Elementary School track season...The Coach's Journal

Members Area My Training Journal
1

Cross country season mercifully ended two weeks ago, and that means it’s track and field time! I will be keeping a blog describing our workouts, and it will be quite the departure from the small group training that many will be used to. My school has 270 students, and we had over half the student body-150 students- show up for track and field tryouts. It is “cool” to run track at my school! We had a lot of fun last year, and some success too, so luckily even more kids tried out this year than we had hoped for.

Of course, managing that kind of traffic is no joke, and our season is very short, so we try to focus on a few big concepts and keep things fast-paced and fun.

I’ll freely relate what I’m doing, and that way you all can give me ideas on what I could be doing better, and suggestions for what to do differently. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! (Angela, any time you’d to pop by a practice we’d be very glad to have you)

2

This is a great idea T-Slow
Contact me directly.
Ange

3

T, I loved your idea of recess workouts. Even if part of team participates it may help break practice into groups.

4

Thanks! Since we have 12 relay teams, usually at lunch and afternoon recess I take two relay teams at a time and work with them for 15 minutes each. We usually do a couple of minutes of upper body mobility, then work on hand position, baton passes standing still, walking, then jogging. It’s amazing how many passes you can get through in 15 minutes with a bag of batons and some enthusiastic kids! If I do that three recesses a week I can get through all the teams in two weeks, but we do some baton work on our tempo days closer to the meets as well.

I might start taking a group to work on arm motion. There are some kids with pretty wild arm mechanics on my squad that could use some additional work.

5

Friday, May 6: Speed Workout (for grade 7&8 students only)

After the wildness of the tryouts in the park on Thursday at lunch time, I wanted to have a speed workout for the intermediate age relay squads, as they are going away on a trip the week before our divisional track meet and will thus miss a week of practises. Now this is a day after the running they did at full blast in the park, but today is an indoor workout in the school hallway due to rain, and I only planned on going short anyway, so I’ll have to shorten it to 15m from 20m.

Mercifully, they won’t be eating lots of fatty foods and schlepping around museums this year, but instead will be heading to a sports camp in Huntsville, Ontario. Hopefully they don’t come back sore from playing loads of different sports, but I’m glad they’re doing that rather than the museum-fest that is usually your end of year trip.

Upper body activation: (repeat 6 times)
• Forward arm windmills L/R
• Backward arm windmills L/R
• Cross arm
• Twists L/R
• Swing arms up

Stretching: Lower (hold each stretch for 2 seconds, 5 reps per leg)
• Achilles stretch (standing with partner)
• quad stretch (standing with partner)
• seated hamstring stretch (“P” position)
• seated glute stretch (figure 4 position)
• hurdle walkovers (10 steps forward)
• hip circles

Active Warmup / Skipping:
• Forward skip 20m / jog back (with the skip, I’m trying to reinforce stepping over the opposite knee)
• Side hop 20m down / side hop 20m back
• Butt-kickers 20m down / straight leg ound back
• A-march (flat-footed, hands on hips) 20m x 2 (with the A-March, I’m trying to reinforce the concept of stepping down directly under the hip)

Multi-Jumps (10m):
• Two foot hops x 2
• One foot hops L/R x 2

(WATER BREAK)

Explosive jumps (up onto bench):
• Step-ups x 16
• Two foot hops x 10
• Butt-smackers x 10

Speed (10m-20m):
• Stair acceleration: 4x 8m+8m (up flight of stairs, stop and turn, up next flight) focused on forward body lean, driving arms down
• Starts: 4x 10m (laying flat, pushup position, seated backward)
• Accelerations: 3x 15m (from laying flat position)

Cool down: jog on spot, 10 fire hydrants LR + 15 donkey kicks LR, static stretching with 20 second holds.

The workout went well. The kids missed about 15 minutes of class, which thrilled them to no end.

6

Looks Good T-Slow.
How many kids do you have coming out?
Will you be at U of T May 27th?
Ange

7

Hi Angela,

I’m with the Catholic board, so our meets are May 25th, 31st, and June 8th at Varsity. I’m guessing James is in TDSB? For the meet on the 25th we’ll have something like 80 kids. Should be fun!

