Interview with Jay Johnson Part 2

Part 2 of 2

Mick: What are the most important exercises to do to minimize injury risk?

Jay: It would be nice if a coach could throw out 10 exercises and say, “do these and you won’t get injured” yet it just isn’t that simple. That said; because running is primarily a Sagital Plane activity, I do believe that runners, especially once they’re running over 35 or 40 miles a week, need to do exercises in the Frontal and Transverse planes. So, rotational work with a Medicine Ball and making big circles (Transverse plane) or simply lying on your side and lifting your leg (Frontal plane) are both examples of things that will help runners. But lets be honest about the human body adapts – you must alter the stimulus to continue to elicit adaptation; in the same way a girl who runs 5:20 and improves to 5:04 can run 10-15 seconds a mile faster on her easy days between those PRs, runners will need a logical progression for their General Strength and ancillary work throughout a season and a career. Doing the pedestal routine for 2 minutes is extremely challenging the first time you try it, but 5 weeks later 2 minutes is a joke and you’ll need 5 or 6 minutes to get a similar stimulus.

Mick: Looking back, what have you learned about training and racing that has formed the core of your philosophy.

Jay: If I look back 11 months the answer is different than if I look back to my freshman year in college, so I'll give a few "mile markers"

11 months ago - Olympic Trials: Talent is king and you shouldn't be surprised to see an athlete who is lazy 10 months out of the year become an Olympian.* The flip side is that events change with time - who knew the US would have two women in the 10k who can run with anyone...but again, these two were studs in HS and studs in college; they were not the 2:17/5:10 girls who were 30th in their respective Footlocker regional meets.

15 years ago - Freshman Year at CU: My HS training was a joke, but that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that I'm pretty sure I'm the least talented person on this team and while I wasn't a state champ, I've never thought of myself as the least talented person on a track team.

14 years ago - Sophomore year at CU, fall: In September I ran a cross race in Pasco, Washington on Saturday, then Sunday morning I ran 20 miles in 2:04 (6:15 pace) on an asphalt path in Seattle. I was the last guy to finish the run. The length and pace of that run are only noteworthy because just 15 months earlier I was a HS senior and the longest run I had every attempted was 10 miles, which I ran once, and that run took me 80 minutes (8:00 pace). I share this story for two reasons. First, I think the reason I stayed healthy during this phase was that I played other sports growing up and was very active, though I did have the first Nintendo console, which put a dint in capture the flag playing. But my point is that I'm not sure the average HS kid can make the 30 to 75 mile a week jump I made as a freshman and then train 80 in singles as a sophomore without having more injury issues. Second, if you plan to run in college and you're thinking, "Well, I run 50 miles a week with a weekly long run and a weekly threshold run, so doing the same types of runs and getting in 60 or 70 shouldn't be too hard" remember this - you'll now be running all of those miles faster than you currently run.

This only happens in some of the "easy events;" you're a woman who runs the 100m hurdles then the US Track and Field team is still "the hardest team to make."

Mick: I'd like to compare your actual high school training/racing with what you believe is the best plan for long term development. What are your thoughts on this? What have you learned about training over the years? (Weekly mileage by year; boys, girls, etc.)

Jay: Again, having not coached HS athletes I want to make sure that everyone takes these thoughts with a grain of salt.

I will assume the following: that the HS athlete in question is running seriously by the sophomore year of HS; that they will run in college; that the HS training will not inhibit their ability to run well in college and run well after college, if they choose.

“Develop the aerobic metabolism.” - Mark Wetmore. I agree.

Become a better athlete or at least maintain the athleticism you had in middle school as you take running more seriously. Now, if a boy could dunk a tennis ball in 8th grade and he loses that ability by his senior year, yet he’s a Footlocker finalist and he also runs under 1:52 for 800m, then that’s great – he’s lost some athleticism but he’s running at a high level. But what I don’t want to see is a kid who could play basketball and tennis decently well, then just runs for 4 years and then can’t move laterally, has horrible flexibility and has had “a couple little injuries, but nothing major” in HS. That’s not a recipe for a successful collegiate career.

Obviously the desire to run more miles and train harder should be intrinsic and should have nothing to do with the aspirations of the parents and coaches…and obviously this rarely happens. While this problem is not unique to distance running, I think it’s important for coaches and parents who truly want the student-athlete to be both successful and happy is to acknowledge the subtle ways they may be communicating the importance of the kid’s running to the kid. Even 17 year olds want to know that their parents love them unconditionally and that their love has nothing to do with their athletic success.

