Need Middle School Cross Country Coaching Tips

Triathlon Forum
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Okay you guys. HELP!!

Our school has a cross country team - basically what happens is that our PE teacher cherry picks the fast runners and puts them in races. So many are natural runners. But since they don’t have an opportunity to train they suffer and are not performing to their potential. (The PE coach is really strapped between teaching PE and running soccer and baseball simultaneously and doesn’t have time.) My son was lucky enough to get picked to be on the team.

So I told the coach I would help him if he wanted. And oh dear - now I have the job as cross country coach! I have a few parents who were cross country runners and one of the teachers who is willing to help.

But I really need ideas to keep the kids entertained and running for a long time. We had such a good turnout of kids who are really good runners and who are really interested. All ideas are appreciated.

THANKS!!

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“Destination” runs. Like to the top of a local mountain. Or something like that.

Relay races.

Running pacelines.

But there’s also a lot to instill in them that sometimes you just have to put in the work, and it isn’t always going to plaster a big ole smile on your face.

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What are the race distance(s)?

If I remember correctly middle school is a 1.5k?

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1.5 miles
.

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Middle School kids love to race. The biggest danger you have is losing them to Halo3 or soccer or Whoppers…let the little buggers race once a week and give prizes. Against all conventional training wisdom I know, but you need to keep it fun for them.

Have a 2 mile course and have them race it every Friday the most improved runner each week gets to captain the team…which usually means deciding where to go to eat.

Keep it fun and keep it positive.

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Congratulations - I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun coaching as x-country :slight_smile:

As for what to do with middle school athletes - I think the most important thing is to go over expectations and goal setting with the team. Especially if they have been involved with successful team sports, it can be hard to adapt to a sport where you may not be the best, regardless of how well you train (especially in the short term).

Beyond that, most will benefit from running more, getting out and running 5-7 days a week, even if it is only for 10-15’ some days. Teenage athletes, especially the guys, will have trouble running easy on easy days and this is something that will have to be monitored and the importance reviewed with them regularly. For the hard days, you’ll want to provide some variety as going and doing the same workout every week can often lead to boredom so using different workouts (or areas for workouts) can help to keep the athletes interested. Also, I rarely take the XC runners to the track as they see enough of that the rest of the year.

If you want to really get these kids into running, then providing them with some strucutred running at the end of the XC season can help them discover a love of running and also enjoy more success in both the track season and also next year with XC. Also, getting into contact with the HS XC coach and seeing if you can watch a practice or two and ask some questions. Also, at this time you can find out if there is anything specific that they would like to see you do and pass along the names of your graduating runners (always nice to know who to track down next season).

If you have any other questions, please let me know :slight_smile:

Shane

7

-destination runs
-indian runs (am I allowed to call them that anymore?)
-rambo runs
-lots of stuff in the woods, trails etc.

just keep them from running over the tops of cars in parking lots and off the tops of local water towers and it will be all good. I guess since it is middle school, it is not an issue, but if you move up to HS coaching, lay down some serious SERIOUS rules about driving when going to meets and places to run.

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I’ve never coached middle school, only high school, but off the top of my head the best thing you can do is to get them to take it seriously. I’ve seen programs get killed with the “show up IF you feel like it” mentality.

Get them serious about warming up and stretching every day as a group. Then you can make the activities a little interesting.

In the grand scheme of things, if you can just get them to do something every day you’ll have 90 % of the job done. Just try to cheat toward doing longer and longer warm up runs and keep the intensity to a minimum (maybe 2 miles total in a day). You’ll probably want to do a workout at least every other day to keep in interesting, but don’t kill them with these.

Any kind of interval workout will be good. Play around with the distances. Do 400s one day, 800s another. Then you can do ladders (100, 200, 400, 600, 800) or pyramids (100, 200, 300, 400, 300, 200, 100). Indian runs work out well if you have a group of similar ability. If not, its not that big of a deal. Like I said, the goal is really just to get them running every day. In an Indian run you have them run in a line. The last person sprints to the front. When he gets there, the next person goes.

Relay intervals are fun too. They can run 200s and match up with two other kids so that they run constantly.

Hills are good.

My HS sprint coach had a course his sprinters would do on campus. They did all kinds of crazy stuff, but the main goal was to get sprinters to run for a half hour without getting bored. It was something like 2 sets of bleachers, a fast 100 on the football field, jog to the track, run the turns hard, jog the straights, jog back to the bleachers, repeat.

Try to do a long run once a week.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

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Actually, even in HS, we used Ultimate Frisbee as our interval runs… Worked pretty well – we had state champion teams several years in a row.

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Candy does wonders. Just every once in a while as a reward for a good week of work.
On a daily basis, the ticket is to make it as fun as possible so they don’t really know how hard they are working. Running “Indians” is a good one (Run in a line and have the last kid run fast to the front, repeat for 10-20 min). Yes I know that name is not PC. “Surprise surges” also works: 1, 2 and 3 minutes: Have certain kids be the ones to surprise (Not a sprint) and everyone else must try to keep up for the 1, 2 or 3 minutes. Teach them to stay together, too: The faster ones loop back and pick up the slower ones. You will have fun, but don’t expect a lot of focus from 13-year-olds. But some kids will surprise you (Both in good ways and bad). They are all so different. Have fun!