I’m looking forward to them running at Varsity again, it sucked last year running at Birchmount. It’s a fine track, but there was no room to warm up and nowhere to hide from the blazing sun.

8

Monday, May 9, 2011 Speed Workout #1

This was our first speed workout with the whole group. We had about 85 kids including the grade 3 to 8 boys and girls relay teams, 400 / 800 / 1500 runners, and field event kids. We walked to a nearby high school track. How we organized it was after the jog, I got my five grade 8 relay girls (who are very keen and know the warmup / drills) to each take one grade of students, find a spot on the soccer infield, and lead the warmup by example, while also ensuring students had decent form. The plan is that each practice I will work with a different group and really focus on execution (usually I take 4 teams, so e.g. I took the grade 7 & 8’s today, with the 5 & 6’s next speed workout). One or two teachers can circulate to ensure students are following instructions, with the grade 5 and 6 boys usually receiving the most attention, as they are the silliest.

Purpose: Prepare body safely for the increased intensity required in sprinting.

Warmup:
• 1 lap jog holding rope: left-right-left-right – students must jog together and keep rope in middle of lane (develop team jogging rhythm, familiarize team with Mach relay methodology)

Upper body activation: (repeat 6 times)
• Forward arm windmills L/R
• Backward arm windmills L/R
• Cross arm
• Twists L/R
• Swing arms up

Stretching: Lower (hold each stretch for 2 seconds, 5 reps per leg)
• Achilles stretch (standing with partner)
• quad stretch (standing with partner)
• seated hamstring stretch (“P” position)
• seated glute stretch (figure 4 position)
• hurdle walkovers (10 steps forward)
• hip circles

Active Warmup / Skipping:
• Forward skip 20m / jog back
• Side hop 20m down / side hop 20m back
• Butt-kickers 20m down / straight leg ound back
• A-march( flat-footed, hands on hips) 20m x 2

The reason for using a very simple version of an A-march is that last year I found kids were all over the place with these drills. I need to teach them in a progression, but it’s probably better that they can do part of the drill properly (e.g. knee up, toe up, step down under the hip) than do it sloppy.

Multi-Jumps (10m):
• Two foot hops x 2
• One foot hops L/R x 2
• Two foot hops (feet together-feet apart) x 2
• One foot hops (side to side) x 2 (WATER BREAK)

Speed (10m-20m):
• Quick feet: 10m (Forward 3m, backward 3m, forward 7m): use variations, 4-6 reps
• Starts: 20m (laying flat, pushup position, seated backward, etc.) 4 reps
Cool down: jog one lap

This workout went very well. We did a good job of keeping kids moving at all times, and there was overall very little downtime. We were finished everything within 50 minutes, which is excellent.

9

Our setup has students doing speed on Mondays at a nearby high school track. Tuesday mornings are tempo workouts, as that’s what worked best for the rest of the early-bird teachers. Suffice it to say that the only way I’m getting up before 7 am EVER is probably gonna be track-related! The kids were not too sore from yesterday’s workout, but let’s see how they feel tomorrow- that will probably tell the tale.

The way we set this up is to go to a nearby park which is pretty large, which allows us to split the kids into three groups. They were split into grade 3/4, grade 5/6, and grade 7/8 and cones were placed in the field. Grade 3/4’s are running 60m each way for tempo, 5/6’s are running 80m, and 7/8’s are running 100m. Since it can be chilly in the mornings, the warmup is accelerated and has almost no breaks, which should facilitate heating up a little bit quicker.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 Tempo Workout #1

  1. Purpose: Flush lactic acid, increase mobility / general fitness

Warmup:
Jog 2x 60 / 80 / 100 yards
Upper body activation: (repeat 6 times)
• Forward arm windmills L/R
• Backward arm windmills L/R
• Cross arm
• Twists L/R
• Swing arms up

Stretching: Lower (hold each stretch for 2 seconds, 5 reps per leg)
• Achilles stretch (standing solo)
• quad stretch (standing solo)
• seated hamstring stretch (“P” position)
• seated glute stretch (“Figure 4” position)
• hurdle walkovers (10 steps forward)
• Hurdle walkovers (10 steps backwar)
• hip circles Lx5, Rx5

