Adapting Canova Style Training for the High School Level

Coach B,

Love your thinking!

I worry that we, as high school coaches, need to work on the "aerobic house" before putting on the decorating trimmings. I remember reading somewhere that Canova talks about needing YEARS to develop the strong aerobic base before doing all of his workouts. (I think, too, he even said after 3-4 years of high mileage, that you can back-off the mileage--within reason, of course--to allow for his workouts.)

Could Brad Hudson style training be more of what you're looking for? He's pretty open that he's using Canova in his training of his athletes. Moderate-high mileage. Canova Hill Sprints. Progressive long runs. Lots of fartleks & multi-pace workouts. I really like his book.

Meanwhile, I wonder too if with the age of our athletes if Lydiard is more the way to go (see first paragraph on the aerobic house)? Do we need all the Special Blocks, VO2 Max, CV Workouts, or would safely progressing student-athletes to, say, 60 miles per week as an upperclassman be more beneficial?

Hayseed Coach

I don't know if a "special block" would ever really be appropriate for a high school kid.

As far as CV intervals and reps.....I think you can safely progress a kid to 60 mpw and still do that stuff. High volume VO2 max stuff tends to be more problematic in my opinion. Seems kids take longer to recover from that type of stuff.

I guess my main concern is that if a high school kid enters the season doing only the fundamental phase, he's going to be getting beaten by kids he should be beating. Unless he understands that the early season races are part of the training process, he could easily get discouraged and lose motivation. Plus, for us during cross country, our first meet that "counts" is the Wednesday after Labor Day and our state meet is the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

CoachB wrote:

I don't know if a "special block" would ever really be appropriate for a high school kid.

As far as CV intervals and reps.....I think you can safely progress a kid to 60 mpw and still do that stuff. High volume VO2 max stuff tends to be more problematic in my opinion. Seems kids take longer to recover from that type of stuff.

I guess my main concern is that if a high school kid enters the season doing only the fundamental phase, he's going to be getting beaten by kids he should be beating. Unless he understands that the early season races are part of the training process, he could easily get discouraged and lose motivation. Plus, for us during cross country, our first meet that "counts" is the Wednesday after Labor Day and our state meet is the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

I use Vigil's program, progressing the Mile Repeats from 85% to 88% to 91% to, finally, 94% effort w/ 3:00 rest between each repeat. These percentages are from the student-athlete's mile time trial. Each percentage is used for 3 weeks for complete adaptation. This means I need--at least--twelve weeks for these weekly workouts.

But, my athletes know our system is used to peak at the end of the regular season. They know they won't be as fast as other teams early on. All of our meets & invitationals don't factor into who goes to the championship season. (They are simply training stimulus.)

Nearing the final few weeks before the championship season, I add Brad Hudson's Goal Pace Training. (Again, I highly recommend his book.) The combination of Vigil & Hudson really make us pretty competitive when it truly matters.

But, even if you're not doing the really fast workouts, your team can be pretty competitive early on (if they do Summer Running). They just won't be SHARP early on.

It does take courage from YOU, the coach, to not panic. (I still worry every year even though I know what's going on.) It takes re-emphasizing to the student-athletes what the goal of the season is too. Once your system is in place, the older kids will help reassure the younger kids (who might be panicking). But, if you simply refer to past seasons & your success, then when everyone sees PR's in the later part of the season (esp. with the introduction of the Goal Pace Training), your team gets really excited for the championship season.

How many mile repeats are your kids doing? And those paces are percentages of mile to pace? Or from some I pace calculator

Keep this going, I love reading both of your posts.

CoachB wrote:

How many mile repeats are your kids doing? And those paces are percentages of mile to pace? Or from some I pace calculator

I steal a page from Jack Daniels & make them go by TIME--a 6:00 repetition with 3:00 rest. That way EVERYONE starts & stops at the same time. You can have your entire team doing the same workout at the same time! I print-up their splits based on their ONE MILE TIME TRIAL from the first day of official practice. I have a handful of pens or magic markers. Kids write their splits on their hand and/or simply memorize their 200, 400, 800, 1200, 1600 split (if they get that far).