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Actually, even in HS, we used Ultimate Frisbee as our interval runs… Worked pretty well – we had state champion teams several years in a row.

It takes a VERY good coach to develop a state champ team using ultimate frisbee. I’m not knocking the concept, only that in my experience I’ve seen more bad come from it than good. Like I said, you pobably either had a great coach who could instill the propper attitude in the runners, or just had a great crop of runners with the right attitude.

I’ve found that playing games instead of practice results in a team that doesn’t take the sport very seriously. Frsibee AFTER practice…that’s different. Even if you intend the frisbee to be part of practice, thet need to get it in their heads that you work first, then play. It’s all psychology.

My 2cents

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Very true. I guess my original post was misleading. We didn’t use UF as our ONLY interval training. But we did use it for some, if not most, of the interval training. And we did have a good coach. Often times these UF days would be the day after a REALLY long run (12 miles plus, which for that age group is pretty long). A long warm-up, followed by UF for an hour, then a long cool-down.

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When/if you do track work for cross country, do the speed work on a track in lanes 7/8 and run clockwise (backwards)

If these kids also run track (most do) they’ll at least be entertained by the novelty. It can also be fun to unwind during CC season if you ge the pun. Of course CC is less about the repetition of the track.

The other step is to set up weekly (or at least monthly) TTs of “equal” distance. Make these arbitrary and never do the same course in the same season. If you make the TT 3km, start with the first one at 3080 meters with some sand and hills. Then cut the difficulty on the TT and shorten it a couple meters each time. Each TT the kids will get faster given the same effort. They’ll get more into the training and believe the in the results and get encouraged all the while. The last TT of the season, before the “big meet”, take them back to the track for an open 3000M. They’ll be fast and reinforced mentally that they are ready for the finale.

-SD

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Barry, remember this is MIDDLE SCHOOL, the best high school coach I ever had (a former All-American at the University of Oregon and current coach for one of the best DIII college programs in the nation) once mentioned that coaching middle school runners has to be all about having fun.

Except in rare cases the drive to train effectively won’t take hold until high school (and even then not for everyone). Ultimate Frisbee, Indian Runs, Form Drills, these are things middle schoolers can have fun and be social doing. Hardass drill instructor middle school coaches will only make kids hate running and never get to the point where they can dedicate themselves to the sport.

To the OP: I second Matt’s idea of having a destination run once a week, just make sure the atmosphere is fun. No yelling or taking everything very seriously, this is not what a middle school coach is for. Good luck, I think it’s awesome that you are taking this on

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If you’ve got a lot of woods to play in, you could try harrier runs… Just alert the local police first, or have the rabbit wear a shirt that says “It’s chalk!”

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Right on with that one. It’s about fun at that age and try to hide running behind games they are involved in as much as possible. Chuck Woolridge, the old coach at College Park in the Bay area put together a girls high school team that was top 5 in the country and they played their share of ultimate frisbee and “Capture the Flag”. Rather than using a frisbee, I would use a football. I teach middle school right now and am visualizing some of these kids throwing the frisbee. Anyway, check out this book. I’ve owned it for a long time and it’s made things easier over the years coaching high school.

Training Games…Coaching Runners Creatively by Eric Anderson.

I own the 2nd edition and I’ve heard they’ve come out with an updated edition. It has some good ideas and other ways will pop into your head on how you can change others to fit your situation. Good luck with that though.

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Whaddaya know the College Park girls team runs by my house every Thursday at about 3:30 p.m…

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Thanks Barry and all. It looks like our long run right now is about 1.5 miles. But I know that will improve in time. Everyone here has been so helpful!!

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I used to coach middle school cross country when I was teaching. My goals for the team were to have them improve over the season and to develop a love of running. Most of the time I tried to train them like I would train myself, only scaled back quite a bit. I wanted them to feel like a real running team so I gave them focused workouts and told them what we were going to work on each day. I also had them do a decent warm up and set stretches each day so they could have time to talk together and to see how much fun it is to workout with friends.

We would do long runs, speed work, hill repeats and other traditional workouts, but I was careful to make sure the distances were appropriate for each runner. There are huge developmental gaps in middle school, so while one person could handle a 4-5 mile long run, another might only do 2. For their speed workouts, I would mix it up between the track, the trail or intervals around the baseball field. I also gave them a lot of fun workouts such as scavenger hunts, hash runs, capture the flag, different tag games and a few other things. Anything that got them moving was deemed a good workout. We also did some timed mile tests during the season so they could mark their improvement, which served as a great motivator.

As long as they’re running and having fun, you’re going a good job.

Adam

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Read: Training Games by Anderson and Hibbert
Do NOT Read: Coaching High School Cross Country Successfully by Joe Newton

For fun check out the sample clip for http://www.longgreenlinemovie.com/

My daughter is the Cross Country team at her Middle School. My 2 year tenure as coach ends after the state meet this Saturday.