How Kids Go From 4:24 to 4:14 and 5:17 to 5:03

Published December 4, 2024 

Have you noticed how the times that used to win medals at the state meet in 2004 or even 2014 aren't even getting kids out of regionals anymore?

I'm on a group text with a bunch of guys I ran with in college, and they're always saying, "it's the shoes and the tracks." 

Sure, that's part of it. But a big part of it is the sophistication of high school coaching right now.

Let's be honest: If you're not doing more sophisticated training this winter and spring than you did 5-10-15 years ago then you're not going to have kids making the state meet in individual events, and you're not going to be able to qualify your 4x8.

And more importantly, you're not going to have a team full of kids who are PRing every week that the weather's good.

Over the next three days, I'm going to share what you need to do this winter to transform your program. 

The two biggest things I can help you with are making sure your kids do strides and getting your team bought into extending the aerobic stimulus.

I've already written extensively about the progression of strides -​ click here to read that email​.

Today, we're going to dive deep into extending the aerobic stimulus, and then on Thursday and Friday, we'll talk about 800m training and the idea that to unlock your kids' potential in the 800m an d1600m, you're going to have to do some different things in 2025.

When I say "unlock potential," I'm not talking theory.

I've seen coaches take boys from 4:24 to 4:14 in a year and girls from 5:17 to 5:03 in a year, making just this change and some of the other adjustments we'll talk about Thursday and Friday. These aren't isolated cases - they're becoming the norm for coaches who embrace this approach.

Okay, let's dive into this new approach to training...

Extending the Aerobic Stimulus

The fundamental principle behind extending the aerobic stimulus is maintaining elevated heart rates throughout an entire training session by eliminating breaks between different training components. This approach combines warm-up routines, primary runs/workouts, and post-run strength work into one continuous session, creating a longer cardiovascular training effect with less actual running time.

While I can't point to primary research that says this works, you've just gotta trust me on this one.

…actually, you don't need to trust me - there are literally tens of thousands of kids throughout the country that are running PRs using this approach since their coaches are a part of my training systems.

I'm so fortunate to get emails both in the cross-country season and the track season saying this approach has kept kids injury-free and running PRs.

As you're going to see, we're able to get the aerobic stimulus of a much longer run - say 10 or 11 miles - but only have the athletes actually run 6-7 miles. If that sounds like some Runner’s World article saying, "run less to run faster,” it's not.

But I do want you to consider this quote, one of my favorite quotes for both coaches and athletes:

"If you want to do things you've never done before, you've got to do things you've never done before."

I challenge you to embrace that and say, "If I'm going to have a season where every one of my athletes stays injury-free and my athletes run P.R.'s week after week after week in April and May, then I've got to set things up in December and January differently than I've done in the past."

And one of the things we’re going to do differently this winter is “extend the aerobic stimulus.”

Three Workout Structures

If you'd rather watch a video that explains everything that follows, I've made a concise video with slides that explain all the workouts that you can watch on YouTube - just ​click here​ to watch it.

60-Minute Long Run (90-Minute Total Stimulus)

This workout is designed for an athlete who was doing 70-minute long runs in September.

In my training systems, we actually decrease the volume initially to accommodate the comprehensive warm-up and post-run work. As you’ll see, the total time the athlete spends with their heart rate elevated is more than they’d have done with a 70-minute run.

I went into detail about the the Jeff Boelé’s warm-up and the post-run work I use in ​last week’s emai​l. It’s got all the links, including links to videos, that you need.

Here’s the workout…

1. Jeff Boelé's Warm-up (13 minutes)

• Here’s the video - on ​YouTube​ or get it on an ​app for your phone​ 
• While beginners might take 15-20 minutes initially, once they learn it it’ll take 13 minutes.

2. Long Run (60 minutes)

• In my training a long run is a serious workout, with the last 25-30 minutes being challenging.
• We’ll an athlete capable of 7:30-minute miles could cover approximately 8 miles in this run

3. Post-Run Work (17 minutes)

• Immediate transition to “Red Hard” routine - you can download it ​here​ 
• The first 5 minutes are challenging, then the last 12 minutes the exercises are easier, focusing on hip mobility and hip strength.
• No breaks between exercises as that would allow the heart rate to drop

Now, there is a bit of an asterisk with everything above.

