Coaching and Care of Athletes

SPRINTING impossible to find the competition developing into elimination by exhaustion. In the case of a recognized field event for sprinters the wise coach will follow a special procedure. The first thing he must do in this connection is so to accustom his athlete to warming up for the production of the peak of the staircase effect that he may be almost certainofgetting in his best throw, put, or long jump at the first effort. It follows, reasonably enough, that the man who can be certain of doing almost his maximum performance in a field event at his first effort can well afford, in the course of an afternoon · in which he is competing in a number of events, to stand or fall by that first effort. In this way he is conserving his energy for such other events as must come afterwards. Incidentally, when this system is followed by Decathlon meri it is probable that even the present amazing world's record will be considerably improved. Now let us consider a week's training schedule in mid-season for a team of sprinters. At a training camp or school the first hour's training, which comes after either breakfast or lunch, should, I think, be devoted to a talk by the coach. There are so many subjects he can discuss, and so many things he can do to improve the athletic education of his sprinters. He may discuss with them the theory of starting; he may, from the notes he has taken at the last training session, reproduce by diagrams on a blackboard the faults in foQtwork which various athletes have shown. Better still, he may show lantern-slides or pass round photographs he has taken of various athletes at work. Best of all, however, is the system I used in the first year of the English Summer School at Loughborough. That year, using a g·s-mm. Pathe Cine camqa, I took pictures of the men on one day, sent them up to London by the afternoon or evening train to be processed, and had them back the next night, so that the men could see for themselves the form they were showing, and particu– larly any faults of which. they had been guilty at the previous day's training session. Mter the first hour's lecture to the team the work of the sprinters should be somewhat as set out hereunder: ·oNE WEEK's Mm-sEAsoN TRAINING ScHEDULE FOR SPRINTERS OF AN ATHLETIC TEAM Monday. Let the team limber up with a jog of from 300 to 440 yds., followed by 5 mins. of body-building, bending, and stretching exercises and then some free exercises. Follow this up with baton- I95