800m off-season training

Strides.

Depends exactly what you're doing for cross. Personally, even during the summer and fall, my guys do a day dedicated to flat speed. By flat speed, I mean we don't go over 100-150m at all in the workout and we give 5 min rest between reps. I have found that this is a great way to get faster even during a high mileage base phase.

So we will typically do a 2-3 mile WU, Flat speed, and a 2 mile CD so that we still get the volume in.

Additionally, If you're dedicated, I cannot recommend plyometric exercises enough. Ultimately, speed at the end of a race comes down to natural fast twitch muscle fibers and good biomechanics. Doing the right plyos can give you the mechanics which makes a huge difference. (Mileage also helps with mechanics because it forces your body to become more efficient).

I can post the list of plyos that my athletes have used if you'd like. Just let me know.

Hope this is helpful.

-Ethan

I would be interested to see the list, if you wouldn't mind :) sounds interesting

Sure thing. So again, these are more of drills than exercises really. Your focus should be on getting the most explosion/having perfect form.

(some of the names might be incorrect, so Ill explain them as good as possible)

Reverse Box Jumps: Start standing on a bench or box and jump off of it. As soon as you hit the ground, jump as high as you can. The goal is to react and make your fast twitch muscles explode.

Bench Taps: Start standing in front of the bench and basically tap the bench with the bottoms of your feet as fast as possible. Ideally the bench should be slightly under knee level to get used to getting your knees up quickly.

Lunges: The key is to do them slowly and move your arms as though you are running. Getting used to supplying power to your stride as well as mind muscle connection on the form.

A-Skip: Again, Form is everything

B-Skip: ^^^^^

Horizontal jumps: Jump as far as you can standing on both feet. Again, just getting used to exploding off of the ground

Running Bounds: Just an extremely exaggerated run. Run but put as much force into each stride as you can and get high.

Twist Jump: Start by standing on both feet and then jump forward and twist 180 degrees. Then do the same in reverse. Make sure you are alternating directions. Also, be careful with this one, it takes a minute to get use to.

Single leg hops: Just hopping across the ground as fast as possible on one leg.

High Knees

Butt Kicks

etc...

There are a ton of different things you can do, but I really like these and they aren't super strength intensive if that makes sense. Leave your pride at the door and get fast.

And we do these 3 times a week. Typically just after the workout on M-W-F.

If you get injured at all, this is the first thing to go btw.

A weekly top end speed session, preferably a part of it on a steep hill. I used a combo of hill/flat sprints and it was after wu and some drills, 5x50m uphill relaxed acceleration/walk back rec and then 4x40-50m uphill close to all out / 3´rec /5-6´rec and then 2-4 x 50-80m flat ground sprints for maximal speed /3´rec. This shouldn´t take more than about 40minutes. Did this the day after an easy long run and lifted some low rep weights afterwards. Occasionally did some (5-6) 100-150´s @ 90% /5´rec, for anaerobic capacity. These helped my 400m speed to stay strong enough with all of the endurance training. DON`T OVERDO this sprint work, it´s mostly neuromuscular, you don´t have to do much of it and not more than once a week / 10 days. Progression on this too, so start with caution.

If you frequently work on top speed and your anaerobic capacity, you don´t have to worry that "oh I´m gonna lose my speed" even if you run high mileage. The speed will be maintained if not improved.

I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately. My boys CC team is going to be made almost exclusively of this type of athlete for 2017. We just graduated a bunch of true distance types. 2 guys are returning from last year and one is more of an 800 type. The majority of my team is going to be made up of kids who did sprint/jump/hurdle events this season in track, then decided to kibosh their football careers in favor of cross. I want to make sure those guys don't regret their decisions.

Regarding these kids, they are mostly fairly scrawny, underdeveloped kids with decent wheels in comparison to distance kids, but slow compared to sprinters. I've kind of had it in my mind that I wanted to adjust the sprint group training next spring to be more geared toward 400/800 types to better suit the strengths of this group. Then, they decided to join the cross country team, so I get a head start on developing them aerobically. I'm looking at an opportunity to develop a really good mid distance group, if I can keep their heads right, keep them progressing, and keep them having fun.

This is what I've come up with for the summer:

June: Easy running with strides 3 x per week

July: introduce tempo intervals and short tempo runs. We have a stadium ramp that is about 10% grade (totally not ADA worthy) and about 35 m long. We'll run sprints up that after the tempo efforts once a week. We'll also have a day dedicated to running smoothly at speeds somewhere in the neighborhood of mile goal pace. That day will include a bunch of drills and strengthening stuff. It might look something like this:

2 miles easy

3 laps of a drill for a straightaway and jog the turn

3 laps of stride the straight, jog the turn

4 x 300 @ mile goal pace with a slow recovery walk, make sure recovery is nearly complete. The goal is to run smoothly at a decent pace

5 minute cool down jog

strength type stuff (lunges, burpies, push ups, pull ups, etc...)

Stretch

Their mileage will probably not get too big at this point, but the 2 experienced guys can double back if they like.

August: We have a hill 2 miles from the school. Start introducing hill repeats run at a 5k type effort with a jog to the bottom. The workout is a contiunous run type of thing. This would likely replace the drill heavy day. Tempo intervals will get longer and closer together.

My main concern is that my girls training and my boys training is going to look really different. My girls are good and mostly true distance types. Our program is combined so boys and girls all usually do variations of the same workout. I feel like this year, the boys will need more high volume short reps for their quality days while the girls are going to need to grind out longer tempos, mile repeats, etc... Everything I've described above is aimed at my whole team, differentiating as the season goes along and still being able to manage all of the different workouts, could be an issue this year.

Coach,

I would recommend keeping the mileage pretty slow and controlled on your middle distance (800) kids. I would usually say otherwise, but in my experience they have a relatively low tolerance for volume in most cases. If I were in your shoes, I would be absolutely sure to keep the pop in their legs throughout the season. Meaning that I wouldn't want them "tired" at any point because it is going to discourage them. Keep the mileage low and relaxed and control the workouts. I think you pretty much have the right idea in my opinion, just be careful not to overwork the speed type kids.

-Ethan

Yeah, I've had a fair amount of success with this type of kid doing the 4/8 combo in track but haven't had a whole lot of them do cross. The one true 4/8 kid that I had who also did cross ended up going 1:56 for me....of course he went 1:50 a few years later in college when he wasn't racing cross.

I am wondering how the training of these boys in cross country turned out. Did their 400/800 times meet your expectations? Also, what did you do with them in the winter months between cross and track season?