If you look closely at Jeff's warm-up, there are some exercises that you do on the ground, and you could argue that the heart rate is going to dip at this point. You could also argue that for the post-run work in this example, Red Hard, which is the least challenging routine you’d ever do after a long run, may only be challenging for an athlete for 5 minutes.

That being said, let's follow the math below because I think you'll find that for a lot of kids, when they're first learning to warm up, their heart rate will be elevated the entire time, and when they're first doing the post-run work, their heart rate will be elevated the entire time.

The Math

Let's assume an athlete was running 7:30 pace for 60 minutes - they're going to cover 8 miles.

...to be clear, I'm not saying your athletes need to be running 7:30 pace for 60-minute, I'm just using a theoretical athlete and making the math easy for both of us 😊

If they're working for 90 minutes total, roughly 80 minutes of it their heart rate is elevated to the same extent that it would be during an 75- or 80-minute run. Now we've got an athlete who got a stimulus that's closer to a 10 or 10½ mile long run.

This is the magic of extending the aerobic stimulus:

This athlete only did 8 miles of pounding the payment (or gravel) but got the aerobic stimulus of a run that 10 miles (25 percent longer).

Eight miles for this athlete is a (very) safe volume of running, but the “aerobic engine building” that goes on is significant.

Said another way...

The risk of injury both this week and in the coming weeks is low, but the race to building the aerobic stimulus is off to a great start.

…quick aside…

If you don’t know (a) what I mean when I’m talking about building the aerobic engine or (b) you haven’t seen the table with the metabolic contribution of the aerobic metabolism to every even from 800m through 5,000m make sure to ​download this PDF​ of three chapters from my book Consistency Is Key.

Now back to our athlete…

In this first week of the season could this athlete handle a 10- or 11-mile run this week? Probably.

And could they handle another one of those runs in week two and three and four? Maybe.

But so often, we see injuries crop up in weeks four, five and six.

This is where people misunderstand my training. They think that I'm somebody who thinks we're just going to do post-run work as a way to prevent injuries, but that's not the whole story.

We're extending the aerobic stimulus and building the engine while running less than other programs but gaining as much or more fitness as kids who are at a higher risk for injury.

Now let's take a look at what a workout day looks like.

The Progression Run (80-Minute Total Stimulus)

Components:

1. Jeff Boelé Warm-up (13 minutes)

- Same warm-up as we did above

2. Main Workout (45 minutes total)

- 7 minutes of easy running, going right into…

- 8-minute segment where they do 3 x 20 second strides at 5k effort

- Easy running between strides, taking as much time as needed

- No stopping between the strides, then after the third one, go into…

3. 25-minute progression run with 5 minutes easy (30 minutes total)

- 10 minutes steady, then...

- Three 5-minute segments, each progressively faster, for a total of 15 minutes (making the total run 25 minutes)

- Athletes need to be able to finish the final 5-minute segment by saying, “I was controlled and definitely had another 3 minutes in me at that pace. And it was a race effort, I would have had 5-8 more minutes.”

- Finish the running portion of the day with 5 minutes of easy running before post-run work

Key Point: Immediately go into the post-run work after the running. If this work has to be done indoors, be quick about getting to the gym, rec center, or basement to knock out this work.

3. Post-Run Work (22 minutes)

- Orange hard routine - ​click here​ to get the videos and PDF with that routine

- Maintain elevated heart rate by taking no breaks between the exercises

- The first 10-15 minutes of this routine will be challenging, so athletes need to finish the running portion knowing that they’ll need to be focused

The Math

Let's assume that the athlete averaged a 7-minute pace for the first 15 minutes of the workout (technically, they probably ran much slower than that for the first 7 minutes, but then during the 8 minutes where they're doing strides, they'll run quite a bit faster).

During the 25-minute progression run, let's assume they average a 6:15 pace, covering 4 miles in total. Just to make the math easy on both of us, let's assume that the athlete covered 6.5 miles in this workout.

Let's assume that they're fit enough now where Jeff Boelé's warm-up doesn't raise their heart rate at all. The heart rate remains elevated during the main 45-minute portion of the run.

Due to the intensity of the Orange Hard post-run routine and the challenging nature of the progression run, their heart rate stays elevated for an additional 15 minutes.

This gives us a 60-minute cardiovascular stimulus while only running 6.5 miles.

