As much as I've read up on PAAVO and the high intensity workouts they say they do, hearing Coach Leonard talk during this lecture it doesn't lead me to believe his teams do PAAVO at all. Where are y'all hearing that they still use the system?
As much as I've read up on PAAVO and the high intensity workouts they say they do, hearing Coach Leonard talk during this lecture it doesn't lead me to believe his teams do PAAVO at all. Where are y'all hearing that they still use the system?
CoachWill wrote:
As much as I've read up on PAAVO and the high intensity workouts they say they do, hearing Coach Leonard talk during this lecture it doesn't lead me to believe his teams do PAAVO at all. Where are y'all hearing that they still use the system?
They do use paavo he just sometimes struggles to explain what they do. They have dine paavo for years and its always worked they aren't going to change it now.
What works is having 300+ kids come out for cross country.
That first slide is right out of PAAVO: "motivated people find a way"
Carroll adheres to a slightly modified approach to the paavo regimen. Still ppms and no easy runs, but also cross training to increase training volume with less injury risk.
BigTex wrote:
What works is having 300+ kids come out for cross country.
Culture and team size ultimately matter more than training, but Southlake clearly has good culture that emphasizes winning above all else, lots of kids, and a training system that has been proven to take poor to ok runners and make them above average.
It's rare to see an absolute stud come out of Paavo, but the regimen is clearly efficient at churning out 6-8 15:00-15:59 XC runners each year and 10-15 16:00-17:30 runners who can step up in later seasons.
We did PAVOO in HS. Small school in southern Indiana. Never more than 7-8 kids on the team. Some years the boys or girls team didn't even have a full team. All of the HS team and individual records come from this 20-30yr time period.
Alan
No easy runs? In the slides he mentions recovery runs at 2:00-2:30 slower than their Mile PR, that's MUCH slower than CT Pace, CT Pace based on the charts is at slowest, maybe 1:30 slower than a runner's mile time.
Okay, but as for workouts themselves, they definitely deviate from what I've read about the program. I personally know a coach who uses it to the letter and it's certainly way different than what Leonard is using.
The 400-Meter repeats he mentions, are those the Short Intervals/Long Intervals that PAAVO describes? He seems to talk about the 400s being done at 5K Pace and then they do another day of 400s/200s at 1600 pace? I don't think PAAVO prescribes Mile or 1K Repeats, that sounds like straight out of Vigil's book.
I doubt he "struggles to explain", how hard is it to insert the same terminology? He makes no mention of Short PPMs, Long PPMs, or Critical Threshold, all of which I'd never heard of before until a coach he uses PAAVO told me about them so it's certainly one of a kind terminology. Short Intervals and Long Intervals are also PAAVO terminology but he can't refer to them as such?
Where was that quote found? I can't find a website or anything on it. A fellow coach of mine said he paid for the PAAVO system but when I tried searching for it, there's nothing.
If it's a proven system then why don't more schools utilize it and why has it been so heavily criticized?
Carroll does use a modified PAAVO system. During the summer/early XC season they will do a SPPM and LPPM each week. They do not do the BTM. At some point during the XC season they start the SI (Slow Interval) sets. The base set is 4x400m with (4min/800m recovery and 1600m recovery between sets). Usually you would do a low set and a high set each week. Low set is lower volume and high set is higher volume. Example: 3 sets of 4x400m for low set and 4 sets of 4x400m for high set. I have seen them also do sets of 3x600m. These seem to be between 3k-5k pace. Sometimes they will run the first mile of a PPM very fast and then attempt to hang on. I believe they refer to this as race shocking. This is to get them used to going out really hard in XC races. They also will sometimes push the recovery between SI reps/sets pretty hard. I have heard that one of the goals of PAAVO is to get the SI recovery pace to be as close to the SI rep pace as possible. Though they occasionally take easy days, they are very consistent with adhering to CT days. In fact most CT days are doubles.
Normal summer week is
Monday - LPPM (Long Pace Per Mile)
Tuesday - CT (Critical Threshold) double
Wednesday - LR (Long Run)
Thursday - CT double
Friday - SPPM (Short Pace Per Mile)
Saturday - CT double
Sunday - CT double
Sometimes, they will run all the mileage on a CT day as one run instead of splitting it into a double, but mostly it is doubles.
CoachWill wrote:
I doubt he "struggles to explain", how hard is it to insert the same terminology? He makes no mention of Short PPMs, Long PPMs, or Critical Threshold, all of which I'd never heard of before until a coach he uses PAAVO told me about them so it's certainly one of a kind terminology. Short Intervals and Long Intervals are also PAAVO terminology but he can't refer to them as such?
It seems people have explained a good amount but I will add on. They train all year round regardless of the weather, they don't really peak for races either. Those together are a sure sign of every PAAVO system I've seen.
They don't "peak"? Why in the lecture does Leonard de-emphasize the importance of races that aren't District and beyond. He claims he isn't interested in those results, he only cares about the athletes performing their best at the end of the season for State and then Nationals, sounds like Peaking to me?
CoachWill wrote:
They don't "peak"? Why in the lecture does Leonard de-emphasize the importance of races that aren't District and beyond. He claims he isn't interested in those results, he only cares about the athletes performing their best at the end of the season for State and then Nationals, sounds like Peaking to me?
Why are you responding to me with this now? People have posted their training.
PAAVO works great for people getting in shape. Your easy runs are not that different than your hard runs. They all feel hard.
I believe they have made some modifications because the kids are running so fast.
But yes they have a huge team in an extremely competitive affluent area. Kids parents are hyper involved and the team is super organized. They will be good if they train hard no matter what the specifics.
Southlake is a weird area. Coach Leonard is the most normal person involved with that school. Real house wives of North Texas (new money not old money). It would be hard to handle all of those egos and parents
What stands out to me about this interview/presentation is how many advantages this school has.
Practice...during the school day? Am I getting that right? His boys team runs at school at 6:45 AM and girls run at 1 PM?
Also, he has kids doing multiple sports (baseball/track) in the same season??
AND they can start practice for XC on June 1st??? And practice as a team all summer?
I grew up in NJ. No way, no how could someone do more than one sport in the same season. Practice in the summer was forbidden unless organized by the captains. Coach would have to magically cross paths with us during our run. Every sport practiced after school at 3 PM...