XC for a 400/800 guy?

Why would you lose muscle?

BUMP we have a similar kid who is debating doing xc or not because of this

When I did XC last year and started lifting in season, I lost all my gains. Obviously they were very tiny gains, but noticable, but we would go out for a 50-60 minute long run and after that my arms felt so damn weak and the visible muscle was mostly gone.

do xc. Good mid distance guys like you typically do this in HS:

weight training class in the morning, xc practice after school and then a meet or long run on Saturday and Sunday off.

The weights 5 times a week keeps your muscle/strength good. Also, its your track off season. You can't be in peak shape all the time. Doing xc will improve your endurance for the 800 and a stronger 800 means better 400. The lifting may not improve due to distance training, but it should stay the same or only tiny bit regress. Then after xc 2 weeks off and start up building a base for track as your coach recommends. Just to repeat, your 400/800 fitness doesn't matter during xc. If you're a 400/800 guy, you'll be in 400/800 shape when its time to be in 400/800 shape. Don't overthink things, overthinking only hinders performance.

Thoughts? Questions? Concerns?

Go ahead and do XC.

Sure, you might lose a little in the weight room, but neither the 400 nor the 800 are contested in the weight room.

Running XC will help your with aerobic development, it will give you a group to train with, and you have another 6-10 chances to compete. Always compete!

Here are the caveats.

Add distance volume slowly. You are strong in ways that are not specific to the ways that long, relatively slow running stresses your body, which actually increases your chances of getting hurt.

Sprint oriented guys often have weird strides when they try to run longer. Make sure you don't. Every pace is a separate skill - take time to learn this one well.

Make sure you keep running fast during XC season - both all out and at 800 pace. Many good XC programs have a speed development day each week and if yours does... great. But if not, ask the coach to work it out so you can get this work in. Sprinting also helps with running economy, so it will also have a direct benefit for your XC racing.

Try to have hill sprints, the all out 60's then 100's at 400m pace as the season progresses. Go really fast once a week.

Also try to hit 800 pace once a week. Something as simple as 3-4 x 20 seconds at 800 goal pace (that would be about 140m in 20 seconds if you're looking to run 1:56). You can do this before your run one day week.

Speed is a skill and a capacity and it should be developed year round, so make sure that stays in your program

I still don't understand why some of you think there might be strength/muscle loss. I would think there would be gains.

Say wha? wrote:

I still don't understand why some of you think there might be strength/muscle loss. I would think there would be gains.

There are two reasons.

First, if you do XC without heavy lifting and/or sprinting, you will loose some neurological efficiency. A lot of the strength gains a HS athlete gets are from his neurological system learning to fire more quickly. Like aerobic capacity, this goes away if it is not stimulated. This is also why you need to sprint and lift heavy year round.

Second, adding XC training on top of lifting adds a lot of perceived stress and actual metabolic stress to one's body, making it hard to maintain previous weight room levels. And if the athlete has been doing a hypertrophy oriented lifting program, a lot of running will interrupt that process and he/she will get smaller.

Cali Guy wrote:

Say wha? wrote:

I still don't understand why some of you think there might be strength/muscle loss. I would think there would be gains.

There are two reasons.

First, if you do XC without heavy lifting and/or sprinting, you will loose some neurological efficiency. A lot of the strength gains a HS athlete gets are from his neurological system learning to fire more quickly. Like aerobic capacity, this goes away if it is not stimulated. This is also why you need to sprint and lift heavy year round.

Second, adding XC training on top of lifting adds a lot of perceived stress and actual metabolic stress to one's body, making it hard to maintain previous weight room levels. And if the athlete has been doing a hypertrophy oriented lifting program, a lot of running will interrupt that process and he/she will get smaller.

Thanks for your thoughtful response. But I disagree with the application yo XC. First, XC includes sprint training and lifting. Of course it may not be at the same level as T&F season, but there are additional pathways that will be stimulated. This improves efficiency when the athlete returns to sprinting. Second, I don't disagree with your other point except that hypertrophy is not something I generally think of as desirable for runners. Thanks again.