I do a progression with quantity too:

WEEK 1: 4-5 X 6:00 at 85% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 2: 5-6 X 6:00 at 85% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 3: 5-6 X 6:00 at 85% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 4: 4-5 X 6:00 at 88% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 5: 5-6 X 6:00 at 88% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 6: 5-6 X 6:00 at 88% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 7: 4-5 X 6:00 at 91% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 8: 5-6 X 6:00 at 91% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 9: 5-6 X 6:00 at 91% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 10: 4-5 X 6:00 at 94% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 11: 5-6 X 6:00 at 94% effort w/ 3:00 rest

WEEK 12: 5-6 X 6:00 at 94% effort w/ 3:00 rest

You can, esp. with the early weeks, make them something fast afterwards too. (This is very much like a Tinman Combo Workout.) So, you can do 4-5 X Mile Repeats @ 85% effort + 4 X 200 w/ full recovery. They're getting good aerobic running & speed work too. Throw in a warm-up & cool down & that's a good practice.

Here is the percentage breakdown:

Level I:

4:00-4:15 Repeat Mile Times

85% 4:42-5:00

88% 4:32-4:50

91% 4:24-4:40

94% 4:15-4:31

Level II:

4:15-4:30 Repeat Mile Times

85% 5:00-5:17

88% 4:50-5:07

91% 4:40-5:00

94% 4:31-4:47

Level III:

4:30-4:45 Repeat Mile Times

85% 5:17-5:35

88% 5:07-5:23

91% 4:57-5:13

94% 4:47-5:03

Level IV:

4:45-5:00 Repeat Mile Times

85% 5:36-5:53

88% 5:24-5:41

91% 5:13-5:30

94% 5:00-5:16

Level V:

5:00-5:15 Repeat Mile Times

85% 5:53-6:10

88% 5:41-5:58

91% 5:30-5:46

94% 5:16-5:31

Level: VI:

5:15-5:30 Repeat Mile Times

85% 6:11-6:26

88% 5:58-6:15

91% 5:46-6:02

94% 5:31-5:51

Level VII:

5:30-5:45 Repeat Mile Times

85% 6:26-6:45

88% 6:15-6:32

91% 6:02-6:19

94% 5:51-6:07

Level VIII:

5:45-6:00 Repeat Mile Times

85% 6:45-7:03

88% 6:32-6:49

91% 6:19-6:35

94% 6:07-6:22

Now, if your runners--like a lot of high school runners--are slower with their time trial than a 6:00, you can extend these charts with some simple math upward as high as you want. For example, a 6:00-6:15 Time Trial would extend to 7:03- 7:21.

Really, Joe Vigil is simply using G.A.S. Gradual Adaptation to Stress. And, so much of this is strengthening the aerobic house (that I mentioned in an earlier post). Notice how Vigil's program is directing the runner to PEAK at the end of the season.

I remember Vigil saying--and this was a few years ago--that many of the NXN teams were using his system. I believe Arcadia was (before Coach O'Brien was fired) &, of course, Joe Newton at York was too.

Oh, if you're a Tinman fan, his CV workouts are about 10K pace or Vigil's 91% effort. So, you get the same thing...just two different ways.

This is great! Super informative. I like seeing how different coaches adapt their training to make the "rubber meet the road" for their own situations.

I have a question about the timing of when you start these mile reps? Is it the first week after the start of the organized season? What is the date on that for you and when is your state meet? I have a hard time believing that your kids are doing 6 x 1 mile @ 94% of mile race pace the week of the state meet!

For us, the season breaks down like this

1. Summer base (14 weeks) Memorial day through our first meet the Wednesday after Labor Day

- 2-3 weeks of easy, running on your own. Kids meet up for runs if they want. Try to re-establish volume after track season taper

- 2nd or 3rd week of June - 2nd Monday in August. Continue to build mileage. Include: 1 day of biomechanical emphasis (short reps, extensive drills, etc... 1 Official long run (20-25% total weekly volume). 1 steady state (M pace) type effort. The second Monday in August is when CIF says we can start practice. It also is within 1-2 days of the beginning of our school year. Our camp is during this period. I prefer to have it just prior to the start of school, but the last 2 years, scheduling conflicts have forced us to go really early.

