Salty Talks
Salty Talks is a podcast focused on science-based training for high school distance coaches. Hosted by Coach Jason Saltmarsh, it delivers short, no-fluff episodes covering periodization, athlete development, race strategy, and championship methods. Drawing on 25 years of coaching experience and training philosophies from Lydiard, Daniels, Vigil, and the Norwegian Method, each episode offers a practical insight for use at practice.
Episodes
The XC Workouts That Build a Championship Engine
Three workouts do most of the work in a cross country season. The threshold run that builds the engine, the critical velocity session that builds 5K fatigue resistance, and the eight second hill sprints that build the chassis. How to pace all three without a lactate meter, how to fit them into a week that already has a race in it, and the four things I cut from my program to make room.Show Notes &
The Pre-Race Warmup That Actually Matters
The warmup is not a ritual you perform before the race. It's the first 400 meters of your race plan, and it happens 45 minutes before the gun.Timed for the first meets of the season. Coach Saltmarsh breaks down what a warmup is actually doing physiologically, the one phase almost every high school program skips, and why teams that know the protocol still execute it badly.In this episode:- The
The Speed Reserve Nobody Talks About
Your 5K runners are slow because they can't sprint.Last meet of the season, we needed a body for the 4x400 and someone said the fatal sentence: "He's in shape, put him in the relay." My best miler split 64. A sophomore sprinter who has never voluntarily run more than 600 meters split 52 and made it look easy. Danny was fitter than everyone in that race. He was also, mechanically,
Coaching Female Runners: RED-S and What Coaches Miss
The topic most coaching resources skip. What RED-S is, the warning signs that show up in training data first, real calorie needs for female distance runners, and how to develop athletes without breaking them.SHOW NOTESFull article: Coaching Female Distance Runners, What the Science Actually Says https://coachsaltmarsh.com/coaching-female-distance-runners/When fatigue becomes overtraining: https://
The 4-Year Burnout Crisis
Why so many promising freshmen are done by senior year, and why “more miles always” breaks them. The Zone 2 case for training slower to race faster, and the numbers that back it up.SHOW NOTESFull article: Zone 2 Training for High School Runners, Solving the 4-Year Burnout Crisishttps://coachsaltmarsh.com/zone-2-training-for-high-school-runners-solving-the-4-year-burnout-crisis/What is an easy run?
Coaching Middle School XC
Coach Jason Saltmarsh takes on the job almost nobody plans for: getting handed a middle school team. Most coaches make one of two mistakes with it. They water down the varsity plan, or they treat it as supervised recess. Both cost you the same thing, which is the freshman class that walks in two years later.This episode covers what the job actually is, why minutes beat miles at this age, and how t
Running in the Heat Without Wrecking the Season
A freshman on a July tempo run tells her coach she's fine, she just needs to get used to the heat. She wasn't fine, and she'd just turned a physics problem into a story about being out of shape. With a dangerous heat dome sitting over much of the country this week, Coach Saltmarsh breaks down how to train through summer heat without wrecking the fall season: why sweat only cools you when it evapor
How Katelyn Tuohy Trained
A girl runs 13:21 at Van Cortlandt as a sophomore, and her coach's first thought is how to make sure she's still running in four years. That instinct is the whole story. In this first case-study episode, Coach Saltmarsh walks the full arc of Katelyn Tuohy's career, from seventh-grade national records to a pro contract, and pulls out the specific, stealable decisions two coaches made al
How Josh Kerr Broke the Mile World Record on 70 Miles a Week
Episode 3 — How Josh Kerr Broke the Mile World Record on 70 Miles a Week3:42.66. The first human under 3:43. A 27-year-old record, gone.And Josh Kerr did it on 65 to 70 miles a week, six days out of seven, with two workouts, no double days, and no lactate meter anywhere in sight. Coach Jason Saltmarsh breaks down the training system behind the mile world record, and what it actually teaches high s
How Many Miles Should a Freshman Run?
The number is the wrong question. Here's the right one.Coach Jason Saltmarsh answers the single most-asked question in high school distance coaching, and explains why volume rarely breaks freshmen, intensity does. You'll learn why running age matters more than the birth certificate, the three freshman archetypes that all need different plans, why strides are mandatory and not optional, and how to
31 State Champions: What Actually Works
The hardware isn't the point. The process is.In the first episode of Salty Talks, Coach Jason Saltmarsh opens up about the moment at Derryfield Park that changed how he coaches, and why 31 state championships came from everything around the workout, not the workout itself.You'll hear why the perfect Tuesday session is maybe 20% of your season, what Joe Vigil's Adams State dynasty actually teaches
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