Let's compare this to a standard run.

We know this athlete could go for a 60-minute run and average a 7-minute pace, and if they did that, they'd cover roughly 8.5 miles.

In my approach, they got the aerobic stimulus of an 8.5-mile run, but they only were pounding the pavement for 6.5 miles.

I think it’s easy to see with the math above that this approach builds the athletes' aerobic capacity more effectively than even the most aggressive traditional training plans. We will keep kids injury-free because the amount of pounding on the pavement is lower, yet we got a nice long aerobic stimulus.

Let’s look at one more example, this time with a long run.

The Extended Long Run (105-Minute Total Stimulus)

Components:

1. Jeff Boelé Warm-up (13 minutes)

2. Long Run (70 minutes) - This is run by feel, not pace, yet we can assume that they’ll average about 7-minute pace, so they’ll cover 10 miles

3. Post-Run Work (22 minutes)

- Orange Hard routine

- Roughly 22-25 minutes

- Let’s say the first 15 minutes are hard, but that in the last 7-10 minutes the heart rate decreases

This is one of my favorite points in the season because now kids know the warm-up, they can do the orange post run work, and they can run a great 70-minute long run. And this athlete is definitely going to average 7-minute pace because the way we're going to do the long run is it's one of our key workouts of the week and we're going to do strides in the last 25 minutes of the run.

We're not going to go down the rabbit hole of why we're doing strides during the run, but that's another wrinkle in the system that helps kids run with good posture at the end of the run.

The Math

The math in this example is really simple.

This workout provides 85 minutes of cardiovascular stimulus while only putting 10 miles of impact on their legs.

So they got the stimulus of a 12-mile run but only ran 10 miles. 

Stack these days week after week and you (a) have an injury-free athlete and (b) an athlete with a big aerobic engine.

Before we go on, please don’t take this as “your kids need to run 10 miles to be good.” 

Everything we're learning here is for an athlete who is running a higher volume. ​In this video​ I provide examples of athletes who perform shorter long runs (long runs of 40 or 45 minutes). The math is just as compelling, and you can also assume that these athletes because they're less fit, are getting an aerobic stimulus in the warm-up that the older, fitter athletes are not.

Now let’s move on to some thing just as important as the aerobic engine building aspect of these workouts…

The Mental Component

The last thing I want to discuss is what this does mentally for kids.

The second chapter in my book, Consistency Is Key, is called "Build Your Attention Span for Hard Work." These workouts absolutely do that because the athlete is focused on the warm-up, they're focused during the run, and then they immediately go into post-run work.

And if you think about that, that's a challenge for an athlete. They've just finished running and up until this point in their high school career, they've always stopped, gotten a drink of water, and chit-chatted with their friends before they did their post-run work. Or perhaps worse, they didn't do any post-run work.

With our new approach they have to commit to hard post-run work when they’re fatigued (and ready for a mental break).

What this does for athletes in the winter is it sets them up to mentally handle the hard race pace workouts they'll have to do on the track. Those workouts are so much shorter than these days that they're mentally ready to do anything you assign them on the track.

Simply put, when you extend the aerobic metabolism by going from the running right into the post-run work you also build the athletes attention span for hard work.

Said another way, you’re strengthening the mental muscles they’ll need to run hard track workouts later in the year.

Looking Ahead: Keeping Kids Injury-free and 800m Training

What we’ve covered today is just one piece of the training puzzle. While extending the aerobic stimulus is fundamental, you still need to do the right race pace workouts later in the year.

In tomorrow’s emails I’m going to give you the training you need in February and March to keep the new kids who join your team injury-free. These are the kids who didn’t do a sport in the winter and were sedentary. We both know this group is extremely injury-prone, yet if you follow my training you’ll be able to keep these kids healthy.

In Friday's emails, we'll talk about how you can take a group of cross country runners and ensure they're at least capable at 800 meters - and maybe you'll be surprised and have some 800m specialists emerge.

Finally, on Sunday, December 8th, I’m doing a live class covering track training from December through May.

The class is free and there will be a special bonus that night if you join live.

The class is at 8 pm EST/5 pm PST. You can watch it on ​YouTube​ or ​Facebook​.

Let’s go!

Jay

P.S. If you're more of a visual learner, I've made a concise video with slides that explain all the workouts in this email - just ​click here​ to watch it.