Dog Days of Summer

Alright, so it's the middle of the summer.  It's hot.  The training is boring.  It seems like meets of importance are either weeks or months away, and the only thing that you care about are the new blockbuster hits on the big screen or an upcoming concert.  As an athlete, or a coach, you aren't alone.  Sometimes we can feel like we are just going through the motions, especially on recovery days, just trying to get to the Junior Olympics or to the start of the cross season.  Well here is a list of things you can do that can help break up the monotony of the summer months:

1) Take a team trip, or have a fun day with the team.  My team both has a late summer team camp at a state park, two team bbq's, and also we will have days where the team meets just to have lunch or hang out (well, we do talk about goals when we hang out!).  These days help give the kids something different from the average day-to-day grind, especially if you are a coach who doesn't have your kids race over the summer.

2) Do time trials!  Pick a distance.  It may be your distance for cross country, a distance you don't often run during the season, or just some random distance.  It doesn't matter.  But doing time trials are a way to check your fitness and monitor progress.  You can even do time trials of the same distance several times over the summer to see if the training you have done between efforts has benefitted the fitness of your team.

3) Play a conditioning game. One of my favorites is speedball which is basically ultimate frisbee but with a tennis ball instead.  I don't often play these with the kids (practice is for practicing and athletes should come with that understanding, not always looking to play games), but once or twice a season will give them some fun and will brighten the morale of the team.

These are just a few ideas, but whatever you do, you want to remember that these are still young athletes and first and foremost is the training.  That being said, sometimes to keep them looking forward to a long stretch of training you may have to mix in some other variants in the daily routine.

Summer can be fun if you put some thought into it.