- Practice start - First meet (4 weeks). The first week back to school, volume drops pretty sharply as kids acclimatize to running after school in central CA august weather. The last couple of years, we've had weeks with temps at 103-107 during the first 2-3 weeks of school. The long runs and sustained M pace stuff gets dropped by the wayside because maintaining hard effort in the heat is difficult. We replace with CV reps and hill repeats. Getting kids together for weekend long runs is problematic and many of my top kids are Mormon and do seminary before school, so getting the team together then is also problematic.

- Summer base officially ends the day before our first league meet. By this point, kids have been going 100 days and we award mileage T-shirts the day before first meet.

2. Early season. (4 weeks)

- The last few years we've had a string of meets early in this period, so we don't actually do many "workouts" for a couple of weeks. Maybe some relaxed 200s the day before meets get done, maybe some short hills where we focus on mechanics.

- For the next two weeks, more CV stuff, maybe mixing in some VO2 max type stuff. Example: 1 mile CV, 800 VO2 Max, 1 mile CV, 800 VO2 max, 1 mile CV. We might do a workout like this once during the end of the "early season" period. We also bring in the first "lactate tolerance" session. Usually high rep 200s with 30 seconds rest. Goal is to run about mile RP.

- This period finishes with our mid season league cluster meet. For the last 7-8 years, I've given the athletes a 4 day break from organized training at the end of this period.

3. Mid Season. (5-6 weeks depending on how far into the post season I think we'll go)

- We've traditionally run in a big invitational on our state meet course at the beginning of October.

- We usually have 3 meets in October, the meet mentioned above, Our home invite, and our league finals race.

- CV work becomes faster. Kids often start exceeding previous season best 5k paces in workouts as the weather cools.

- We do maybe one more mixed CV/VO2 max workouts.

- We do 1-3 more lactate tolerance workouts, working on extending the duration of reps, still with short rest.

- Toward the end of this period, we may do a session such as 2 x 2 miles very hard with 10 minutes recovery. Kids may run at least one 2 mile PR during this workout. If I think we are going to win or get second at our section meet, we might do this workout 2-3 days before the section meet qualifier (which we try to run at 90% effort).

4. Peak Season (1-3 weeks)

- This is our section meet and state meet.

- volume of hard work drops off.

- The workouts during this time vary quite a bit, depending on the physical and mental state of the team. Mostly the focus is on staying mentally fresh and maintaining the fitness we've gained while also letting the legs recover.

- Workouts might include: 3 x 1k starting very fast for 200m then settling in. 6 min recovery. 3 x 1200 CV + 3 x 800 VO2 pace, 2 miles very hard + 1 mile very hard (10 min recovery)(we often see 1 mile PR happen on this workout).

If I started the 12 week progression of 6 minute reps after summer base, it would continue right up to the week of state. If I start it on the first week of school, it takes us up to about our section qualifier. To me, it seems like starting the progression in early August is the answer

CoachB wrote:

I have a question about the timing of when you start these mile reps? Is it the first week after the start of the organized season? What is the date on that for you and when is your state meet? I have a hard time believing that your kids are doing 6 x 1 mile @ 94% of mile race pace the week of the state meet!

...

If I started the 12 week progression of 6 minute reps after summer base, it would continue right up to the week of state. If I start it on the first week of school, it takes us up to about our section qualifier. To me, it seems like starting the progression in early August is the answer

You're right about "a hard time believing...kids are doing 6 X 1 mile @ 94%." The kids struggle with 4-5 X 6:00 @ 94% w/ 3:00 rest. I'm okay with this, unless there times are terrible...then I'll pull them. Never go to the we ll in practice! But, these 94% effort bouts coupled with Hudson Goal Pace Training (Workout #2 for the week) really seem to make kids fast.

I do TRY to get the Mile Repeats done before the championship season begins. (Some years I'm more successful than others.)

I know Arcadia High School used to start Mile Repeats during the summer! This is a great read!

For the Apaches, the cross country buildup begins the day after school ends in early June, with captain-led practices during the California-mandated no-coaching period. "Everybody has a schedule, they know how much and what pace they should be running," says O'Brien.

