Any US HS programs doing double threshold?

Out of all the coaches I know who did it last year, none are doing it this year; the return on investment was too low.

I only know of 1 team around us doing it. We don't, though.

Double double threshold makes no sense. Basically no kids have the volume to support it or the situation (who can run in the morning while still getting in 9 hours of sleep) to allow it.

A program of double threshold(call it 20 mins 30-40s off 5k pace) and a day of 30s hills is probably better than 95% of the high school programs out there...

How many coaches did you know that tried it last year? I don't know of any that have done it at all. Just curious.

Stop. Just stop.

My coach is having us do it as of rn. Our top boys have done between 50-60 mpw so it’s more structured for us with the rest of the team just doing the morning workout. But so far it’s been really fun especially because most of the team has learned to exert the proper amount of energy into practice, only a couple weeks in but I’ll report in later if it actually gets results

How are you structuring the week so far?

I think it's silly to do double threshold in high school for a couple reasons:

1) You don't need to do a bunch of fancy stuff to make high schoolers improve. Get them running decent mileage including weekly threshold workouts, and they'll improve from year to year. There are plenty of little things you can do that can cause marginal improvement (usually by reducing injury risk), but having kids run 2 workouts in a day is not a little thing, in my opinion.

2) High school coaches shouldn't be trying to squeeze every little bit of improvement out of their kids. You should definitely develop kids, but you shouldn't be taking risks to try to get as much as possible out of them at age 17. I firmly believe the difference between 20 and 60 miles per week is the difference between a D3 college and a D1 scholarship for a lot of my kids. Adding double threshold on top of that isn't going to make even close to that marginal difference.

Every person who does serious double threshold training will tell you real results do not come from it until months or perhaps even years down the line. These are runners who double threshold 2,3+ times a week

Most HS runners don’t even progress enough to justify doubling more than once or twice a week, let alone doubling workouts.

Even if you were able to progress a sophomore entering junior year, who could handle the volume, into doing double thresholds that summer, the HS racing schedule would obliterate the point of double threshold training. Racing every week would make it impossible to do double thresholds steadily throughout the season. Let’s not even consider the indoor and outdoor schedule. And even if you could implement it semi-decently for the remaining 2 years of HS, it might not even have much of an effect, compared to other, less demanding, training methods for HSers.

Let us again consider the fact that Jakob ingebrigsten double thresholds on Christmas and supposedly gave up “reading books” because it took time away from maximizing training. HS coaches can’t even get their athletes to turn in their physicals to the nurses office.

Let’s readdress this in December once the season is done. This stuff works but it isn’t what your read as being perceived as some subpar effort. You’re closer to redlining the effort then running easy. My son does double t and to hit the recommended lactate levels you’re running faster than what people think you should be. My notes so far is strict rest, focus on recovery, you have to be able to handle 10-14miles of work in one day, Cut out cool downs or your can easily find 13-16miles in one day. We won’t know if translates into XC races until next month.

We’re doing a modified version currently, so monday is our double threshold day, where we will do 3 miles of repeats at threshold, so for example 5x1k with 1 minute rest, our coach usually has us base it on effort. The second one will be shorter intervals like 7x800 later in the day about 12 hours later. (In Texas we have to do it really early and late or else he legally can’t take us outside) then we have recovery days on Tuesday and Thursday, with a speed day on Wednesday which amounts to 2 miles. This day will usually help us just develop our pacing and comfort ability with faster paces and shouldn’t be hard. We usually then have a race on Saturday, but our coach is still playing around with it to see what works for us

Sounds like you're about to experience what burnout looks like..

what’s burnout?

Past couple years I would have 1-3 kids come to my club workout in evening only to find out they already trained with their HS that morning. I suspect they are reading the same stuff we do about doubles. They look tired to me generally, often have to quit the workout early due to aches and pains. I think its just too early-career for that much stress with no recovery hardly. But I admire the drive.

Double T on 50-60 miles a week is pure madness. Actual to lol levels. Absolutely insane to do this. Literally no need whatsoever. Your coach is an idiot who is copying Jakob when he should be copying the amateur brother, Kristoffer , if he wants to follow Sub T method.

Your coach is an idiot. This is pure madness to lol levels on 50-60 per week. Just crazy. He is trying to be cool and copy Bakken or Jakob. When he should be copying his older brother, Kristoffer, if he wants to train you all into sub T monsters.

I felt like I had huge gains from double threshold after only 3 weeks, so 6 workouts. I got even stronger after 12 weeks.

I went from a high 15's runner (admittedly off 40 mpw of mostly easy) to a mid 14s over that time period.

So if you are starting a double T program you don't care about your current Seniors. You are looking at your Freshman and trying to get them going in the future, although Freshman will improve with anything you give them as long as they aren't injured but you will most likely injure them giving them Double T. Just my 2 cents.

To be effective at double threshold it has to be started back in the summer base phase with paces they can hit and week after week you squeeze the pace down as you achieve adaptation. Depending on the caliber of kids each session is 3-5miles of the prescribed effort. It doesn’t take years just be consistent for weeks and months. I think the difficulty starting it during the season coaches won’t be willing to prescribe the paces to achieve long term adaptation because when you start they will be well off the goal race pace and trying to prepare for an upcoming race they deem important.

Where it continues to get difficult is when coaches are trying to incorporate this along side race pace and or below race pace work in the same training block. Even managing this type of training becomes a challenge with the high school racing schedule.