SPEED ORIENTED COLLEGE DISTANCE PROGRAMS

Sanjay Gupta wrote:

SandDunes wrote:

Yes NOP does speed all year round, but they do a bunch of easy mileage too. And, I guess you don't understand what a analogy is do you?

His point was that it’s a poor analogy. Did you not understand that?

Exactly. I know what an analogy is, and I know that the cake one was terrible. Good coaches and athletes are well beyond the strictly defined periodization that Lydiard developed. It was a great starting point, but was too rigid for optimal results.

ScottEvil wrote:

The Starved Elephant wrote:

Yeah but they finished dead freakin' last at Nats last year, and they did not do much better the year before that.

Don't they have to do a bunch of other physical training year-round? It might make sense to prioritize being generally strong versus the whole complicated cycle associated with base-building and peaking.

Also, I'd think they'd need more upper body strength year-round than is actually optimal for XC.

What is complicated with periodization? You do a bunch of easy exercise in whatever your sport is and peaking is just a matter of decreasing volume and increasing intensity leading up to your goal event. Even weightlifters/powerlifters (the serious ones at least) even do it. I mean even Percy Cerutty who focused a lot on building strength through hills and weight lifting did periodization. George Saint-Pierre main coach Firas Zahabi points this out as the reason why Russians are better at wrestling than Americans is that they just do mostly flow rolling and only do really intense training leading up their main competition. Highly recommend this podcast below for all of you who think training must be balls to the walls 24/7, 365 days a year. And, this has been a problem with training in America for a long time to quote Arthur Lydiard, "I have a saying 'train, don't strain.' The Americans have the saying 'no pain, no gain' and that's why they have no distance running champions. They get down to the track with a stopwatch and flog their guts out thinking that it'll make them a champion, but they'll never make a champion that way."

LRC geniuses wrote:

Sanjay Gupta wrote:

His point was that it’s a poor analogy. Did you not understand that?

Exactly. I know what an analogy is, and I know that the cake one was terrible. Good coaches and athletes are well beyond the strictly defined periodization that Lydiard developed. It was a great starting point, but was too rigid for optimal results.

Training can become one long grind if you repeat the same things over and over. Having different phases of training makes training mentally easier to handle keeping you mentally fresher. You rest, you run easy, you add in progression and tempo runs while shorter intervals touching on speed, more intense longer race pace intervals, tapering as you move towards your most important championship race: The Local Turkey Trot Natty’s.

Most people aren’t going to improve indefinitely. Doing year round speed work won’t take you from 4:40 to 3:40, there’s only so much you can improve.

So explain year round speed work and how it’s better.

Penn State?!

Flagpole wrote:

The Starved Elephant wrote:

I'd like to nominate this for post of the year.

Seconded!

Thirded!

The OP may be a miler who happens to be OK at XC. I understand the desire to focus on speed even if it isn't the best method.

ninjarunner wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

Seconded!

Thirded!

Reminds me of a post to a similar question on here once. "Just look at the programs with good DMRs that underperform in XC and you'll have what you're looking for"

Penn State.

Lydiard Cerutty wrote:

The ones that suck.

Like Justyn Knight @ 40 mpw?

That kind of suck?

Old Miss

caveat: NONE of this applies to people who are using drugs.

Old Miss?

RunHillsinHighWaters wrote:

Uconn

Go to UCONN and run hard intervals constantly so you can peak at 1:51 and 4:10 your sophomore year.

Lydiard Cerutty wrote:

The ones that suck.

This is EXACTLY what I was going to post.

Laydhard wrote:

Lydiard Cerutty wrote:

The ones that suck.

Like Justyn Knight @ 40 mpw?

That kind of suck?

Have you ever heard of the saying exception to the rule? One in a million people win the lottery. Should you than conclude that you should not save and invest for your retirement and just buy lottery tickets?

The Naval Academy has a 6 week period called Plebe summer prior to their Freshman year where they have sort of a basic military training. After that, if you are in cross country - your only training is cross country training. If you are not a D1 athlete then there are year around non sport specific training and every student must be in some intramural sport.

womens basketball wrote:

RunHillsinHighWaters wrote:

Uconn

Go to UCONN and run hard intervals constantly so you can peak at 1:51 and 4:10 your sophomore year.

Guess its hard to hold a peak for 6 months straight and still improve. Who would have taught.

Va Tech training is (was?) not what you think. There are lots of drills and strides for pure speed development. But that is not the same as heavy speed training intervals. Their intervals are more focused on race pace and short recovery.

Akron, I was at a talk that Labadie was giving 2 summers ago at a camp and he said for cross that his guys work is 65% aerobic and 35% anaerobic throughout the season. Pretty high percentage for anaerobic work when you are training for 8k/10k.