Three weeks later, on July 1, semi-official workouts begin under the auspices of O'Brien's Army, a USATF club. That continues for seven weeks until school practices begin the last week in August, three weeks before the first meet. Over those 13 weeks the Apaches log prodigious miles. The top 14 runners who will make up the varsity top 1,000 miles, with underclassmen and JVs running 800 to 900. Even the lowest-level runners are asked to do 650 miles.

"The first three weeks are just mileage, with a few easy fartleks thrown in," says O'Brien. When the more organized workouts begin in July, they add repeats of 800m to 2 miles and zone runs, which are based on Joe Vigil's VO2 max charts. On the repeats, O'Brien says, "We'll start doing those at 85 percent of a guy's mile PR, then gradually increase that to 88, 91, and finally 94 percent." The zone runs are done at a lower percentage, and based on a runner's 3-mile best. For example, someone with a 3-mile PR of 15:00 does a 75 percent zone run at 6:00 per mile, whereas 85 percent results in a 5:40 pace. "It makes the math real easy for the kids," says O'Brien.

Five days a week the runners do doubles, logging up to 5 miles before 7:15 a.m. One day on the weekend they'll do a long run that reaches 16 miles by the end of the summer. Hill repeats are introduced around that time, run on a median strip up the nearby Santa Anita mountains.

Once school begins and the competitive season approaches, 2-mile repeats at lactate threshold are added. They complete only three or four repeats of these, but with scant rest. Mileage drops in deference to the demands of school, and the hill repeats are dropped while the zone runs shift to the uphill median strip to prepare the runners for the terrain at the state meet.

Meanwhile, Coach B, I would love to hear what your mileage is like (esp. with the unique situation of religion & attendance). My main focus this upcoming season is try to increase our mileage. I don't know about two-a-days. Our mileage is pretty moderate or even moderate-low (about 50 miles a week). I build the kids up to 60 minutes Monday through Friday & a 90 minute long run on Saturday. Sunday runs are OFF or a recovery run (of 35 minutes). I'm trying to get the kids to do organized Captain's Runs on Sunday, but no success yet.

My main problem is TEAM SIZE. My name Hayseed Coach sums it up perfectly. I teach in a rural school with small school population (less than 600 students). If I can get 25-30 boys & girls out (total), then that's a pretty big team for me. Sigh.

Our mileage is pretty low. It's not that I try to keep it low, but I don't force the mileage issue and not that many kids really go crazy on their own.

For my varsity boys teams, I try to aim for 30-35 miles of running at practice during the season. Kids can add to this on their own. For instance, my boy that won our section meet in 2013 did all the workouts with the team, plus ran 4 miles easy in the morning 3x per week, and did about 15-20 miles over the weekends that we didn't have meets and maybe 10-14 on weekends we did have meets. So his mileage jumped around from the low 50s to low 60s. He did go up to 80 during the pre-season of his senior year trying to get an Arcadia qualifier early. He ran a time that would have qualified easily the year before but got left out.

This year my varsity team was really inexperienced, the top boys didn't run that much on their own. The stuff during the week was just about enough I suppose. My top 2 boys had a bunch of weeks in the mid 40s, but the rest of my varsity team was mid to high 30s. I'm really stressing upping the mileage safely during this off season. I've got all but one of those boys back for next season, so a big winter, followed by a good track season followed by a big summer and hopefully I've got a whole team in the high 40s low 50s next fall. They may go into the 60s briefly prior to the start of school.

Top girls were mid 30s with some weeks going into the 40s. Most of my kids were far too low. I've set mileage goals for them for this off season based on what they did during cross. Here's a spread sheet of what they did during cross and their track off season goals

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IaL1_620TPnZ5uvRC_U3tKWAGgyqldFqAonPyXx-I8c

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SP7ZeQY1jZYAUJFoHgaqv3jtHscXGLYr36A_1WsJ25g/edit?usp=sharing

Here is last year's spreadsheet, much more experienced team

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fm82JvCwFYpU2g7eaPmMOdKmC0ybe76z8G_Qb9VdTVk

Simple. Find all the most talented kids in your school district, or other school districts, and then have them run cross-country for you.

