How to Beat FM

Floyd Mayweather is a tough cookie; the man won't go down without a fight. Your best bet is to catch him off guard on a lazy summer afternoon.*

*Serafim Todorov, 1996 Olympics

here are some of their secrets to success from a former male runner there

1)cheat- they practice way more than allowed throughout the summer with coaches

2) be anorexic- more than half the girls there are

3) strict lifestyle- no drinking or drugs or going out only thing they are allowed is sex once a week

It's not cheating to practice over the summer with a coach. There is no longer an out of season coaching rule.

They can't be mandatory but you can do it.

fm maann wrote:

here are some of their secrets to success from a former male runner there

1)cheat- they practice way more than allowed throughout the summer with coaches

2) be anorexic- more than half the girls there are

3) strict lifestyle- no drinking or drugs or going out only thing they are allowed is sex once a week

You obviously know nothing about the team and are not a former runner there. If you are, you can email me at

. We were probably teammates. If you are actually a former runner, then you probably didn't buy into the program, which is fine. What isn't fine is attacking those of us who did. I'm sorry that we put our all into something and were successful and that that fact makes you uncomfortable.

1) None of their practices are illegal. There are voluntary practices over the summer. They truly are voluntary.

2) I'm not going to speak for every girl on the current team, but to my knowledge this statement is simply untrue. Obviously female runners often struggle with eating disorders, but if you listen to Aris give his talk to get kids to buy into the program, the nutrition is more important than the mileage. He knows, and teaches, that you can't perform without proper fuel.

If by anorexic you mean they watch what they eat, then you're absolutely correct.

3) The sex comment is obviously an attack by a jealous person. As for the rest, heaven forbid that kids dedicate themselves to something other than partying. What is our society coming to?

IN 1980, the Americans beat the Soviets in hockey, a team with 9 consecutive world championships, 4 consecutive Olympic gold medals and 42 straight unbeaten games.

Oklahoma won 47 straight football games until Notre Dame beat them 7 - 0 in 1957.

In 1987, Edwin Moses finally lost a race in the 400 hurdles. The last defeat was in 1977.

Alexsandr Karolin didn't give up a POINT for 6 years (unbeaten for 13 years in a row) until he finally lost to Rulon Gardner at Sydney.

America's Cup was won by an American boat every race from 1851 to 1983, until the Australians put together a winner to break the streak.

In 1974, Notre Dame beat UCLA, after UCLA won an astounding 88 games in a row. College basketball entered an age of relative parity.

Knowing nothing about our team, but presumably a good deal about cross country, what things do you think we should do to beat the best?

I know enough about FM to know that the encouragement of anorexia is complete crap. Don't feel that it necessary to respond to such idiocy.

"No Way", how would you beat your old team?

Merely Mortal Girls Team wrote:

I know enough about FM to know that the encouragement of anorexia is complete crap. Don't feel that it necessary to respond to such idiocy.

"No Way", how would you beat your old team?

Knowing nothing about your team, it will be tough. Are you a section 3 team looking to beat them, or are you looking to beat them at nationals?

FM is a relatively large school where running is a popular sport. Many of the best athletes want to run rather than do other sports. Not to take anything away from the coaching, but that culture has a lot to do with it.

Assuming you can get the talent and dedication that FM has, then you simply have to do better. Obviously this is different for everyone. It might mean more mileage, more quality, more cross training. It almost certainly means better diet. It probably means more sacrifice. That other guy wasn't kidding when he said they don't stay up late very often.

Basically they live the lives of a top collegiate runner. Outside of school, running is a full time gig. If you can get 5-7 girls who can do that, then you have a shot.

Good answer to a question that I purposely made difficult to answer because of its lack of focus, but sometimes I find it easier to get an informative response if the question isn't leading.

We are not in NY and we are not a large school. Like every other team in the country, FM is at a different level from us. We still have teams in our own state better than us (the number has shrunk each of the three years I've coached and we are still improving), but since the girls from FM are typical American girls, there is seemingly no unbreakable barrier that should stop another team from doing what they can do, then going a little beyond.

Your post is worthy of reflection.

I understand that every part of the FM program is geared to optimal results. If you had to pinpoint one aspect of the program that is clearly superior to all other programs, what would that be?

Merely Mortal Girls Team wrote:

If you had to pinpoint one aspect of the program that is clearly superior to all other programs, what would that be?

This has been talked about before on the "How does Fayetteville-Malius do it?" thread. The answer is going to be the culture that gets the kids to work extremely hard.

