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Jack Daniels and the Center for High Altitude Training at NAU


Stephanie Lowe
October 21, 2007

Jack Daniels, head distance coach at the Center for High Altitude Training at Northern Arizona University, trains and consults runners from all over the world. Prior to coming to Flagstaff, Daniels was named NCAA Division III Coach of the Century, three-time NCAA Division I National Coach of the Year, and was named World’s Best Coach by “Runner’s World” magazine. Throughout his career, Daniels has worked with many successful athletes, including Jim Ryun, Joan Benoit Samuelson, Peter Gilmore, Amy Hastings, Ryan and Alicia Shay, the McMillan Elite Team and many others.

Had Daniels been born a talented runner, he may not have become the world-renowned coach he is today. His experiences with other sports eventually led him to running, which he said is often the case in the United States. Daniels said the main reasons U.S. athletes begin running are to get in shape for other sports or because they were cut from other sports. He said one of the reasons Kenyans are so successful with running is because they see running as heroic.

“We need to make running attractive,” Daniels suggested, by increasing media coverage of the sport.

Daniels began his athletic career with swimming in high school and college at the University of Montana, where he received an undergraduate degree in physical education and math. While in college, he was a member of the ROTC rifle team. Daniels then went on to compete with the Army in the triathlon, which consisted of pistol shooting, swimming, and running. His success in the triathlon led him to join the United States Modern Pentathlon Team. The modern pentathlon combines fencing, pistol shooting, swimming, equestrian show jumping, and cross country running. Although Daniels became a two-time Olympic medalist in the modern pentathlon, his weakest event was running. He wanted to find out why, so he decided to study the sport.

“I wanted to be a runner,” Daniels said.

Daniels began coaching cross country and track and field at Oklahoma City University. Despite the program’s success, it was dropped after four years in favor of tennis. Daniels then went on to coach Peru’s National Track Team, where he met USATF Hall of Fame coach Lawrence “Larry” Snyder, who he said taught him a great deal about coaching.

“Larry was a really nice guy and a good coach to be around,” Daniels described.

After a year in Peru, Daniels returned to school to earn his PhD in exercise physiology at the University of Wisconsin. While at UW, he researched altitude’s effects on athletic performance and served as an altitude consultant to the 1968 U.S. Olympic track and field team.

Daniels then coached at the University of Texas for three years, but was unhappy with the track program at the time and left to teach at the University of Hawaii for a year. When Title IX allowed women’s participation in collegiate sports, Daniels returned to UT for seven years as the head coach for women’s track and field, UT is also where he met his wife, Nancy.

For the next six years, Daniels joined Nike to continue his research, testing the Athletics West distance team. After the team disbanded, he wanted to return to coaching. At first, finding a college coaching job was difficult for him since he had not coached for several years. Luckily, the State University of New York at Cortland required coaches to have PhDs, which was an advantage for Daniels. He was hired for the job and coached men’s and women’s cross country and track at SUNY until he joined the Center for High Altitude Training in 2005. The center accommodates athletes to train at altitude. Daniels said runners, swimmers, cyclists, triathletes, and rowers from many countries come to the center to train.

“I don’t coach them all,” Daniels explained, but their coaches send him the athletes’ workouts and he answers their training questions.

Daniels said he likes the weather in Flagstaff. The high altitude, dry air, low humidity, and warm temperatures make it an ideal training location.

Although Daniels coaches both men and women, he treats them the same. He said the only difference is that women seem more enthusiastic and willing to learn. After testing female runners over the years, he has found that despite having a lower VO2 max (maximum capacity to transport and utilize oxygen during exercise), a woman is just as efficient as a man and can handle the same amount of training.

“I don’t use a different approach,” Daniels said.

Rather than finding differences between males and females, Daniels believes in training on an individual basis. Some runners benefit from altitude, while others prefer sea level. Joan Benoit Samuelson, 1984 Olympic gold medalist in the marathon, is one example of a runner who had better success training in her home state of Maine at sea level. Daniels believes that a runner will benefit the most by training in a comfortable environment.

“There’s no one way to do it,” Daniels said, “Training should be enjoyable and rewarding.”

Daniels teaches a set of basic training principles that allows runners to gradually adapt to stress. The first principle is explains how the body reacts to stress, and that it needs rest to rebuild strength. Also, specificity of training is important. This means that everything an athlete does in training should contribute to the ultimate goal. However, over-training is detrimental and must be avoided.

Each specific stress produces a specific result, so training should be adjusted to avoid injury. One way to avoid injury is to understand the rate-of-achievement principle. This principle encourages runners to follow a weekly plan to safely increase their mileage and workout loads without overtraining. It is best to experiment with different plans to find what works the most for the individual’s personal limits.

Daniels said to avoid injuries at all cost. A major cause of injuries is poor nutrition.

“If you lose a few pounds of unnecessary fat, you will get faster,” Daniels explained.

However, since the body can only react at a certain rate, runners often do not recognize when they are losing too much weight, or worse, have an eating disorder. Daniels said that a lower body weight does not always lead to better performance in the long run if there is muscle loss. It is more beneficial to be strong than too thin.

“As soon as you lose muscle, you lose aerobic power,” Daniels said.

Weight-loss also correlates with the principle of diminishing return, which basically says more is not always better beyond a certain amount. The principle states that adding more mileage (or even losing more weight) does not produce equal percentages of improvement in competitive fitness. For example, increasing mileage from 10 to 20 miles per week will have not have the same effect as doubling mileage from 40 to 80 miles per week. Athletes should understand this principle of accelerating setbacks, which states that the risk for setbacks, such as injuries, increases with the training load. If a runner experiences a setback that causes an interruption in training, the ease of maintenance principle explains that some fitness is still retained.

Daniels’ training plan consists of base building, marathon-pace training, threshold training, interval training, and repetition training. However, the plan is different depending on fitness level and race distance. Daniels has written several training articles, but remains most famous for his 1998 book, “Daniels’ Running Formula,” which outlines his training programs for 800 meters to the marathon distance. For more information on the Center for High Altitude Training, in Flagstaff, Arizona, visit hastc.nau.edu


Photos from mcmillanelite.com (Flagstaff mountains), hastc.nau.edu (Daniels), and runnersweb.com (Daniels' Running Formula).

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#5
Female Reader   October 25, 2007 at 2:38pm
I love your articles each week, they are always on very interesting topics. Keep it up!
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#4
Sdsd   October 23, 2007 at 6:13am
Stephanie Lowe is txRunnrGrl on letsrun.com.
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#3
Cara Hawkins   October 22, 2007 at 3:44am
Great article, I see improvement in them every week. Your articles are just a great way to start off my week each week.
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#2
Reader   October 22, 2007 at 2:59am
good stuff!
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#1
Cheryl   October 21, 2007 at 6:55pm
Keep it up!
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