There are a number of coaches out there who have ideas of how to integrate Canova's ideas into a high school program.so

I would suggest you reach out to Sean O'Connor, Austin Hindman's high school coach and the coach of the successful boys team at Lafayette Wildwood in Missouri. You can read some of his thoughts here:

http://coachoc.blogspot.com/2015/03/designing-cross-country-training-plan.html

You also could reach out to John Davis, who is an assistant for the Edina (MN) Boys Track team. He's written a great deal on Canova's ideas, and would be a worthwhile resource.

http://www.runningwritings.com/2011/09/peaking-with-renato-canova_28.html

Applying the Italian school of training (I'd include Gianni Ghidini along with Renato Canova in this) to a high school situation is something we've tried to do, but it has inherent difficulties in track season. Much of this comes from the number of races we all have to run in the spring; one look at how few races Canova and others have in the specific period - and the spacing between quality workouts - underlines the difficulties in adapting this to our high school schedules.

Yes it takes time to get kids to buy into your system. They may start out slow as you say but what i do is focus on improvement from last year at the same time. This works well in xc if you go to the same meets each year. I keep a spread sheet of everyones results from last year and review their improvement.

Anybody who uses the term aerobic house is pretty much lost in a time warp.

You have to read some physiology published after 1985.

Whether an approach is successful depends on multiple factors, not just the volume, or this workout or that. Try to avoid the one size fits all thinking.

One of the best ways to identify a bad coach is to look for those insisting everybody needs to do exactly the same thing. On a real HS team you'll have kids who progress best on 30-70 miles/week. Much more than that and you are likely dodging speed side development and tougher work.

Canova's training would not adapt well to a high school setting. One of the main things he always points out is how everything he does is important and not one type of workout is 100% better than the other. If you are not going to do his special blocks then you are not doing his training right. Downsizing it for high school is not doing it correctly either. Using race days as substitutes is not good either because special blocks are known for being very volumous.

Go for Hudson if you want something that is inspired by Canova's specificity but doesn't hinge on trying to adapt (shortcut) the actual program.

Hayseed, 3 questions:

Is the progression listed above what you do with your kids or are these tables straight from Vigil? Some of the volumes seem really high as the quality increases.

It seems like doing 6 minutes would make it even harder on your fast kids. For example, if you have your slow kid (say 6 minute miler) do the workout as prescribed, he is running less than a mile each time. Whereas the fast kid (say 4:30 miler) hits the mile mark at the same relative effort as the slow kid, but still has another 400 to go. So, if vigil was prescribing those times based on someone running a mile, your guys doing 6 minutes would be running 2k. Does that make sense. 6 x 2k @ 94% of mile pace seems like an unreasonable workout. Just want to make sure I'm reading it right.

You mention the "race pace" workout as being your second workout of the week. What are you doing with that? Say, you're training a miler. Would you start early season with something like 16-20 x 200 @ goal pace with long rest then gradually make the reps longer or rest shorter? When I read Canova, I see this type of progression would be possible. After 20 x 200, the athlete could progress toward 12-14 x 300 then 8-10 x 400 then 6-8 x 500 all at the same pace. This would fit the principle of extension while the increasing pace of the long reps fits the criteria of increasing aerobic capacity through increasing pace.

I'm lost. What about the above is adapting Canova for the HS level? He's a big proponent of modulation. This seems like you would be doing the same workout every week. It does capture his idea of extension. But you could achieve the same end with modulation + extension which would result in better adaptation all else equal. I would say that this seems to adapt the training for an HS coach dealing with 30+ runners. The simplicity of the pace charts seems nice, which might be more complex if you were varying the workouts.

From my understanding, when you get to 94%, you are only doing 4 x 1600 with 3' rest.

That seems more doable, but to extend those out to 6 minutes for a guy that should be running the miles at 4:4x would be really quite a bit tougher.

The progression posted by Hayseed is a progression of speed. That is why I was wondering about his progression of extension for various race distances. To be sure, the progression posted, if accomplished without injury or staleness, would result in tremendous aerobic power gains. I'd like to see how he uses those gains with his race paces stuff.