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

ThatEpicMania wrote:

wejo wrote:

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.

Not universally true. Many private schools require so many seasons of afterschool sports to graduate.

Yes, I believe 2017 XC powerhouse St. Francis of Mountain View has a school requirement where all 9th and 10th graders have to do a sport. So, if it's not football or water polo......you're now required to be in XC.

And that is why I can't take you seriously as a coach rojo.

Coach Soles wrote:

Culture. Everyone in our program understands that to be the best we can be it takes that amount of time. You see the key is they aren't bought into my goals, they are bought into their goals. Athletes will waste your time, but they do not like wasting their own. A group of people 100% focused on their goal doesn't care about the time it takes. The time becomes irrelevant. It takes what it takes to get the job done. It isn't about me or the rules or the time. It is about getting the job done.

If you are struggling to get your athletes to do something, it is because they don't have or value the vision that is set for them. Start there.

Doug

But, it doesn't really take 2.5 hours a day. That is untrue.

You have convinced them that your goals are their goals. This is not a job, it is HS athletics.

I mean, are there really that many teams that have had national-level success with much less time per day than that?

Especially in the state of California, it's going to be next to impossible to compete on a mere 6 aerobic efforts a week, so you need more time. If you aren't doing the core/strengthening/mobility, you aren't going to be able to sustain that many efforts.

I know when I was in high school, our practices usually ran 90-120 minutes, but I always had at least another 30-45 minutes of work I would do on my own at home. Unfortunately, we didn't have the luxury of it counting as a class, so we weren't able to start practice until after school was out.

Doug - Any thoughts on how to best get a larger group to come up with that kind of paradigm changing goal? Anything you feel was particularly effective when you first saw the kids "turn the corner" as a team?

Coach Soles wrote:

Culture. Everyone in our program understands that to be the best we can be it takes that amount of time. You see the key is they aren't bought into my goals, they are bought into their goals.

If you are struggling to get your athletes to do something, it is because they don't have or value the vision that is set for them. Start there.

Doug

loose nut wrote:

who's got the 10 1/2?

Kira.

Question:

Why do 75% of individual athletes (and 75% of teams) underperform at their biggest races of the season, while only 25% of individuals/teams run their best races at the biggest races?

Follow up:

Why is it that the same programs predictably underperform?

From article

wejo wrote:

John O’Malley said in the last six years, he’s had 390 kids go through his program and they’ve had a total of two stress fractures. That is absolutely amazing with how much these kids are running. Joan Hunter said when she coached a decade ago, her runners used to get injured a lot more than they do today, as she puts more emphasis on keeping them healthy. What are you doing to keep your runners healthy?

So what is the secrete to keeping runners healthy or more specifically reducing the number of season ending injuries?

I am a parent of a D1 runner on a team that has an experienced, well-respected coach, that takes teams to NCAA Cross Country Championship year after year. What do these high school coaches with top teams do to limit the number of season ending injuries? Why would a D1 coach have 4 stress fractures during one cross country season across the men's & women's programs while these high school coaches have so few stress fractures or other multi-season ending injuries? This D1 team had a podium finish in a year where somehow the top runners remained healthy but they have since had injuires among their top runners. This past season they probably had 10 runners who could qualify as two teams for the NCAA XC Championship if they were healthy and running at their potential.

A couple of thoughts.

I was at a USATF clinic a decade or so ago when Brooks Johnson said something that is important for a parent of a DI athelte (and their HS coach). He said that if a college freshman replicates their HS PRs, that's a good job on the part of the college coach and the college freshman. HS coaches and HS parents don't like this fact, but it's one of many things I've heard Brooks say that people don't like that are spot on.

Second, parents forget that as the athlete moves from middle school and through high school, the environment is fairly stable. Dad cooks the same dinners weekly, mom reminds her daughter to take her ferritin, coaches like the five that presented at the clinic check in with kids every day (which is impressive given the size of their teams), there is a support system of people - at school, neighbors on the block, perhaps at church - that ask the HS athlete ho their running is going. I would think this was especially true for the caliber of athlete your son or daughter had to have been in HS to be on this type of college team. Athlet goes to college and life is a little, or a lot, less stable.

