Coaches, You're Doing It Wrong

I've been heckled before.  "You only do how much mileage?,"  "Your athletes will never progress," and "My kids would never do well in your system."  All pretty standard by today.  Actually, I've kind of realized that as soon as I start having people agree with my training, I may have gone "too mainstream."  I'm just kidding about the last part, but I want to illustrate a point: I don't want to be like other coaches.

Now coaches, before you get offended understand what I mean.  I do non-traditional training.  Blame Jay Johnson, blame John Cook, and blame Boo Schexnayder for entertaining my questions on distance running.  And I also probably listen to Scott Christensen too much too.  But all of this is okay.  These are coaches who are unapologetic about success and have some fine nuggets of wisdom to drop if you listen to them.  I am glad I don't follow the traditional training programs.

What do I mean about traditional program?  I mean the programs who put the miles before the important aspects of training.  Programs that say "you will run 70 miles this week" and then proceed to have you run distance runs everyday.  In reference to those who focus solely on running 100 miles a week, a wise man once said "The magic is in the man, not the 100 miles."  That man was a guy named Bill Bowerman, one of the greatest track and field coaches in history.  Bill also said "There is no such thing as bad weather, just soft people." That quote is for another day though!

Last time I checked our body is complex.  Running is hard.  The sky is blue and Tulane should have never left the SEC.  There are essential truths in life and just because you ignore them doesn't mean they go away.  Running distance runs everyday, especially in the oppressive heat of the gulf south, is not necessarily counter-productive, but certainly not as effective as other routes.  There is a wealth of training options that coaches seem to under and over value within certain respects.

Also, when did Matveyev go out the window?  I talk to coaches who train their athletes fairly hard with fewer recovery days that you would expect.  Or the coaches who have their athletes run 50-100% more volume than the ones I work with.  I'm not training greyhounds, but we can hang with several teams we shouldn't be able to compete with.  It is perhaps that our training culture has started to slink back to the cult of quantity.

On the other hand, plenty of programs have reverted to the cult of laziness because their coaches (or in better terms, babysitters) don't care to have long practices nor push kids in fear they will quit.  Kids will quit regardless of how hard you train them.  Just saying.

The high school I coach at, John Curtis Christian School, had the #1 high school football team in the country last year.  The crazy thing about them is not only did they outwork any and every team they played last year, they probably got in 3 times the practice than those teams too.  Sure, they may have practiced a little bit longer than the teams they played, but they practiced far smarter.  Every player got numerous reps everyday.  There was no sitting around or standing at practice.  They dared to be different.  It starts with the coach who isn't worried about being traditional.

So coach, or even athlete out there reading this, take this away from the article:  Be smart with your coaching.  Don't do training that is less effective just because everyone else does it.  Traditional doesn't mean better. Dare to do what other won't, or don't be afraid to try something new.   Also, don't be afraid to work hard, but training volume isn't necessarily the dictator on what hard work is.