How to get high school XC runners to run over the summer?

This has worked for me:

http://hughsoncc.blogspot.com/p/2015-mileage.html

I don't get 100% participation, but the kids who are the backbone of the team buy in. Our "summer" is a 100 day period that ends the day before our league opener. We have shirts for 300,500,700 miles. Our 700 shirt is a technical deal with a "fight club" soap on it, only it says 700 mile club instead. The others just say Hughson Cross Country 500 mile club.

Don't be disappointed if you don't get all of your team to practices either. We meet 3 times a week at Hughson, but I'd say most kids show up to around 2/3 of the practices. Even the serious ones travel, show animals at fair, forget to set their alarm, etc....

Kids send me their mileage via text message on Sunday afternoons during the summer and I plug it into the spreadsheet. My blog gets the more visitors during the summer months than at any other time, so I know the kids are checking their totals and those of their teammates.

Almost no kids cheat and submit fake totals. They don't want to be shown as frauds when they show up to the first day of actual practice and can't live up to what they claim to have done over the summer.

Many have talked about building a culture. That is tough. Reinforce effort rather than results. If you point out one of your mid packers because he had an excellent workout or even one of your slow kids who is doing a warm up drill well, after a while, kids start to buy in and want to hear praise coming their way as well.

Beat them. Repeat.

Thanks, all. CoachB, that blog looks like a great idea and I will likely steal the idea or do something similar.

We are here in the midwest where it is obviously hot and humid in the summer. Previously summer practice was in the late afternoon, but this is unnecessarily hot and now that I will be running things I'd like to have a.m. practice. Anyone with experience on how early you can reasonably expect kids to show up? I was hoping by about 6 a.m. or so. Partially this is so parents would be able to pick up their kid and still make it to work. Any input is appreciated.

The positive coaching alliance stuff, at least the stuff from Coach McGuire, that I checked out is really good and I recommend it.

Anybody got any advice for how I (a HS athlete) can get my teammates to run?

I was our 2nd runner last year and will likely be 2nd again this year. #1 and I were captains, and the girls #1 was a captain. Our top 2-3 in each gender are well motivated and I'm sure will get plenty of summer mileage, but the others aren't as reliably dedicated. Our coach is pretty bad and doesn't try to get kids to run in the summer. I try to keep them running throughout the year (through some anomaly and a notoriously bad distance program, almost no xc runners do track, they opt for lax and baseball) by telling them when local 5ks are, and have recently started a team who runs a local long-distance relay, but the majority of the team still doesn't run until the season.

First of all, it's great that you care about your teammates getting better. In my experience, teenagers won't run in the summer unless they truly want to improve or their friends are doing it. A lot of kids run XC for the social aspect and, even if they want to get better, they don't want to put in the extra work for it.

Almost all runners want to improve, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are willing to do the hard work needed to make it happen. Do you have any teammates who may not be super dedicated but you know get frustrated about not breaking 19:00 or not running with the varsity 7? If so, have a real convo with them and tell them the only way they can get there is by running. Tell them they have a group of teammates ready to work with them all summer.

Try to make the workouts social in nature. Have a "workout" once a week where you do a team warmup, drills, then something fun like ultimate frisbee. After some of them get used to that, turn the game into a real run and afterwards do something fun as a group. If a teammate has a pool, everyone goes over to their house afterwards. or go bowling, or out for pizza, or whatever. You have to make it something they look forward to and not just a run. We never did group runs, but twice a week a bunch of us met up at the school and did some sort of obstacle course workout. Each of us would take turns creating a course that we would race each other on. They usually included bleachers, hurdles, pushups, and sometimes even used a football or basketball to mix it up. A lot of them didn't like running long so this got them moving in a way they somewhat enjoyed. With any luck, they'll begin to accept the concept of running over summer and show up more throughout the week.

I feel encouraged that you care enough to write into LRC about this.

Ashton Eating wrote:

Anybody got any advice for how I (a HS athlete) can get my teammates to run?

