HEY PARENTS, TEACHERS, COACHES: Think Before You Speak to Kids
This blog is directed at all of those parents, teachers, and coaches out there that think they are helping out young distance runners (especially females) with comments that are actually detrimental to their running and their physical health and most importantly their mental health.
I have thought about writing this blog for years now and just never did. However, yesterday was the final straw for me. We had our first indoor meet of the high school season and I had two runners, one male and one female, achieve first place finishes in the 2 mile run. My sophomore male runner ran 9:19 and my freshman female runner ran 11:28. Running these fast times this early in a season makes me excited because I know how I coach and how I believe in progression of the distance runner, not only over the course of a season, but also over the course of the runner’s career. Of course, there are always insecure haters out there that will find some way to turn these fast times into a negative. Yesterday I was asked by opposing coaches and also parents of other runners if I thought my runners would get any better this year and thereafter. Many of them said of the freshman female, “Enjoy it now coach while she is tiny and has nothing to carry. Just wait until her body changes and when she becomes a woman and gets hips and all that.” Then others said of my sophomore male, “Well, he is old for his grade so no wonder he is running so fast. He won’t get hardly any faster because he is already the age of some seniors.” This is when I decided it is time to write this blog because I am fed up with the same comments I hear every year, especially about females.
First of all, I must explain that I have been coaching young distance runners since 1997, so going on about 23 years now. I have coached 12 different individual outdoor state champions in Indiana in that span of time (along with many more indoor state champions). We are the last state with a one class system so to be a state champion in Indiana is the real deal. Out of those 12 state champions, 7 of them are females. Out of those 7 females, 6 of them were seniors when they won these state titles. Out of the 5 males, 4 of them were also seniors. None of the state champions was an underclassmen. As a matter of fact, I have never had a freshman male or female be anywhere near a state title. And hardly any sophomores have sniffed a state title either. I always want to set them up for their greatest success when they are juniors and seniors and beyond if they run in college. So my response to people that say things about my underclassmen that run fast and are skeptical that they will get any faster, I always say, “Check my resume and check the progression of all of my runners.”
I have NEVER initiated a conversation with any athlete ever about them losing weight. Rarely have any of them ever brought the subject up to me because I make it known that I am not concerned about their body maturing and about them “becoming women.” I have actually found that as they get bigger and stronger, they are able to handle more mileage and more vigorous training without breaking down or getting hurt. Ironically, if I have a conversation about weight, and again especially females, it is about gaining weight and gaining muscle and making sure they are eating well. Also with females, I want to know if their menstrual cycles are regular. If they are skipping periods for more than a month at a time, this is a sign of poor nutrition and could in fact lead to anemia or injuries. Therefore, I preach good nutrition and not skipping meals. Have we all not learned anything from Mary Cain and the various other Nike runners and their experiences with their former coach, Alberto Salazar? These young ladies have all been scarred for life by insensitive comments.
We as coaches can manipulate their training in such a way that they will have no choice but to get faster every year. We are doing them a disservice if we start them at a high level of training when they are freshman and then they do not progress any further. If you continue to run the same amount of mileage every single year, you will likely get angry athletes that are not improving. These kids will mentally get drained and frustrated and want to quit the sport. Then their coach will say, “Oh they just ran so much over four years that they are physically burnout and need a break.” Wrong. You, as the coach, have caused the problem by setting them up for failure because you have not given them the progression needed to improve from year to year. They may be mentally burnt out but it is not physical.
Sometimes it is the runner’s own parent that makes the comment to them if they are having a bad season. “Well, honey…you know your body just isn’t the same as it was when you were a freshman. You are carrying a much bigger load now so it makes sense why you are getting slower.” NOOOOO!!!!! Please parents, do not make these insensitive comments that you ironically think are sensitive comments. First of all, you are basically telling them they are going to get slower no matter how hard they train. Second of all, you may be triggering them into an eating disorder and poor body image issues.
The best female runner I have ever coached, Alissa McKaig (now Alissa Doehla), was 135 pounds at the state cross country meet her senior year when she won. As a sophomore, she was 110 pounds and placed 14th, far away from the champion. Alissa asked me during her senior season, “Coach, am I too big of a runner to win a state title?” I immediately answered with a resounding, “NO!” I then explained to her that her strength as a runner came from her physical strength and durability. Alissa could run 12 miles in 6:00 mile pace as a senior and recover quickly 2-3 days later for a hard interval session. She could not have done that when she was a little 110 pound new runner. Alissa’s dream was a state title. She believed in the plan of progressing her mileage each year. She ran 30-35 miles per week as an underclassmen. She increased that training to 40-45 miles per week as a junior and became a contender. Many thought she would not get any better after that junior year. But she knew and I knew we had something special planned and that was hitting her highest mileage that he wanted in her senior year. Her times dropped again and she won the cross country state title and the track state title on 50 miles per week and at the highest weight she had ever been. Lucky for me, Alissa trusted me and just as importantly, her parents trusted me and also showed their belief in Alissa and never made comments to her about weight or her “new body” as she progressed each year.
