By Kathy Butler
A two-time Olympian, former national record holder, and 5-time NCAA Champion while at University of Wisconsin, Kathy Butler is head coach of Run Boulder AC, a post-collegiate training group in Boulder, CO, which has had three athletes compete internationally for Team USA and multiple athletes compete at Olympic Trials and National Championships. Kathy also coaches at Nederland High School, which has had athletes win 12 state titles. She is a USATF Level 1, 2, and 3 instructor and advisor. More info at kathy-butler.com.
Humans, including human female athletes, are diverse. However, since most female athletes are coached as part of a team, individuals must be coached within a group setting. A synergy among the individuals should be created, which includes taking a humanistic approach to coaching based on caring, mutual respect, and trust. These factors must be present first so the technical elements of training can be used to achieve high performance. There are three key areas to focus on:
1. The team backbone of support, appreciation for each other, and opportunity for growth and individuality.
2. The technical weaving of individual physiological needs, using an individual approach within the team environment.
3. “Gender-collaborative training:” how female athletes can work together while utilizing the male athletes on the team for pacing and motivation.
Coaching environments include single sex, predominantly one sex, or fully integrated male and female. Truly effective group training always starts with a plan for the group and each individual athlete as well as a coaching philosophy that fits the situation. Every training environment is different, and your group dynamics will vary from situation to situation. The coach’s approach to the group will significantly affect how the athletes are impacted by the group.
Defining key roles is very helpful in a group training situation. Formal roles, such as coach, massage therapist, athletic trainer, IT consultant, and even social media manager all may be labeled and defined roles within the group. Thinking about your role as a coach within the group dynamic can be useful for seeing how everyone fits together as a team.
How would you define yourself as coach? Creator of training, decision maker on training location and time, timer of interval workouts, analysis of results? These are the more easily defined parts of the role as coach. What are the other roles? Confidant, sounding board, mentor, unofficial dietician, and amateur psychologist are all possible roles you might take on. As you go through your coaching career, mentally or physically write down any roles you find yourself in and think about your approach to them. It can also be useful to ask the athlete how she sees you as coach and what roles she finds you fulfilling.
Informal roles can be more fluid from day to day, but roles such as social coordinator (coffee/brunch organizer), birthday reminder, time keeper who makes sure everything starts on time, and team re-grouper can be very valuable, as they keep everyone together and feeling part of the team [1]. The cheerleader, the scientist, aid station attendant, therapist, and the yoga instructor are all additional roles that different people take on within the group [3].
The final set of roles are the ones that are specific to the training sessions. Each individual athlete has a defined role in terms of her specific training for the day, and the paces or heart rates for that training. Each athlete should also be clear on how her training relates to other athletes within the group. Sometimes this will be discussed by the athletes during warmup and guesses will be made on how the group will arrange and work together. The coach should check in with each athlete before the session starts and talk to the group to make it clear how everything will work for everyone. The technical side of group training requires instructions and guidance on how the group can work together despite differing effort levels, duration of reps, or goals for that training session, microcycle, or goal race.
There is great value in recognizing and curating all these roles. Taking time to think about how different people contribute can be valuable, especially during times of change within a group. For high school and college teams, these changing times are obvious, as seniors leave and freshmen join, but within all groups or teams there are always changes over time. Considering the impact of new individuals or how existing team members might step into previously filled roles is a valuable part of the art of coaching.
Technical aspects of combining training for a group can really test the coach’s ability to work through his or her understanding of training concepts. Knowing the purpose of each workout, each week of training, and each macrocycle, as well as the goals and current fitness of each athlete are necessary to weave the training of different athletes together.
Taking athlete PRs as an example, the chart below shows where there may be some commonalities for training paces and where training would need to be different. The matched colors show areas in which the pace is potentially close enough to adjust a workout to work together.
Based on the chart, here’s how the athletes could be combined to benefit from each other in training.
Combined Training Session Examples
1. Athlete 1: 6 x 400m in 64-65 sec with 90 sec recovery, 8 x 200m in 30-32 sec with 45-60 sec recovery
Athlete 2: 6 x 400m in 64-65 sec with 90 sec recovery, 6 x 400m in 64-65 with 60 sec recovery
Athlete 3: 5 x 300m in 48-50 sec with 1:45 recovery, 6 x 200m in 31-32 sec with 45-60 sec recovery
Athlete 4: Has a more endurance focus so does a different workout this day
Analysis of this training session shows a range of adaptations taking place. For Athlete 1, the session is an intensive tempo workout, working on the ability to process lactate but also getting into anaerobic glycolytic work. For Athlete 2, the session is a VO2max workout. Athlete 3 has an anaerobic glycolytic emphasis workout. Analyzing the individual workout for each athlete is important for planning the rest of the training.