For our XC season we just have daily practices (2 hours) which consist only of running. We didn't lift a single day last season in XC. we did core but that was about it. It was just running running running. I can make time to go to the weight room obviously but my ooach doesn't incorporate lifting into training.

i've posted before. wrote:

When I did XC last year and started lifting in season, I lost all my gains. Obviously they were very tiny gains, but noticable, but we would go out for a 50-60 minute long run and after that my arms felt so damn weak and the visible muscle was mostly gone.

I call BS, unless you are over 35 years of age. Young people do not lose muscle that quickly.

yes run cross country, but MODIFY it for you as a 400/800 guy. a good coach won't just have you running every day like a 10k guy.

you should lift (olympics)

you should sprint 10 to 60 meters

you should do continuous running, but fartlek and tempo stuff might be better for you than just 4 days of "going out for a run"

you talk about muscle, but what you want is power. even at 400 and 800m you don't want extra unnecessary weight.

So you can still do simple plyometric exercises, throw med balls etc.

It should be a meld of track practices and cross country practices.

The races themselves could be your "long run"

"Running cross country" allows you to have the motivation to practice daily, but it doesn't have to be 5k training.

yeah man i'm a 50 year old male who runs with the high school cross country team. lmao

ok, maybe not 1 long run, but the muscle would mostly go away after a few days at the most if i didn't go to the weight room.

.............................. wrote:

you should do continuous running, but fartlek and tempo stuff might be better for you than just 4 days of "going out for a run"

to the OP, there is some great and solid advice already, and I'm going to add a few pieces. having coached 200m/400m athletes who have run XC, and have had excellent success at the higher levels (All-American status on the track), the above point is something that I incorporated.

I recommend forming a mid-distance xc group--sort of a subset of the normal XC team, that trains together 1-2 times per week, where the primary goal is to foster group identity/ sprint cohesiveness, with the secondary goal being development of sprint dynamics through xc training. workout examples would be, while the standard XC team is doing a workout such as mile repeats, the mid-d group would be doing 6-8x 3 minutes at a quick tempo, with 90" recovery, usually ending with 1-2 longer sprints at a high intensity (80-150m at 80% of full effort).

A basic tenet of sprinting at the high school/ early development level is knee lift, and XC is a great way to develop strength in your hips and thighs to increase your knee drive. When you are doing your hill repeats, or other longer hill sessions (could even be a long run over a hilly terrain, or a hilly XC race) remember while you are running that it will improve your strength and range of motion, which will improve your ability to explode out of the blocks. When you're rounding the final turn in the 400, and your body starts to get tired, you will be able to fight it off, due to increased strength gained from XC.

Be careful in the weight room during the fall, as you will still be competing, but transition it to a winter session, so that your physical strength gains will be maximized when you begin racing in the spring.

Play a real sport, our best 400/800 guy in high school played soccer year round but the conditioning and strength he had as a result was phenomenal.

I agree that proper XC training includes weights and sprint training, but many, many HS programs, like the OP's, fail to do this. For some, it's a lack of knowledge, some a lack of time, some are lazy, but many people in the distance community believe, deeply, that "speed" means 5k pace and "strength" means a 40 minute tempo run.

I also agree that hypertrophy is undesirable for performance. It was fun to see the surprise the football guys had when they came to sprint with us and they got faster, stronger, and more explosive while getting smaller on our low reps/high weight program.

But I made my point because teen boys like showy muscles (even slightly showy muscles) - which is why they panic even when they are getting stronger if they get "smaller". This led me to actually add in a few exercises into our routine to give our guys slightly more cut abs and slightly bigger pecs. They just didn't feel like they were making progress if they couldn't see those things!

wow, thanks for the reply.

So basically, the track mid distance team only has 1 kid who did cross country last year and probably won't do it again this year. I really really reaaaaalllyyy want to try that idea of forming a mid-distance "squad" for cross country but it would be very tough to form one. If I can make one I definitely will!