Gender

Most boys can handle a linear progression of 10-15 miles per week more each year. If a boy runs 30 miles a week as a freshman then 60 mpw is not unrealistic his senior year (even a couple weeks at 70 or 80). Brad Hudson would advocate much, much more; he told athletes at my camp a few years ago that get to running a lot as soon as you safely can - and he wasn’t talking 70 mpw but 100 mpw.

….and you know what, I agree with him, but only if the kid is DYING to do that, dying to run that much. I think few kids are dying to run 60 or 80 miles a week in HS, yet the examples of Hall, Ritz, Solinsky, Teg, Jorge, etc. all point to one thing – lots of running and lots of intense running in HS. But these are not normal people – they wanted to do that and I don’t think you can find in any of their stories a manufactured desire to train that hard; they wanted to be good, but the emphasis is on “they.” They all had an intrinsic drive as HS athletes to train really hard.

Back to the point, if a team/program has a nice progression to plug boys into from 8th grade to 12th grade that has them running 60 mpw their senior year I think that is very reasonable, yet I wouldn’t be surprised if every year there were 1-2 boys that did 80+ miles a week consistently.

For girls I think the ideal training is much, much different. I would argue we would be well served in the U.S. if Lyle Knudson’s approach was adopted for HS aged girls

(Can you hear the Lydiard devotee’s gasping, then crying, “I thought you ran at CU!?!?!? I thought you believed in the Long Run ?!?!?!?). They’d run hard, they’d run fast and my guess is that their endocrine system’s response to that training would not only help the girls run fast in HS, but it sets them up to handle high training volumes and great training intensities later in life.

That said, the bigger problem with HS girls distance running is that so few girls who say “I love running!” when they’re 16 say the same thing at 20; many boys who say that at 16 will say the same thing at age 20. I know that I shouldn’t be comparing boys to girls and girls to boys, but I think we have a problem in our country and I think this is an important talking point for parents, HS coaches, college coaches and anyone who is passionate about U.S. distance running. We don’t have the same problems – or at least it’s not as dramatic – in the power events in our country.

I’ve heard college coaches say that athletes have a finite window of time that they can focus intensely on running; I believe in this concept – though there are always outliers – and I’d say that window is being shortened by many HS girls’ coaches who have the girls running really hard in HS. I’m not saying I have the answer, but one thing is obvious: a stud girl can score more points at the state track meet than a similar stud boy because the competition is not as deep and often that means that over 2-3 years the girl has run more “important” races than her male counterpart. While this does not explain the abysmal rate of drop off for female vs. male Footlocker finalists, I find it surprising that more HS coaches aren’t discussing it.

Finally, for both genders I think General Strength/Ancillary work in the HS years will decrease injuries both in HS and in college, while also increasing their work capacity. On the world class level, that is one of our obvious problems – our athletes don’t have as many years of hard running, running at threshold pace for a long time and I firmly believe that GS work in the HS years will help the athlete handle more and more hard running as they get older.

Mick: Please tell me more about why you specify Lyle Knudson for girls?

Jay: Honestly, part of throwing that out there is to get people thinking - if they read the article and have read RWTB then they'll be surprised to hear that, yet in my cursory reading of his training system I agree with most of it. His system not only taps into the innate athleticism that athlete brings to distance running but it develops that aerobic system as well, just differently than 80+ miles a week develops it; hard running for 20-30 minutes is a good thing, not a bad thing. Plus, I work with a post-collegiate athlete, Sara Vaughn, who has a similar background – lots of sprinting, weightlifting and a gymnastics background. Sara really liked racing in HS and run 2:11.8 (I think - somewhere around 2:12) and while she might have run faster with a serious long run or a weekly 20-25 min threshold run, I'm not sure that mentally she would have thrived if she would have been asked to run 50, 60 or 70 mpw in HS. This is not say she’s not mentally tough or that she wasn’t serious in HS, but it does point to a simple fact: dozens of girls in here era ran 2:12 or faster and the vast majority of them can beat her at 1,500m today…and in most cases that because they don’t run anymore. Plus, I think too many HS coaches hold it against the athletic girl who plays soccer and basketball; they won't let them run on the 4x800m relay because they're not at practice every day. I’d love it if track was a national passion, but it’s not and if the soccer playing or basketball playing girl wants to come to track practice but can only come 3-4 days week then we need to let her come out. I had the pleasure this winter of writing a series on the recruiting process with Alan Versaw, coach of The Classical Academy (girls made NTN in 2008) and I made this statement. “The best HS distance programs in the country do two things: they make distance running cool, attracting better athletes (and yes, attracting them “away” from other sports) and they practice when others do not.” We need to do a better job recruiting athletic kids away from other sports and I think that many HS distance coaches either forget this or simply don’t want to the admit that three of the best 4x800m legs are playing lacrosse, soccer or basketball. Here’s the entire rant Also, the reason to highlight that I think Knudson might work well for girls is to conversely support lots running and lots of hard running for boys, again, to get coaches thinking “Should I be coaching the girls and boys the same or do we need to adjust the approach for each gender?” And I guess if I'm honest I don't mind saying something that is extreme if gets people thinking and it gets them to re-work their training theory...I need to do the same thing myself and while my first reaction to reading that RT article on Lyle was, "This guy's not nearly the amazing coach the author thinks he is;" on further reflection I have to admit that if I had a group of freshman girls I'd train them in a similar spirit to what I think Lyle does...but I have yet to go through his program detail by detail.

