Boldwarrior
I agree with you also but business is different than coaching in its purest form. Don’t you think?
Not everyone is cut out for some types of coaching . And not everyone
is cut out for what I feel might be compromises when money or business
might interfere with the performance aspect of sport. I have boarded many people
into my house , fed them , helped train them and at the end
of the day what satisfaction is there if I am not trying my absolute hardest
for the sake of performance? I’m less motivated by
money now than before but I enjoy seeing how information changes
people’s lives. I totally agree however with your comments as I think business organizes relationships within sport that really help the process of learning.
Esti , for sure I would hold hot and cold sessions administered
by me, enforcing each person do one to qualify for my messages. I’m certain Charlie
did not operate like this but he sure didn’t
like it when I didn’t do my bit to make his work
a bit easier.
Ultimately , I feel a long term successful coach athlete relationship must have some
mutual understanding of how the coach athlete relationship works successfully.
Esti, I think you get a great deal of satisfaction out of what you are doing. I don’t think it hurts
to be mindful of what motivates you to work so hard and ask yourself if you are getting what you need as a coach
out of your athletes.
Thanks Ange!
Having a higher level talent certainly has brought up issues I have never faced prior. Only if it was as simple as program design, timing runs in practice, and running fast in meets!
Thur jan 31
We had a solid week of training and ran just the 60H tonight. He ran a new PB in 8.07. Although he hasn’t done much in 3 weeks, was still hoping he’d run sub 8, but training suggested 8.10. I still have to look at the video for analysis. Overall happy. He came away healthy and we continue the training tomorrow with bike tempo. He also got to meet our state record holder in the hurdles (7.79, 13.65, 35.90), Kenneth Ferguson. He ran at South Carolina and then trained with Kersee for several years. He’s back home finishing up school. It was very cool to meet him.
Feb 16, 2013
After the 8.07 on 1/31/13, we had a solid few weeks of practice. With him, I have always kept things simple in training. We do few drills, usually 1 drill for a given aspect we are focusing on. Right now, it’s been speed between hurdles. We did a lot of work with hurdles at 36" and 9 yard spacing (vs 39" and 10 yd spacing). Practice runs in hallways in running shoes have been around the 1.00-1.10 split range per hurdle. I’m trying to create training environment where he is put into goal racing rhthym (approx. 1.00 splits or faster) . We did one day about 4 reps of a 10 step run up to H1 to help increase speed throughout the run. This did work well for him.
On Feb 13, he raced again running 8.06 and I felt ran technically really poor. This came after 5 days off due to a college recruiting visit weekend going longer than expected. He then ran a 60 in a 7.14 and again, technically ran very poor from reaction to finish. Mentally, it was good for him. He had “been on top of the world” and finally ran poorly and got beat bad in the 60m.
A race on Feb 16 had 2 rounds, and I felt after such a poor showing Wednesday, that meet would help him prepare for his trip out to Seattle next weekend on Feb 24. I did not go with him to the race today (feb 16). I wanted to see how things would go without me and used this as a preparation for Seattle, when I will not be there again, and potentially NYC March 2-3.
He ran a prelim of 8.15. Later on I received a text he ran 7.76, which would put him #1 in the US right now. I had a few other messages and phone calls. It was eventually finalized that was indeed his time. After speaking to him on the phone, he said he felt good during warm-up and jogged his 8.15 prelim. I have felt he needed a prelim to run fast and most meets we do not get that luxury, nor room for a proper warm-up on the hurdles. My instructions to him last night was to attack H1 with more speed. I felt he was jogging it in the 8.0x races after analyzing the races on video. I’m hoping to get video from this race so have some idea what he did.
Overall, this nearly completes our goal of running 7.70 indoors. Technically we just finished SPP and now entering comp phase of 2-3 weeks. The plan is to race on weekends and do 1-2 easy technical sessions and some accel SE work out to 60m with limited accel zones. Hopefully he can arrange time with me for 1-2 massages weekly as well.
This week we focused on staying technically crisp without doing too much. We had solid workouts and he felt great as of last night. He flew out today (Friday morning) and races Sunday. I posted a link in the race reports threads. He has 2 rounds and the competition appears to be solid from top to bottom of list. He will race 2 times in 90 minutes. We have done this all indoor so I am confident he will run fine and run well this weekend.
He did well at Brooks running two rounds of 7.82, getting second in the final. He had a stumble and finished poorly. He was in position to run sub 7.8, but things happen! He certainly solidified himself as one of the top hurdlers in the country this indoor season in the US.
Since then we have been fairly cautious just doing what we have been over the last few weeks. Today (Wed March 6) was his last indoor workout of the year. He leaves tomorrow for NYC for the New Balance Nationals. A round Saturday morning and two on Sunday afternoon. The entries are great and should provide another great environment for him to run well again.
He will have next week off completely and then will start back into it. Most likely will race in a meet April 11 as that is our first dual meet of the year. More info to come soon!
