They get in most of their best training during summer camp. I see most of the guys running in the morning on the Cotton Belt Trail Colleyville and the Girls in the afternoon. I don't know how they can stand to run on so much cement. Same with Keller running the cement trail along Bear Creek. Of course they are doing two workouts a day so I have not seen what else makes them so great.
I get wanting to know what the best teams are doing, so I hope you get an answer from someone in the know. However, I feel pretty confident in asserting that the real answer your seeking isn't the super-special-sauce workouts or the exact right volume for 9th grader, 10th grader, etc.
The very best teams (like SLC, I am sure) have established a winning culture that the kids 100% buy into. The coaches don't have to persuade the kids that consistency is important because the kids already know this in 8th grade. The coaches don't have to often persuade kids that they, too, can develop to be the best in the state... the kids see their upperclassman friends doing the same work and being the best. The kids don't doubt that the coach has their best interest at heart, they've seen it and experienced it. In programs with a winning culture, the kids feel like they are working towards something great together.
Of course, this doesn't just happen. Coaches who have fostered this type of environment (where the upperclassmen mentor the youngers that running and working hard to be good is cool) deserve a lot of credit. So, hats off to SLC and other similar programs.
there is an ESPN article from a decade ago, it's already out there.
i am sure he tells you his secrets because the vibe i get off this is you have one single combined 9/10 and 11/12 team from two campuses, brought up with one school nickname, very very wealthy area (i think median income is over $200k), oddly Stepford kids, crazy training, and based on what i say below, likely a strong junior high feeder program.
in short, it's a one-off. so "here is my playbook, good luck stopping it."
along those lines, yes, they do paavo, but the coach said a decade ago in the article the 400 intervals are set at 71-76. what does this tell you about the incoming runners they bother to keep? assuming the intervals are set a percent above race pace with runners chunked out by assessed pace. bearing in mind they have won like 5 or 6 straight years of state. ebb and flow would be talent based. this is a machine because at year 5 or 6 some percent of the previous winners are gone.
to hint at what i think, my HS was half the size, we lost about half our junior high to a neighboring HS, we had about 15 kids to work with, and despite a pretty good distance running program after the split we'd have about 5 kids who could run those intervals. on down to kids who run over 20 on a 5K on JV. that is what a normal HS is working with. does that sound like what southlake carroll works with? no.
related point but if you look at southlake carroll's 2022 TF district meet (4-6A), they have no one scoring points 100-400, couple kids with small points in the 800 final scoring. no 110 finalists, single kid with a JV worthy time in 8th in the low hurdles. worst sprint relay, mediocre mile relay.
8th TJ. no one scoring in throws. no PV kids. no one in HJ. or LJ. i mean at all.
not starting to sound a little weird? it is to me.
it's all distance. i'd safely assume they lost district because all they did was sweep mile and take 234 on 3200. and the mile times are meh. mid 4:20s. as a pack, which i assume paavo ensures.
so presumably what they do is train up some ok robots who churn out solid mile times as a pack and tightly finish in XC. good for XC. all their program is for TF.
1. I can’t believe that is Caden would be posting their workouts.
2. They have a good coach that builds a culture more than relying on some mythical training plan.
3. They have an affluent population that allows the kids to focus on school and running. The parents care and provide support for the kids and the program. Good nutrition, best sports medicine available, etc…
4. They don’t have a good Middle School feeder system. Coach builds the kids up starting in 9th grade from scratch mostly. There are a few good athletes here and there (kids with parents that were athletes) but coach builds 99% of them from scratch with zero running background.
5. The kids push each other and push themselves. They have 120+ kids on the team. They all want to be on Varsity so the internal competition pushes them without forcing the coach to push them. Again it’s about culture.
6. They train consistently. Day after day all year. No breaks. The kids meet and run on their own and push themselves when there isn’t organized practice.
Running isn’t rocket science. Anybody can say “go run a lot and do a mix of fast and easy days”. The difference is leadership. Southlake isn’t perfect and hasn’t claimed to be, but they have a tough minded disciplined program that leads to consistently strong (not perfect) results.
I've always been interested in what training looked like for the smaller schools that have placed high at NXN: Bozeman, Boerne Champion, Dakota Ridge, etc.
yeah if i could discard 100 kids it would help compete in any sport. as in 120 show up for practice and 21 go to the meet. as i said, it's almost eerie how little interest there is in anything else come TF season. like they have a kid running quarter in my junior high times. my impression is what they have is a machine for above-average-milers in bulk. little special, they are back of the pack at state in distance TF. the winner runs 4:08. they run 4:18. but they produce a pile of 4:15-4:30 kids. i severely doubt you are creating a program where everyone runs within a narrow pace range and is trained to go hard, and they don't show up fairly worked on from junior high. it's either that or the sheer throughput. the kids at my school running 4:1x didn't manifest from no place. they were winning at junior high and setting records that level. i could see where high volume steady fast pace work would make them solid but not incredible milers, good enough at district but not at state, and where a pile of such kids might make a good XC team and maybe useful college XC recruits or to run 5k/10k TF. i'd assume the lack of mile speed is they run too much and are trained to hit a split more than kick to victory.
the winner runs 4:08. they run 4:18. but they produce a pile of 4:15-4:30 kids. …. i'd assume the lack of mile speed is they run too much and are trained to hit a split more than kick to victory.
