Coaching and Care of Athletes

I, COACHING AND CARE OF ATHLETES his preparation he will be ready for competition, if he is not already competing. It is often better to give a man a relatively unimportant competition to take part in than to put him through a set of trials as a part of his training. By thus making competitions into trials one adds the necessary competitive excitement, to which the athlete must become accustomed before the important event for which he has been pointing throughout his preparation. Ear.ly in the fourth stage of training, which really represents the athlete's higher education, he should be very nearly at the maximum point of his physical and mental ability, and should also have practically perfected his form in the event in which he hopes to succeed. At this period it should hardly be necessary for the coach to have to correct technical faults. The athl1~e's form having become stabilized, he should not be allowed to after it. Now the training periods are becoming shorter and far less severe, because the tapering-off process, if not already begun, is quite close at hand. At this stage the coach need not pay so much attention to the education and training of the athlete, but must emphasize the importance of the contest, withgut in any way making the athlete self-conscious, or, in other words, unduly nervous. If, up to the fourth phase of training, a man has been practising more than one event he should gradually be weaned away from his minor interest, so that his whole attention may be concen– trated on his principal event, to succeed in which he has under– taken training. Finally, in this fourth stage of training the coach must emphasize the still greater importance of rest and limbering up, the distribu– tion of effort _among the field-events men, and pace-judgment among the runners. Above all, he must concentrate his attention not only upon maintaining the athlete's condition, but also \upon preserving the edge of that athlete's keenness. Let me once again stress the point that you must have your athletes at their peak some two weeks before the competition, but you must never take the edge off their keenness by giving them an all-out trial too close to the date on which the com– petition is to take place. Before closing this chapter upon the building of schedules · there are one or two remarks that I want to make about training in general. First of all, one of the main objects of training is to delay the 128