Training plans for Kids

Dm1

Hi looking for a little advice as regards training plans for kids in the 9 - 12 year old age group. I am involved in a relatively new athletics club and am an inexperienced coach. We have some events coming up in next while. Mostly 60 meter sprints and 600 meter races. Some kids will run both disciplines. They will all train together twice a week at same time. What type of joint training should we doing that all will get a benefit from and that they will all enjoy. Thanks.

Testosterscone

Have you done any coaching courses?

http://www.athleticsireland.ie/coaching/coach-education/

Dm1

Testosterscone wrote: »

Have you done any coaching courses?

http://www.athleticsireland.ie/coaching/coach-education/

I have done Athletics Ireland courses but what I have done so far does not go into that type of detail.

RayCun

At that age they should all be training for and running both anyway. They need to work on both speed and endurance. (You should also try to fit in throw training, and jumps when you can access facilities)

Start your session with a good warm-up. 3-5 minutes of easy running, followed by lunges, side lunges, hamstring and quad stretches, side strides, cariocas, skipping for height... there are lots of warm-up videos on YouTube with good exercises. Pick a bunch of them, and if you can vary the warm-up from week to week it helps keep their attention. Finish the warm-up with some increasing speed runs, or a set of sprints, gradually increasing speed with each sprint.

Start the session itself with sprint work. They need to be fresh to run fast. You can work on starts, different reaction starts (eg, they sit facing away have to get up, turn and run on the whistle, or they are lying down, or...), or jog to one cone, accelerate to next cone, hold pace to next cone, then slow down to final cone. Or use small hurdles to work on their knee lift. We play a game called cat and mouse. The cats are at 200m, the mice 100m on. The cats start, one at a time. When they get close, you let one mouse go, and the mouse has to try to reach the finish without being caught.

With all the sprint work, you want to make sure they have enough recovery between efforts, so they can actually sprint, not just run fast.

Will post something on middle distance later

Dm1

RayCun wrote: »

At that age they should all be training for and running both anyway. They need to work on both speed and endurance. (You should also try to fit in throw training, and jumps when you can access facilities)

Start your session with a good warm-up. 3-5 minutes of easy running, followed by lunges, side lunges, hamstring and quad stretches, side strides, cariocas, skipping for height... there are lots of warm-up videos on YouTube with good exercises. Pick a bunch of them, and if you can vary the warm-up from week to week it helps keep their attention. Finish the warm-up with some increasing speed runs, or a set of sprints, gradually increasing speed with each sprint.

Start the session itself with sprint work. They need to be fresh to run fast. You can work on starts, different reaction starts (eg, they sit facing away have to get up, turn and run on the whistle, or they are lying down, or...), or jog to one cone, accelerate to next cone, hold pace to next cone, then slow down to final cone. Or use small hurdles to work on their knee lift. We play a game called cat and mouse. The cats are at 200m, the mice 100m on. The cats start, one at a time. When they get close, you let one mouse go, and the mouse has to try to reach the finish without being caught.

With all the sprint work, you want to make sure they have enough recovery between efforts, so they can actually sprint, not just run fast.

Will post something on middle distance later

Thanks for that. That sounds great.

RayCun

For the endurance side, you can do intervals and longer, easier runs.

For intervals, you could think of the goal as running 2 x 300 at race pace with a minute jog recovery. That's a really tough session that would need to be built up to (if you do it at all). You make it easier by
Making it slower
Making the recovery slower
Making the recovery longer

So, just for example, you could start with 4 x 150, a little slower than race pace, with two minutes walking recovery. Over time, you make it harder by changing one of those variables, one at a time.

It would get very boring if you did that every week, so you could also do pyramids ( short, fast runs, getting longer and slower, then shorter and faster again), fartlek runs, alternating short intervals with longer intervals, and so on.

And as well as all the different types of intervals, you should also do longer, easy runs for general endurance. With these you want to make sure that they start at an easy pace and maintain it, and that they are not getting tired and losing form. In one way, these are easy to organise, but you probably have lots of different ability levels, so you have to keep an eye on them, make sure the faster ones are running properly, the slower ones are not overstretched, and everyone is in sight of coaches, without making them run really short laps which are just boring.

And of course you can mix these up a bit, easy runs with surges or other speed changes.

Dm1

RayCun wrote: »

For the endurance side, you can do intervals and longer, easier runs.

For intervals, you could think of the goal as running 2 x 300 at race pace with a minute jog recovery. That's a really tough session that would need to be built up to (if you do it at all). You make it easier by
Making it slower
Making the recovery slower
Making the recovery longer

So, just for example, you could start with 4 x 150, a little slower than race pace, with two minutes walking recovery. Over time, you make it harder by changing one of those variables, one at a time.

