I attended a clinic with the top high school cross coaches in the country: ask me anything

A good place to start might be the topics of the lectures. They are here:

https://boulderrunningclinics.com/high-school/

I had to leave mid day on Saturday to fly to Houston so I couldn't stay until the end.

what kind of mileage are these kinds of programs doing?

even on a low mileage program, at our school we deal with injuries. What do these programs do to prevent injuries?

epicTCK wrote:

what kind of mileage are these kinds of programs doing?

even on a low mileage program, at our school we deal with injuries. What do these programs do to prevent injuries?

A lot of the coaches stressed it's not about the miles. It's more about tailoring the stress to each kid. Jonathan O'Malley measures stress not miles. Joan Hunter generally prescribed minutes not miles, but obviously even for them there are mileages that this maps out to and some of the coaches go on miles.

Joan Hunter said her top boys are running 60-70 and will cut back to 55 the week of NXN (not a huge volume taper) but that her kids are only running hard twice a week. So that means one race, and one workout. But they are touching on speed nearly every day (strides, etc) . Plus a long run that might be 20% of their mileage.

Jonathan Dalby had a sample 4 year progression:

Freshman year (20-35)

Sophomore (35-50)

Junior (40-55)

Senior (50-65)

Doug Soles (letsrun poster) shared daily logs for months. There is always a day off a week. This is going to be his top kids I assume, but one months had kids going 40-60 miles a week (6 days week). April looks like a high month (44-69 miles on 6 days). In terms of absolute mileage that might be the most per day.

Pace also varies. Doug Soles' chart says TR pace 6:30 Girls 7:30.

Joan Hunter said her kids' pace is 2-3 minutes off of 5k race pace on easy runs.

Dan Iverson over the summer is building the kids up to a 10 mile run on Monday and a 90 minute run on Saturday by the end of the summer for the veterans. During the season he has 9 day mesocycles, so clearly the focus isn't on weekly mileage.

Coaches stressed junk miles on a cooldown might get scratched, etc.

So everyone has their kids training a decent amount but you can see they are achieving success differently.

You mentioned "ancillary stuff" and the fact that these coaches are keeping their athletes healthy, can you be specific with any of that? What specifically are they doing?

Why did you delete my post? You said to ask anything. So I did. You didn't say "ask me anything" about the clinic I attended. Perhaps you don't understand how AMAs work...

asdfasdfa wrote:

You mentioned "ancillary stuff" and the fact that these coaches are keeping their athletes healthy, can you be specific with any of that? What specifically are they doing?

It varies but they're all doing something. Creating functional strength/power and preventing injuries. Strengthening the core is key and they all have that.

Dan Iverson has his girls doing yoga, Joan Hunter's kids were in the weight room, but she said this year some of her kids didn't get access to it and were just doing body weight exercises (lunges, squats, etc) and were fine.

A Great Oak slide says their core routine is 30 minutes. They also have time as practice can be 2.5 hours.

John O'Malley said no static stretching (that seems to be out with everyone) and stresses you're trying to create dynamic athletes. He's working on making efficient fast runners. Step ups, plyos, hill sprints, speed drills, etc

A lot mentioned Jay Johnson's warmup drills. I think that is here:

Most runners (not on high school teams) I think would benefit from even as little as 10 minutes or so of this a few days a week as a lot of people with jobs and what not are just running and working out.

If I could go back and do my running career over, I'd do more functional strength stuff. I knew static stretching was out but that was about it. I loved to run and stretched but didn't realize the need for a lot of this other stuff which is becoming more common knowledge now.

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

Why did you delete my post? You said to ask anything. So I did. You didn't say "ask me anything" about the clinic I attended. Perhaps you don't understand how AMAs work...

Maybe you don't know how private forums work :) I can delete what I want. The point is to ask me anything about the clinic.

But I'll indulge you once (and will remove anymore posts like this)

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

Would you rather be kicked in the face or punched in the face and why?