How about a more hard hitting unambiguous question like: What is the training like? I mean the details of how mileage is progressed, weekly structure in the beginning, middle, and end of the season, specific workouts, etc.

It changes year to year, sure, but what about the years you were there. This question has never been answered thoroughly here.

Your coach needs to develop five girls at least (preferably 6-8) into 17:00-17:45 5k runners. After that you can question what else to do. Until you can do that, nothing else matters.

Ask a better question wrote:

This has been talked about before on the "How does Fayetteville-Malius do it?" thread. The answer is going to be the culture that gets the kids to work extremely hard.

How about a more hard hitting unambiguous question like: What is the training like? I mean the details of how mileage is progressed, weekly structure in the beginning, middle, and end of the season, specific workouts, etc.

It changes year to year, sure, but what about the years you were there. This question has never been answered thoroughly here.

I've tried to find this answer in other threads. There might not be another program where answers to specific training questions are as consistently ambiguous.

So I second your question to those associated with FM.

"No Way", you've been helpful already, would you care to help?

Get a team of 50-60 girls, have them run 60 miles a week with a good bit of high end aerobic work, keep them healthy and happy, and you'll trounce FM within a few years.

Well you got the first part right. Again, not to take away from the coaching, but the culture is it. It is like in the south where football is king. You don't have trouble getting people to play football and play hard and train hard because that is what everyone wants to do. We're lucky enough to have that in running. When you have enough people join the program and put the effort in, you're bound to get 7 that really flourish. If you only have 8 girls on your team, even if half of them turn into all-stars, you're still short of a good team. When 6 of those 8 girls got cut from the soccer team and perhaps just aren't athletically gifted...The results probably aren't going to be very good. Basically, you have to have running become the predominant sport in your school. This was accomplished in FM because the coaches established a program that the runners really believed in. The runners were told, "If you do this, you will be great."

((As a digression: A lot of people criticize the program saying that the runners are forced into a certain life style, and that if you don't follow that life style, you're not on the team. This isn't the case. All you have to do is go to one of the meets where the full team is present and you'll see that the runners run the gambit of ability levels and levels of dedication. That said, there's not a whole ton of tolerance for people who don't put in at least a basic level of commitment. All of the extra "crazy" stuff is completely voluntary.))

So basically, the runners buy into this program and believe in it. Once a group started doing it and got results, the believed more deeply. Other people saw this and also started to believe. If you remember back to 2004 with the guys, when they shaved their heads and really started preaching the whole Stotan thing..That's when it started. They drew attention to it, made it popular. The group that was really the leaders was doing very well, and then the group that didn't quite buy in at first saw that and said, "Hey, I want to be that good." And then the kids who did other sports and maybe weren't stars or sat the bench saw it and said, "Hey, I want to do that too." It's not that we have a very large team by any means. We still lose a lot to soccer and other sports, but at least running is an option.

As far as training, there's a reason that you don't find anything specific, and that is because it doesn't exist. You have the generic "it's nothing special, just run." that everyone says. That's sort of true, but what I think makes FM more special is that each runner's training plan is literally custom tailored to them. Of course there's a general plan based on Lydiard, but the day to day stuff is individual. One runner might go for a 40 minute run while the other goes for an hour. Another might go for 20, or ride the bike. Another thing is that there is no mile counting. It's all based on time. There is a lot of hill running. Roads are avoided as much as possible. I don't know where you are and what your winters are like, but a typical winter here involves tons of snow which makes trail running difficult/impossible.

Another big thing, is that the focus is on cross country. I know everyone here hates Lance, but remember how his big thing is that his only goal was the tour? Everyone else was trying to win other races, but by focusing only on the tour he has an advantage. We did the same thing. Outdoor track had some importance, and there was a peak there, especially when some of the guys were doing well in the 1600 and going to nationals. For the most part though, everything was geared toward XC. This meant hills and strength training.

I know this was a big jumbled response, and if you want me to clarify anything I'll be happy to. The key things, in my opinion, are the culture, the year round running program with a single coach and a single philosophy, the individualized workouts, and the focus on XC.

fadfasd wrote:

Get a team of 50-60 girls, have them run 60 miles a week with a good bit of high end aerobic work, keep them healthy and happy, and you'll trounce FM within a few years.

Not far from the truth. It's just a lot easier said than done apparently.

I also don't know for sure, but I don't think many of the FM girls do 60mpw. I can think of maybe one, but again we didn't count miles.

There are also way less than 50 of them.

