What F-M coach Bill Aris knows that no one else knows...

I think to a certain extent success brings success (helps get more kids out to run), but he must have:

a) had a good plan
b) lucked into some good initial talent

" Percy Cerutty described Herb Elliot, the 1960 1500m Olympic Champion as a “Stotanâ€. The term “Stotan†refers to a cross between a “Stoic†and a “Spartan.†The Stotan code explains that an athlete must be able to withstand any physical hardship to accomplish feats of strength and endurance. A Stotan is tough, works hard, and never complains. It also goes on to state that the mind is what hold’s back an athlete in training and competition.

The mind is what causes an athlete to set
limits. When one trains like a“Stotan,†they eliminate the notion that they cannot do something. Once an athlete believes he/she can accomplish anything, and they are willing to work to get to that point; then there is not a thing that can hold back the “Stotan.â€

"A Stotan is one who hardens, strengthens, toughens, and beautifies the body by consistent habits and regular exercises, which are consciously and irrevocably made part of the life plan of the individual, as well as consciously determining that the mind will be cultivated upon such abstractions as purity, beauty and logic."

I think there is a snowball effect at this point, but I think he's found some way to really appeal to kids' serious competitive passion in a way that few coaches can outside of the money sports. I mean, a lot of good running coaches can do that to an 8 or 9 level, but he hits 10 almost every year. I think it's even a bit cultish (but in a good way, LOL). The kids are kind of part of some secret society of excellence.

Another amazing thing about it is there really isn't a lot of kids in the program. This is no Great Oak here, or like any program where there's 50+ girls or guys and the cream rises to the top.

This guy:

http://www.irunfar.com/2016/05/away-from-it-all-an-interview-with-zach-miller.html

Read and listen to his interviews- he gives the answer.
And I believe him.

Aris:

"We do comprehensive resistance work, including squats, dead lifts, power cleans, and presses, year-round. I do the same work as the athletes. For my 60th birthday, I did a 365-pound dead lift.

Our program rarely has stars. My whole process is attempting to take average runners and make them above average, and taking above-average runners and trying to make them great. But it’s not really making them; it’s sharing with the athletes the pursuit of excellence."

He and his program without question have that something that appeals to kids and gets them to believe in themselves. Called it an aura or mystic...but very much like a John McDonnell or Mark Wetmore the athletes buy into the process of being great.

Pretty amazing to say the least!

Aris is a total badass. I have more respect for him than probably anyone else in the sport.

Besides the culture and training philosophies, they also have a few other things going for them (IMO):

1) Money: FM is a very wealthy school district. Allows funding for big invitationals, parents that can take time off work, and all the socioeconomic forces that go along with being rich.

2) Syracuse weather: Makes you tough as nails, and prepared to run well in late november/early december.

3) Green Lakes State Park: Amazing resource where they do a majority of their training. Sounds silly, but I think it plays a significant part.

We did a lengthy podcast with Aris in 2010:

You can listen to it here (or read a transcript of it)

http://www.letsrun.com/2010/tracktalk041301.php

He didn't reveal "the secret". To me, the secret is easy to define - Lifestyle, lifestyle, lifestyle.

Sort of like how in real estate the three keys are "location, location, location."

He gets the boys and girls to buy in 100% into running. On the female side of things, that results in dominance. The men are really good but by no means dominant.

Thanks for the podcast rojo.

It's easier to be dominant in girls sports.

I think you can do a lot with a strong goal oriented system, and a culture of self motivation.

My dad coaches Shawnee Mission Northwest, which had 14 consecutive state titles. I was a part of two of those teams. And a big part of our success year after year was knowing what we had to do collectively, and how to do it. Namely, we knew from history and past experience that if you could field five runners capable of running sub 17:00, you would be very difficult to beat at the state meet.

I think this gave us something of an edge, because I don't think many think of Cross as an event driven by time, so much as it is by place and team score. Track is where you worry about splits; cross you survive and try to pick off as many people.

Our team did not focus so much on place as we did on running the splits we needed in workouts, and focusing on those times in the races all year until by state we knew that the pieces were in place, and it was a matter of replicating what we had done previously.

The other crucial variable was self motivation. The coach is crucial of course, but cannot be there on every training run with every athlete. So there is a good deal of self-supervision going on. And when I entered varsity for the first time, there was that culture in place, that history. The seniors on the team told me and the other newbies, "Okay, here's what we're doing, you guys are going to stick with us." The older runners let the younger people knew what was at stake, and made us feel a part of something important.

I imagine FM has this same culture. I think they have this same strategy. Because there is nothing strange in the water there where they run. It's not like they field five phenoms year after year. They are really, really, really good at forming a team that knows exactly what it must do to achieve their goal, and they go out and do it. It's a surprisingly difficult thing to do, and something not many teams can do.

