Club workout during championship season HS meets - thoughts on this

Just a chumpy HS coach wrote:

Just curious what everyone thinks on this club workout. To give some background, we have one of the top teams in a fairly competitive state. We do have a national level girl and several very solid regional runners.

We have our 2nd round meet on the path to state this week. Last Friday we did 3200m of interval work at 3k pace. We had a session of 6x800 planned for today at 10k to 8k pace (slightly dropping with each rep.)

Race Wednesday. Daily mileage the rest.

The club coach decided to do this on Sunday (not every girl does this.)

4 sets of 500 then 200 "fast" with a long rest between the sets. So basically repeat broken 700m hard runs.

These girls are 1600/3200 specialists.

Any girls that did the club workout yesterday should not do the 6x800m today.

Are you saying that they ran the workout with both the 500m and the 200m hard? If that is true, then the workout is a very hard workout, especially 3 days out from an important competition.

Now if the workout was 500m at 1600/3200 pace and the 200m at 800m pace, then the workout would have been a great workout in my opinion. But if the whole thing was done "hard" then the workout was probably very hard and they need to really rest the next couple of days.

How does an athlete train for high school and Club unless it is the same coach. I'd think that during each season you have to pick one training regiment or the other.

I found out toward the end of the workout.

I was just told "fast." From sprint coach standards, that probably means race pace for target event at a minimum.

As for doing both....Most don't. Honestly, though, I don't see the point of club in my state. High schools can work out year round here.

Club coaches have it all - they coach the kid 1-2 times a week. Don’t account for what the kid is doing during the week or the following week. They take credit when the kid does well and give blame to the hs coach when kid does poorly. It’s a great scam. Any club coach that gives a workout like that on a Sunday - basically doesn’t care about the kid. I’ve had issues in the past with club coaches in season- and both situations the athlete was better the seasons they weren’t at club and worse when they were. Mostly because there was no focused training - just workouts from both hs and club and some club coach telling them everything they were doing was wrong ... which led to lack of belief which leads to poor performance

Most club coaches don't have it all. They lack Integrity.

1600m506pr:-/ wrote:

How does an athlete train for high school and Club unless it is the same coach. I'd think that during each season you have to pick one training regiment or the other.

Exactly. This is how kids get into trouble, and get injured. Neither coach is willing to capitulate, so the athletes in the middle getting tugged on from both sides are the ones who wear/give out.

I think it's fine if a kid wants to go one way or the other, but not both. If they choose to go the USATF youth route, with a finish way into the summer, and forgo running for a state title, that is ok. And if they just want to just do the high school thing and call it a racing year in June, that is as ok as well. I don't believe it is wise to try to burn the candle at both ends at that age, and I think that High School coaches should draw a harder line when these "conflicts" come up.

If club coaches truly are a**holes and lack integrity, we shouldn't let kids participate in age group track and field at all.

When coaching in high school, I had an athlete ask if he could do a workout on the weekend with a club coach, and I said sure, but if it was a hard workout, let me know so we would move his hard school workout from Monday to Tuesday.

When coaching at a club on Sundays, (during the high school season) I only did technical work, the workout was not designed to fatigue the athletes so much that it interfered with their high school training plan.

From either side, I was perfectly willing to "capitulate" - perhaps that's why my teams at both levels have found success.