Saturday March 9, New Balance Indoor Nationals
http://new-balance-indoor-nationals.runnerspace.com/eprofile.php?event_id=1164&do=videos&video_id=81448
Won heat and advanced on. Semis and Finals tomorrow.
Congrats! This has been a big past few weeks for him… and you… both should be proud!
On to the finals!!
Awesome. Looking forward to final result.
-EDIT- We have winner w/ 7.72!
Thanks for posting it!! He is super excited. What an incredible indoor season it has been. Our goal of 7.70 is pretty much reached. Now on to the next two, 13.65 and 35.90 (300H).
He has the entire week off and we will start back up next week.
You’ve obviously done a fantastic job preparing a superb athlete. Many congratulations, and I hope the pain of last year’s state-title DQ is erased somewhat. 
I’m not familiar with US highschool track organizations, but is the New Balance Indoor Nationals considered a national championship?
This is as close to one there is. Qualifying times were required. Multiple round multiday set up.
this was a usatf event. Usatf likes multoday events as I’ve read they feel it prepares kids for similar set up in college and Olympics /world championship levels.
It would be fun to see a world junior indoor championship like in outdoors. Most is schools start outdoor late feb early march. Leaves little rime for worlds.
It’s been a really long time since I posted last…
The first 8 weeks of season has been terrible weather. On days that were nice we tried to get in quality SE work. The theme during indoor was initial focus on speed and then cut back on most speed work to leave time for specific hurdle work. That was the philosophy taken during outdoor. The cold weather has just made it really tough overall. The first 3 dual meets were in cold and raining weather. Being so much faster, he jogged those races and we considered them hurdle endurance workouts. Last Saturday was cold but sunny (37f). He ran a personal best hand time into a headwind of 14.2 Overall I felt it was not the most technically sound race but given the time spent on SE so far, was acceptable. With the pressure of the boys team repeating as champs again, we have decided to focus on training the next few weeks in preparation for regionals. He should have no problem winning that meet and advancing to state finals. That week would begin a “race and rest” week with 3 meets in 6 days leading to a taper into state finals.
2 weeks since last post…
He ended up racing a bit after he and I discussed some things. He ran 13.6 in his meet back and 37.2. Technically was outstanding. Unfortunately I was running the finish line and didn’t get video.
A few days later he ran again, btu looked really bad in the 110s but fantastic in the 300s. Without practicing it, he has found a great cadence that should get him to be state champ in the 300s. With some issues still lingering, training has been scarce, s I have chosen a race a rest method. This is similar to what we did during indoors.
After the poor race we had a week off. It was mostly just warm-up drills over hurdles working on little things like arm and trail leg positions. At regionals, the focus was a great start, which he did in the prelims flying through the first 6 hurdles before cruising to advance. Smei finials he repeated it and eased over 9 and 10 to advance. In the finals, tore through the entire 10 in 13.7, a regional meet record set by the state record holder. Everything so far is on track to get the 13.65 FAT state meet record we set out for in the fall. In the 300H, he ran a very clean fast ran in 37.4. 2nd place was at 40.0. =)
He also ran in 2 relays and did a great job.
This week we have the league championship on Tuesday, county championship on Thursday, and team state championship on Saturday, then gets 1 week of “Rest” to prepare for individual state finals where he will run both hurdles and 2 sprint relays.
That is great to hear. Keep us posted!
This is the last post for this forum! The end of the season is finally here! What a ride is has been.
In the 110H, mission accomplished! State champion, but not without obstacles along the way (not the hurdle type!) About 10 days from state finals, his back got pretty tight and we had to only do treatments until state finals. Once there, he had a hard time warming up, even with my treatments at the team tent area. He felt loose overall, so he just ran races. He would sit and hang out and then go run. Between races I would treat him again. In the end he didn’t run great at all, wasn’t able to get his fast starts and won by a small margin.
He then later took 2nd in the 300H and I could tell it started to bug him again.
He is off until he leaves for college in the fall. No summer plans training wise. He put in a solid 9 months this year, 1 month more than last year.
As a coach of a successful athlete, it was quite the challenge I did not expect. Too many things along the way to mention, but I think a line from Charlie sums it up, the road to success is more fun than the road to stay there (Ange, I think this was the line!) The indoor season was fantastic, but the mental aspect of being labeled a national champion and then having to deal with uncontrollables such as weather for training, weather for meets, lack of competition for most of the year etc kept leading to frustration on his end which did impact me as well.
He will certainly be missed around here and had achieved a local celebrity status of sorts. Kids asking for training advice, people coming up with all kinds of achievements (world national indoor world record holder), kids wanting to hold his blocks during warm up starts, parents talking to him during warm up at meets etc. He leaves holding both hurdle school records and was part of all 3 sprint relay school records (4x1, 4x2, 4x4). He had the ability to break the 200 and 100 records as well, but the opportunity to do it was never there.
For me, I have grown to really appreciate the beauty of the hurdle events, and almost prefer to coach hurdlers, whereas before I coached mainly sprinters.
That is fantastic. Do you know if he’ll train with you in the summers at all, or will he be taken over entirely by the school paying for his degree?
He will be with the college.