Coaching and Care of Athletes

MAKING A CHAMPION losing his form, then the recovery will be much quicker, because the athlete's mind will not be borne down by a weight of worry. If he does discover that he has gone stale you must tell him that it is merely a normal condition of the athlete in training, and one that will pass quickly if he does not worry about it, but leaves him– self entirely in your hands. Disappointments are bound to come in the nature of setbacks during training, and this is where I have found the keeping of graphs to be of inestimable value. In a graph the athlete's whole history is written, and if you have had him in your charge for more than one season, or even for a fairly long period of training, you can always, by showing him the grf!.ph, convince him that he has had setbacks before, and that invariably such setbacks have been followed by better performances after brief periods of rest or a change in diet, in the training system, or in something else. The great thing is to keep your athlete eager and confident. The secret of doing this is largely an individual one; but even so the problem is mainly psychological, and success depends mostly upon the way in which the coach arranges the work of his pupil, and more particularly his trials. Every coach knows that athletes, left to their own devices, will turn training into mere trials of strength, speed, and endurance. Along that road lies nothing but failure. Training, as I have said, must be a gradual building-up process which includes trials. Such trials are for the purpose of enabling the coach and the athlete to assess what progress is being made. They can, however, be continued for too long a period. In any case I think it is a bad thing to let a field-events man go all out in a ser:ies of trials, and particularly is it bad to allow a vaulter or a high jumper to continue after he has achieved a peak performance. Similarly, runners should not be encouraged, even in tri_als, to carry on to the point of exhaustion, unless the coach has some particular reason for wishing the athlete to punish himself. I have in mind the type of man who is rather careful of himself, ana who, if he is never asked to punish himself in training, will nQt do so in competition. Let me explain this position a little more clearly. With the proviso always that special consideration must be given to the type of man one is training, I think the best system of trials is to give the athlete a time-schedule to which you wish him to conform in his running or hurdling trials. · Where the throwing 95