Help me build team cohesion: what are some daily drills or games to better integrate sprint and distance squads?

Have the sprinters run with the distance team on their shortest slowest day and have the distance runners workout with the sprinters on their longest day.

Give em the shocker!

Secret Santa

/EOT

Warm ups, plyometrics and stretching plus your daily pep talk should be enough.

Athletics is an individual sport with a 'secondary' team element.

Leave the 'team building' crap for actual team sport participants who need the validation.

As a distance coach you should know this already.

Practice those baton passes! Mix everybody yup and compete in relay races. SMR/DMR/whatever distances you desire. Make it fun with blind handoffs only.

Get over it, they warm up together and that is enough. They will also be traveling to meets together and watching and cheering on each other as they compete.

This isn't HS football.

Scattergories?

We always did workouts in the hallways, and stairs was definitively part of it. Stairs we did as a group, maybe more aerobic building for the sprinters and strength for the distance runners.

Core strength stuff, both sprinters and distance groups can do core strength stuff together.

Some lifting can be done together with things modified for their different needs.

Have the entire team do both 600 yard & 600m time trials in multiple integrated (runners/jumpers/sprinters/throwers) heats. The 400m & 400mH athletes should prevail in 600 yard run. Your best 800m & 1500m runners should prevail in 600m run. There will be overlap. It should be fun! Have an 800m/1500m runner race one leg on 4 x 400m relay in dual or tri or quad meets. Have a high jumper, pole vaulter and a thrower race a 100m &/or 200m leg on a medley relay. It's indoors. Make it fun!

All track groups need core/mobility work. Do that portion together then split up.

Extend warmups with some goofy little relay races. Some can just be for fun, others can work in your plyos (hopping on one foot, etc.).

Mandatory team showers... you can pee on someone just like in the movie.

Thanks very much to those who replied seriously.

Bump for others to weigh in.

We would have plank contests, could be something fun to try. Most of our team bonding was team dinners and things outside of practice where we could really talk/laugh and build friendships. In HS the distance girls bought ribbon for the team to put in their hair and handed them out with a note for each girl just saying good luck and something nice, the sprinters bought us a box of our fav energy bars the next meet with a nice sticky note attached, we also ran together on slow/short days. idk how you can use this for your team but I will say that we had much more success when the clique stuff stopped and I love that you’re putting the effort in.

We have actually done a once a week workout where we do a bodyweight circuit with 300 meter runs (easy to tempo effort) in between the exercises. Split the team into two groups, one group is at the 300 start, the other is at the start/finish line. Each group has some sort of bodyweight exercise to do for 45 seconds. Then the group at the 300 start runs 300 and the other group walks/jogs/some sort of ambulation across the infield to the 300 start. Once everyone is where they should be, another 45 second exercise. We do 5-6 x 300 this way then the distance kids generally go run for 20 mins or so and the sprinters are basically done.

Ultimate frisbee would be a good workout for each group. Make sure to mix the teams up randomly so sprinters and distance have each other on the same team. Have everyone do the same strength workouts.

Do a paarlauf on the indoor track - sprinters do 1 lap then rest, Middle Distance Runners do a few laps then changeover and start again.

Bump for more ideas.

Thanks again to those who gave well-meaning advice. Particular thanks to Coach Joan.

M4tth3w05t:

I hadn't previously heard about paarlauf competitions. Do you have any advice on how to split up teams to have somewhat equal relays? Any further advice is welcome.

The warm-up routine (including plyos and stretching) and pre-practice team meeting should be enough for everyday practice. Beyond that, support eachother during meets as all good teammates should ... but that's about the extent of what really needs to be done. Track is an individual sport first and foremost, and what athletes need to do to improve varies depending on their discipline so it doesn't make much sense to sacrifice valuable training time. If the scheduling works out you could add in post-practice games like ultimate frisbee but with different groups doing different things that doesn't necessarily work out.

Honestly, the 30-40 minutes of the start of practice (plus the time between when school gets out and practice starts) should be enough as it is.