Coaching and Care of Athletes

MAKING A CHAMPION he very wisely went into the dressing-room and got the White City masseur to attend to his muscles preparatory to making his successful attempt upon the record. If you make friends of the athletes you are training, and talk over the intimate details· of technique and training with them, you will not have the fear that they are going to let you down by doing something foolish or neglecting some small but none the less important point which you have been at pains to instil into their minds. There is another reason why it is important that nothing greater should be attempted by the athlete on the same day as that on which he has reached a peak performance. It is also im– portant that once a man has reached a peak no further trial should be given him for a period of a week, or perhaps a fortnight. Where the athletes I have trained are concerned, I usually make it a definite point of policy to give them their last trial in training at least a fortnight. before the competition for which they have been trained takes place. The psychological effect of reaching a peak-that is to say, achieving a performance greater than one has ever done before– is exemplified by so great a feeling of relief that there is a distinct probability that although the ability to go higher, or faster, or to jump or throw farther, is definitely latent in the athlete, he will not produce it on that afternoon, and may, indeed, neither do so nor again reach his latest peak for some few days, or even weeks. In other words, a peak performance is usually followed by a sort of mental and physical relapse upon the part of the athlete. This is clearly borne out by training and competition graphs which I have kept of athletes whom I have trained. It seems almost as though the athlete, having accomplished at least a part of the object he had in view when he went into training-i.e., the achievement of better performances than he had ever done before- sits back and takes a mental breather before going on to greater feats. Studying the gr~phs which lie before me, I ~nd that an athlete reaching a new peak almost invariably drops back to lower levels in subsequent trials if they are given ·at once. Then it is as though he takes a deep breath and makes up his mind to go forward yet farther, and one finds almo~t invariably that at the next real trial, provided it is not taken too soon, yet a fresh peak is reached, or, at the worst, the former peak is equalled. Now let us take a definite case of training to show how the coach 99