Running the Mile & Practice Priorities

How should basketball programs maximize their offseason training?

NOTE: My friend James Marshall from England has a new book based on his coaching and training. Please check out the introduction and links to buy here:

I ran cross country as a high-school freshman for coaches who have won multiple state championships and developed numerous NCAA Division 1 cross country and long-distance runners, in addition to at least one Olympian. We won our freshman league and section championships during my year. I personally do not have a positive word to say about my coaches for a variety of reasons, but by almost any measure, they knew how to develop and train long-distance runners.   

I joined the team after a summer of playing basketball every day in a summer league, summer camp, or at a gym near my house. I never ran intentionally prior to our first preseason cross country practice, at which I kept pace with junior varsity and varsity runners.

I finished in the top 10 of our very first race, third or fourth on my team, before school even started. It ended up as my season’s best finish and possibly even my best time. The more I ran and the more I trained, the more my progress stagnated.

I was not the best practice runner, and as the season progressed, I disliked the coach more and more for personal reasons. Practices were boring and I would have preferred to play pickup games after school rather than run along the river. The lack of motivation certainly affected my training and performance.

Despite my disinterest, I finished among our team’s top seven at the section meet. The constant running largely maintained my performance throughout the season, but did not improve my fitness or performances. Running long-distance (3-7 miles) did not improve my ability to run medium distance (most freshman races were 2.1 miles) more so than playing basketball.

When I started basketball tryouts, I was not the best conditioned player despite the running volume. It did not take long to regain basketball shape, but sprinting in scrimmages and line drills is not the same as running long distances at a steady, slower speed. My cross country performances may have been better if I had been allowed to play basketball all week and show up for the races on the weekend, but my basketball fitness certainly would have been better if I had played basketball all fall rather than running in a straight line every day.

Legendary track and field coach Dan Pfaff once spoke about his initial coaching experience at a high school. A few basketball players came out for track and field and immediately posted great times in the 400m. Pfaff was excited, as he assumed with his training, they would improve and be contenders. Instead, they never really improved. He said he realized the intermittent nature of basketball, essentially the intervals of maximum speed/work interspersed with recovery in low-intensity activity such as walking or standing, prepared athletes better for the 400m than his longer duration efforts.

I have questioned the common methodology of overloading by distance, not speed. We ran three to five miles at cross-country practice to make the two-mile race feel easier. However, running longer distances at a slower than race-pace speed also trained us to run at slower speeds. Distance events tend to build through volume and taper to speed, whereas I side with building speed, then adding the requisite distance or shortening the rest. The body must learn to run at race pace or faster, not just to run a further distance. An an example, I would train 400m runners with 200m and 300m at a faster pace rather than 600-800m or longer at a slower pace. My plan is not researched, just what makes sense to me intuitively.

As a rower, we had to do some longer rows to learn the technique and teamwork, as we were new to the sport, and there is the very real risk of capsizing the racing shell before the technique and teamwork is mastered (and even thereafter, as we capsized and nearly caught hypothermia the night before our regional finals). Despite this, our most beneficial practices were our 500m and 1000m races (preparing for a 2000m race), not the longer 5k rows.

Basketball players running a 5:30 mile, often required for men’s college basketball players, is around 11 MPH; basketball players reach maximum speeds around 20-22 MPH during games. Is running 11 MPH for a longer distance preparing players physically and physiologically to run 22 MPH during games?

Duke Men’s Basketball posted clips of their one-mile test with the headline “Early morning track grind today.” I wrote about the mile test in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters, Volume 5 after driving past my university’s team running a two-mile test on the track early one morning during graduate school, and further explained my objections to the mile test in Fake Fundamentals.

Two years ago, the state of Arkansas attacked me when I tweeted “It's that time of year when college basketball coaches brag about their players' mile times, and college players post their walks to the gym at 5:30 A.M.” I posted after a former player posted her morning walk on Instagram, and an ACC head coach bragged about his teams’ mile times. The coach was fired before the season ended, and my ex-player’s team shot under 30% from the three-point line. Again. The mile test and early mornings did not contribute to the success others described.

High school and college coaches frequently suggest they lack sufficient practice time; the player above said her team rarely practiced shooting, which clearly showed. They lacked time to practice shooting, possibly the most vital skill in basketball, but spent time running miles on the track. This is a choice. Players’ time and practice time are not unlimited; coaches must determine the things they value most. I value shooting, among other things; many coaches value work and grind on the track.

My last season with a professional club, the strength and conditioning coach asked about conditioning with my teams. I told him conditioning would not be an issue if we practiced correctly. My focus for our strength and conditioning was increasing strength and power and decreasing injuries. He concurred, and lamented the volume of long-distance running demanded by the professional team’s head coach. Coincidence or not, the professional team suffered several early-season injuries, and ultimately the head coach was fired in November because of their poor record. Consequences of his choices or bad luck?

Many suggest a five- to six-minute mile is not difficult for a college basketball player, even without specific training. My cross country experience leads me to concur. However, why bother with the test if there is no challenge? Why use the test if the team does not train for the mile? Testing should measure the progress of current training and inform the plan for subsequent training. What information is provided when the team does not train for the mile?

The mile test persists, as do most fake fundamentals, because few people ask questions. Duke does the mile test, so it must be valid; after all, they are a very successful program. We suffer from survivorship bias, as we copy the winners, but ignore teams who finished in last place while also using the mile test or practicing at 6:00 A.M.

I imagine the mile test originated in the era when coaches were unable to coach their own players during the offseason. People encouraged me to run cross country because I could not practice with my basketball coach until November, and people believed running would prepare me better for basketball than playing basketball (there were other social reasons involved in these suggestions; it was not a 100% basketball decision).

Our high-school coaches, at the time, were prohibited from spring and fall workouts, and we had only about six weeks during the summer. We could not be in the gym with our coach from August 1 until tryouts started in November. Our first game was roughly three weeks from the first day of tryouts (over 100 boys tried out), so offseason conditioning was through a fall sport or on one’s own, and was assumed not to occur during tryouts or preseason practices.

College programs once were not allowed summer workouts. Players were on their own from May when the school year ended until they returned to campus in August/September. The mile test was used by many as a stick to motivate players to work out when they were away from their coaches. It was an easy to measure, easy to manage, easy to explain test.

My very first day as a junior-college assistant coach was the mile test for the players. The head coach prohibited those who failed from practicing until they passed. We had no offseason practice or training, by rule. The test and the practice threat were supposed to motivate players to stay in shape on their own during the summer and return ready to play. It was not a resounding success.

Today, high-school coaches can coach their players year-round in most states, and even in states that limit offseason contact, players work out with trainers and AAU programs year-round. College players take a short break after the season, then usually have a few weeks off between the end of the school and summer school, then another short break between the end of summer school and the start of the school year; they never have a long period without activity. Do players really de-condition so much in the three weeks between the end of the school year and summer school that teams need a motivational stick for them to stay in shape?

A team such as Duke starts with as much talent as anyone. A bad practice or a few wasted hours will not alter the course of their season. The mile test, in that sense, is relatively unimportant. However, what if a player was injured running a mile test for which he has not trained? Several years ago, an NCAA D1 starter suffered a hamstring injury during the mile test. As the saying goes, one practice will not win a championship, but it can cause you to lose one.

Why use the test without training for it? What is the purpose? On the other hand, is training for the mile test the best use of time? Is the training maximizing the offseason for a basketball team? Is grinding on the track a better use of time and energy than speed or power work or more shooting practice?