Coaching and Care of Athletes

HANDLING THE ATHLETE to follow his personal preference, because only by so doing will the athlete attain the maximum success of which he is capable. If a coach is to succeed he must have a kindly, sympathetic disposition, or he is not likely to gain the confidence of his pupils. The disposition of the coach and the mental attitude of the athlete are bound to have a big effect upon the result of training. In the first place, both the coach and his pupils must realize that the practice of track and field athletics is the cultivation of a branch of sport for the pleasure of those taking part therein. A great American authority has said that the 'fun-motive' should be the greatest factor in sport. · In this connection it may not be inappropriate to quote the words in which Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Modem Olympic Movement, set forth the Olympic ideal, which is also the ideal of perfect sportsmanship. This great Frenchman said: The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win, but to take part. The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well. To spread these precepts is to build up a stronger and more valiant and, above all, more scrupulous and more generous humanity. This ideal might well be inscribed upon the wall of every stadium and of all training quarters. If the coach insists upon the realization that athletics are sport it should not be difficult for him to point the further moral that the greatest enjoyment is to. be had, win or lose, when the athlete does his best. More– over, he should inculcate a definite mental control which will enable his charges still to find pleasure in a competition they have lost. He must gain the athlete's confidence, and also make him self– confident. He should help athletes to study their events and also their own abilities. In this way he will build up their confidence in themselves. He should try to get a man to develop a real love for his own event, should encourage a vital desire in the athlete to improve himself, and, by his own willingness to learn new methods, should inspire the athlete to start again from the be- ginning if this should prove necessary. . Nothing, I think, has stood out more clearly at the last two celebrations of the Olympic Games than the mental attitude 7I