Middle school outdoor track advise

If they're only meeting twice a week, I'd do workouts both days. Maybe a tempo one day and some intervals the other day (starting with longer threshold repeats and getting faster as the relevant championship meet approaches). The kids can do the easy distance running on their own. Save the recovery/distance runs for days that the team doesn't meet.

Please put them in an agility movement based program. No weights or lifting, just agility and coordination based movement.

No hard intervals that cause mechanical fatigue. Short hill sprints are fine, nothing long. Focus on sprint running machanics when doing the hill sprints.

Every other run should be very very very low end aerobic, while staying in form.

I appreciate the feedback. Any other idea's would be appreciated. Thanks.

I've done a lot of youth coaching and can tell you that kids aren't going to understand tempo runs. They want to run fast every time they get out there and aren't going to have the pace discipline for sustained tempo run. I'd use a 10-15 warmup and cool down to get in some mileage and then run various interval workouts to make the most of their competitive drive.

A couple of workouts that have worked well for me:

Continuous 2-3 person relays of 200 or 400m for a set time like15-20 minutes. They pace themselves better when they realize they'll be going for awhile. You should also work on handoff techniques so they can get practice handing off and receiving throughout the workout.

Timed intervals. Instead of 800s at 5k pace I'll have them run for 3 minutes and see how far they can get. I set out cones every 10m and let them run any pace they like as long as they finish one cone further each time. They tend to start out controlled and then enjoy the challenge of competing against their last interval.

I should add that I'm in favor of youth runners training hard and building mileage as MS runners but for the majority of kids this age they'll only last a season or two if they are not winning every race and leading every practice. I like to find workouts that get them to train hard without turning every workout into a race.

We all know that today's youth superstar is probably not going to be tomorrow's superstar so getting as many of those kids out for HS track is the real goal of MS track.