Let’s also talk about running age. With my “old” sophomore male runner, he did not run until his 8th grade year. Even then, he only ran about 10 miles per week. Therefore, when he came into my program as a freshman, I started him off in the summer where he left off, at 10 miles for the first week, and then we upped that mileage a few miles per week until he was able to run 30-35 miles per week comfortably, and then we kept him there for most of the season. If I had asked him to run 40 to 50 miles per week right away, I think we would have been injured and also wondering if he could even handle this sport. He had a fantastic freshman cross country season and finished in the top 30 runners in all of Indiana. Could he have had even more success had he done 40 to 50 mile weeks? Perhaps. But I believe the chances of injury were much higher and also I point back to our job as coaches…to set the runner up for success each and every year. I have a plan for this young man to do more and more miles each year and to have a chance to win state titles when he is an upperclassmen rather than be greedy and try to rush him to a state title at a younger age and sacrifice the proper progression. In his freshman track season, I had advanced his training to 40 miles per week. He did not even make the state meet in track. Was that frustrating? Of course it was but he knew the big picture plan. He put together a great summer of training at 40-45 miles per week. He ran 50 miles per week through this past cross country season and was the 7th place state finisher as a sophomore, setting him up perfectly to be a challenger to win a state title in the next year and after. He did not run any Sundays all season. Now, he is beginning to run 7 days a week every other week as he continues to progress and his running age also obviously progresses. He already has run 9:11 for two miles indoors after never breaking 9:30 last year. 9:30 is a great freshman time. 9:11 is a sensational sophomore time. Now the haters are saying he will not get any faster than 9:11. I say to them again, “Check my resume.” My runners peak at the state meet and my runners get faster every single year. Fact. Ideally, he will run 7 days a week consistently in his junior/senior seasons. In turn, he will get faster as long as there is no injury. Even though he will be running more mileage and this will lead some to believe that this is how he will “burn out,” it is actually the opposite effect because we have trained him properly to get to that point and most importantly, he will be running faster times than he ever has. When a runner keeps getting faster, there is zero “burnout” effect. If you cannot tell by now, I believe burnout is essentially a myth, or an excuse for the coach and athlete. But most likely they did not use progression in their training, which led to frustration and mental fatigue.
On the other hand, if I get an 8th grader who ran 30 miles per week for 3 years of middle school, that running age is much greater so I can start that runner more aggressively at 35 to 40 miles per week. But again, the important thing is progression and to have an endgame for the senior year of the runner. If it is a freshman boy that ran those 30 miles per week in middle school, I will probably have an endgame of 60 miles per week as a senior. They would run a little more each year and also the workouts go from maybe 3xmile repeats as a freshman to 6xmile repeats as a senior. Also, the rest between intervals would change because the runner is stronger. The runner could maybe handle 90 second rest between mile repeats as a senior but this same person would have needed 3 minute rest as a freshman. Again, what are we talking about with all of this? PROGRESSION IN EVERY ASPECT. From weekly mileage to workout volume to recovery time between reps to days per week. Most of my freshmen girls run 5 days a week and cross train on a 6th day. Then they advance to 6 days a week of running as sophomores. Ideally, they can handle 7 days of running per week when they are juniors or no later than seniors. The freshman female I have right now is typically 25 to 28 miles per week in 5 days and is still running times like 11:28 for 2 miles and 5:19 for the mile. Could she maybe already have run 10:45 and 4:59 with 40 miles per week? Quite possibly. BUT I would guess she would get injured. And if she would stay healthy and run those times, where do you go from there? I want them to improve EVERY SINGLE SEASON to help their mental health and help them continue to enjoy the sport. When a sport gets stale and stagnant, that is dangerous for the child. This is when they tend to give up and either stop putting in the work or they will just quit altogether.
I implore all of you that are reading this to think twice before saying things to young athletes like the examples I gave above. Please admonish anyone that you hear saying these things as well. We can help kids stay in this great sport of distance running but more importantly we can help them be healthy and happy people with strong mental health. They can then pass that on to their children of their own or to future runners they may work with down the road. We hold the key as coaches to progress them appropriately. Take this seriously. Do not make excuses for them or for yourselves. Educate yourselves and think before you speak because as you all have said or heard, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” That old saying has never fit better than with this subject matter.
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