Perhaps most important is the issue of sleep. The best book I read in 2017 is Peak Performance - get it. Brad Stulburg and Steve Magness us the following equation as the touchstone of the book:

Stress + Rest = Growth

Stress is training, but also all of the social and academic stresses of college. I'm a parent of young kids so I haven't given much thought to this, but in 9 years when my oldest will be ready for college, I'll assume that her academic life will get more stressful than life as a HS senior. Everyone - athlete, HS coach, HS parent - going into this process assumes training stress will go up when the athlete goes to college. Socially college, even when it's new and exciting, would be viewed as an increased stress in this model.

This leads us to the Rest part of the equation and the fact that a college student who is flirting with someone they like, overwhelmed by being in classes with people as genetically gifted in that subject - say calc based physics where there are brainiac equivalents of 4:10/4:50 milers, wich means you're working your ass off to get C+'s and you never got less than an A- in college, getting hammered in practice every single day by people who are better than you, as well as by people who are less talented than you but are having a good day, and you have the Stress part of the equation "bigger" than it was in HS.

If you agree with this rationale, then there is a simple question: is your son/daughter getting more sleep in college than they did in HS so as to deal with the increased stress? My data set of one is that my teammates and I lived like monks. I was in bed at 9:45 pm six nights a week, up at 7 am, to get 9 hours. Took a nap in the library or the locker room every day - but it was too long, as I'm learning in Dan Pink's book "When." That was the minimum I needed to run with a dozen guys who were some combination of more talented and tougher than me. Most college kids get less than 9 hours; I would question those getting less than 8.

I know college kids are running the marathon, but here is a quote from an NY Times article by Gina Kolata in 2007: "Deena Kastor, who won the London Marathon last year and set an American record, said she sleeps 10 hours at night and takes a two-hour nap every afternoon. Steven Spence, a marathoner who won a bronze medal at the 1991 world championships in Tokyo, had the same sleep habits when he was training.

“I would be sleeping about half of my life,” Mr. Spence said.

Hope this was helpful.

Curious about the junk miles on a cool down getting scratched. If the cool down is taken at your normal easy day pace, would that still benefit you? I was planning on doing a 2-3 mile cool downs after my workout days and meet days ( ex. 800 and the 2 mile) so that I could keep up my mileage. Is this appropriate or would it be better to get mileage in by running 7 days a week or something else?

Jay- Paula Radcliffe also slept 12-13 hours/day, same with Greta Szabo. Probably one of the most overlooked aspects of elite athletic life, and indeed maybe even tucked out of sight in order to not look "weak" or "lazy", .

One of the most affecting quotes I ever read was in Kenny Moore's piece on Filbert Bayi in the '70's. It was Bayi's coach, who claimed that others in the group had as much talent, but the Filbert was the one who had the discipline to sleep an additional two hours in the middle of the day. It really opened my eyes on things being as much about recovery as about "hard work".

getting in miles during track season wrote:

Curious about the junk miles on a cool down getting scratched. If the cool down is taken at your normal easy day pace, would that still benefit you? I was planning on doing a 2-3 mile cool downs after my workout days and meet days ( ex. 800 and the 2 mile) so that I could keep up my mileage. Is this appropriate or would it be better to get mileage in by running 7 days a week or something else?

If you aren't getting in at least a couple of miles after a hard track session or race(s), you are not giving yourself proper recovery. "Junk" in this context would be going to run for another hour, and/or at faster than easy pace. Of course, AlSal famously throws in workouts right after races in early season, but there is a different context there than for your average High Schooler.

How many of these coaches of top programs teach at the school that they coach?

Great post! And spot on from my experiences as a former collegiate runner and long time HS coach.

wejo- Did you have any stimulating conversations on the intellectual capabilities of different races? I mean you WERE at a running clinic.....

Did they talk about ideal number of races/meets per season? There are so many cool invites popping up that seem to keep kids excited... but it seems there is possibility of over racing and being flat at the end of the year when it really counts?

Reffering to track specifically

At what mileage do they incorporate doubles for girls vs boys?

Jay's thing about sleep was interesting. Also most college runners are doing more intensity than high school. Maybe they should scale it back a bit but easier said than done when for the first time the athlete is surrounding be people equally talented or better.

A lot of these programs at the clinic do do workouts after races. I never did something like that so I haven't thought too much about the physiology of it but the body clearly can handle it if done right. Then use the next day to properly recover.

Same thing with cooldown. I would often run extra to hit a mileage total but why are you trying to hit the mileage total? Is it to become more efficient as a runner?, keep your metabolism at a certain level, whatever it is. If you're just doing it to add miles and also it's very inefficient running with bad form are you hurting more than your helping?