True or false: Al Sal: "You want muscle on you. In the long term, being skinny is a negative."

Yes, they can be reconciled. Salazar is being vague, Wetmore sarcastic. You want to have enough muscle to adequately handle the impact of whatever top speed you regularly run without breaking down. As it turns out, that tends to be a very minimal amount of muscle relative to most other sports and society in general.

How come every athlete associated with Alberto looks like they just got out of a concentration camp?

When people think of muscle, they often tend to think of hypertrophy. Yes, we want muscle, but we don't want bulk. You can have one without the other.

Anyone remember Alan Webb? Guy stood 5'9" and weighed 140 to 145 when he set the American mile record back in 2007. That's right 3:46 mile weighing that much. He wasn't some 5'9" 120 pound guy looking like he spent years on an island with minimal food. He had a very good amount of muscle on him.

Has Alsal been trolling us as X_fit_guy_the_real_1?

I'm sorry, but this piece is just terrible. There's absolutely no basis to conclude that strength work or multisport backgrounds have anything to do with the success of current high school runners. Even coaches who are pretty big proponents of "supplemental work" wouldn't say it contributes very much to performance.

As for knowledgeable coaches and parents? Well, obviously having good coaches helps athletes perform better. But if we're trying to figure out WHY high school distance running has gotten so good, then the real question is why do we have more knowledgeable coaches now than we did 10 or 20 years ago?

Raymond Reddington wrote:

Anyone remember Alan Webb? Guy stood 5'9" and weighed 140 to 145 when he set the American mile record back in 2007. That's right 3:46 mile weighing that much. He wasn't some 5'9" 120 pound guy looking like he spent years on an island with minimal food. He had a very good amount of muscle on him.

There's a lot of debate nowadays in the distance world over weight training and gaining muscle and therefore weight. Tabor Stevens, D2 XC and Steeple Champ, is 6'5" and 180 pounds according to ASU's website, and I remember when I looked at his profile in the fall after he won XC it said he was 190 pounds then.

This is in comparison to the most successful runners, such as Rudisha who's only 2 inches shorter than Stevens yet weighs 25 pounds less, yet many will agree that you need more muscle and power for the 800 than you do for the 10k.

Peter Coe and Frank Horwill both encouraged weight training to build explosive power over 400 meters, prevent injury and reduce body fat.

However, they did not believe that skinny was a negative. The athlete's weight was the most important factor. Coe is 5'9" but his ideal racing weight was under 120 pounds.

Weight-training alone does not make you heavier. In my experience it's the best way to lose body fat, along with a carefully controlled diet, though I've never run 70 mpw.

this is how runner muscle should look

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/si/2012/olympics/2012/writers/tim_layden/06/22/alan-webb-dathan-ritzenhein-2012-olympic-track-and-field-trials/alan-webb.jpg

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/---gQ-OaV2Wg/U4l7GQW2h1I/AAAAAAAAAMA/ikvKJq7vW8w/w935-h647/Fullscreen%2Bcapture%2B5302014%2B115029%2BPM.jpg

800 dude wrote:

the real question is why do we have more knowledgeable coaches now than we did 10 or 20 years ago?

I hope that this was meant to be rhetorical. Just it case it wasn't - the answer is "the internet". Duh.

the answer is coe.back then, people trained like they thought coe trained. now they train like he did train.

800 dude wrote:

I'm sorry, but this piece is just terrible. There's absolutely no basis to conclude that strength work or multisport backgrounds have anything to do with the success of current high school runners. Even coaches who are pretty big proponents of "supplemental work" wouldn't say it contributes very much to performance.

As for knowledgeable coaches and parents? Well, obviously having good coaches helps athletes perform better. But if we're trying to figure out WHY high school distance running has gotten so good, then the real question is why do we have more knowledgeable coaches now than we did 10 or 20 years ago?

Raymond Reddington wrote:

Anyone remember Alan Webb? Guy stood 5'9" and weighed 140 to 145 when he set the American mile record back in 2007. That's right 3:46 mile weighing that much. He wasn't some 5'9" 120 pound guy looking like he spent years on an island with minimal food. He had a very good amount of muscle on him.

It's funny how this is a good amount of muscle/bulk in the running word when those numbers by themselves sound skinny to anyone outside the realm.

Losing weight is like tapering in a training cycle. Tapering is necessary to hit peak performance, but obviously "tapering" all the time is just being undertrained. Similarly, more muscle helps prevent injury and facilitates better training. Being skinny lets one run faster, but there's no benefit to being excessively skinny during training.

Cyclists typically cycle their weight with their training cycles, typically weighing ~10 lbs more in the offseason compared to peak races.

I'd conjecture that you have to be at least "skinny" to be good at mid-distance or distance running; however, once you're at the minimal amount of skinniness, there won't be much of a correlation between your performance and how skinny you are.

It's like basketball. With few exceptions, everyone who is good at basketball is above 6'5"; however, among the NBA players, there's little correlation between height and points scored.

Every elite distance runner is skinny. Salazar should have used a word like scrawny. Weak would be a disadvantage.

iCoach wrote:

When people think of muscle, they often tend to think of hypertrophy. Yes, we want muscle, but we don't want bulk. You can have one without the other.

Bingo!

800 dude wrote:

There's absolutely no basis to conclude that strength work or multisport backgrounds have anything to do with the success of current high school runners.

I agree with this, and Webb was way too bulky for a runner.

El G had a much better example of a good runner's build.

Doo wrote:

Losing weight is like tapering in a training cycle. Tapering is necessary to hit peak performance, but obviously "tapering" all the time is just being undertrained. Similarly, more muscle helps prevent injury and facilitates better training. Being skinny lets one run faster, but there's no benefit to being excessively skinny during training.

Cyclists typically cycle their weight with their training cycles, typically weighing ~10 lbs more in the offseason compared to peak races.

Makes sense.

Re: Wetmore. Why the condom over the head?

I wouldn't say AlSal, but a good possibility is that xfit is another handle on this boards considering he forgets that he is still on that handle when posting in race threads.