I was our 2nd runner last year and will likely be 2nd again this year. #1 and I were captains, and the girls #1 was a captain. Our top 2-3 in each gender are well motivated and I'm sure will get plenty of summer mileage, but the others aren't as reliably dedicated. Our coach is pretty bad and doesn't try to get kids to run in the summer. I try to keep them running throughout the year (through some anomaly and a notoriously bad distance program, almost no xc runners do track, they opt for lax and baseball) by telling them when local 5ks are, and have recently started a team who runs a local long-distance relay, but the majority of the team still doesn't run until the season.

Read through this thread, there are some excellent ideas. One guy said that ultimately if it is their decision they will do it. So that is a big key.

I had basically the same guys on our varsity team for 3 straight years. Then I brought in an old coach who told about what he did, how tough he was on the kids and etc. That seemed to help.

What that group did is get together and play lots of soccer, ultimate, and other games they liked. I asked if they wanted me there and they told me no. So I do not know exactly what they did. They said they did do some running as well. But this was a group of kids who really liked and enjoyed each others company. AND we won.

One thing that I found out too late is to reward those who show up and not complain about the ones who do not show. If it's fun or rewarding, that word will get out. Sometimes it will be the young ones who show up because they admire the older kids like you.

If you can find a popular kid who has never been out for the team before to come to the practices that could be a boost. The kids are the best recruiters on a team. It's rarely the coach who can recruit unless he has solid leaders who can turn on kids to the sport.

This is a good tread. Throw out the ideas that you know will not work with your community. Show some of these ideas to your coach. Whether he is a great coach or a bad one, he will want to help. Ask some people who run which ideas may help. They will have some ideas too. Pick the ideas that will work though. Everyone has the right to offer opinions, you have the right to ignore them.

New Coach wrote:

Thanks, all. CoachB, that blog looks like a great idea and I will likely steal the idea or do something similar.

We are here in the midwest where it is obviously hot and humid in the summer. Previously summer practice was in the late afternoon, but this is unnecessarily hot and now that I will be running things I'd like to have a.m. practice. Anyone with experience on how early you can reasonably expect kids to show up? I was hoping by about 6 a.m. or so. Partially this is so parents would be able to pick up their kid and still make it to work. Any input is appreciated.

The positive coaching alliance stuff, at least the stuff from Coach McGuire, that I checked out is really good and I recommend it.

We meet at 7:00 AM. By the time we finish all of our junk around 9:00 AM, it's getting pretty warm here. I don't know if I could get kids there by 6:00 on a regular basis. I know some programs meet even earlier, but I don't know how often they do it.

As far as parents needing to pick kids up and still get to work, my recent experience tells me that kids can make it without mom or dad. Some live pretty far out in the country, and that could pose a problem, but I don't think starting an hour earlier would fix that problem for us.

If you are looking for a great way to monitor the kids mileages. You should get the app Running2Win. It is an app on apple products only i think. But it is also accessible from the internet. In this app you can create teams. And monitor how all of the kids mileage is and how their workouts are going.

From experience, there are plenty of ways to improve this.

One is incentive, the shirts are nice, but to a lot of kids not worth the miles. We had a camp you got to go to only if you hit a number of miles and this was pretty effective.

I think the most important aspect is creating a culture where people want to run. My team used to not really care, but we got about 5 older guys who really wanted to get better. After running a ton during the summer, all their times dropped at least a minute and they all made our top 7. This made everyone want to be like that, so summer training increased drastically because the kids looked up to these guys as leaders on the team, so a lot of the young guys wanted to become better too. And it helps when the team is close, because then they'll want to run with them and keep working to improve as a team.

Q: How to get high school XC runners to run over the summer?

A: You can't.

The one who are motivated will. 99% will not run consistently. You can yell, plead, demand, teach, educate, and more. It will last a week and then they stop showing up.

I've tried it all. But truth is the ones motivated and who love running will do it. Those who are out for other reasons won't.

