Coaching and Care of Athletes

COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES team. I saw how on edge Simpson was, and slipped him quietly away. Just before the race started we had a few words together, and Simpson went to his mark with the firm impression in his mind that lightning would descend from the skies and strike him if he dared to look over his shoulder i.n taking a single fence. Throughout that race he never faltered, and came in a winner by yards upon yards. He told me afterwards that the one fixed impression in his mind was that he must run and keep on running, and was on no account to look back. The curious thing was that when I twitted him about his blackguarding of the kindly old professor he had not the slightest recollection of the incident, and went off in no small perturbation to tender his apologies. Another thing for the coach to remember, according to the nature of the particular athlete he is training, is that increasing strength and fitness will perhaps alter an athlete's outlook upon life, and will certainly make increasing demands upon his vitality. · It is necessary, therefore, for the coach to plan the athlete's life in such a way that it will balance the various considerations which I have already mentioned. • With some types of athlete it is best simply to draw up a training schedule and to state blandly that such is the programme to be followed. In some cases it is not even advisable to let the athlete see his training schedule, but to keep with him and give him his work piecemeal. Other athletes do better by working to a concrete plan. I think I favour the method of showing the man what he will have to do for a period of at least a week. American coachJ~S, on the other hand, seem to prefer to set a man a task for each day, and to let it go at that. Both systems have their merits, but according to the British point of view, the American system has a" tendency to make the athlete lose his individuality. On the other hand, it does induce in the athlete's mind a supreme confidence in his coach and a ready obedience to that coach's instructions. In this connection I well remember one afternoon in 1935, when the Harvard and Yale athletes, prior to their match of that year with Oxford and Cambridge, were ·working out at the White City. The Yale coach handed to each ofhis men a little slip ofpaper, and I suppose that the slip given to Keith Brown, at that time world's record-holder in the pole vault, stipulated for so many vaults at 12 ft., so many at 12 ft. 6 ins., and so many at 13 ft. Anyhow, 88