Run-Down Forums

[Hammer]

We have been hammering this topic for weeks now and for the most part we have only talked about the issue of ECONOMICS.

How would you rank the REASONS why American Males are not near the top of the Distance Game???

[Guest]

Funny because I just started addressing this issue in my last post on the Economics thread ... And what I suggested as a prime area to look at is coaching/coaches ... As they are responsible both for recruitment of athletes and their development ... So what do the rest of you think before expanding further ???

[Hammer]

I believe there are a multitude of reasons. I started this thread to see if people would be willing to state their opinions instead of waiting for someone to post and then contradicting the opinion of the original person.

[Conway]

I think it is an excellent post .. The first response was mine ... I posted anonymously by accident ... But definitely feel that coaching/coaches bear a lot of blame/responsibility ...

For example the one thing that I have seen good coaches do in the sprints AND weight events is pull together groups of athletes to work with ... That isn't done with any regularity in the distance area - that I am aware of ...

I also think it is imperative for coaches ot stay on the cutting edge of the technical aspects of their disciplines .. Again I see that in sprints and weights but not necessarily in the distances .. Although I could be wrong ...

[Distance_Guru]

I think a very big reasons is the exposure our sport gets vs the big four (see my post on the Kenyan thread ).

Another huge reason and I'm sure people will go nuts on me for coming out and saying this, is our all consuming fear of overtraining. People constantly talk about how hard athletes from other countries work and then turn around and tell a high school kid that if he's not carefull he'll overtrain. The reason for this is that Americans a lot of time get running to run fast and running to stay healthy mixed up. Runners World is a fine magazine and I even have a subscription to it, but the advice they give is for the most part for adults that are trying to stay healthy and use races as a way of keeping up there interest in running. For an athlete that is trying to be a sub 4 minute miler in high school a lot of the advice that is in that magazine is contradictory to his goals. And as much as it pains me that this goes on a lot of HS coaches read RW like it's the bible and don't take it in context. My old HS coach was one of them. But if you look at the training that most of the best Americans now were doing at 16-17 years of age and compare it to that of the best athletes from around the world were doing at the same age, you just might have found a big chunk of the difference between us and the rest of the world right there.

_________________
Time is the fire in which we burn

[Hammer]

Good example DG... A friend of mine once said, "All good coaches are accused of overtraining their athletes @ one time or another."

I coach. I push my athletes hard. Some of them get hurt from time to time. I have been moderatly successful. I would be cheating my athletes if I didn't push them. +90% of the HS coaches in the US don't run their athletes @ the mileage and intensity that I do. (and I never have gone over 60 miles/week with a HS kid)

HS coaches try to cheat their kids and tell them that they can get good with 20 miles a week. its horrible

[Conway]

I definitely agree with the fear of over training .. When I was in high school (even jr high for that matter) we trained very hard .. Losing one's lunch was a common thing during early season training no matter what event you were in .. And we were good across the board ... Good enough to win our section championship (state meet qualifier) by almost double the next place team my senior year ...

I've kept up with the program over the years .. And the kids I talk to are amazed at the workouts that we did (we being sprinters and distance runners) .. Our distance runners were coached by a man heavily influenced by Lydiard ... They ran long and hard .. Including some light morning runs ... And weekend training .. And only once in three years did we have a serious injury to any of our distance runners ..

Question though ?? Is it the coaches or the kids now a days ?? My high school coach retired about 7 years ago .. and he told me at the time that he ust couldn't get the kids to work like they used to ... And it was frustrating for him ..

Chicken or the egg ??? Kids not wanting to work as hard .. OR coaches not pushing them to do so .. Challenge for the coach is to be innovative and make things somewhat fun while still pushing them ... I think creating a challenge is the key ...

