200 miles each month [remember, this was pre-Lydiard]. We go into the surf occsaionally during the winter as part of our toughening. We try to go to the snowfields once each winter. WE use the horizontal and parallel bars as we can and do many 'sut-ups' and 'press-ups' at odd times.
Again on p. 130
Assume the 880 yards event. A lot of the running will be over various distances from, say, 100 yards to 600 yards at our full (hoped-for, predetermined) race speed. Assume a training session of forty to sixty minutes is occupied in this manner, resting just as long between efforts as circumstances, not predetermination, determines. The next day the training session may be devoted to holding hard efforts for periods of time approximately 1:45 to two minutes. Thus the organism gets conditioned to move freely at the essential speeds and holing hard efforts for the duration necessary.
So to say Cerutty doesn't speak of specifics is folly. While he was against rigid schedules, so were many other coaches—Lydiard resisted putting "schedules" into Run to the Top and only acquiesced reluctantly under pressure from the publisher.
The weight training regimen has evolved a lot over the years. It has always been a part of training, but more recently has become a significant part of what they do. Like others have said, higher weight and lower reps. Mostly olympic type lifts on alternating days. Bench, front squats, push press, dead lift, etc.
Recovery runs, like mileage, vary a lot by individual. When I was there, sub 7 was standard on most runs so I'd imagine 7 minute miles would be close to recovery. Over the years, pace of runs has definitely increased so I would guess most of the upper level athletes are running between 6 and 7 minute pace on any given day. Girls I honestly don't know, but they're fast and well trained so I wouldn't be surprised if they were averaging sub 7's if they got after it.
Diet is huge. That's been a mainstay of FM training for a while. ALL of their athletes eat well and are instructed to do so.
Syracuse winters are awful. So some obvious concessions are made to accommodate for the weather. Workouts are more creative, a lot more cross training, and more of a focus on gaining strength and preparing for outdoors.
I remember doing 50X500 in the mid summer, 100 hills in one day, 40 mile long runs twice a summer, and barefoot running in the snow during winter.
amen to that. you have it right. california stop complaining. fm lost two of it top kids, seniors and leaders of their team. watch how they overcome it
REXRYAN wrote:
swizzle swag wrote:Science ain't the name of the game in this sport. Hard work, new ideas, and motivation are the names of the game. Deal with it. I'll be back on after early December to read up on new excuses for CA teams being routed.
By the way, did I see NY Girls teams were ranked 1,2 and 3 in the nation on Dyestat today? Oh my God. Must be something in the water, or mud, or PED's, or our 8th graders, or our summer training programs, or the temperatures, or the conditions, or the............
Shut the fucX up
Talk about it swizzle swag!!! Don't worry Califonia, NY is goin travel across the country to prove it to ya again! NXN is no day at the beach so leave all volleyballs and excuses at home!
Did some thinking about the common idea that 'NY Boys teams aren't as dominating, why?'.
My thought is two fold. First, boys cross country has a higher level of consistent/top notch competition throughout the championship teams. There are some girls teams who have their 4,5,6,7 runners who are way off the chart. When a team like FM (girls) is capable of having all of its top 7 ahead of most teams' 2nd, 3rd, 4th runners, the domination is obvious. On the boys side the numbers are always much closer due to the higher level of consistent competition from 1-7. You rarely see the 4,5,6,7 guys on top teams way back. The level of dominance on the boys side is not possible.
My second point might surprise, but here are my figures for the top four teams in the history of NTN/NXN (York, FM, Carroll, Woodlands). I believe these are the top four programs in recent HS XC history for several reasons. First, number of appearances of 7 chances (York 7, Woodlands 6, Manlius 5, Carroll 4). Second, top finishes compared to number of appearances. All but one of these team has had a top five finish at least once (Carroll, best finish of 11th). All of these teams has had at least one year of a 14th or higher finish. Two of these teams has had top three finishes three times (York, 1,2,2/Manlius 2,3,2). There are obviously programs who have made it once or twice, and have placed very well. But not for at least five of seven years in the case of FM, and certainly not all seven in the case of York. My criteria of being a top boys program is to have qualified at least 4 of 7 times the race has been run. All four of these teams meet that standard.
**NC = did not compete/qualify
2004
1. York
2. Manlius
7. Woodlands
14.Carroll
2005
2. York
3. Manlius
NC.Woodlands
NC.Carroll
2006
10. York
11. Carroll
12. Woodlands
NC. FM
2007
4. Woodlands
9. York
15.Carroll
NC.FM
2008
2. York
4. Woodlands
16.FM
NC.Carroll
2009
3. Woodlands
9. FM
13.York
NC.Carroll
2010
2. FM
14.York
17.Carroll
20.Woodlands
Top Three Placings:
York 1,2,2
FM 2,2,3
Woodlands 3,4,4
Carroll (None)
Top Ten placings:
York 1,2,2,9,10
FM 2,2,3,9
Woodlands 3,4,4,7
Carroll (None)
Here is the final point that in my opinion proves the theory of NY boys teams not being dominant at NTN/NXN.
Simply add up the placings for each team for every year they competed, and divide by the number of years completed. This will tell you the average placing for each team, per the number of years they competed.
