Emphasis on recovery intervals during the high-stress workouts.

A relaxed cooldown period where the team can bond together.

A dynamic, static stretch free, warmup each day that is progressive in design.

The appropriate skills that are important for a middle school runner to learn include the following: There are other important skills to be learned that transcend running and apply to all of athletics. There is more to middle school cross country practice than the main endurance unit each day. Then sit around and eat the suckers back at school. Runners run out to the “can of candy” at the 2½ mile mark and grab a sucker from the can and carry it on the run back. Total up the “scores” of the cards in each person’s hand to determine the winners (face cards are 10, aces 11). They all run to a coach at the two mile mark who gives them another card, then they run another mile to a coach who gives them the fourth card, and then run the last mile in. Before going out for a distance run give each runner two cards, one for the palm of each hand. This teaches relaxation of the upper body and hands and concentration. The goal is to come back with unbroken chips. Before going out for a distance run place a whole Pringle in each of the kid’s hands (palm them). Three running games/gimmicks that are fun to do are: Running-type games, fun days, and gimmicks can play a bigger part in middle school training than to high school plans, but they should not be overdone. The stirrings of competitiveness can certainly begin at this age, but the process is far more emphasized over the end result. It is important that a middle school coach add joy to their runner’s day. * Training Resource: Successful Coaching Strategies: 3200m However, keep in mind these types of girls are far and few.

As long as the young lady can emotionally and socially handle stepping up the work, and perhaps even joining the high school team, then that may be favorable to her long-term development. There are definitely some outlier young girls that can physically handle a high school training load. One important factor to keep in mind is that middle school girls mature up to two years earlier than boys do. Fortunately, the races are short enough so that a reasonable amount of aerobic training can be prescribed, and there can be some “experimentation” with anaerobic work. On the other hand, children this age are eager to please, and see distance running as a great new adventure, so they lack (or ignore) the ability to self-regulate what they are capable of handling. When all of these principles are added together, one can see that there are limits to what a middle school runner can do both aerobically and anaerobically in training. MS children lack running economy, mainly because joints and muscles are not yet stiff enough.

MS children secrete far less testosterone than older people.MS children have less coordination in their running stride because of incomplete nerve myelination.MS children use much of their energy intake each day for growth.MS children have thinner, less fatigue resistant, myosin muscle filaments.MS children cannot translate anaerobic work to greater H+ ion buffering because of an inability to store sodium bicarbonate as an adaptation.MS children have an incomplete mTOR gene to muscle cell pathway which limits protein-based changes that occur with training such as building additional cell membrane pores for draining lactate– and H+.This limits aerobic capacity and aerobic power.

MS children have small hearts and small blood volume for their body size which limits VO2 max.MS children can operate at a very high heart rate because they have less venous resistance at that age.Several physiologically-based growth and development principles come to mind when setting up a middle school (MS) training program. Besides, middle school cross country races are less than half the distance of high school races, so event specificity in training is a major factor as well. Largely, because of their lack of growth and development, and inexperience in handling training loads, middle school runners need to be trained in a more macro-based training program than their older brothers and sisters are.

Siegel middle school cross country