Successful high school girls teams: How do they train?

Maybe don't follow Saratoga's plan......http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=7931804&page=2

Some teams choose to give talented freshmen and sophomores super light training, then lay on the miles starting Junior year so that they can improve a lot.

Other teams choose to run their youngsters into the ground- after all, new ones come in every year. The older girls will be mostly injured but those who survive will merely be a little slower than they were at 14-16.

Extreme dieting is often a solution.

But tempos, mile repeats, and high mileage are almost always a key ingredient in a successful top 7. I’ve also noticed top teams typically lift heavy and do back and IT-band strength stuff.

These programs don't breed good college runners. Sure you will get some short term results but High School athletics are about building a love for the sport first and foremost.

Athletes can thrive and accomplish their goals and still have room in the tank to grow. As a coach I'd prefer to hear that my athletes continued on and eventually became olympic hopefuls then toting their state championship accomplishments.

Look at Fayetteville Manlius runners that go to big schools. They don't perform well at all. Saratoga runs Junior High girls off the face of the earth. Those coaches are fing crazy, manipulative, abusers. That is all.

The parents drink the coolaid expecting little billy and sally to get scholarships to big D1.

There is a team near me that has done very well with both the girls and boys. The local newspaper does a lot of stories on them and the trend seems to be that some of the girls are always injured or coming back from an injury. The boys less so. I have no idea about their training but that trend seems to indicate a bit of overtraining.

Run a lot and keep the ferritin as close to 100 as you can. Pretty damn simple.

Before you look at this in detail, you have to ask yourself how you define success.

Our number one focus is at the state level, and any regional/national success is a bonus. We want our girls to love the sport, have balance in their lives, and have room to grow in college or as an adult if they want to continue running (and most do). Other programs have different focuses and train at a different level of intensity as a result.

A few of our program's goals (keeping in mind how we look at success in our program):

-Monitor ferritin levels. This is more on parents than coaches, but we encourage them to check.

-Commitment to long term development. We will sit, limit mileage, or cross train younger girls that have low ferritin or minor injuries. This has hurt short term from time to time but it's extremely rare that a kid doesn't have their best year as a senior in our program, which probably has helped us long term.

-Strong team culture & a love for running. Fr/soph year is for learning and loving running. Jr/sr year is when the mileage training and intensity picks up.

-Strength work 5x a week. If we notice girls going through a growth spurt, they do additional hip strengthening drills daily to be proactive against injuries.

-Year round, low intensity aerobic work with moderate mileage.

-High intensity repeats are done based on time intervals, not distance intervals. The recommended distances for high intensity work usually seem too long for developing girls.

You mentioned strength training 5 days a week. Is this in the form of body weight/core or weights or both?

Saratoga is interesting, there have been some alums of the program who have had decent college careers, it is not a complete flame out there. I think they have struggled recently trying to catch FM and have started to go over the edge, desperation maybe.

I cannot remember an FM girl having much success in college as an athlete, that says a lot about a team having that kind of success in HS and it not translating even a little.

Not sure about GO, has there been any collegiate success from their alums? Pretty new to the dance compared to Toga and FM, but Collins ran 9:52 as a jr. has not translated into collegiate success. Any others for them do anything at a high level.

Collins did get 7th at BIG 12 Meet and 10th at regionals this year. Didn't race great at nationals.

"hs girls coach" good post, what additional hip strengthening things do you do? We do some hip stuff like myrtle but it always makes the girls pretty sore.

Yea, Collins was better this year than last, but three years removed from a 9:52 3200, that number would indicate all-american level performances.

Bingo. Need to set it up for long term- have strong enthusiastic juniors and seniors

Training might help a little, but they key to successful teams is starvation.

watchful eye wrote:

Saratoga is interesting, there have been some alums of the program who have had decent college careers, it is not a complete flame out there. I think they have struggled recently trying to catch FM and have started to go over the edge, desperation maybe.

I cannot remember an FM girl having much success in college as an athlete, that says a lot about a team having that kind of success in HS and it not translating even a little.

Not sure about GO, has there been any collegiate success from their alums? Pretty new to the dance compared to Toga and FM, but Collins ran 9:52 as a jr. has not translated into collegiate success. Any others for them do anything at a high level.

I believe many of the girls that left these high school programs would have done much better continuing with their high school coaches if possible as college runners, Seems to me that far too often college coaches do not develop their recruits, and this should be more reflexion of them, and not the high school coaches. Just my take as a high school coach that is shocked by what many college coaches do with incoming freshman.

Uhm... like successful boys, just slower?

Collins had a lot of new things going on her freshman year so it was a big adjustment. She's running great again and there's no reason to think she won't continue being successful. As has been said, it's quite strange to blame a high school coach for a runner's perceived failure or stagnation at the collegiate level when their high school coach has no influence on them anymore. FM or GO not having a lot of superstar alumni is a reflection of Aris and Soles getting their kids prepared better than others. As a college coach, one would be wise to disregard FM's cross results because they are hitting way above their weight relative to track.

It is interesting to look at the top college freshman runners who are directly out of HS (no redshirt) from NCAAs:

38 Brie Oakley Cal/Grandview HS CO

53 Emily Venters BSU/ Lawrence Free State HS KS

62 Maddie Boreman CU/Rouse HS TX

64 Maggie Farrell Mich/Lakeview HS MI

I don't think any were from NXN teams (?). Boreman is of particular interest because she was an age-group phenom who ran ~5:00 mile in 7th grade, won state as a frosh, then slid back a bit as she matured as upperclassman; Wetmore took a chance there and it seems to be paying off.

Oakley didn't run until into her junior year and was an immediate impact, so raw talent there.

So the best college runners do seem to be talents from smaller, underdeveloped programs that get into solid collegiate programs. Girls who run 10:19 on lighter training. The "big" HS programs rarely produce collegiate all-Americans.

One could argue that it is better to be thoroughly developed in HS and succeed than to be lightly developed and never have success at any level at all. York and Mead on the boys side are historically emblematic of this (with Don Sage the major exception).

hmmmmmmmm..... wrote:

You mentioned strength training 5 days a week. Is this in the form of body weight/core or weights or both?

Both, but with different goals in mind. Body weight/core work is used for injury prevention and weights are used to work on developing speed and power. We typically don't have kids lift weights until they have mastered some basic body weight exercises though. We tend to lift more in the offseason and track than during XC. I'd love to get in the weight room more often, but there are only so many hours in the day!

As far as hip exercises, we do most of the ones on the Myrtl routine. We don't go through the whole routine in one day though - we have several different strength routines we rotate through. And just like we modify runs, we modify strength routines based on the experience and needs. A senior could do pistol squats while a freshman is just doing a basic body weight squat. I talked to local PTs and trainers about common injuries we saw and they helped us come up with some exercises to address common weaknesses and prevent them.

Thanks so much for your detailed thoughts on strength training.

Hm lets slow down before we call those programs successful. Most college coaches I have interacted with will outright say they refuse to recruit from those schools. Its easy to get a tiny girl with no hips or boobs to run fast. But its only a matter of time until they either break or burnout. Look at what a program does post high school before you call it successful.

I feel that I became a successful high school runner (state champ) on a team that won states by simply being consistent and strong. There is no magic answer, but if you can get your girls to build a strong foundation with pushups, planks, myrtle routine, and general strength. I think that provides a level of fitness that most high school girls don't have, and a level of fitness that will prepare them for college.