Good luck.

Thanks so much. I don't know if we would be allowed to do a camp as we have pretty strict rules as far as taking precautions for things like student contact away from campus. It may be worth checking into whether we could do it if we have multiple coaches attend. I'll have to look into the Running2Win thing some more. Believe it or not I don't use a smartphone. Does it cost anyone (coach or athlete) to use or download? The website makes it tough for an old guy like me to tell.

I did not quote you in my prior posting and I don't think I was intended to say anything negative about your posting. I just re-read your postings and I agree with them. I did not mean to imply what you suggested was nagging. I just wanted to say I don't think nagging works and have heard comments and seen the faces of high school runners who I think were nagged at times by their parents or coach. Some parents or coaches take running more serious than the runners and can take the fun out of it for the runners. Some runners enjoy the team aspect and enjoy spending time with teammates but they do not enjoy the pressure they may feel from parents or coaches. Some coaches or parents push the competitive component too much for some runners and may stress PBs/PRs too much. I think a balance is needed and the coach needs to get to know each runner and learn what motivates them and want may cause them to be too stressed. What works with one runner may not work with another.

I am not a coach. I am not associated with Saline High School in any way. I have followed the success of their program and some of their past and current runners. I posted links to their program as their program is successful and has information online that others may read. I was involved closely with a different, much smaller team which tried many things to encourage runners to train in the off season. One interesting event is the runners voted to hold a practice once when the coach gave them the option to just run the day on their own. Many of the runners admitted they were not likely to run on their own so they preferred to have an official practice where they could run together. I then realized that most of the team probably did not run on their own on Saturdays or Sundays much less the off season. They enjoyed their time together at practices and ultimate frisbee after practice. Some did attend the off season, optional, non-practice, group runs that were held several days a week but the coach always hoped for better participation. My observation after several years was that it seemed that it took a month or two for most of the runners to get back to their prior season best times. If they had run throughout the summer I think many of them would have come back in the fall nearly as fast or faster.

I like to see a team that has clear rules and clear requirements for earning a letter. I think some teams may devalue the earning of a letter by giving it out to nearly all so as not to offend anyone and to encourage all the runners to return.

I still remember clearly when my 8th grade school track coach introduced me to the high school XC coach after a track meet. The high school XC coach explained to me what XC was and invited me to join the team the next fall and offered to provide suggested summer training schedule. I was thrilled to be approached (recruited) by the high school coach. So I agree with you comment about communication. My son's/daughter's college coach stresses the need for the athletes to come into his office regularly to talk. In college the athlete is responsible for approaching the coach. The coach considers it to be very important to come regular one-on-one discussions with his athletes. The leaders on my high school team my freshman year instilled a sense of pride into other team members

So I think the captains and other older members of a high school team can have a very positive influence on the other runners.

My HS coach, an extremely successful one at a famous private school, wrote and gave out individualized training programs for each of the top runners, and then a standard one for the others, depending on grade level. All top runners, and any others were welcomed at weekly summer long runs on Saturday mornings that started at the school, led by one of the captains, whose job it was to recruit for that run. Young kids look up to the older kids and want to be around them.

It also included a very positive letter explaining why summer running was important.

You aren't going to get all kids doing this, but any with some level of interest will be helped greatly by having it to refer to. I kept mine and still have them all.

Tell them that if they don't run over the summer you are going to punch them in the face the first day of practice.

An individual plan for the faster runners is the way to do it. I had one kid who was very talented and I did this with him. You have to find a balance. We didn't do a lot of killer workouts. I am a fan of doing more frequent but moderate workouts with maybe two hard ones at specific times during the season. Things like fartleks, timed tempos, and timed repeats worked well for me since I had no assistants and it kept all the kids running for the same amount of time. These were things my top kid could do with the other kids but get more out of it. On days where he was supposed to do something more advanced, I would send the others on a longer run and have a specific workout for him. It worked pretty well for the limited talent pool we had (school of about 300 students).