"How High School Teams Train... A Chat With Jeff Arbogast" Bingham High School South Jordan, Utah

Their record speaks for itself. In the past decade alone, five state championships in cross country and two in track. Two cross country national titles as voted by The Harrier magazine. The most recent #1 national ranking came in the 1999 cross country season for the Bingham girls. Bingham's #1 girls team was considered by some to be not only the best in the nation last year but also the best girls cross country team of all time. To what do they owe their success? Well, they certainly couldn't have done it without their coach, Jeff Arbogast. An accomplished rifle shooter in high school and college, Arbogast didn't start running competitively until he was out of college. However, once he caught the running bug, he caught it badly, and has since completed 22 marathons.

Bingham High School Coaches Robby Duncan, Jeff Arbogast and Bill Moore

When he was hired to coach (and teach English) at Bingham High School 20 years ago, he had little formal coaching experience. He was able to draw upon the valuable lessons he learned in his shooting days. "My experience came from having perseverance, dedication and excellence drilled into me from seven years of shooting 4-7 hours a day under extremely competent coaches," said Arbogast. "Coach Arb," as he is affectionately known, used his dedication to eventually become the consummate student of the sport, studying how the top runners train and adapting their programs for high school-level training.

Would you briefly summarize the training plan that the Bingham teams use?

We believe in a four-macrocycle approach to training -- Summer Preparation, Cross Country, Indoor Track and Outdoor Track. We prepare an athlete on a yearly plan which starts with a strong strength and distance base in the early summer, increases speed and decreases mileage through the XC season and indoor track, and culminates with speed-endurance and true speedwork in outdoor.

Our training model parallels the Kenyan idea of building a "building" instead of a "pyramid" -- the traditional Western training model. We use the speed developed in outdoor track and immediately apply it to our next year's distance base, resulting in aerobic efficiency that is substantially greater than the previous year. We try to look at a one-year plan, and also at a four-year plan, exactly as the Africans would train. We avoid the stereotypical burnout by training only two of our goals (speed, resistance, and endurance) at any one time of the year, training in interesting and exciting places away from our school, throwing games and radical workouts into the mix, and constantly working on the psyche of each runner. (I now teach Sports Psychology at the school as well as English).

(For more information on how the Bingham teams train, visit the Bingham Track & Field and Cross Country Web Site)

You give your runners summer mileage goals. Do you worry about overzealousness or overtraining?

We monitor our athletes so closely that no one can exceed the mileage recommendations without our instant awareness. We run together four times per week during the summer... We track and record our 'core' workouts even in the summer, so we know immediately if there is a performance decline indicating overtraining. In general, our athletes really are not near the "high mileage" espoused by many other teams.

Frankly, we do believe that American student-athletes do not train as hard (or perhaps well) as those from other distance running nations. The Bingham philosophy is to try to train our kids to compete at that level... although we temper the African mileage goals with sensible and (hopefully) advanced training concepts.

1999 National Champions The Bingham High School girls cross country team Photo courtesy of the Bingham XC & Track Web Site.

To what do you owe your teams' continued success -- Or, why are your teams so fast? I believe several things keep the teams on top year after year. We have a core of coaches who have not changed in many years, an obvious plus as kids know what to expect and who will be there to work with them. We have an extremely good Parent Booster group, and parent involvement is at an all-time high (they don't meddle ... they just support well!). We are driven by past successes and no team wants to be "the one" to let down the Bingham mystique. But finally, we believe that our training philosophy is unique, advanced, and extremely detailed... Could you tell us a little about the morning runs that your teams do? Our morning runs are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. We lift on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The workouts are structured so that they are "lactic acid-dumps," designed to help the kids get rid of waste products from previous intensive sessions, or to get warmed up for the day's activities. They are required, so we don't worry about getting kids there. They understand they are a part of a tightly choreographed set of workouts and to miss one would mean an irreplaceable part of the training microcycle has been lost. These runs also give kids a chance to talk ... to socialize (fairly tough on the track during a speed-endurance session!) ... and to dream, plan, and set goals.

Could you tell us about your Alta Runs?

The Alta Run is completed every Friday morning throughout the summer except during the week of our altitude camp. We use it as the 'core' of our weekly microcycle over the summer. It is a 10K (boys)/5M (girls) run which starts at 8700 feet and ends up at 9200 feet. It is a gravel road which is uphill for the first half and then downhill. Our girls run the same route, but cut it short at five miles. The run is an answer to the problem of kids running mega "junk" miles over the summer ... they are expected to perform and are monitored. Our Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are intensive power runs of approximately 40 minutes in duration, of which Alta is key. It gives us a repeatable and difficult standard course each week that is run hard. It is important enough that the team awards a free (nice!) shirt to every athlete (including those from other schools who train with us) who runs all, or all but one, Alta Run throughout the summer.

How do you deal with a kid who gets nervous before a race?

