Is indoor track ruining our kids? Should we be encouraging them to wrestle or play Basketball? Look at our young stars and many of them were also playing other sports in HS. Grant Fisher (soccer), Mary Cain(swimming), Allie O(basketball), Galen(soccer), etc.
http://highschoolsportsstuff.areavoices.com/2015/01/20/one-sport-athletes/
Let's discuss.
Do the kenyans play soccer, basketball, wrestling, and swimming growing up?
Galen was doing soccer even after he joined with Salazar? Was Cain doing swimming after 10th grade?
Also, full contact sports are a heightened risk of injury. Twisting an ankle in soccer or basketball would be devastating to an athletes base training and probably good portion of the season. No, if a runner wants to be great, I would not advise them to play another sport instead of running. Is this another troll thread?
Just gotta throw it out there wrote:
Do the kenyans play soccer, basketball, wrestling, and swimming growing up?
There's incomplete information here. We can't test this question because Kenyans don't have much of a developed world much less pools, soccer balls and basketballs being distributed regularly in circulation.
Just gotta throw it out there wrote:
Do the kenyans play soccer, basketball, wrestling, and swimming growing up?
They are more likely to be playing soccer than competing in indoor track meet...
I think another sport does help from an overall mental and physical development perspective. I'd guess he burnout rate of a 9th grader that runs 60-70 mile weeks without taking a break is pretty high. But then- that's what made Alan Webb.
iid wrote:
Galen was doing soccer even after he joined with Salazar? Was Cain doing swimming after 10th grade?
Yes, they both played other HS sports. Galen played soccer and Cain swam in HS.
Good topic. Keep the freshman under 40mpw, sophomores can touch 45-50, juniors 60 and seniors top at around 70. Extremely rare for the typical high school athlete to make a living off running alone unless they are historically fast and have a great personality. Their talent will show at 40mpw and top colleges will see that. YES have them do different sports! They are kids still.
Alan Webb is not a good role model for being a well-rounded high schooler. Pretty sure the behavior was excessive compulsive.
He did amazing things in HS, he was physically very mature and he trained as an olympic athlete. I wonder if he looks back with a tinge of regret and wonders how much better his social life and running career would have been had he ran 60-70 mpw in high school, and maybe even played a winter sport, and left the 100 mow workouts for later in life.
E. African kids do play soccer, cricket and other sports. But it is mostly informal stuff. Anyone who is good enough to play soccer or cricket with a team will stay away from distance running.
And in E. Africa, they ruin young runners all the time. The talent pool is so huge and there are so many young runners trying to make a name for themselves that lots and lots of runners get hurt or burn out. Salazar said that in Kenya, coaches have a dozen Galen Rupps and can train the snot out of them, whereas Salazar has to be very careful with the talent he has.
justme wrote:
iid wrote:Galen was doing soccer even after he joined with Salazar? Was Cain doing swimming after 10th grade?
Yes, they both played other HS sports. Galen played soccer and Cain swam in HS.
You didn't answer my questions. Did they play other sports during the 2nf half of highschool?
You can find good runners who did other sports in high school and then switched and you can find good runners who only ran. Ryun and Lindgren only ran and did OK. Ron Clarke played Aussie rules football well into his running years and only gave it up when an injury ended his footie career and he did OK as well.
Most kids who are on their school's track team, indoors or out, would not make their school's basketball team and a lot of schools don't have wrestling. For most kids high school track gives them, a sport to have some fun with.
multisports wrote:
Good topic. Keep the freshman under 40mpw, sophomores can touch 45-50, juniors 60 and seniors top at around 70. Extremely rare for the typical high school athlete to make a living off running alone unless they are historically fast and have a great personality. Their talent will show at 40mpw and top colleges will see that. YES have them do different sports! They are kids still.
This is the clown attitude that lead to many years of zero sub-9 high school 2mi times during the '90s.
1st world problems wrote:
Just gotta throw it out there wrote:Do the kenyans play soccer, basketball, wrestling, and swimming growing up?
There's incomplete information here. We can't test this question because Kenyans don't have much of a developed world much less pools, soccer balls and basketballs being distributed regularly in circulation.
God you're a moron. Kenyans don't have soccer balls? Have you ever visited Kenya, or are you just talking out of your rear end? Sheesh.
I'm sick and fucking tired of reading mindless, idiotic bullshit like this every time I log on to this site full of retards. First, not one HS kid in 100 runs indoor track. Second, rule #2 of being a rational, intelligent human being (second only to not being a liberal or reading or listening to anything liberals write or say) is to learn the difference between correlation and causation. The fact that some elite runners were competitive in other sports does not mean nor even imply that their participation in those sports is the cause of their superior running ability; instead it only reflects the fact that the traits required for high-level running overlap to some degree with the requirements for other sports. This is completely obvious and nobody who isn't liberal should require an explanation.
If playing soccer made you a better distance runner then I'm sure Salazar or Canova would have it as part of their training program. Perhaps the implication from your statement is that runners should be undertrained in HS? That may be the optimal strategy for those with elite talent so as to maximize their long term potential, but what about those with average to above average talent? Shouldn't they be able to maximize their ability in the short window (4-5 years) they have to run competitively before giving it up in college? There's nothing wrong with coaches coaching effectively with any eye towards maximizing talent in HS. The ones that say otherwise are either mediocre coaches looking to justify their lack of success or college coaches hoping they can create more undertrained talent they can then "coach" into star runners. How many D1 talents does an average HS coach have on their team in a given decade? 2 or 3?
I live in northeast and we have indoor but it is really tough because of all the weather interruptions. We more or less do base work. 2 of my xc kids made the basketball team and I encourage some to swim on our swim team.
Only no talent losers migrate to track and/or xc after getting kicked out of marching band because playing an instrument at the same time is too difficult.
^marching and playing an instrument at the same time is too difficult.