Magness & Marcus on Coaching

By Steve Magness

Health Sports & Recreation Outdoor Fitness & Nutrition

What's Magness & Marcus on Coaching about?

Coaches Steve Magness and Jon Marcus team up to bring you an insider's view on coaching. Taking you inside the thoughts and conversations that usually occur behind the scenes. They bring a diverse background having both worked with athletes at the collegiate and professional level. They hope to bring a mixture of science, old-fashioned wisdom, and a touch of philosophy to help understand the process of coaching and maximizing endurance performance. For more information visit www.ScienceOfRunning.com

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Episode 208: Freaks of Natu...

06.05.2023

It’s time to talk about the outliers. We cover the craziest workouts, the most mind blowing bounce backs, and much more of athletes who are just freaks of nature. This isn’t just a highlight reel of crazy athletes, it’s understand ...

Magness & Marcus on Coaching episodes:

06.05.2023 Episode 208: Freaks of Nature: The Best are Different It’s time to talk about the outliers. We cover the craziest workouts, the most mind blowing bounce backs, and much more of athletes who are just freaks of nature. This isn’t just a highlight reel of crazy athletes, it’s understand ...
05.29.2023 Episode 207: Instant Offense: Things you can do today to be better tomorrow In this episode, we discuss recovery, priming, potentiation and other things that we can do to enhance our performance in both the short and long run. This one goes into preparing to race at our best. What can we do ...
05.22.2023 Episode 206: Resiliency: Bounce Back after you bomb! We’ve all been there. A tough race or competition that didn’t go well. How do you bounce back from failure? In this episode we provide the science and tools to get back on track after a rough race. Steve & ...
05.15.2023 Episode 205: Risk Tolerance: What is it and how to build it? We can either train ourselves or athletes to take appropriate risks or to shy away. In this episode, we talk about how to move towards discomfort and challenge. Steve & Jon Check out the Scholar Program The Scholar Program is ...
04.24.2023 Episode 204: Polarized Training vs. Moderate Intensity Training: When, Where, and Why for each? Should we follow the 80/20 training model, or go all-in on the threshold model? In this episode we break down the different training models, explaining when to use them, and when to put them on the backburner. Steve & Jon ...
04.17.2023 Episode 203: Do What Works and Don’t Do What Doesn’t! What actually works in training runners? There’s so much nonsense out there. Jon and Steve cut through the BS, and get at what works and what doesn’t when it comes to coaching runners. Steve & Jon Check out the Scholar ...
04.10.2023 Episode 202: Genius Revealed: Igloi- The Master Coach You Know Nothing About Mihaly Igloi is one of the most underrated coaches in history. In this episode, we dive into his coaching genius, and how modern science has validated many of his ideas. If you are interested in learning more about Igloi, we ...
03.27.2023 Episode 201: Establishing Culture and Setting Boundaries Are you setting a performance or mastery-based culture? In this episode, we talk about setting standards versus boundaries, and the dangers of going too far toward an outcome-obsessed team? Steve & Jon Visit our Sponsor The Scholar Program is our ...
03.20.2023 Episode 200: Experimenting On Ourselves As Coaches Do you try out workouts before you give them to athletes? In this episode, we talk about the importance of experimenting on yourself as a coach. It’s not about the speed of the workout, but that doing something difficult gives ...
03.13.2023 Episode 199: Winning the Self-Improvement Game Often in coaching, we obsess over the physiological and the physical. We go over and over the workouts. In this episode, we go in the other direction, talking about holistic improvement as a person. It’s time to talk about the ...
02.27.2023 Episode 198: Mastering the Art of People. How to Successfully Navigate Working with Different Personality Types Coaching is the people business! We have to help individuals see their capabilities and put them on the journey towards achieving their potential. But, people are complex. Sometimes we don’t always click. In this episode, we talk about the hardest ...
02.20.2023 Episode 197: The Finishing Kick: How to Develop It How do we improve the finishing kick? In this week’s episode, we give you a framework for developing your athlete’s kicks, along with specific workouts designed to help out. We cover everything from the energetics to the muscle recruitment pattern ...
02.13.2023 Episode 196: Starting from Scratch. How to Grow a Successful Program from the Ground Up! What do you do when you take over a program that’s in need of help? In this weeks episode, Jon and Steve go over how to change the culture, what to focus on, how to get people to join the ...
02.06.2023 Episode 195: The Art and Science of Speed Endurance Workouts What is speed endurance? In this weeks episode, Jon and Steve go over this vital but often misunderstood ingredient to your training. Steve & Jon Visit our Sponsor The Scholar Program is our one-stop-shop for all things coaches education. And ...
01.23.2023 Episode 194: Champions in The Making- Winners are everywhere. They just need coaching. Arthur Lydiard once said, ‘There are champions everywhere.’ And for good reason, his most famous pupils were local athletes. In this episode, we explore how to give your athletes a chance to reach their potential. And why it’s so important ...