(Please note this is not promoting violence and I would do neither of these to you. I would, however, like to see why picked the answer you did)

I can't think of anyone who would rather get kicked in the face than punched. Especially if a shoe can be worn.

One more thing on the drills.

Obviously you want to have basics for your team but ideally you're trying to create individual athletes.

I only caught the tail end of this but John O'Malley has his runners do some single leg strength test drills. He uses that to inform the type of training and drills they do. Dylan Jacobs (Footlocker champ) was super weak in this area and he adjusts the drills and training accordingly.

I was this way in high school, but a lot of high school kids are really weak, haven't grown, and don't have the strength necessary to even endure the training others can do.

What was the basic structure of these coaches programs?

Ex:

2 Hard Days a week- 1 Tempo workout and 1 Race Specific workout/Race

1 Speed Day

1 Long Run

What was each coaches staple workout and also the most important thing they attributed to their programs success

for the benefit of those (like me) who are not in the US, could you please re-post that mileage progression to include some indication of how old those kids are? and could you please clarify whether these kids are voluntarily on this programme or is this part of their school's compulsory sports education.

They also have time as practice can be 2.5 hours.

how often are they attending a practice that lasts that long?

Cheers.

I used to search for the one thing that makes runner's good. It doesn't exist. Consistent development is the key.

I'd say they'd all say building the culture and getting the kids to buy in is first and foremost most important. After that you can move on to key workouts. But if the kids don't work hard, nothing is going to happen.

Freshman are 14-15.

Sophomore 15-16

Junior 16-17

Senior 17-18.

This is all voluntary. In America after school sports are a voluntary thing. Some schools may get the kids some sort of physical education credit for doing it but no one is having their kids show up for compulsory reasons.

Great Oak was the exception in terms of times he could have the kids, so naturally you focused on that ;). One reason I didn't put specifics into the article was I didn't want you to think "you have to do this specific workout to be good" or "have the kids for 2.5 hours".

I was amazed at how much time the kids put in at Great Oak. I joked when I trained you could only run for about 2 hours a day but his high school kids are putting in a lot more time.

I'm not sure what they do in the summer but every day in during the school year during the season they have practice from 3-5:30 pm if needed.

He also has the kids for a 1st period open class when many of them doing a morning run as well (there longer run is often in the morning). I'd never heard of anything like it but he's had such great success the school gives him a free period and it frees up other teachers (they've got 100+ kids out on the team).

He said a typical practice is:

Team Meeting and attendance- 10 minutes

Warmup: Drills + Speed Ladders +Hit =15 minutes

Core Routines: 25-30 minutes stretch

Main workout 45-90 minutes

Stretch 10 minutes

uggh, this makes me sad about everything our team is not doing (im a hschooler). I know I'm sounding ungrateful but seriously? These coaches sound awesome. Did they talk much about setting a standard on the team for things like attendance (so many unexcused abscenses and your kicked off)? I guess I'm wondering if you could give anymore information on the culture. I've heard American Fork is really good at really promoting their XC program as a legit program so even the not so good guys and gals are proud to be on the team. Most of the guys around me on my team treated XC kind of like a joke and the guys who took it seriously were kind of looked down upon.

sad guy wrote:

uggh, this makes me sad about everything our team is not doing (im a hschooler). I know I'm sounding ungrateful but seriously? These coaches sound awesome. Did they talk much about setting a standard on the team for things like attendance (so many unexcused abscenses and your kicked off)? I guess I'm wondering if you could give anymore information on the culture. I've heard American Fork is really good at really promoting their XC program as a legit program so even the not so good guys and gals are proud to be on the team. Most of the guys around me on my team treated XC kind of like a joke and the guys who took it seriously were kind of looked down upon.

When I was telling everyone else at LetsRun how the culture was so important the first question I got back was "How did they built it?"