2. Athlete 1: 6-8 x 1,000m in 3:00 with 3:00 recovery (VO2max)
Athlete 2: 6 x 1,600m in 4:48 with 1:10-1:15 recovery (lactate threshold)
Athlete 3: 6 x 800m in 2:24 with 3:30 recovery (VO2max)
Athlete 4: 8 x 1,200m in 3:36 with 2:24 recovery (aerobic power, up to 10K race pace)
3. Athlete 1: 3-4 x 5 km at marathon pace with 2 min recovery (lactate/aerobic threshold)
Athlete 2: 17-mile long run (aerobic threshold)
Athlete 3: 2 x 5 km threshold run (lactate threshold)
Athlete 4: 15-mile long run with 3 x 5 km at slightly faster than long-run pace (aerobic threshold)
Coaches should consider that female athletes can take a little longer to develop, especially through the longer distances. Greater care needs to be taken to ensure fueling needs are met and menstrual cycles are maintained, as these can be more common pitfalls for female athletes. A female athlete’s training age may be the same as that of a male athlete, but she may still be physically developing and take longer to reach her performance potential.
High school teams, on which boys and girls can train together, can also take advantage of different athletes’ development levels. Coaches need to keep in mind the training age, maturity level, and athlete’s race distance preference when combining training sessions.
Combined Training Example High School
Track Season Pre-Competition, each athlete’s individual workout is listed by letter with the sections they are joining other athletes mentioned within the workout.
a. Freshman Girl (goal 2:09) – Set 1: 3 x 400m in 82-84 sec with 80-90 sec recovery, joining Senior Girl 1 (VO2max) Set 2: 6 x 200m at 800m pace with 60-90 sec recovery jog across the field, joining Sophomore Boy (anaerobic glycolytic)
b. Senior Girl 1 (goal 5:29, 11:29) – 2 sets of 4 x 400m, starting in 82 sec, bringing down to 78 sec by the end with 80-90 sec recovery (aerobic power becoming anerobic glycolytic toward the end)
c. Sophomore Boy (goal 2:06, 4:35) – Set 1: 3 x 400m in 74-76 sec with 80-90 sec recovery, joining Senior Girl 2 (VO2max) Set 2: 6 x 300m at mile pace with 100m walk recovery (anaerobic glycolytic)
d. Senior Girl 2 (goal 9:59) – 2 sets of 6 x 400m in 74-76 sec with 80-90 sec recovery & 400m jog between sets (VO2max)
This pre-competition training session allows all four athletes to train with a teammate for a good portion of their workout while getting the individual stimulus they need.
The benefits of genders training together necessitates “gender-collaborative training” [5]. There are often males on the team who can help their female teammates with their training (and on teams with talented female athletes, there can be females who can help the males!). While male athletes often have their own goals and cannot always be put into the role of “pacemaker” for female athletes, when the coach can view the training group as a collaboration, everyone benefits. Gender-collaboration raises the level of all athletes within the group.
Gender-collaborative training allows for a wider variety of roles to be filled within the team. Research has found that when training is gender-collaborative compared to gender-segregated, “Players who had experienced gender-collaborative workouts unanimously supported them, as did some players who had never experienced them. Furthermore, data from the ethnographic components support the value of this training—not only leading to better workouts, but strengthening team cohesion and men’s attitudes toward women’s athletic and leadership abilities. When participants spoke about this training, their narratives also focused far less on questions of gender difference and instead highlighted women’s strength, power, or leadership skills” [5]. Endurance training groups are in a unique situation to take advantage of these gender-collaborative effects in a day-to-day training environment.
Predominantly female training groups can benefit from dedicated male training partners as well as male training partners with their own training goals. Using a scientific foundation to develop a plan for each individual, then interconnecting the training together, allows the coach to develop a collaborative and supportive training environment [2] in which all athletes can thrive.
References
1. Franken R., Bekhuis, H., & Tolsma, J. Running together: how sports partners keep you running. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 16(4):643150, 2022.
2. Zentgraf, K., Musculus, L., Reichert, L., et al. Advocating individual-based profiles of elite athletes to capture the multifactorial nature of elite sports performance. Scientific Reports, 14:26351, 2024.
3. Plateau, C.R., Anthony, J., Clemes, S.A., et al. Prospective study of beginner running groups: psychological predictors and outcomes of participation. Behavioral Medicine, 50(1):55-62, 2024.
4. Woolley, A.W., Chow, R.M., Mayo, A.T., et al. Collective attention and collective intelligence: the role of hierarchy and team gender composition. Organization Science, 34(3):1315-1331, 2022.
5. Ogilvie, M.F. & McCormack, M. Gender-collaborative training in elite university sport: challenging gender essentialism through integrated training in gender-segregated sports. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 56(8):1172-1188, 2020.
