As a coach how do you help your head cases?

Try to encourage them. Or, try to see why they are the way they are. Get the rest of team to encourage this guy or these few in every race or practice. Get him/them to believe in themselves. Show the movie,"MacFarland" to them.

Let me qualify this by noting that I coach a local YMCA running group and coach friends; I am not a high school or college coach and am not certified in any way.

This is something that has eluded me as a coach. It is one of the things that I think would be hard for most athletes who get into coaching a sport in which they were successful. Many people for whom the mental side came easy cannot relate to what is going on in the heads of those who fold under pressure. I fall squarely in that group.

That being said, I try to stick to positive reinforcement and by mostly pointing to the positives (especially since I coach adults, and I am not going to lecture ag grown man or woman). I try to get in at least some workouts that are generally accepted as fitness measuring sticks and then using successful efforts in such workouts as tools to help the athlete believe that they are ready to race at a particular pace. I have had only middling success with this approach.

Take pressure off of them. Usually poor race results is because they are overwhelming themselves with expectations that don't exist. Give them some weird race tactic that you want them to try out so that it feels like they're not even running a race. For instance, tell them to go out extra slow and then turn it on in the second half. Or Vice Versa. Whatever. Just do something, so that the emphasis is off of the racing and instead on some weird tactic.

That sounds like a good method.

I did all of that stuff and it did not work. You are a horrible coach.

Hmmm..... wrote:

Take pressure off of them. Usually poor race results is because they are overwhelming themselves with expectations that don't exist. Give them some weird race tactic that you want them to try out so that it feels like they're not even running a race. For instance, tell them to go out extra slow and then turn it on in the second half. Or Vice Versa. Whatever. Just do something, so that the emphasis is off of the racing and instead on some weird tactic.

They buy in or they don't. Not every athlete is the best fit for a coach and vice versa. You do the best you can but the buy in is up to them.

Give them an extra mile or 2 the day before a race and tell them that they are just "training through" this race. Tell them there is no expectations that week. The extra mile(s) won't really hurt their race, but the reduced pressure will do wonders.

Unless they're super fast, just cut them. No one needs that.