Coaching and Care of Athletes

COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETE S offs make for slovenly work, and are also often responsible for athletes sustaining injuries. The coach should, as a matter of routine, take a looK at each athlete's spikes, to satisfy himself that he is wearing spikes o£ a length suitable to the surface he will have to work on. Different lengths ofspikes are required on turfand cinders and in accordance with whether the ground is dry or wet. Athletes should not be allowed to train in cold weather, nor, indeed, to hang about at any time without wea~ing their track suits. Cold muscles do not function efficiently; warm muscles do, and are not so liable to strain. 'Safety first' is perhaps the soundest motto that any coach can follow. When he is teaching the throwing events he should make absolutely certain that no one remains within range of the missile that is being thrown. At the Easter School at Earl's Colne in 1937 I would have sworn that there was no one within the danger-zone when discus-throwing was being practised, and yet, while I was coaching the discus-throwers, with my back to the hurdle track, Corporal Dyson, of the Somerset ,Light Infantry, walked up with one of the hurdling pupils, and together they leaned upon a hurdle. The man I "was instructing sliced the discus badly, and it took Dyson -clean on the side of the head. By the mercy of heaven it was a boy's discus and Dyson was a good dis– tance away, or we might well have lost one whom I consider to be among the finest amateur coaches that this country has ever produced. On no account should a class be arranged in two lines, with the men throwing towards one another. Some one is sure to make <:_, long throw sooner or later, and when that happens there is likely to be an accident. When throwing has taken place athletes should not be allowed to throw back towards the throwing-poidt unless the whole class moves over and throws back in the direction froin which they started. If a javelin is thrown when the whole of the class is behind the scratch-line and the rest of the stadium is clear no one can possibly sustain an injury. If, on the other ~hand, people are straying about all over the ground to recover javelins that have already been thrown, or if they throw back towards the class, then there is bound to be an accident in due course. In the foregoing connection it mus,t be remembered that a 16-lb. hammer, a discus, or a javelin can very well become a 8o