Pretending You Know What You Are Doing

It’s a stressful time of the year for a coach. All the best laid plans devised last autumn for the training year ahead are soon to be tested as the outdoor track and field season is upon us. The evenings are getting longer, the recoveries are getting longer, the training times are getting faster and athletes and coaches are carefully selecting when and where they will be first dipping their toe into the water and picking their season opener.

In fact, many will have chosen their season opener and their whole season ahead of them has been laid out. It’s a time for great optimism too. The coach reminds the athlete how great they have trained this winter by recalling that session on Christmas Eve when everyone else was gone for a few cosy pints or the February night when they trained in a blizzard that would have terrified Tom Crean on an Antarctic ice shelf. But there is always the doubt that no matter how well the athletes have trained or how well you have structured the training that now that its business time it can all go horribly wrong.

Vern Gambetta says that no one session can make an athlete but one session can break an athlete. That’s most relevant at this stage of the season and a coach must ensure that they reduce the volume sufficiently and increase the intensity so that their athlete is lining up in that season opener feeling good. A bad season opener can have grave consequences. Have I trained too much or have I trained too little? The doubts may start creeping in and the coach and athlete may lose the focus and go chasing or playing catch-up in training and undo all the hard work and planning of the previous seven months. Patience is required. An athlete and coach must be aware that no races of consequences are won in April so there is no point peaking there and that the races to win or peak in are run in July and August when the hardware is handed out. However you could say a bad season opener can also narrow the focus and act as a motivator. I suppose it depends on whether the glass is half full or half empty.

It’s all a balancing act where mistakes will ultimately be made and hopefully learned from. The best you can hope for as a coach is that those mistakes are small and nobody, especially your athletes, notices them.

The domestic track and field season along with many coaches and athletes making their seasonal debuts kicks off this Sunday in Cork with the Leevale Open Sports. Let the fun begin.The evenings are getting longer, the recoveries are getting longer, the training times are getting faster and athletes and coaches are carefully selecting when and where they will be first dipping their toe into the water and picking their season opener.

In fact, many will have chosen their season opener and their whole season ahead of them has been laid out. It’s a time for great optimism too. The coach reminds the athlete how great they have trained this winter by recalling that session on Christmas Eve when everyone else was gone for a few cosy pints or the February night when they trained in a blizzard that would have terrified Tom Crean on an Antarctic ice shelf. But there is always the doubt that no matter how well the athletes have trained or how well you have structured the training that now that its business time it can all go horribly wrong.

Vern Gambetta says that no one session can make an athlete but one session can break an athlete. That’s most relevant at this stage of the season and a coach must ensure that they reduce the volume sufficiently and increase the intensity so that their athlete is lining up in that season opener feeling good. A bad season opener can have grave consequences. Have I trained too much or have I trained too little? The doubts may start creeping in and the coach and athlete may lose the focus and go chasing or playing catch-up in training and undo all the hard work and planning of the previous seven months. Patience is required. An athlete and coach must be aware that no races of consequences are won in April so there is no point peaking there and that the races to win or peak in are run in July and August when the hardware is handed out. However you could say a bad season opener can also narrow the focus and act as a motivator. I suppose it depends on whether the glass is half full or half empty.

It’s all a balancing act where mistakes will ultimately be made and hopefully learned from. The best you can hope for as a coach is that those mistakes are small and nobody, especially your athletes, notices them.

The domestic track and field season along with many coaches and athletes making their seasonal debuts kicks off this Sunday in Cork with the Leevale Open Sports. Let the fun begin.