Long Warmup: this is done continuously! No breaks! (15m each for grades 3-4)
• Forward skip 20m / jog 20m x2
• Side hop down 20m / back 20m x2
• Butt-kickers 20m down / jog 20m x2
• Straight leg bound 20m / jog 20m x2
• Lunge 20m (hands on hips) / jog 20m
• Spider lunge 20m / jog 20m
• Alternate toe touch 20m / jog 20m
• A-march( flat-footed, hands on hips) 20m / jog 20m x 2 (When complete, short rest)

Tempo (60m grade 3-4, 80m grade 5-6, 100m grade 7-8):
• 30 seconds of crunches (arms reaching for sky), run 60/80/100m, 5 pushups, run back
• 15 seconds of legs bent 90 degrees, knees to chest, run 60/80/100m, 4 pushups, run back
• 10 fire hydrants Left / Right, 10 donkey kicks Left / Right, run 60/80/100m, 3 pushups, run back
• 16 lay down, sit up, touch left toe / centre / right toe with feet apart, run 60/80/100m, 2 pushups, run back
• 30 seconds crunches, run 60/80/100m, 1 pushup, run back
Abs: 5 minutes (Side plank L, side plan R, front plank, 30sec each x 2)

Regular pushups are obviously not feasible for some kids, so they were told to do knee pushups if they couldn’t do regular ones. By next week the tempo volume should increase somewhat, as this is reasonably easy for most students, but they seemed to have a good sweat / blood flow going by the end.

Help! Does anyone have a decent standing calf / achilles stretch when you dont have a wall available? The one I’m using is pretty useless.

10

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 Speed Workout #2

For the second speed workout with the large group, we used the exact same warmup as in Speed Workout #1 with a few variations. Today I wanted to introduce the baton. When we arrived at the track, we talked briefly about how we would operate our passes, then did some upper body mobility, then did some stick drills.

We have the arm raised almost parallel to the ground, with a flat palm, fingers together, thumb spaced wide. Students are to use the push pass, with the baton vertical when passed.
Students stood in their relay team and practiced the stick drill standing still, then practiced walking. We sent them off in groups for their 1 lap warmup jog with a baton (stick, stick, stick, drop, 1st runner retrieves, then repeat). It sucks to be the first runner, but it gets the blood flowing plus gets everyone a few touches on the baton.

We then warmed up as during the previous workout, and did the following work.

Speed (10m-30m):
• Starts: 10m (laying flat, pushup position, seated backward, etc.): use variations, 4 reps
• Starts: 20m (laying flat, pushup position, seated backward, etc.) 4 reps
• Speed 30m (laying flat, crouch start, etc.) 2-3 reps (grades 6,7,8 do 3 reps)

Cool down: jog one lap

It’s pretty obvious that we have some talent on both our grade 8 relay teams, plus our grade 5 boys team that went to the city finals last year. We have a bit more speed throughout the grades than last year due to more kids trying out, so it will be interesting to see what happens there.

11

Thursday May 12, 2011 Tempo Workout #2

The second tempo workout with the large group went even smoother than the first one. We did basically the same workout, with a few minor variations to the stretching. We also did some standing baton passes at the very beginning of the workout. There are probably some clever ways of working the baton into tempo workouts, but I haven’t heard of any, nor could I really think of anything. I’m thinking you’d only want to do this if the workout was really easy, as the last thing you need are a bunch of dog-tired kids passing batons.

We started right on time at 8 am, and were done by 8:35 when I had to take off for my other school. Turnout was excellent, and the kids had a good sweat going and found it fairly challenging but nowhere near barf-inducing. No need to make track a miserable experience in elementary school!

12

Good work, I expect you’ll also start getting positive feedback from class teachers who will say the kids (boys especially) are better behaved as they have expended some energy. IMHO (and others) a lot of behavior issues would sort themselves out if kids were more active, and that doesn’t mean structured just playing and mucking around.

13

John,

I totally agree that kids are way too sedentary. I caught a program the other night that made me think it’s not just the fault of video games either- there was an interesting British produced show on unstructured play the other night on CBC.

It talked about how schools have progressively become so paranoid about exposing children to the slightest injury risk that kids are living in a far too sheltered and structured environment. It also talked about the excessive coddling of parents- and had a brief bit about the “Free Range Kids” founder who wrote a blog post about letting her 9 year old take the New York subway solo, and subsequently got buried alive in angry feedback. I’ll try to find out the name and see if I can find it online.