Mick: Please talk about your DVD's. How many minutes per day should high school kids spend on drills? How would you structure practice? What are the most important drills? DVD

Jay: First point is that I don’t call 99% of DVD content “drills” because drills, in my mind, are things skills broken down into smaller parts. The Miken drill in basketball helps the player with the ability to make a lay-up with either hand. A-Skips and B-Skips are drills in that they focus on one part or two parts of the running gait, helping the athlete get stronger and hopefully run/sprint faster. But the pedestal routine in our DVD is not running – you’re touching the group with both feet and both arms! – and because it’s not running I wouldn’t call it a drill.

Semantics is important and that’s why I love the term General Strength. Why should a runner not be generally strong? You’ll struggle to convince any serious runner that they should be weak, yet the problem in the U.S. is that our brains quickly couple the term “strong” with an image of a body builder or football player, yet what should come to mind is simply a person that is strong and fit, regardless of bicep size. Ancillary is a good term too and for many coaches it describes exercises and routines that I’d put under General Strength, yet I go out of my way to use the term General Strength because I want the athletes I work with to be fully bought into the idea that we can improve our work capacity with General, non-running work and that work will not only allow us to run more or run harder, but it also keeps the distance runner healthier from an injury standpoint.

The biggest problem with the DVD is that we don’t lay out what people should do because ethically we can’t say that a 14 year old girl who runs 2:16 on 20 miles a week, a 28 year old woman who run 2:40 for the marathon and a 50 year old woman who runs 5ks in 29 minutes a week should do the same exercises. I made the DVD that I wanted as a coach – a menu of exercises and routines to choose from, leaving the implementation of the work up to me. But as a businessman I need to now make a series of DVDs that tells runners what to do. We will make the rest of the “Building a Better Runner” series, showing what Mike Smith does in the weight room and showing the “highest level” exercises, yet I’ll also need to produce a series that tells athletes what to do, day by day and week by week. I should have the first installment of that ready by the fall.

I’m doing a summer video series at RunningTimes.com that is all rooted in the DVD series and progresses throughout the summer. This will be a good resource for coaches and athletes, yet if they truly want to get better they need to do more work than is presented in that series. And that’s been one nice thing about not being a college coach and being able to answer questions on my blog – I can interact with the people who have purchased the DVD series and answer their questions directly. RUNNINGTIMES

Mick: Can you recommend a specific group of exercises to focus on or a good weekly rotation for kids to follow?

Jay: Kids should first follow this plan and then check this link

Mick: Let's talk about training and racing over the course of a year for a high school student/athlete. We’ll call it “The Jay Johnson Program.” Please walk me through the summer/fall/winter/spring for training and racing. Feel free to be general or specific.

Jay: I’ll lay out what I think athletes can/should do in the summer, highlighting the places where the athlete needs to be particularly careful.

State Track Meet: First week after state, take completely off from formal exercise – no cross training for 50 minutes because “my coach told me to take the week off.” Second week play – play tennis, skateboard, diving in the local pool, etc. – be active each day, but nothing formal.

Next 6 weeks: Running 5-6 days a week in a logical progression, but tons of GS work and a focus on doing more of that work than ever before.