We use a variety of sports-psychology strategies, including imagery, relaxation techniques, and pre-event rituals to help our kids deal with "performance lock." Many times our kids will "pre-run" a race in their minds or visualize in a formal sense what they are doing in an event before they even arrive on the site. We firmly believe that the mind is 90% of what happens on the race course, and we like to boost their confidence, trust in coaching, and positive motivation by always looking at the good things in a race.

Each athlete is also required to debrief a race after it is over. We look at the good and perhaps not-so-good things that may have happened, evaluate performance and pre-race rituals, and see if we can reinforce good racing technique and behavior.

With so many fast runners, is competition among team members a problem at Bingham?

Girls and boys definitely react differently to competition amongst the team itself. Boys are a little more competitive while we are always trying to get our girls to understand that the 'competitive' aspect of the team can not only coexist with the 'social', but in most cases actually enhance it! The National #1 team of 1999 was a great example ... what made them unbeatable is that their friendships transcended the racing, and they felt an allegiance to each other to run fast. Substandard effort was never an issue ... they simply ruled it out at the altitude camp and never looked back.

Could you tell us about some of the special activities/events in which your team participates?

With so many special kids to work with our awards banquet is truly an emotional and intensive affair. The kids have given so much to make themselves into better citizens as well as athletes, sacrificed so much, and grown so much, that the evening is very special. We recognize each athlete with a participation award if they complete the season, and then spend about twice our annual budget just on the awards we distribute to all the team members for various performance-related issues. Our parents debut the team video of the year (at least in its pre-production rough form), we have school administration and all parents there, and we couple it with dinner at the school.

The 24-Hour Run is perhaps the single most exported concept we have developed. After the season is over, we have kids garner pledges of a certain amount per mile then run 1-mile segments in order around the track, relay style. We have three groups (20-30 each) of the team there, starting at 2:00pm on a Friday and ending at 6:00pm, then 6:00pm until 10:00pm, finishing up with 10:00pm until 2:00am. But ... the fun part is that you get BOTH times around the clock! If you run from 2:00 until 6:00 in the afternoon ... you also come back for 2:00 until 6:00 in the MORNING! So, each kid is here twice in a 24-hour period. The lights are on in the stadium, the parents provide a buffet table in an alcove off of our gym, the kids sleep over on the gym floor, play games, and hang out together. It is as much a bonding experience as it is a fundraiser ... but we routinely collect over $10,000 in one evening. That buys a lot of team shirts! Our team record is 265 miles, one after another, in the 24-hour period. That averages around 5:45 per mile for combined boys and girls, throughout the entire 24 hours. Each pledge sheet may have from 50 cents to a dollar (plus) on it ... times 265 for each kid. It adds up to a super event and a great fundraiser.

We also do a team varsity retreat in August at a condo in Park City (Utah) in order to harden our "battle unit" of the top-7 for the season (although the kids may change slightly as the season progresses). We have an overnighter with an easy run and sleepover, monitored by parents. It is a special event.

On a daily basis, we sponsor our "Breakfast Club" during the academic year. I have several cabinets at the back of our running room which are dedicated to cereal and toaster-pastry storage, then the cafeteria workers come early to set up a milk stand so the kids can drop off a quarter into a cup and take a milk on the way up to the room from every morning workout. We have a battery of toasters and a microwave in the room. Kids eat, socialize, study, watch running videos, or ask coaches questions until they leave for 1st period at 7:20am. If they would like quiet study instead, one of our assistant coaches, also an English teacher, has a quiet room for those preparing for tests, etc. The aroma of toasters and breakfast draws in student spectators all the time.

It is clear that you are very dedicated to what you're doing. How do you find the time and energy to do it all and what motivates you as a coach? There are times when the pressure of just keeping up with the program weighs upon all of us as coaches, but the understanding that there are always at least three of us working together to get the tasks accomplished helps. Coach Bill Moore and Coach Robby Duncan would be very competent leading any national-class program all by themselves, yet we have the three of us working together ... a very good combination.

But perhaps the key to the entire program is my wife, Debra Arbogast. Not only does she maintain the website and its updates (it is common after a meet to see her downstairs at the computer at home at 3:00am so the kids can see their results by 5:30am if they want to get on any computer at school!). She also is a sounding board for parents, athletes, and sometimes the administration, keeps the team charged with new ideas, and allows me to dedicate a large portion of our time together on behalf of the kids on the team. Most of the national cross country press and gurus know her ... and wish they could hire her away! However ... we get her services, time, and love for free!

The motivation for me is seeing a Special-Education student so proud of racing in a Bingham uniform that they can't sit down after a race ... knowing the first kid from a family of six graduates of our high school has now gone to college, courtesy of a distance scholarship ... receiving a letter or note from a student-athlete or a graduate telling me that something we did really had a profound effect on their lives ... or having a "talk" with any of our athletes, listening to their problems and always trying to point out the positives or the silver lining. It's a very rare day when something we do as teachers and coaches fails to reach at least several students in a big way.