Coaching and Care of Athletes

THE QUALITIES OF A COACB of such men involve a special technique in crossing the circle, and far less effort is needed in putting the missile into flight than is the case with men of normal stature. It would, therefore, perhaps be a mistake to teach to the ordinarily built athlete the style of a Jarvinen, a Beard, or a Torrance. This is where the coach may so easily slip up. In no circumstances must he allow himself to be misled by the mannerisms or the action dictated by the build of world-beaters. , The question the coach must ask himself every time a new world-beater comes to light is whether the athlete is attaining his success on account of some special endowment he has been given by nature, or whether either he or his coach has discovered some new technique, or if the points in his style which are different from those generally accepted as the correct principles are due to some freak mannerism of the man himself. Generally spea.king, it is safe for the coach to bank on his know– ledge of athletic fundamentals and his opinion as to whether those fundamentals are to be contravened with success. If the successful contravention of what the coach has previously regarded as the fundamental principles of any event in the track and field programme appears to be responsible for the new record, . then obviously the coach must reconsid€r the whole position. It may be that what have hitherto been regarded as absolutely essential fundamentals are not fundamentals at all. Perhaps the case ofthe discovery ofthe Western Roll style ofhigh jumping may be taken as an example. Some litt~e time prior to the holding of the Olympic Games at Stockholm in I 9 I 2 an American athlete named George Horine found himself at a place where it was impossible for him to run and take off from his . normal side of the jump. He therefore tried approaching with a run directly in front, but that would not work, so he transferred himself to the side of the pit opposite to that from which he was accustomed to run, and in so doing accidentally took off from the foot nearer to the bar, which was his normal jumping foot, and went into the peculiar lay-out which subsequently constituted the Western Roll. Horine, in one year, increased his own personal jumping capacity from 5 ft. I in. to 6 ft. 7 ins., which was then the world's record. He had contravened what had hitherto been regarded as the funda– mental principle that a man in achieving a high jump must take off from the foot farther from the bar. In other words, he had 55.