I remember being 11 years old and taking the subway downtown with friends to research a project at the library, going out for lunch, then hanging out at the greasy video arcade. It was considered socially acceptable, and this was well before cellphones existed. Crime has plummeted in the last few years, yet parents are absolutely paranoid.

I don’t think the proliferation of competition among news outlets to provide up to the minute info on the latest fires, car crashes, and pervert spottings has done kids any favours.

14

Well stupid me, I didn’t update the journal for a couple of weeks, then report cards hit. Oops. I will get all the updates in shortly, but I will say this- Angela was kind enough to take time out of her schedule to come and take in one of our practises. I was sooooooo nervous, but she was super-positive even though it actually ended up being the worst practise we had all season.

The upside is a lot was learned overall. I’ll get to work on the updates, and a huge thank you to Angela for coming out to eyeball it, the kids were hyped to meet a real life former nationally-ranked track athlete.

15

It’s track and field time in elementary school again, and I foolishly didn’t update my journal from last season. The teams did fairly well, with most teams at least making the divisional finals, with three moving on to regional finals, and my grade 5’s last year making it to the city finals for a second straight year.

I am going to update the journal on a weekly basis this season, so I don’t have to bore people with multiple entries in the same week. It should also allow me to make entries with a more reflective tone, rather than just updating our daily workouts.

I just found out that next year I will be a full time physical education teacher in one school, rather than being at two schools as I have been for the past couple of years. This will give me a LOT more control over athletic preparation of all students.

Anyway, we have already started our workouts for this season as of last week. ESTI and Chris Glaeser have come up with some great ideas that I will be impementing. Last year, GymRob had some terrific input as well. I am really looking forward to hearing some new ideas. I’m especially interested in hearing about ways to keep things simple and digestible for the little kids. We have relay teams from grades 3 to 8 (60 kids including subs), but our kids in grades 3 and 4 are particularly insanely enthusiastic, but I need to keep the concepts simple so they can remember a few key spot checks. Please, share your input! I need all the help I can get!

16

There are three meets in my elementary school’s track season. First, the Divisional meet, then Regionals, then the City Finals. Last year we had one relay team and a couple of field athletes go to the city meet, and this year we were hoping to send a few more people.

The first meet went OK. Most of our relay teams got through their heat in the top 4 and made the finals, with the exception of our dreadful grade 3 girls team. Unfortunately, our grade 3 boys, grade 4 girls, and grade 5 and 6 girls teams did not come top 2 in the finals, thus they were eliminated. Even my two time city finalist grade 6 team came second in their final, and their exchanges looked a little rusty- this is usually our major strength, as we have no standout 100m speed king, but these kids gain massive time by destroying everyone in the exchange zone.

Basically, after the first meet I have to say that the key problem with this year’s work is that there were not nearly enough high speed baton exchanges. We only got to complete one or two practises that included full speed exchanges. Usually, I’ll set students up on the back stretch at 30m spacings. This allows us to get a lot of reps in (6-8 in total) at high speed, and we usually run it in both directions. (After this, I’ll take students in grades 5 to 8 for a few longer reps, but 6-8x 30m is usually enough for the little ones, especially because it’s preceded by a warmup, drills, and some 10’s, 20’s, and 30’s lying face down, pushup position, etc.)

For example, we run 4x30m exchanges. Once the baton reaches the anchor, students turn around to face opposite direction, and the anchor becomes first runner, 3rd becomes 2nd, 2nd becomes 3rd, 1st becomes anchor. Students now receive baton in their other hand. This means if needed they can run in any spot on the relay with equal effectiveness. (It also eliminates the need to run batons from the finish back to the start)

This is the workout that got our exchanges to be far more efficient than those of other schools, allowing even our mediocre teams to advance to finals at least at the divisional level. This year, we only got through this workout once or twice, while last year it was done many more times.

Overall we had a number of very good individual performances. We had our twins from the 4x100 relay clean up in the 400 and 1500, where they smashed the field. Also, our grade 8 runner in the 800m and 1500m creamed the field in both events by sitting on the top guy and just taking off with 200m and 300m to go respectively. However I was disappointed in the relays overall.