I would assume it is more talent. In every 1000 kids you might have 1 4:10 kid and 50 4:40 kids. You can win in XC with a bunch 4:40 kids who run 16:00 5ks. Get a few of the more talented kids in the 4:20 range and you are a national title contender. Talent gives you peak performances. Training systems give you depth…
They were good 20 years ago when I was in high school. I haven't really paid attention since then, but what has the coaching situation been over the years? I know back then a lot of the top girls were with the Metroplex Striders, but I don't know how much that coach was involved in their training vs. their actual high school coach.
I ran for a team very close to southlake and followed many of them on strava/talked at meets. can confirm they are still doing paavo. I don't think they follow it 100% but it is very heavily influenced by it.
the winner runs 4:08. they run 4:18. but they produce a pile of 4:15-4:30 kids. …. i'd assume the lack of mile speed is they run too much and are trained to hit a split more than kick to victory.
I would assume it is more talent. In every 1000 kids you might have 1 4:10 kid and 50 4:40 kids. You can win in XC with a bunch 4:40 kids who run 16:00 5ks. Get a few of the more talented kids in the 4:20 range and you are a national title contender. Talent gives you peak performances. Training systems give you depth…
but like i said, if you have 120 kids showing up and zero bother with creating people to run 110H, 400s, 800s, or anything shorter than a mile, the volume helps find some above-average kids in bulk. thing being, i had 2 guys faster than their best are -- talentwise -- on an above average HS team. who themselves never made state as we had a hard area. but we weren't going to state in XC because we had a drop off within the 7 after the actual talent.
what SC does is have a bunch of nearly identical above-average kids in a pile. so they can have 5 finishing almost atop each other. which is how you win XC meets. longer races that reward people who run fairly hard on a pace. i say fairly hard because state TF shows if they have to run 4:0x they don't have it in them. you put them on a track, they don't win individually hence my distinction between great talent and above-average.
to offer another comparison, plano and pano east up near SC in dallas' suburbs used to own HS soccer here by fielding 30+ kids on a team from 5000+ kid high schools, and using ice hockey-style shift tactics within the liberal school soccer rules. if you played them 11 at a time with 3-5 subs total under FIFA style game rules you might beat them. if you find a way to make it a mass production game, i play 90 minutes and you have kids as good as me but they are being subbed for constant freshness. you're not necessarily better than me in terms of any single player, it's how you use the bulk. SC is a lot bigger than a normal HS, has a single pipeline in the school district to HS, teaches the kids a certain way, directs them away from sprints, hurdles, jumps, and then picks the faster above-average kids. as a team they are hard to beat. and they have an easy district to get out of. but in a TF race with talented kids they actually wouldn't win. they will be recruited for XC more so than TF. it's the machine.
i mean if they are told to run repeats within a 71-75 seconr range, that's a narrow range of athletes. maybe 20s difference in a mile. how many HS teams you know able to gather a team that tightly clustered. even in training.
to offer another comparison, plano and pano east up near SC in dallas' suburbs used to own HS soccer here by fielding 30+ kids on a team from 5000+ kid high schools, and using ice hockey-style shift tactics within the liberal school soccer rules. if you played them 11 at a time with 3-5 subs total under FIFA style game rules you might beat them. if you find a way to make it a mass production game, i play 90 minutes and you have kids as good as me but they are being subbed for constant freshness. you're not necessarily better than me in terms of any single player, it's how you use the bulk. SC is a lot bigger than a normal HS, has a single pipeline in the school district to HS, teaches the kids a certain way, directs them away from sprints, hurdles, jumps, and then picks the faster above-average kids. as a team they are hard to beat. and they have an easy district to get out of. but in a TF race with talented kids they actually wouldn't win. they will be recruited for XC more so than TF. it's the machine.
Track is nice, but XC is where we win the hardware that actually matters.
They were good 20 years ago when I was in high school. I haven't really paid attention since then, but what has the coaching situation been over the years? I know back then a lot of the top girls were with the Metroplex Striders, but I don't know how much that coach was involved in their training vs. their actual high school coach.
Justin Leonard runs the show and the kids aren't training outside.
it is possible that this is Caden Leonard posting above because that is actually paavo training he describes and it is pretty accurate.
There are no secrets. Justin Leonard has just done extremely well with what SLC has to offer.