01.16.2023 Episode 193: General Vs. Specific Training? This week we break down a classification for training, from general to specific. What is general training? How does it set the foundation for training? How does each level of training connect to the next? We break it all down! ...
01.09.2023 Episode 192: You Don’t Need As Much Vo2Max Work as You Think! Vo2max work! 800s at 3k pace, 1ks at 5k down to 2-mile pace. We all know the workouts. We include them all of the time. In some training programs, especially for high-school, they are the bread and butter of the ...
01.02.2023 Episode 191: Strengthening Your Coaching Weakness What do you suck at as a coach? In this episode, we go over identifying your weaknesses and shoring them up to allow you to become the best coach that you can be. Steve & Jon Visit our Sponsor The ...
11.28.2022 Episode 190: See God Workouts: Reckless or Indispensable Have you ever done a workout where you went to the absolute well? That’s a ‘see God’ workout. Going until there is nothing left. An exploration of what you are capable of. These workouts are meant to shift your perspective. ...
11.21.2022 Episode 189: The Norwegian Model of Lactate Threshold Training Norway has had a lot of endurance success lately. From the Ingebrigtsen’s to triathletes winning major events, the small country of Norway has taken the endurance world by storm. We break down their threshold-influenced training, going all the way back ...
11.14.2022 Episode 188: Updating Outdated Coaching Ideas Jon and Steve take on popular ideas that have stuck around but need some updating. From energy system domination to various forms of training, we take you down a rabbit hole of what needs to be updated in the running ...
10.24.2022 Episode 187: The Power of the Barbell Strategy: Why protecting against the downside will protect the upside In Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile, he introduces the concept of the barbell strategy. At one end of the barbell, you’ve got low-risk low-reward, don’t he other end high risk, high reward. Taleb believes that you stack a bunch on the ...
10.17.2022 Episode 186: The New Laws of Lactate Dynamics and Its Implications for Training “Lactic Acid” is horribly misunderstood. It’s been cast as a demon for far too long. It’s time to set the record straight. In this episode, Steve and Jon break down new research that shows lactate’s true rule in the body. ...
10.10.2022 Episode 185: Marathon Training: Surveying the Little Things That Can Add Up to Big Results We all know about the big things you have to worry about for marathon training: the long run, the mileage, the longer tempo runs, but what are the small things that make a difference? In this episode we go over ...
09.28.2022 Bonus Episode: The Mike Smith Tapes- Part 1 An exclusive interview with NAU coach Mike Smith! This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Part 2 and 3 are exclusive to our running scholar program. If you’d like to listen to them (and get access to courses, ...
09.19.2022 Episode 184: Fitness Measurement Fallacy Does your belief in your fitness feel like a ping pong ball, bouncing back and forth wildly, dependent on whether your latest workout went well or not? In this episode we cover the fallacy of equating a single workout or ...
09.12.2022 Episode 183: The Secrets to Becoming a Great Coach What’s it take to become a great coach? In this episode, we breakdown three essential skills for great coaching:1. Thinking and Observing 2. Problem Solving 3. Collaboration If you haven’t yet, check out Steve’s new book: Do Hard Things: Why ...
09.05.2022 Episode 182: What We Learned. In this episode, we reflect on what we’ve learned over nearly two decades of coaching. What did we think was important but quickly realized wasn’t? What actually matters in preparing athletes to perform? We cover all of this and more ...
08.22.2022 Episode 181: Flux Training: The Magic Bullet Workout? What’s new in training? Not much! But, alternations, flux training, lactate dynamics, natural fartleks…or whatever you call it is underutilized in modern training. In this episode, we break down the physiology, psychology, and history of emphasizing and manipulating the recovery ...
08.15.2022 Episode 180: Avoiding Training Dead Ends: Methods to Restoring the Winning Balance Training is about balancing opposing demands: speed and endurance. What happens when you mess up the balance? It’s often a disaster. In this episode, Jon and Steve go through how to find the balance point, and what to do to ...
08.08.2022 Episode 179: The 10 Timeless Guiding Principles of Distance Running Training We often get lost in the details. Arguing over the final 1%, whether we should run at lactate threshold or critical velocity? Whether 200s or 300s are best for milers? In this episode we outline 10 timeless principles that stand ...
08.01.2022 Episode 178: Running Half Truths: Advice to Be Ignored Every sport has the items that many of us seem to believe, that are ingrained in the history of the sport, that have no foundation or backing. In this episode, we explore those half-truths. We’re aided by a pamphlet written ...
07.18.2022 Episode 177: Sympathetic Overdrive- How to Get Out of Stressing Out! Athletes stress out…a lot! And once you are in stressed mode, it’s hard to get out of it. You can’t sleep hours after competing because your mind is still racing and your body is still buzzing. You can’t let go ...
