A very interesting thing I saw at a aau summer track club

It's may or many not be the optimal way to train, but for young inexperienced runners, ANY type of work is going to create a stimulus provided they have the proper amount of recovery. That being said, lunges as part of a program definitely don't hurt performance.

In college we did something pretty similar to this, as a 800m specialist I think it really helped. We started before every-workout doing 200-500 lunges then 5x20m sprints. Followed by planks and a 10min jog before every workout. So around 4 times a week.

We would slowly reduce the lunges down to zero with around 4-5 weeks left in the season. The ability to recover was improved so much it felt ridiculous.

Schedule kid of looked like this

Monday- 200/400 workout, 3x300, long rests. Then a hard 20min later at night.

Tuesday Am: 40min. Pm: 40min progressive run

Wednesday 800m workout: alternating 5x400 @800 pace, with 3x3x300 @ 800 pace, 5x300 @ 3 seconds faster than 800 pace , and 8x200 @800 pace with 30” rest

Thursday: Am 60min easy Pm: recovery session (massage light jog and yoga plus sometimes pool)

Friday: 1500/3000 workout, 2x800 @3k pace + 5x600 @1500 pace

Saturday: Am :60min Aqua jog Pm 20min jog plus 20min recovery session

Sunday: early season would be 15 miles at 6:00 pace, end of year would be 10 @ 5:25 pace, then during a peak it would be a 5 mile run @ 5:00 plus 5 easy.

Err wrote:

This seems like a really good way to improve muscle endurance and improve fast

No. I would expect a young track newbie to improve that much, just from running. No need for the lunges.

The one thing I do very clearly remember was how tight my legs would be after every workout for the first 3 months of every season, your body adapts and you slowly get less and less sore, so we would keep upping the lunges up.

I’ll put our entire warm up below

1 mile warmup

400 @ LT

400 @ 10 seconds slower than 800m pace

15min jump rope

Static stretches

Lunges

Planks

5x20m sprints

10min jog

Workout

There was a 3 minute jog after every single exercise

I was a 1:59 guy in high school, during my last year I was running 1:48

After every practice we also had a routine,

3 miles easy

15min of burpees and box jumps

Honestly I think that this kind of training takes a very long time to build up to. I got very lucky and adapted, but most of my teammates ended up injured or would transferring

I don’t think I was clear enough, the same week that the lunges were removed from the warm ups he dropped times during workouts. This is during a 8 week period of intense training, not his second time doing intervals ever.

BUMPLP

Err wrote:

I don’t think I was clear enough, the same week that the lunges were removed from the warm ups he dropped times during workouts. This is during a 8 week period of intense training, not his second time doing intervals ever.

Sure but that is just because he isn't sore. If he hadn't been doing the lunges, he would have been running faster all along.:)

Obviously it is hard to prove stuff either way. Some people swear by doing things like this or weight lifting for local muscle endurance. Others never do it and they seem to run fine also.

For kids, it might work great as training that is unlikely to get you hurt the same way running mileage or sprints in people in poor shape will.

about what you'd expect wrote:

Err wrote:

This seems like a really good way to improve muscle endurance and improve fast

No. I would expect a young track newbie to improve that much, just from running. No need for the lunges.

Yes. All this.

Hundreds of lunges at each practice? Utter silliness.

Is the AAU even still around?

It was in the 60-90 range, never more than 100

Coaches that don't know what they are doing. Coaching distance runners like they are sprinters.