Why is it good to have runners be athletic? Why are stretching and strength training so important to young runners?
Read Coach Jay Johnson's article Metabolic changes vs Structural changes.
Yesterday I posted the following on my twitter feed.
Mixed results for today’s workout. @DadVaughn did good work, but we need to be careful – metabolic fitness precedes structural readiness
I think this issue warrants more of an explanation than I can give in 140 characters on twitter.
Mike Smith of Kansas State University is the person who shared this concept with me when I was first starting my coaching career. The point is simply that the athlete gains aerobic fitness (or even anaerobic fitness/tolerance) quicker than their structure – their bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments – can handle that fitness. For this reason Mike believes in a lot of non-running work for middle and long distance runners. I’m a convert to this worldview, as evident in our Building a Better Runner series of DVDs. Simply put, I’m asking the athletes I coach to do a lot of non-running work so that they can tolerate more fast running.
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