It would get very boring if you did that every week, so you could also do pyramids ( short, fast runs, getting longer and slower, then shorter and faster again), fartlek runs, alternating short intervals with longer intervals, and so on.

And as well as all the different types of intervals, you should also do longer, easy runs for general endurance. With these you want to make sure that they start at an easy pace and maintain it, and that they are not getting tired and losing form. In one way, these are easy to organise, but you probably have lots of different ability levels, so you have to keep an eye on them, make sure the faster ones are running properly, the slower ones are not overstretched, and everyone is in sight of coaches, without making them run really short laps which are just boring.

And of course you can mix these up a bit, easy runs with surges or other speed changes.

Thanks RayCun very useful used some of it tonight and went well. Would you mind explaining the Cat and Mouse game don't fully understand it and would like to try it out.

RayCun

Dm1 wrote: »

Thanks RayCun very useful used some of it tonight and went well. Would you mind explaining the Cat and Mouse game don't fully understand it and would like to try it out.

Okay, so you have a finish line.

You stand about 100m away with the mouse.

Another coach stands another 100m away with the cat. All distances approximate.

They let the cat go, and the cat jogs towards you. You hold on to the mouse until the cat is 5-10 metres away, then you let them go. The mouse tries to get to the finish without being caught.

The mouse has a head start, but the cat has a running start. You can change the size of the head start to suit the kids.

When you have twenty kids, you have ten mice and ten cats, but you release them one at a time, with enough of a gap that they're not on top of each other.

RayCun

another good option for groups is a continuous or shuttle relay - something to do for 10/15 minutes towards the end of a session.

For the continuous relay, we have a 300m track, and divide the athletes into teams of four.
Runner A is at the start line -> B at the 100m line -> C at the 200 line -> D at the start finish line -> A, who is now at the 100m line -> B, who is now at the 200m line...
... and so on, until everyone is back at their starting position.
In effect, it's 3 x 100m with 40-45 seconds recovery
They run hard because it's a race, and they get to practice baton changes.

If your training area is square, for example put the changeover points in the middle of the side, not at the corners. (and you'd need 5 per team)

Or a shuttle relay. 20 kids, two teams of ten
Half the team here.........................................................................and half here

Runner goes from here...............................................................hands over
...............................................................................................this runner comes back
hands over.......
second runner goes...................................................................hands over
etc
you can keep this going for 5-10 runs each, depending on how many are on each team (so how long the recovery is) and how long the run is.
But you can't practice the handover, and you often get kids inching closer, starting early, etc

You can do it with, instead of handover points
A...............................................B
the handover point is C
A.....................C........................B
and each runner either does C->B->C (handover) and next runner does C->A->C (handover), or
each runner does a full lap C->B->C->A->C (handover)
but we've never really done that

Testosterscone

Ray's advice is solid.

Biggest focus should be on kids having fun without realising that there is method to the madness

Parlauf relays are a good one. Basically its a relay race set up with different start positions (say for example Runner A on Team at the start line and Runner B Team B at the 200m line) Essentially they are trying to run each other down and game can continue for fixed time frame or till one team catches up with other. Good if there are a wide level of abilities as even someone way off the back will be perceived to be neck and neck as the start lines are different so no one is way off the rest of the team.

Snatch the bacon is a great one for reaction times

Circuits are also a good way of developing good aerobic base as well as good movement patterns. If you have access to a hall simple chair step ups, tricep dips on chair shuttle sprints etc can be simple exercises that can be used.

Main thing is keep it fun and away from specialization at this early stage. They are still developing - activity and good fundamentals will go an awful long way towards preparing them for training at a later stage and keeping it fun enough to stay in the sport.

RayCun

The challenge is really in adapting the sessions to who is there, what conditions are like, where you are training, etc. With older kids, we have more of a training plan set out, when I was coaching younger ones we rarely did. It was more

has it been raining? okay ground will be too wet for sprint starts, might do accelerating from a jog
it it cold? okay, we have to keep them running, no long recoveries
what is the ratio of kids:coaches looking like? Lots of kids - you have to keep them busy, and keep them running. Not so many kids - you can do something technical
how much space do we have? can't send kids on long runs around and around a football pitch, they'd get bored, you need a bigger park

and if conditions are good - plenty of coaches, dry, light, not cold - and you had scheduled a running session, you throw it out to do something more technical, because you know that most of the time when you plan to do something technical you end up having to run instead...