Since bad coaching seems to be a recurring theme, I thought I'd ask how many of you have had what YOU would consider bad coaches and what you did about it. What made them poor coaches in your eyes?
Since bad coaching seems to be a recurring theme, I thought I'd ask how many of you have had what YOU would consider bad coaches and what you did about it. What made them poor coaches in your eyes?
In college I had a terrible coach, who left me permanently injured. What made him a poor coach? Plain ignorance and inexperience, and a concern only for training sessions--taking recovery for granted.
I was self-coached.
I had a great HS coach who was very knowledgeable and instilled in me a love of running that has lasted for my life so far -fifty five years plus later. .
In college, I had an asshole who was only concerned about how he looked to the AD. One conference Meet my senior year, I ran the race of my life in the 880, taking a close second to a guy who would be National champ later. My coach's only comment to me was "Is that the best you could do?" Right before we graduated, four of us seniors got together and wrote a letter to the University President telling him what an asshole our coach was. He was not back the next year, by his own violition, he said. We knew better.
Good coaches are a real gem. I went to my HS coach's funeral, out of respect for him.
After my experience being coached in HS, I was determined never to be coached again.
I had a football coach who made white kids run the mile or the 2 mile. Goddamn stupid dirty racist moron. If you were lucky, the hurdles. No option for the sprints for us, those were for " football guys." No opportunities to get a spot during practice, nothing. He wouldn't even care if you could outsprint 2 of his best 3 in the 100M, he WOULD NOT let you run. He'd say you were a mile guy. I had a white friend who ran a low 12.x/high 11.xs as a freshman during football/track workouts, and the coach made him run the mile. He ran like 8 minutes and the coach gave him shit and put him down.
I had a very bad coach my senior year of HS. A triathlete (running was his weakest event), he had never run XC before and had never run a 5k outside of the triathlon. Also openly admitted he was coaching because he needed a little extra $$$ to pay for a new bike he wanted.
Junior year, I was second at my state qualifier race for XC. The next summer, I trained my butt off, ran more miles, did all the right workouts, and he managed to get me into 7th in the same meet with a weaker field (and a 20+ second slower time on the same course). He didn't write workouts for us either, just made it all up on the fly. Half of the time we would start a workout and be running something different by the halfway point.
Craig Virgin's high school coach had never really coached before Craig came along. As CV describes it, they both had an open mind, worked toegther and tried various approaches.
There was nothing dogmatic because they were in a small town in illinois, with no access to any resources. They jsut had to figure it out. Obviously, it worked well.
i think thats what makes a good coach (and athlete). A willingness to examine what has worked in the past, evaluate its success, and modify future plans.
Dogmatic coaches are a problem. Uncoachable athletes are a problem as well - those who insist on doing it their when somebody has to allocate the limited resources and time of "the team".
yeppers wrote:
Junior year, I was second at my state qualifier race for XC. The next summer, I trained my butt off, ran more miles, did all the right workouts, and he managed to get me into 7th in the same meet with a weaker field (and a 20+ second slower time on the same course). He didn't write workouts for us either, just made it all up on the fly. Half of the time we would start a workout and be running something different by the halfway point.
Please tell me you blame your f***ing self for your failure. Don't pass all the blame onto the f***ing coach, that is pure bullshit.