Why? The Science of Athletics

44 WHY?-THE SCIENCE OF ATHLETICS enthusiasm among boys, but it is a very much harder matter to maintain their interest. Even with the good ones, peak-performances are followed by the inevitable · reactionary relapse, and this is just where the coach's knowledge of psychology, plus the mental outlook he has given the athlete, are going to come in. The coach has got to nurse the boys through their bad times ; often times he must "kid them along", tell them yarns, and pitch true tales -of unlikely looking and disappointed youngsters who fought through their bad time and ulti– mately made good as world-beaters. In building up the proper mental outlook, the coach must be for ever striving to create a proud, invincible fighting spirit. All this may sound as though the coach is setting out to make competition assume an unduly large degree of importance in the eyes of the athlete. Well, competition is important, otherwise where is the use of training, and why does the lad want to submit himself to the rigorous work and the exacting discipline that training calls for ? All the same, a good coach does ·not give his charges the impression that athletic competition is the be-all and end-all of life. The dud coach who adopts that sort of attitude soon finds himself saddled with a bunch of . nervy youngsters, none of whom are ever likely to win anything, simply because the fear of losing will rob them of their natural ability to win. What a good coach aims at is to create the sort of mental outlook that makes a boy believe that what the coach is teaching him and the way in which he is being trained will give him the best possible chance, within the limits of his personal capacity, of winning, and that if he fails it will be neither his fault, nor the fault of his coach, but the chance of circumstance which has matched him against a better man, whose victory it is his bounden duty· to honour. It is very important to emphasize this point of view, because it is the knowledge that, win or lose, one is going to do one's best that drives out fear.