Bill Aris has said he only gets about 20-30 girls for the team... Is that just the ones that stay in the program after tryouts or something because that's not a large number?

If individualization is a key, then how is that approached?

We are located in the Upper Midwest, so our winters are similar to yours, but our topography here is different. You've got to travel a bit to find any kind of a hill.

How do the hills fit into the workouts? For instance, could you describe a period of your individualized training when hills made up a large focus of your training, say during the late summer (if hills did indeed make up a good bit of your training block then)? How would that contrast with another of the top runners on the team, seeing how you've said that each runner's workouts were different?

Did you do more Canova type 10 second hills, or longer hills at a tempo type effort, or simply take advantage of the terrain and frequently direct your efforts over hilly trails and roads?

For instance, I can tell you that the 2004 York team that beat the 2004 FM boys team would have a dedicated hill day on Saturdays in summer at a park in a nearby town. After a 3 mile warm up, they would run the workout hard (like most York training sessions) sprinting near full speed up a 250-300m hill and then jogging continuously down without pause. If I remember correctly, they ended the summer doing around 18-20 of those. After that, they would do 60-75 meter uphills on a hill with a steeper grade, but rest a little in between sprints. Since the coaches weren't by this hill, lots of times the captains would organize those into relay races.

Ask a better question wrote:

Bill Aris has said he only gets about 20-30 girls for the team... Is that just the ones that stay in the program after tryouts or something because that's not a large number?

If individualization is a key, then how is that approached?

When I was there, there weren't really any tryouts. They lose a lot of girls to soccer.

As far as individualization, they make an effort to find what works best for each runner. There are girls who run 7 days a week, and girls who run 4. There are girls who lift weights, and girls who don't. It's a process. Let's take a new runner for example. Let's say they played soccer in middle school and then decided to run in high school.

Ideally, they would join the team in the summer and simply slowly build fitness. They'd run at Green Lakes State Park on the trails and hills. If they were tired or injured they'd ease off, if they were doing well they would increase volume.

Obviously the goal is to push yourself as far as you can, right? Well they way it works at FM is that you keep increasing until performance stops increasing, or something else says "Hey maybe I'm doing too much."

You might have two guys running 4:20 for the 1600. One might have a two hour long run, the other might be 40 minutes. It all depends on what works for that person.

Coach Aris is very easy to talk to, and it is easy to discuss how you're feeling with him. If he suspects something might be wrong, he'll ask, "Hey, how are you feeling? Are you sore? Did you sleep well last night?" He also makes it easy to approach him. A runner might say, "Hey, I've been feeling a little sluggish, what do you think I should do?"

I don't know if that is the answer you're looking for, but it basically just treating each athlete as an individual.

It does answer it, thanks.

How common are those 2 hour long runs?

But before you said running is a big sport at FM, but if you only get 20-30 girls without tryouts, then that's not very big. My high school has 20-30 girls with a school of only about 400 total students.

How is the summer program run? Like how many days per week do they meet with any of the coaches and how structured are the workouts?

This is probably my last post of the night but I'll be happy to check back in tomorrow.I want to start by saying that I was never really a "top runner", so my comparison to what I did and other guys did may reflect that.For the most part with the hills, we simply ran on hilly terrain. They might say, "So today the game plan is to get in a steady state run with moderate hills. Sam, you're running 40 minutes, Jack, you're running 60-70 depending on how you fell, etc." Many workouts were pretty unstructured. We didn't do a lot real "speedwork." Our speed work was the hills. The late summer was spent mostly doing hilly moderately paced runs. Later in the season, we ran on flatter ground and ran faster.As far as what determined who got what kind of workout, that was between coach and athlete. There was open communication always. If someone needed more strength, they would do more hills. If someone was feeling sluggish they'd do less. The key was finding each person's sweet spot, balancing volume, hills, strength work, etc. If someone had been doing high volume over the summer and ran fast summer races or early season races, but then slowed over the season, then that person might try keeping their mileage up. If it seemed like higher mileage left a person tired or sluggish, then they would ease back.The decision really was made between athlete and coach on an individual basis. Obviously in practice people ended up running together and doing similar workouts, but usually people would be running for different amounts of time.I'm not sure if that answers your question. FM is a hilly area, we would seek out hills on our runs. On occasion there would be hill repeats. There was not a whole ton of all out sprinting up hills. There were fartlek type runs where we pushed on the hills and recovered on the rest. I suppose in reality, that's the same as repeats with jogging recovery.