Your "Middle Group" of Kids

Published July 23, 2025

It's the middle of July, and I have a pretty good guess at what's happening with your team right now.

You've got some kids who are absolutely crushing it - showing up every day, getting better every week. These athletes are going to have the best cross country season of their lives this fall, and that's really exciting.

You've also got some kids who haven't shown up yet and probably won't until official practice starts. Those kids can still have a really fun cross country experience, but let's be honest - you're probably not going to see them for a few more weeks.

But today I want to talk about that middle group - kids who are showing up somewhat inconsistently but genuinely want to be good runners. For many of these athletes, it's not their fault. Maybe their family has them running around for summer vacations, or they've got a job that prevents them from making every practice.

And here's the thing about kids with summer jobs - you can't assume they're getting their runs in on their own when they're not at practice. Not because they don't want to be good, but because they're tired. That's totally understandable. Once their only concerns are school and running, they'll be consistent. I actually think it's great for kids to have summer jobs, and if it occasionally gets in the way of training, so be it.

What I want to share today will help these middle-group kids make real progress, even with imperfect attendance.

Build Their Attention Span for Hard Work

Here's a chapter from my book Consistency Is Key called "Build Your Attention Span for Hard Work." If there's one thing I could share with your athletes this week, if I were their coach, it would be this: that all the post-run work we're doing is worth it. And that by building our attention span for hard work in the second part of July and the first part of August, that's going to set us up to handle racing in the fall and also handle the hard race pace workouts we'll do in September.

Whether or not you're the most talented athlete on your team, you want to have an exceptional experience running in high school. To do this, you need to build your attention span for hard work.

Consider the term "long run." This is the most time you'll spend on your feet each week, and it will last much longer than a race. Staying engaged mentally, making sure you're running with great posture from start to finish, and making sure the pace doesn't slow down toward the end—these all build your attention span for hard work.

After you have a few long runs under your belt, you can either increase the distance or increase the pace of the run. (Later on, I'll explain why increasing the pace is often a better choice.)

As a high school athlete, you're obviously going to train fewer minutes or miles per week than professional athletes, yet the non-running work you need to be doing after each run or workout might be as challenging and lengthy as theirs.

It's not uncommon for a determined high school athlete to do 20 minutes of non-running work following every run, and as much as 30 minutes a couple of times a week on the harder days.

Strength and mobility exercises can be simple, but they're not easy. A determined athlete can hold a plank for 10 seconds, regardless of how hard he or she ran during a workout. And a 10-second plank can soon become a 15-second one, which is a great indicator that you're slowly getting stronger, even if you're unable to run more minutes or miles. You just have to build the attention span to improve your planks.

Here's the deal: You can't change who your parents are. You can't change the genetic talent you were born with. But you can change your capacity for hard work.

Staying engaged mentally on a long run, making the last 10 to 20 minutes the best minutes of the run, or doing challenging non-running work following a challenging workout are all examples.

My favorite quote for runners is from the iconic jazz pianist Thelonious Monk: "Simple ain't easy." I'm not saying running hard long runs and doing 15, 20, or even 30 minutes of non-running work is going to be easy, but it's definitely not complex.

If Thelonious Monk had been a runner, he might have said, "Running is simple, but it's not easy."

Free Resource for Your Athletes

Your athletes can access the post-run strength routines I use in my training systems at this link.

These include both the Red (beginner) and Orange (intermediate) post-run work with complete video demonstrations.

Even for naturally strong kids, this progression typically takes 3-4 weeks to master. For athletes who are newer to sports or need to build more foundational strength, it might take 5-6 weeks. That's perfectly normal and expected.

The key is that your athletes do this work immediately after every run. No breaks, no cooling down first - straight from running into the strengthening work. This "extends the aerobic stimulus" and builds their attention span for hard work at the same time.

If you missed last week's email about extending the aerobic stimulus, you can read it here.

But that's a key part of this: we're going to end our workouts and long runs, even our easy days, and go straight into the post-run work.

Free Chapters of Consistency Is Key for Your Kids (and Even Their Parents)

Here are some of the most important chapters from my book. It's crucial that kids (and I'd argue even their parents) understand the car analogy. They need to understand that their workouts are building the aerobic engine, and that cross country is almost a hundred percent an aerobic endeavor.

They also need to know that they've got to strengthen their chassis. We've got to lower the rates of injuries on your team and we can do that with chassis strengthening work, and then we've got to rev the engine most days.

Kids need to understand the importance of strides and need to understand that every day they're assigned they have to do that. You won't be able to watch every kid on every stride, and they need to take accountability for their training and get that in. By sharing this link with them, they can do all those things.

It includes the kids' favorite chapter, "Prepare to Run Fast, Faster, Fastest." It also has the sleep chapter, which all the kids need to read, as well as the mental skills chapter.

If parents are interested in getting a book for their kids, they can use the same link. If you want to get a bundle of books for your team, use the same link - there are deep discounts on books.

But to be clear, with this free link, they've got a lot of resources right here.

It's Not Too Late to Start

I know it's getting late in July, and a lot of people think that it's too late to invest in the XC Training System. Here's what a coach shared with me just two days ago...

Hi Jay,

Just letting you know we have completed 6 weeks so far of our summer XCTS program.

We had our annual summer camp last week so we will launch into week 7 this upcoming week.

We are getting some good traction and the head coach is starting to see the benefits of all our pre and post run work in that this is the first year of camp that we had ZERO injuries.

Every year at camp we have 1-3 kids out or modified due to an overuse injury incurred in the weeks leading up to it. We have 72 kids running at camp this year.

We capped off the week with our annual 5K "race" and many runners 30-90 seconds faster than last year. (one of them being my son, who ran the "course record" that we at least have recorded in recent history).

July is a great time to get your team up and running with the XC Training System (and yes, sorry for the bad dad joke).

Summer training is laying the foundation for everything that happens this fall. Keep building those attention spans for hard work, and your middle group kids are going to surprise you come October.

This work really matters, and I really appreciate you taking the time to help these kids develop both physically and mentally.

Let's go!

Jay

P.S. I'll be announcing this year's speakers for the 2026 Boulder Running Clinics later this summer, but if you want to get a taste of what the clinics are like, I've got tons of videos from past years on my YouTube channel.

Browse through all the Boulder Running Clinic videos here.

P.P.S. - If you have any questions about the recruiting process, I'm putting together a detailed resource for parents and coaches. It will be comprehensive, and I'll have it ready by September at the latest, possibly in August.

So if you have any questions, please send them to me. And if they're really good questions and really useful, I'm more than happy to send you a free copy of Consistency Is Key for your time.