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Hello, and I hope this finds you doing well.
For the majority of high school runners, the chance to race in a junior varsity uniform in school-sanctioned meets has ended, or is ending in the next ten days. At some schools, there is a tradition of training for a Nike Cross Regional meet (NXR) for junior varsity athletes.
So, athletes are either entering a time where they won’t be meeting with their team for a few weeks, or they will continue to train with their team for the NXR meet. With that in mind, here are my suggestions for junior varsity athletes in these two scenarios.
Recover, Get Ready To Get Ready, Then Get Ready
I’m of the opinion that high school athletes can improve from season to season (and year to year) if they simply run 48 weeks a year. So that means two weeks of not running following the cross country season. I first heard this principle from Greg Weich, one of the best high school coaches in the country, and the coach at Broomfield HS in Colorado (here is a summary of his contribution to High School Running Coach).
Other coaches, such as Joan and Marc Hunter, who coach the reigning NXN Boys Champion Loudoun Valley team, take less down time. After having a spring season where they were top 25 in the 4x800m relay, distance medley relay and 4x1600m relay, they are the current number one ranked cross country team, so obviously their approach works. As with many things in running, there are multiple ways to approach training.
My approach is simple:
- Recover from the cross country season.
- Get ready for the first steps of training — so get ready for the training that gets you ready to do real training.
- Get ready for real training by doing aerobic training, basic neuromuscular preparation and lots of general strength and mobility.
Obviously athletes need to follow the directions of their coach. What follows are my recommendations, which should not be taken by parents as the rule for training following the season.
Recover From The Season
The key takeaway here is simple: a high school athlete needs a mental break from the rigors of training. Parents and coaches will know athletes are ready to train again when athletes are antsy, wanting to get out the door run. One could argue that high school student-athletes in 2018 have unrealistic demands placed on their time. Giving athletes a break from training for a week allows them to live the life their friends who aren’t distance runners get to live.
On the day that they are antsy to train, try to delay formal training for one more week, then resume training. You want them excited to resume training, and if they aren’t chompin at the bit to train, wait another week.
The First Week
The first week following the end of the season, I recommend one week of nothing. No running, no cross training, no general strength and mobility. If they want to do some activities — swimming, basketball, biking with parents and siblings, hiking, a yoga class, etc. — that’s fine. The key here is they feel like they get to do as they please, which could mean video games and Netflix and possibly some junk food.
The Second Week
The second week, athletes need to be active, yet the activity should ideally be an activity that they wouldn’t do during the season. No running this week, and no cross training this week. There is no reason to do strength and mobility work this week.
Basketball, ultimate frisbee and yoga come time to mind as activities that athletes might not do during the season — this is a great week for those activities!
The key here is that the athlete is active four to five days this week, but there is nothing that looks like the focused training they would do during the year.
The Third Week
Key Point: From here on out, the coach is obviously in charge of the training.
This is the first week of formal training. What should this entail? Here are three areas that all athletes need to focus on:
1. Focus on the neuromuscular system. Athletes should be running strides, and running some of them fast, the very first week of formal training, assuming they have a safe surface to run on. If the roads and fields athletes ran on during the cross country season are icy and snowy, then they will have to find an alternative.
2. Strength and mobility are crucial if the junior varsity athlete is going to handle either more volume, more intensity or more of each variable over the winter. A strong foundation of bodyweight work should start during this week of training.
3. The development of the aerobic metabolism is vital for distance runners, as well as middle distance runners. Thus, in this first week of training, some light fartlek runs make a lot of sense. If coaches want to assign a long run, the distance should be quite a bit shorter than the long run distance at the end of the cross country season. For instance, a junior varsity athlete who was doing 8-mile long runs during cross country may run 5-6 miles for their first long run. They are four months until March, giving athletes 16 weeks to build their long run distance.
This week, the athlete is ready to follow the winter training the coach has laid out. Obviously each coach will have a progression of training — volume, intensity, neuromuscular work and strength and mobility work — that will take the athlete from this week to the first week of outdoor track.
You can argue that this is a great time for running circuits, circuits where athletes run 300m-500m and then do exercises between the running.
Note: Running circuits are very different than weight room circuits, where athletes go from exercise to exercise. The running circuits I’m referring to are mostly aerobic in nature, compared to a weight room circuit, which has a significant contribution from the anaerobic metabolism to fuel the session.
What I love about circuits this time of year is that you can get a 30-, 40-, 50-minute high-level aerobic stimulus that is challenging, yet the overall running volume is low.
Coaches should design circuits that are appropriate for junior varsity athletes’ abilities and their strength and their mobility. The video examples I have to share are likely one step beyond what would be appropriate for a young athlete. That said, if you need ideas for circuits, simply respond to this email.
NXR and Footlocker Junior Varsity Racers
One of the neat things about NXR and Footlocker is that a junior varsity athlete can continue to train through the months of October and November and race with their teammates at the big meet. What follows is simply my suggestion — athletes need to follow the direction of their coaches.
The First Week Of NXR Training
I think it makes a lot of sense for a junior varsity athlete to take 5-10 days of easy running, light strength and mobility, yet no decrease in neuromuscular work, following their last race with their school.
From there, the training should include an aerobic workout and a race pace workout each week. Some coaches would say the aerobic workout needs to be a long run, others would say a threshold run. The key is that there is aerobic work being done at this time of the season.
Race pace workouts are key during this period and should be done at goal race pace, with fast finishes.
Finally, I like to see athletes do aerobic repeats, which are longer repeats (800m, 1,000m, 1,200m or 1,600m) where the majority of the repeat is aerobic, with the end of the repeat, and the end of the workout being a bit anaerobic. These workouts are fun and athletes recover quickly from them.
Another type of workout athletes can do during this portion of the season is Critical Velocity (CV) workouts. Some CV workouts fit well at this time of the year, as they improve the aerobic metabolism, yet are easy to recover from, allowing for some race pace work later in the week.
In the coming weeks, the Boulder Running Clinics videos of Tom “Tinman” Schwartz will be available. He discusses his Critical Velocity (CV) training in detail.
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Have a great Thursday!
Jay
