Team Coaches: When do you tell your athlete the details of the workout?

Not only do I go over the details of my workouts with my athletes, I explain why we do everything. I answer all questions about "how" and "why." I spend a lot of time early educating the athletes on my squad. Besides empowering and thus helping the individuals, it does allow for the team to "take care of itself" in that if someone is not sure or needs additional guidance then it can come from their teammates. When I get into the end of track season when I'm worried about other things I have it set up so that any questions about workouts can be handled by almost anybody on the squad. But since most already have an understanding of what they are doing, practices go pretty smoothly.

Same, but to answer the question...I tell them right before. If...I tell them earlier, they have time to start bombarding me with haggling about the workout.

our coach (tom donnelly, truly one of the best around) tells us our workout right before we warmup for said workout. he'll tell us a few days in advance that we have a workout, if it'll be on the track or roads (or both), but not much else.

As primarily a high school coach, I explained details of what we are doing and why as others have suggested. I did this during the workout while giving form, and other instructions/cues.

As far as workout, I did not tell them more than one rep ahead. This builds mental toughness, helps with getting in tune with their body rather than just trying to complete something, and prevents sandbagging or overzealous reps. Finally, if they are not responding as I want I may have pulled the plug and changed things. If I did this they had no idea and after my praise, still left on top of the world after a good workout rather than feeling a failure for not completing what was prescribed.

Until they were fit enough to feel and control pace I did not give them specific times to hit so that we hit the desired energy system. EX: "This will be a 450. One lap and to the cone. I want this at a pace that you can currently run 4 laps without stopping. If you can't do it 4 times without stopping, slow down. You absorb training, not grasp for something far over your head. Ready, go."

On the track we rarely ran a rep at a steady pace, rarely ran conventional distances (200/300/400...), and I never told them what they doing beyond the current rep. This is just another of many approaches.

I told him when the workout day is. Just prior to the workout I explain the science of what we’re trying to accomplish. I don’t like to tell them exactly what it is until that day, because often I am changing what the workout is going to be based on how my team is feeling throughout the week.

The science explanation is not to impress them, it’s more to get that buy-in.

In high school we were told after the warm up. We had clipboards with the workouts. We’d see the workout 50 meters before starting the workout.

In college the coach would tell us sometimes a few days before, sometimes before the warm up. It just depended on if you asked. Sometimes the workout would change slightly if we’re told a few days beforehand though.

As an athlete who has run from HS to professional I strongly recommend you build your athletes up by telling the workouts prior to the week you are in. These kids are smart and should understand how training flows throughout a week and season. They also have a lot else going on and should be able to arrange things like school work etc to accommodate training. To an athlete you look more professional and planned out. Your athletes will also remember the types of workouts you did years later rather than sessions being a blur where you are just trying to figure out which rep is next....treat the athletes a step up from the level you coach at and they will probably perform that way too

When I was coaching I would tell the workouts on the day of. My reasoning was because I didn’t want my athletes putting too much mental focus on workouts, treating them like races or worrying about them being too difficult.

Everything we did was building to be ready for our championship races.

I ran for a top 10 team nationally in the 90’s. Coach wouldn’t tell us the workout until before the warmup.

That seemed fine. however, he wouldn’t tell us how many reps we were doing. So we didn’t know it was the last one right until about 20yrs before the last one. We all hated that. lol.

Not 20yrs! haha. I lost my mind for a second.

20 seconds before the last one!

When they ask me generally. As the first poster said I explain the whys as well for the day. The more informed your athletes are the better. Some care more than others of course. I sometimes send out the plan for the week just in case athletes can’t make it and need to go on there own.

It depended on the athlete. I had a few (two of them are sub 4 milers in college now) who would come to my classroom before 1st period every day to talk about the workout.

They were/are very intelligent and we would actually go into why we were doing that workout at this time.

We get the general schedule on Sunday. I like it this way so I can plan the week.

the details of the workout are given the morning of.

Did you only run 40 miles a week?

At the beginning of the season I would post a seasonal plan specifying the main focus and secondary focus(es) of each week during the season. Then each Monday morning I would post the workouts for the week. If a day’s workout involved intervals, that morning I would post the goal pace/times for each team member. Of course, there were almost daily discussions of the science behind all of this.

This was the approach I used for our middle distance runners (800m - 5k). Athletes in this group are generally above average in intelligence and self-discipline. I found that providing them with training information up front increased their buy in to the program.

Yeah man did you really think that extra 50m made all the difference in how they finished at the end of the season?

Runners need to know what is expected of them, what the work load is, and why they are doing said workout.

You sound like you want to be a Guru of Running, not a coach. Keeping things secret is ridiculous and insulting to your athletes.

So many coaches think like this. Every answer here is so pretentious, like we are coaching for the Olympics. For the most part, this is about high school kids. And coaches love to talk about how important their “plan” is. Our staff has a general plan but figures out the workouts sometimes on our way to the track. There’s no set plan. Let’s stop making ourselves feel more important then we are.
And if we do have it set before the day, we don’t tell the kids until everyone’s at practice because then we don’t have to listen to the whiners and complainers and also then we explain it once and aren’t repeating ourselves.

This is a really strange take.

Some of us think it is important enough to put in the proper time and planning for the workout for our athletes.

I never once think of myself when planning for my athletes.

My athletes want to know that I put some thought into their efforts. You are right that it is just high school but your athletes don’t cheapen the value of why they are doing something.

If you want your team to buy into your training you should show them you care.

Think outside the box if you want to make a difference is how I view it. I coached at a small school competing against those 4-5 times larger.

The odd distances are to keep them focused on "racing," not I have to hit X mark by Y time. I tried to teach kids I coached how to "race" first. By always doing something the same such as all intervals finishing at 100's (200/300/400/600) many learned to focus solely on marks on the track instead of reading their body and reacting to the race. Not wasting moves, surging, setting up a kick.... How many beginners have you watched that has to see the finish line to start kicking? I was trying to avoid that over-familiarity with marks on the track.

Until they are fit and are ready to shoot for times, what is expected of them is to run a particular "effort," not time. They absolutely get the intent of a workout, just not the whole ball of wax before they start.

I had pretty good success; team and individual state champions, national champions, and even a recent NCAA champion who I obviously don't currently coach. This was in our state's largest division even though we graduated less than 100 of each gender per year.

Maybe they achieved in spite of me instead of because of me, but their exit tickets showed that they appreciated the approach and many praised it. It is just another approach, not better or worse. Anything not done exactly as you do it does not make it right or wrong. It seemed to work in my situation so I shared.