[Distance_Guru]

I don't think kids ever change. The enviornment that kids come up in is different from the one that kids came up in a decade or so ago and so a coach must be able to adapt. Find a different way to get the same result. In the 50's a coach could yell scream and even be physical with athletes, (it did happen) and the culture these young people came up in made them respond to that. Now you have to convince the kids that doing the work is what it takes to be win. Of coarse then as a coach you run into the problem of athletes that don't care about winning or improving.
An old teammate of mine that has gone on to become a successful coach use to say "there are three kinds of athletes, the one that need you to kick there butt, the ones that need you to kiss there butt, and the ones that you just need to leave alone" and those words are no less true today than they were when he said them. The trick is knowing which kids are which type. But that's why coaches get paid the big bucks

_________________
Time is the fire in which we burn

[Dan]

I could list a number of reasons, but I'm not sure I could rank them in any meaningful fashion (nor would I place much value in anyone else's rankings). There isn't any way to separate cause and effect, so it's all moot conjecture (as is 99% of our daily lives ).

On the over-training topic, one thing I would add is this. From the standpoint of college coaches, you often get one of two types of high school athletes (the third type doesn't comprise the majority one would hope for): those who were under-trained and those who were over-trained.

The under-trained athletes can easily get caught up if they are motivated to do so. The over-trained ones may take 3-4 years of their college career to do so, if at all. So, a lot of it depends on the goals of the individual athletes. If their goal is to compete at the highest level, than risking over-training makes more sense. If it is to be the best high schooler they can be and maybe make it to districts/state and hopefully score some points for the team, then again, it makes sense. If it is to develop long term as effectively as they can (not counting those stellar athletes who's long term projection includes very high levels of competition), then it becomes questionable.

Dan

[Hammer]

I havn't seen too many HS runners who have been overtrained when they make it to college. A lot of them are mentally burned out (they usually become week college runners anyway) but I have yet to see the problem of HS kids being overtrained.

[Conway]

Where I've seen the overtraining in high school is at the elite level ... Usually the kids that are the stars in high school end up having average at best collegiate careers .. For example I used to live in the Sacramento area where Jesuit High School is .. They have had numerous milers that have been state champions .. And it is not unusual for them to have an athlete at 4:07 or better .. As a matter of fact they have had many athletes run 4:04 - 4:05 ... Most have done nothing in the mile / 1500 in college ... The lone exception being Michael Stember who made the last Olympic team and ran 3:34.xx ...

So I would give some validity to Dan's statement .. Having said that however, I've seen few overtrained high schoolers that have had average to sub average times ... Although I gues that statement would speak for itself ...

[Hammer]

I don't see epedemic numbers of overtrained athletes. But I do see undertraining HS runners as a major problem.

[Distance_Guru]

I think an occurance that is more common than overtrained athletes fizziling in college is undertrained athletes regecting the increased work loads at the college level. Many times talented athletes think that what was good enough at the high school level will be good enough in college because they nver experensed serious training in high school and they simply don't put in the work that it takes to be good in college or beyond. Of coarse another, a simpler way of discribing these athletes might be lazy.

On the other hand almost any athlete on the high school level that overtrains very likely may have done it to himself. Before you decide to hang me hear me out. If the athlete has a good coach they will not be overtrained in practice and if their coach isn't all that good they almost always undertrain their athletes as opposed to overtraining them. In order for most athletes to overtrain they would have to go out and do extra runs and workouts on their own. Or they would add on to the distances and intensities the coach asigned. I am sure that there are a few High School coaches that overtrain their athletes, but I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that many more athletes overtrain themselves inspite of their coaches rather than because of them. On the upside if an athlete is going to work hard enough to over train at least you don't have to worry about them being lazy

_________________
Time is the fire in which we burn

[Conway]

Guru your post raises a question for me and that is this - what is the motivation these days for kids running track in the first place ... The reason that I ask is that that it would seem to me tht the under trained kid who gotto college and found harder workouts would do them if he was in the sport to truly become good at it .. The kid who is just there for the hell of it may not care .. At least that is how I would look at it ... But I'm not so sure about how kids are thinking now ...

And not going to hang you over your over training statement ... But will ask if that happens a lot in the distances ??? I know in the sprints and hurdles it is easy to "do more" ... But then I'm not in tune with the kind of workouts high school coaches are giving their distance runners ..

[Hammer]

The problem that has risen (with reguards to undertraining) is that athletes are going to college with a "burnout" or "tapering" mentallity. Some runners refuse to put in the mileage that a coach asks for because they fear that they will burn out. They also believe that they need to taper for every race and therefore believe that their coach is overtraining them, when in fact the coach is looking at the season as a whole.