That is the hard part. Joan Hunter's talk was "From Frisbee Folly to NXN Champs in 4 Years". Drew's freshman year the kids would go play ultimate frisbee most of the time. Gradually she and her husband began coaching more and the kids saw Drew success and were drawn to it. But most of the coaches said it can take 3+years to change the culture. But kids want to be part of something successful. Some of the kids from the old culture didn't say nice things to him.

Never apologize for success. It's hard for a high school kid to realize because you want to fit in but if you're trying to be good at something and someone else is making fun of you, try and ignore them.

Some had mandatory practices, some said if you skipped so many practices without a reason you couldn't be on the varsity, but they all has programs where the kids liked being a part of something successful (even if they weren't on varsity.). Dan Iverson had come from North Central College where practice was voluntary. He tried that at the high school level and found out it didn't work.

I could look up the numbers but there are a lot of kids on these teams. Great Oak is a big school and had 130+ (boys and girls) on its XC teams. Jonathan Dalby gave a talk about kids who never made the varsity but were totally bought in and part of their culture.

I have little doubt that when coaches who were not at the clinic who watch the full presentations - videos ready in 2-3 weeks, if not sooner - will be surprised at how much time was spent talking about building a culture. That was Joan Hunter's entire talk, and it was a big part of every talk.

Different coaches have different takes on building a culture. Dalby spends a lot of time after each meet recognizing the non-varsity runners. Doug Soles only take roughly the top 14 of each gender to the pre-season camp. Dan Iverson's girls do all-night relays as part of their pre-season camp (at which time they set their season goals).

The bottom line is that you have to start building a culture. Yes, Dan Iverson talked about his nine-day training cycle, Soles talked about using HIIT training, obviously Joan is using a ton of Critical Velocity training and O'Malley has boys running 40m all-out the first week of practice, etc. But the workouts - the Xs and Os of training - don't matter until there is a core group of kids excited about training and excited to work hard in a sport that is considered punishment in all other sports (something I forget but was brought up by speakers several times).

To the young man who doesn't have serious teammates or a serious coach: there is a pace for you to run in college where the team is serious and the coach is serious and where you'll have a fantastic time training seriously. Find it. I was in the same boat in HS and it was amazing to be on a college team where everyone was passionate about seeing how good they could be/how good we could be. If you're not super fast, there is still a school that will want you on their team, but it takes time to find those schools.

Thanks to everyone that attended the clinic. We will calculate this next week, but my guess is 20-25 states represented, maybe more. And more coaches in attendance who have had NXN teams or individuals outnumbered the speakers by a ratio of 2-3 to 1. That was neat and shows that the best coaches in the country are on a never-ending quest to improve their programs.

Why did you attend a clinic when your own brother is the finest coach in the history of the sport?

I’m pretty surprised. Our team does all that stuff (functional training, band exercises, dynamic stretching) and we still tend to flop between having kids getting injured and being severely undertrained

That's a long practice. Having a successful team is great but these kids are starting school at 8am then leave campus at 5:30 everyday. They are also giving up weekends for practice and meets. That's 15 hours a week!

Then they have to-

5:30- kid leaves practice

6: arrive home

6:30pm-7:00: dinner+dishes

7-10: homework

~~~~~~~~~~

Make practice shorter and streamlined

Warm up/drills/speed ladder/hit: 15 minutes(coaches take attendance during warm up)

Core routine/team meeting: 10 min

Main workout:45-60 minutes

Stretch: 10 min

Practice no more than 1 hour 30 minutes.

I liked what Jay reminded me of and that you're trying to get kids to enjoy something that other kids consider punishment.

A decent Hs runner wrote:

I’m pretty surprised. Our team does all that stuff (functional training, band exercises, dynamic stretching) and we still tend to flop between having kids getting injured and being severely undertrained

Now that makes no sense. You're undertrained and injured? If could train more and aren't doing it, then do it. I mean if your'e injured and running 5 miles a week, but could run 10 run 10. But the kids need to learn how to run and I think it's a learned skill.