07.14.2022 BONUS: Sink or Swim, Survive or Thrive Welcome to this special bonus issue. Steve does his best revisionist history impression, telling you the story of Paul Bear Bryant’s famous Junction Boys football camp, while discussing the origins of ‘old school toughness.’ This is adapted from his new ...
07.11.2022 Episode 176: Individualizing Training in Larger Settings Individualizing training is easy at the professional level. You’ve got a handful of athletes, all very good, and can adjust as needed. In larger settings, it’s much more difficult. The athlete’s abilities are spread out, there’s only one of you, ...
07.04.2022 Episode 175: Fast Losers-Racing vs. Time Trialing Racing is a skill. How do we get comfortable in a pack? Running from the front, or perhaps stuck in the back? How do you deal with the rising tension of a tactical race? Steve and Jon discuss all of ...
06.20.2022 Episode 174: How to Do Hard Things: The Art of Suffering How do you handle pain, fatigue, and discomfort? Do you look for a hole to step into or do you work your way through? In this episode, we discuss Steve’s new book Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong ...
06.13.2022 Episode 173: The Difference Between Extraordinary and Mediocre What game are you playing? We all may think we are all running the same race. A 1,500m race in high school is the same as in college, and the same as in the pro’s. That’s incorrect. In this week’s ...
06.06.2022 Episode 172: The Importance of Leaving Room to Grow One piece of advice I always give coaches is: Always have somewhere to go. The younger your athletes, the more important this is. We should leave room to develop and grow. In this episode, we take on the debate on ...
05.31.2022 Episode 171: The Headcase phenomenon: Stop Blaming Athletes for Poor Performance “He’s a headcase!” We’ve all heard it as coaches. Maybe we’ve even said it. In this episode, Jon and Steve discuss why this is the wrong approach to take. It’s a self-limiting mindset, that allows the coach to blame the ...
05.16.2022 Episode 170: Everyone is an Outlier We are all an experiment of 1! We often talk about individualization in coaching. In this episode, we talk about the contrast between applying your training program to a group, versus adapting your training program to the individual. We discuss ...
05.09.2022 Episode 169: Developing Performance Flexibility: How to prepare adaptive athletes to deliver when it counts If running is going bad do you feel crushed? In this episode, we discuss the importance of letting go, of diversifying your sense of identity, in order to free you up to perform. Steve & Jon Visit our Sponsor The ...
05.02.2022 Episode 168: The Dunning-Krueger Effect on Steroids: How a Narrow World View Holds You and Your Athletes Back How does your viewpoint impact your coaching? In this episode, we discuss how sometimes we get comfortable employing the same style of training, and it makes it where we aren’t open to considering or exploring new ideas. In this episode, ...
04.18.2022 Episode 167: What’s worth doing even if you fail? — How to be brave, take risks, stretch your comfort zone, and avoid manufacturing certainty. Often, in racing we play it safe. We don’t take the risk. We focus on times instead of competing. In this episode, we talk about how to be brave in racing. How do we train athletes to take appropriate risks, ...
04.11.2022 Episode 166: Everything we got wrong coaching Women. And a few things we got right. In this episode, we take on an important but difficult topic: the differences between coaching men and women. In this episode, we cover differences in biology and psychology, and how that impacts what you do in training. From handling bodily ...
04.04.2022 Episode 165: The Rocky Road to the Top: Embrace the Mess of Training. Training is messy. Progress is not linear. In this episode, we get real. We talk about the messiness of training. How do we handle setbacks, what do we do when things go wrong, and when a workout is going rough? ...
03.21.2022 Episode 164: How much of your training should not be running? In the 1960’s Percy Cerutty made the claim that 1/3 of your training should be non-running. Does this hold up or not as a useful heuristic? In this episode, we examine the training aspects outside of running to see where ...
03.14.2022 Episode 163: Biggest Bang for Your Buck: Training and Workouts that Build You Up Without Breaking You Down What workouts give you the biggest bang for your buck? In this episode, we go through the best workouts for the mid-distance, track distance, and long distance races. What workout has the biggest bang for your buck for aerobic or ...
03.07.2022 Episode 162: Dumbification Immunization — How to not be a dumb coach & why it’s important How do you know what’s right? Do you buy into a particular program or coaching style, neglecting anything that runs counter? Or do you get lost in the complexity of training? In this episode, we go back through history, looking ...
02.21.2022 Episode 161: How to become a Nuanced Thinker and level up your coaching Too often in coaching, we get stuck. We tie ourselves to one training method, one training system. We approach things from an energy systems model, neglecting the biomechanical, neuromuscular, or psychological. In this episode we discuss how to get unstuck. ...

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