Ryan Hall posts training program for his 13 year old daughter - reasonable??

They could transition well into the Great Oak program.

If the goal is to get his kid to hate running this is a great plan.

CoachJoanHunter wrote:

No, this is not typical in any way for middle schoolers. This is more volume and density than my son Drew ran as a high school sophomore.

1 big difference between the 2 she is Ethiopian.

No mention of intensity for the specific 'workouts' other than the Tuesday one with 800 for time, etc. 2:42 would not even be a top 500 time for middle school girls on milesplit last year so I am guessing not a time trial. Was it her mile/1600 pace? A 1600 5:24 time is not outrageous for a MS girl, about a top 30 time in 2017.

In simple Daniels vernacular, she is running mostly Easy (E) pace runs for time but we have no idea the intensity of the specific workouts (I, R, FR, T) or what her easy pace even is. What are the 6-8 x 800 run in? That makes a difference.

The amount of time/mileage at E pace seems heavy. Vigil says middle school girls should be running roughly 25-30 miles a week (20 mpw for grade school, 30 mpw for junior high). This looks like 40 mpw if I were to guess. 3 hours alone on Fri-Sundays. Assuming 9 min pace, she's doing 10 mile long runs (25% of weekly mileage).

It seems a bit over the top to me at the daughters age.

On the other hand I was nowhere as good as her.

In conclusion, who knows. I will be her biggest fan or be very sad.

TLW wrote:

If the goal is to get his kid to hate running this is a great plan.

+1

Too much running and too many hard sessions per week for that age.

For a 13 year old girl going through puberty, I would consider this program borderline negligence. 20-30 minutes a day is more than enough. If you want to toss in strides 2-3days a week with some drills to teach fundamentals and coordination go ahead. But that is about it. Kids that age generally already spend an hour a day in gym class. If she has any genetic predisposition (talent) towards running nurture it and over time it will show. Having been an elite athlete is not a free pass to prescribe physiologically stimulating maneuvers (exercise is a huge physiological global stimulus, muscular/neural/endocrine/psychological...) to a child without understanding it.

I think Ryan Hall should probably reflect on his own career.

Haha like all American girls she will be heavy and slow.

As someone new to coaching kids, Hall will learn over time that it's not a miniature version of what he did in his career. These workouts are not as crazy as some I've seen, but it's still way more than is necessary for 13 yo. This is the kind of training you see with phenoms, some respond well to it and become very good, but some don't and quit in their second year of H.S. At 13, kids generally only run the 800 and mile; focus on speed.

Does anyone else think that sprint 300m makes no sense? A true sprint should be way less than that, if that was at like 800m pace that would make more sense, but still that seems like a long specific interval.

TLW wrote:

If the goal is to get his kid to hate running this is a great plan.

My college roommate was running 70-80 mile weeks in middle school - he still enjoys running and competes in his late 20's, unlike almost all my other teammates who quit immediately after college. Whether you enjoy running or not is innate. Those who grow up to hate running (i.e. most normies) would hate it no matter what.

Not at all. If the stories from Ethiopia and Kenya are true, that many if not most kids run an average of 12 miles a day to go to and from school, then not too much.

Obviously Ryan is preparing a future national champion (who knows even a world champion) let it be.

What the hell? Not only is that way too much, even if this was a high school senior, the training is written in a way that it's as if he is clueless about training. Just another example that a good athlete does not make a good coach. Hall has always been an idiot. Can't believe he went to Stanford.

He's ruining that poor girl too, borderline abusive.

Regardless of the training itself, his posting it on IG (as her coach) qualifies Ryan for Narcissistic Parent Of The Year Award.

At that age I trained in swimming and we had 80-90 minute trainings six times a week. And girls were tougher than boys since they develop faster. Don't see a problem with 60 min easy running per day if she feels ok herself. It depends on her previous activity level as a child, I bet Ethiopian kids are way more active as kids and thus this must be less stress for them overall

At that age, I was spending a lot more time on my bike than that. 1 hour rides and often 2 hours. I wasn't coached, just self-motivated by magazines and a guidebook I checked out from the library, to explore the local backroads. I didn't have structured harder workouts, but I'm sure I hammered all climbs, tried to motorpacing slower passing cars, etc.

Everybody is entitled to their opinion rather it be a professional opinion or otherwise. I have professionally coached at the youth level (ages 7-18) and my opinion is that the training set forth for Ryan's daughter Mia is not typical for a middle school child. Two to four days per week of specific run training is much more typical for the average middle school child. The training for Mia could be more considered "marathon" training. Fwiw it is my opinion that marathons should be run by individuals that are at least 18 years old.

YMMV wrote:

Regardless of the training itself, his posting it on IG (as her coach) qualifies Ryan for Narcissistic Parent Of The Year Award.

+1