Someone commented on one of yesterday’s posts that you can
learn a lot from your athletes. Amen to that. I think in forty years of
coaching that I have learned more from the athletes that I have coached and
those athletes that I have been fortunate to have been around than any single source.
The athletes live it. They know what the
workouts feel like, they are the ones who put their ass on the line in
competition. It is important to note that I have learned as much or even more
from the average athletes as from the stars. There are times when I wish I
would listened more and talked less. That is another lesson it seems we all
must learn. Richard Aguirre who ran 8;56 in the Two Mile back in 1975 asked me
one day why we always did out long run on Sunday and then came back with Monday
as our hardest day of the week. That simple question forced me to go back and
look at my whole distribution of work throughout the microcycle. Of course I
had the long run on Sunday because that is the way everyone else did it. Pure
and simple sheep walking! It is good to empower the athletes by teaching what
you are doing with them. Coaching is a cooperative process, it is not something
we do to the athletes, it is something we do with them.
