Lots of high school coaches REALLY suck

High school coaches in general are strong candidates to end up living in a van down by the river

Low hurdler? Let’s go 21st Century with comments.

I have heard of stuff like this. Had a friend from another school who said his coach wanted them to do 4x1200m at 1600m pace one time and didn't understand that's impossible. My own coach had been coaching for 25 years and didn't even understand doing a hard workout the day before your race was not a good idea. His rationale was that the more workouts we cram in the better. He also encouraged us to treat every tempo run like a race and had me run 11 miles once on my first day back from an injury. Stuff like this is not terribly uncommon.

What was most frustrating to me is that I was a pretty intellectually gifted kid/teen, and I read a lot of books like DRF etc at the time and knew our training was terrible, yet all the adults around me just said things like "trust your coach" and seemed to believe 100% that if he was the coach, he knew best. In reality, I understood more about training properly by age 17 than he ever has in his life. Very, very frustrating.

I do not understand why so many old farts downvote when you mention how bad a coach is. Almost like THEY are the bad coach and it hurts their ego. Get it together and do better.

Agreed - coachB is a terrific coach, but I got the sense that HE was offended that HS coaches in general were being vilified, which included him. While there are certainly some poor coaches at the College level, which is inexcusable at that level these days, even with the idea that not every coach is right for every individual, the majority of HS coaches are poor. But (as with CoachB) there are quite a number of very good coaches, so the good ones should not take it personally that they must somehow defend their profession (such as it is). Coaching education, while getting better, isn't as good in America as it is in many other countries (especially at the HS level) where certification is required. Too many feel that since they jogged the local 5km or Parkrun, that they are now qualified to coach track (or even XC). In my local area of about 20 schools, I would say that 3 have good coaching, 5 have average coaching and 12 have either poor coaching or no coaching at all (none are paid, and so most are teachers). We have a pretty good area relative to most that I know. There is a reason why many kids seek out private coaching or clubs - they are looking for consistent, qualified tutelage, not just what any given school has to offer. I would say that the majority of HS coaches have never heard of Letsrun, or TFNews either for that matter. That coachB posts on LR puts him way ahead of the majority of his peers.

Trust your coach son. lol

I hate to be that guy "back in MY day..", but honestly I do not remember meets taking this long when I ran in HS all those years ago. I don't know if people just didnt invite as many teams, if they ran prelims the day before (adding yet another whole level of organization) or if they had very hard time/athlete limits. Whatever it was, I don't remember having a dozen heats of the 100m, 200m, and 400m, or running 20+ in the distance races at one time.

you dont have to be a good teacher to recognize those things, you have to be a good coach. good coaches are capable of fostering a relationship of trust with athletes both in their non running related and running related endeavors and is responsible for keeping up with those things by having regular conversation. A good coach is also organized, keeping up with all necessary procedures and documentation. Coaching isnt just giving them training, its so much more.

This post is low key disturbing as h***

yeah, I’d say def don’t do this if you’re coaching.

A good high school coach has to have basic knowledge of training, should be fair and inclusive, and should know how to set reasonable goals and standards and boundaries.

That's my two cents.

I was a college coach for 20 years and I can say the biggest reason most talented high school runners struggle in college is because their high school coach failed them.

I've seen talented high school athletes overtrain and run over 20 total 3200 races in just 1 season, not to mention countless 1600s, 800s, and relays. I've seen coaches put 1:52 guys on 4x8s with 2:08 teammates in a quadruple at a small conference championship meet and expect their kid to win despite being 120 meters back.

Some high school coaches put so much pressure on their athletes that it isn't fun anymore. They are mentally burned out before even stepping foot on campus.

I would have loved to see the training program of the bottom half of our conference. We are talking 1400 kids and the top guy running 4:50… I have a feeling the bottom 1/3rd of coaches might be decent people but have very little coaching skill. And to be fair this is probably the same across most sports..

Dang, some stuff I'm reading here makes me think I could actually be a better coach than a good amount of HS coaches. I wouldn't be good, but I could at least do better than 3x1200 at 1600 pace.

You have a team that has success, you dedicate your life to educating yourself on physiology, sports psychology and learning from the best.

Then:

- The high school audits you thinking you are stealing funds. Finds out you are not.

- Private coach is trying to poach your athletes. Tells everyone you don’t know what you are doing.

- School system decides it’s not safe for your team to compete out of state.

- Another jealous coach you hardly know goes around saying you are a predator.

All of these things and more happened to me in the course of one year after over a decade of coaching without incident. I no longer am coaching.

Maybe the reason your coaches stink is because they are under payed, under supported, under valued, and are finding better ways to volunteer their time.

65

New York state has extremes on both ends. You have nationally elite programs that will practice 365 days a year and then you have programs (my kid's school district) that can't even bother to have practice over spring break.

I feel so bad for these kids that don't get a great experience.

Track season has turned into something akin to travel hockey with games every few days. Here is the last week for my kids squad:

pre race easy day a couple miles + strides (makes sense)

Race (makes sense)

Off day sunday (makes sense)

Pre race couple miles + strides (makes less sense)

Race (no sense)

Post race recovery easy run (still have not had a single day workout)

And finally a work out day on day 7

7 days- 1 work out, 6 races. one day of any mileage.

Too many meets. You can treat a meet like a sort of quality day but not week after week. 6 days a week they are pre race, race or post race. Admin and coaches treat running like baseball and basketball. It's not the same.

Also a 440 champ and broad jump record holder.

Yeah thought I'd write a small update from original post. Last week they did an 800m time trial on monday and then a 600m time trial straight after, raced tuesday. wednesday easy, thursday was 400m repeats and 200m repeats, friday was a 20 minute tempo.

These kids could be the most talented in the world and probably would never get better than 18 mins on this sort of stuff, no such thing as an aerobic base, no adequate recovery, nothing. Kids think they are injury prone too or just not good, but they are made to train like this by people who they are supposed to trust. Kinda infuriating.