FM (2,2,3,9,16)= 32 (divide by 5 years qualified) = 6.4
York (1,2,2,9,10,13,14)= 51 (divide by 7 years) = 7.3
Woodlands (3,4,4,7,12,20)= 50 (divide by 6 years) = 8.4
Carroll (11,14,15,17)= 57 (divide by 4 years) = 14.3
In my opinion, NY Boys teams (plural) correctly have not been as dominating. One single program has. Not with the power that their girls program has, but I have said why I think that discrepancy exists. Fayetteville Manlius is the best combined program in the nation, has the best coach in the entire nation, and we now have 2011 to see how the results may affect the statistics above.
There is no other program that has consistently produced a better combined product, ever. Until this is proven otherwise, I am sold. Bill Aris is the best coach in the country.
FM is the best program, combined.
Having had multiple exchanges with Perc and with many of his athletes, I have to question the use of the term Stotan in the FM program. I've said it before and I'll say it again. The Stotan philosophy is not one to be bought into in the 7th or 8th grade. Simple question...How long was Herb able to handle the Stotan philosophy, even at an advanced age? Is there anything wrong with the creed? No, it's just far too intense for 7th and 8th graders.
In addition, don't tell me you read a book and you understand Cerutty. And Perc was more than happy to describe every workout anybody ever did, down to the most minute of details.
you are considering california type 7th & 8th graders.
they couldnt handle it, agree.
they need to stay inside and xbox for a few more years.
syracuse area kids, different story, not too intense.
to ray:
i completely agree with everything you noted with the exception of one item, that being your objection to our respectful usage of the term stotan. if his approach were applied by me to 7th and 8th graders, and for that matter to hs'ers on my part (esp in terms of training), i would agree with your statement in total. however, and as i have said many times in clinics, in interviews, and person to person communication, the term is a respectful recognition of one of the greatest coaches who ever lived, their value system, and to his athletes of long ago. in fact, several years ago, my son john contacted herb via e-mail to express our full appreciation of both percy and his contributions to athletics and the profound impact they both have had. herb responded with sincere appreciation of our sentiments and the usage of the term stotan, as well as congrats for our successes to that date. i still retain a copy of his reply along with all of their books.
as far as books go, i have read and own all of percy cerutty's books as well as books about both herb (the golden mile) and percy. certainly reading books and studying their works and efforts pales in comparison to first hand personal experience, but we have done the best that can be done as percy has not been with us since 1975. i would say that a more realistic connection, and which is utilized to some degree with my 7th and 8th grade runners in middle school, would be percy's 'schoolboy athletics'.
with regard to percy's well known willingness to share his work with others, as you have noted, i have spoken at clinics, done interviews, and have helped coaches and athletes over the years as well as i can via personal e-mails and phone conversations at their request as to my coaching methodology in terms of the physical, mental, and emotional considerations i have utilized, of which cerutty's inspirational and 'spiritual' side plays a significant role. in fact, i provided my contact info, upon request, at clinics i have spoken at for that purpose. i have not discussed these things on this or any other message board on purpose and will continue that approach due to the destructive and anonymous nature contained herein.
last winter i spoke at a clinic (charlotte nc) with the assignment of discussing 'the development of a championship program'. i spoke in between joe vigil and renato canova, obviously 2 current day giants of our sport. my task was not to discuss the intricacies of my training of hs kids but rather the development of a total program and all aspects. as some expressed disappointment that i did not discuss physical training as they might have desired, i made a point of doing so at another clinic in march at villanova univ at the invitation of marcus o'sullivan. those who came to hear about training seemed to leave more satisfied than the previous 'customers'. i remain incredulous that with vigil and canova on the slate in charlotte, people actually would have any interest in what i had to say about training.
make no mistake about this, the reference to percy and the term stotan is done with respect, reverence, and honor to a coach/philosopher, his star athlete(s), and a bygone era. we simply try our best to pay homage to their greatness by honoring the stotan name via our humble pursuits of today. our post collegiate group known as stotanracing does the same but is geared to the aspiring young adult runner whose desire to fulfill their potential mirrors that which was the same as percy's original stotans at portsea. of course, their training is more rigorous than the hs'ers, as it needs to be.
i hope this clarifies any misconceptions on our part. further, i would have loved to have been in your position as one who spent time with those great ones and their under appreciated coach. if ever the opportunity arises, maybe you could share with me some of your interactions with them. if so, you can contact me via our stotanracing.com website. i will be sure to respond.
sincerely,
bill aris
Bill,
Thank you for your detailed explanation. I believe I now understand your use of the term. Please know I was not referring to you but rather another poster who claimed to understand Cerutty because he had read "Why Die" and "Athletics". It was that poster who claimed that Perc did not share information.
Yes, I saw you speak in NC, and unlike others, it did not bother me that you did not go into specifics on training. I think any good coach will listen and read all that is available and chew on it, swallow what is palatable, and spit out the rest.
Incidentally, "Schoolboy Athletics" is an excellent text for the high school runner but my personal favorite, which seemed to mirror the exchanges I had with Perc, was "Be Fit or Be Damned"
Best of luck,
Ray