Next 6 weeks: Focus on a weekly long run and a weekly fartlek workout or longer threshold run. For the mature HS kid a weekly progression run is great. Also, this is the time to be doing some neuromuscular stuff – running 150m up a 1% grade at XC pace or barefoot strides (actually, these scare me a bit as foot injuries are tough to recover from, but many HS coaches have success with them and to me a 15 or 16 year old foot should be able to do this).

Next 6 weeks: This is where everyone really wants to up the volume before school starts and while I agree that it’s a good time to run more, just be careful you don’t overtrain. Also, the week before school and the first week of school TRAIN LESS – the body can only handle so much stimuli and the change from summer mode to school mode is a stress on your body, even if you’re excited to be back. If you want to read more on this topic get a copy of Hans Selye’s “Stress without Distress” (and don’t get his more popular “The Stress of Life” book unless you’re an MD or have aspirations to be an MD).

Cross Country: Do what your HS coach tells you. If you think you or your parents know more than your HS coach bout training then go meet with your coach and say that; 70% of the time the HS coach will agree with you and will let you or your parents construct the training plan. But don’t question the HS coach because it invariably leads to doubt which invariably leads to you racing slower than you’re capable of. You must have faith in what you’re doing and if that means you think your HS coach is right 90% of the time then just fake it the 10% of the time you think he or she is wrong – do the workout anyway and do it without questioning why you’re doing it. So many serious HS runners sabotage their racing by training hard but only buying into a certain percentage of their coach’s training; you’ve got to be bought in fully.

Mick: Please tell me a little about your camp. BoulderRunningCamps

Jay: Arguably my favorite two weeks of the year are the two weeks of the Boulder Running Camps. I get to talk about training (I do several presentations on exercise physiology and training) with kids who love the sport and are dying to get better. Plus, when I was a coach at CU it was a time where I got to know the student-athletes, who worked as counselors, on a deeper level...and I got to see them excel in a leadership role, which is important because during the year it was easy to just think of them in the context of the athletic hierarchy. But the neat thing about camp this year is that many of the counselors have come to camp as campers and now run collegiately. I'll still tap into the CU team for counselors, but long term we'll easily be able to staff camp with counselors who were campers.

We've always attracted good individuals - despite my meager marketing of the camp. 10 Footlocker finalists and over a dozen DI All-Americans have attended camp. But this year I'm so excited to have both the Naperville North and Albuquerque Academy boy’s teams coming to the team camp. Albuquerque Academy came last year with just their varsity and this year they're bringing over 20 boys and that's exciting. Plus, Adam Kedge is both a friend and a mentor and if I'm honest, I'm selfish with wanting him to come to camp - it get to learn and I get to hang out with someone who is a great educator, great coach and a great father - all of the things I aspire to be.

Mick: I'd like to know about your goals and objectives.

Jay: The goal is simple - to have the camp that has the best balance of fun and learning; we don't do a dance, we don't go swimming, but campers have a blast at camp. Also, I want camp to be a logical week of training and I'm very critical of camps that ask kids to run twice a day, 5 days a row at camp, just to fill time. It's rare that a camper has been training in that rhythm leading up to camp and it's a shame if camp is the starting point of an overuse injury. In the first few years of camp I made it my goal to learn every camper's name: I got to 85 in the third year, but now, with two weeks of camp, that's unrealistic for me* now, yet it's important that each kids gets a lot of individual attention from his or her counselor, as well was the senior staff. We've got a good template now. I just have to be a better businessman with camp in the coming years. I was approached by a shoe company this winter to run a big, fancy camp for them and they said they'd pay me “the same rate I make on a week of your camp.” The problem was, I make 3 times less on camp than they thought I made (and this doesn’t address the biggest issue which is the fact that the shoe company camp would compete directly the Boulder Running Camps). Not the end of the world, but I think I’ve been a little altruistic with camp and now that I’m a father I need to make sure I’m making career decisions that are financially responsible for my family. But again, I didn't start the camp just to make money and now that the camp is established as an elite, premier camp, we can find a way to make more money and sill keep the camp special.

Dean Smith's "A Coach's Life" he talks about knowing every campers name in camps with 300+ kids

Mick: I'd also like to know how the kids enjoy running on the famous CU courses.

Jay: That, along with the fact that our counselors are great people, is the key to camp. You can't fly out to Boulder and run the trails we run, hike to the top of Green Mountain and then do a long run on Magnolia road. Well, I guess you could, but you'd need a knowledgeable tour guide and for most kids that would be unrealistic.