Tell me about it… I was practicing at a middle school about 2 months ago and the entire track team came out and the coach made the whole team with no warm up do repeat 800’s. These young kids were so disgruntled that they had to run that long in practice; I was just disgusted as to how lazy and unscientific the coach was. He just clumped them all together M-F sprinters all the way to what look to be like future shot putters.
Some coaches like my old HS coach are better in there programing but still are old school in the idea that its ok for 400m SPRINTERS to run x country.
It seems to me that many coaches are afraid of sprint work and are afraid to pull hamstrings so they rather have there athletes do extensive tempo, and se2 type workouts. I mean, it works but anything works for a developing athlete and secondly I’m sure this is what leads to burnouts for many of the U.S athletes.
Lastly, and this just pisses me off; but the United States is just over saturated with distance running! Year around there is always some kind if marathon going on and most running clubs are distance runners who get orgasmic pleasure by getting up at 5:30am to run 5 miles thinking that’s the most healthiest thing you can do.
So my point is, we are such a distance running culture that I feel it now influences the way we train our sprinters here in the states. Just my 0.02$.