The thing is none of his runners ever reach the same success in college or beyond college as they did in highschool! I wouldn't even consider his coaching much of a "success" in the grand scheme of things beyond highschool. Name any of his stars who continued to the same level of success after highshool? They don't.

With that said I also am personally friends with ex-athletes of his and they have told me most of the runners end up hating running because of the army style coaching and eventually burn out not too long after they leave. It's not that hard to convince a few impressionable teenagers with type A parents to give up their lives for running. Yes, many of his students ran well but for the reasons I stated above I don't think his program is a success. Also I can't say this about all of his athletes but the ones I know don't exactly love Mr Aris that much.

Like these kids train like professionals when they are in highschool and when they get to college I've heard they actually are let down with their programs and don't care anymore. I know personally with running I like to think I'm progressing with training and didn't reach my peak when I was 17.

Why does everyone think this program is good for kids? Also his semi-pro team has never produced anyone good, and he usually just injures his athletes because of over-training. There is no balance with him and that only works with super talented athletes.

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FM in College... wrote:

The thing is none of his runners ever reach the same success in college or beyond college as they did in highschool! I wouldn't even consider his coaching much of a "success" in the grand scheme of things beyond highschool. Name any of his stars who continued to the same level of success after highshool? They don't.

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No denying F-M is successful.

It's is unfair to blame a high school coach for a lack of college results. Kids from programs like F-M quit running in college because when you run a ton of miles in high school and run 4:50 in the girl's mile you get a lot of attention. Once you get to college 4:50 is suddenly very ho-hum at the conference level, and when your mileage jumps from 55 a week to 65 a week you are not going to see the same level of improvement that the 5:10 miler who ran 35 miles a week will.

If most high mileage athletes would stick with it they would probably be average to above average Division I runners, which is really all a high school program can hope for for their alumni. A lot of women who do the training that F-M and most colleges do can run sub 4:50. Not nearly as many women, regardless of high school background can run sub 4:30.

Get kids to buy in and have a reasonable coaching model and they will run well. The first part of that statement is hard to do at the high school level.

I spent my first two years of HS in upstate NY from '06-'07, right around when they really started to dominate. This was the Tommy Gruenwald/Owen Kimple/17:18 4xMile era for those of you from the area.

I spoke with the coach several times, really really nice guy, as well as his son.

Despite being one of the higher ranked runners in the section, I can tell you from my experience when we got to meets and saw FM we looked in awe. Most of this was from being a nerdy 9th grade runner, but there's something to be said for how important the intimidation factor can be when a team has such a great history of success. I can imagine being on the other side of things, on their team, it must have been a major confidence boost to show up to meets knowing you were going to dominate. The culture of "we're going to win, there's no doubt about it, and we are going to do the work to be able to do it." is very effective with young adults, obviously. I couldn't get my teammates to stop playing hide-and-seek during practice the week before our state qualifiers..

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FM in College... wrote:

The thing is none of his runners ever reach the same success in college or beyond college as they did in highschool!

Like these kids train like professionals when they are in highschool and when they get to college I've heard they actually are let down with their programs and don't care anymore. I know personally with running I like to think I'm progressing with training and didn't reach my peak when I was 17.

Why does everyone think this program is good for kids? Also his semi-pro team has never produced anyone good, and he usually just injures his athletes because of over-training. There is no balance with him and that only works with super talented athletes.

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My college roommate was from a pretty dominant program in Connecticut in the 90s, Xavier HS.

They were no FM for sure, but there are definitely similarities. One of them was that all of these All State and All New England kids were pretty mediocre in college, and this included my roommate.

His perspective, and one that I agree with, was that kids that would have been 4:45 milers in most programs ran 4:25 in Xavier's. When it came to XC, it was bigger than the individual and they knew if you they were toeing the line at the state meet they had a certain expectation and they were going to compete well. Similarly, other runners looked at the black singlets with an X in awe and fear.

But why did these guys run poorly in college? 1.) Because they were average HS talents who greatly overachieved. 2.) Because college programs are more about the individual and there isn't a dominant coach forcing them to do all of the little things that made them overachieve in HS. 3.) Average talents don't make it at that level.

Same goes for York HS. We heard for years and years how that program burns out all it's kids, but look at Don Sage, the one super talented kid to come through it.

He was top 13 three times in NCAA cross and won an NCAA title on the track.

I would be willing to bet that 99 out of 100 of the York studs weren't all that talented, they just bought into a great program with a 1 in a million coach.

Aris gives these kids an opportunity for excellence at least once in their lives. If he can deliver on that, he should. Leaving it up to college programs to *maybe* develop their potential would be doing most of them no great favor.