Cross country training can be rather complicated and confusing for a coach just getting started in the profession. Many times, a new coach will start by merely constructing a training program that looks pretty similar to what they ran in high school. Pretty soon it becomes apparent that circumstances and location are different, so adjustments…
Archives for cross country athlete
Stimulus, Adaptation, Fitness, Timeframes and the Cross Country Athlete
Why do distance runners need to train all summer, effectively doubling the length of their fall season, in order to be competitive in the championship cross country meets at the end of the year? The answer lies in the rate by which physiological changes occur in humans. Today we will discuss stimulus, adaptation, fitness, and…
Assessing the Athletic Lifestyle of the Cross Country Athlete
More and more scientific studies on distance runners have shown that proper recovery facilitates faster physiological adaptation and enhances endurance-related performance. By ignoring recovery today, it all leads to tomorrow’s poor practice session and, eventually, poor recovery habits that are tough to break. It also reinforces attitudes that can lead to under-recovery injuries. However, by…
The Nine Day Cross Country Training Microcycle
Applying the principles of contemporary training theory is an important aspect of coaching cross country runners. In general, training theory applies the laws of the natural world to the science of longer distance running so that coaches do not have to rely on trial and error or anecdotal beliefs in setting up a sequential training…
Aerobic Power Training
Documented training schemes designed to improve aerobic power velocitym (vVO2 max) in distance runners were first described by the Soviet Sports Institute in the 1970’s. Besides the Eastern Bloc countries, one of the athletics organizations to quickly pick up on the training concept was the British Milers Club in the early 1980’s. Frank Horwill and…
Aerobic Power Principles
Aerobic power is considered a good measure of aerobic fitness. Commonly known as VO2 max, it is useful for the running coach to determine what velocity is associated with present day aerobic power development in an athlete at that moment in time. Once the vVO2 max is determined it can be used to structure aerobic…
Aerobic Power Primer
All of the standard distance races including cross country are combined zone races. Combined zone means that energy needed for muscular contractions at race pace is derived from both the aerobic and anaerobic energy systems in combination. Improvement in both the capacity and efficiency of these independent energy systems, and how they work in tandem,…
Cross Country Workout Themes
One of the most important chores that a cross country coach does is to set the workout themes for the many daily sessions during the season. The workouts must be compatible with the other workouts that are sequenced around each other, and themes must be appropriate for the time in the macrocycle in which they…