Coaches, if an athlete screws up, please try to follow this advice from Chris Fox and Justyn Knight on how to handle it

Memory Lane - you are prescient in pointing out that being a passive aggressive mess of frustration and despair is also out of line. And combined with a penchant for over-training, that sounds like a disaster.

I still find the notion of yelling and strange in the sport of track and field. I recall Bob Kennedy's description of winning his first NCAA championship as a freshman - where Sam Bell quietly but sternly reminded him to be both tough and patient around the 4 mile mark - a remark likely made effective by body language as much as what Bell actually said. That is the type of which is effective in track. The yelling never made me run any better, or train harder.

Haha, this is so Dan Green from The Woodlands! Guy was a total jerk to almost everybody, especially his athletes. Only reason he won so many state championships with us was because he lived in one of the wealthiest suburbs in Texas with 250+ kids on his team every single year.

Wow, wejo, you scaped the internet for "groves" and "disappointed" to make a minor point?

No, Harry Groves was never disappointed in me, or my teams performances. Not in the context that I'm talking about. When I think of "disappointment" I DO NOT think of it as having high expectations and not hitting them. I think of it as the coach excoriating his runners for not hitting those high expectations. That has never happened by Harry, or any other coach I've been associated with.

Groves instilled in us an "act like you've been there before" attitude, which means that bad days are part of athletics. Your "failures" are mere stepping stones to your next success. You simply shrug it off, and move to your next race.

Yelling at your athletes is NEVER encouraging or motivating. Great coaches don't yell at their athletes. The ones that do, are psychos and azzholes.

It's been my experience with 30 years of coaching young people that it's the coaches job to build confidence and create ownership on the part of the athlete. Whether they perform well or not in practice or in competition, they own it. This doesn't happen right away as there needs to be a trust relationship that can take a couple years to develop through good communication. It's a process that takes time as the athlete matures and processes information, watches positive and negative role models and decides what they want from the experience. The coaches role is to guide responsibly, explain "the why", support with data that shows rate of improvements, work with the athlete where they are at, etc... Being negative is a sign of a coach that is ego driven and coach centered rather than athlete centered. As mentioned earlier, getting to know people outside of athletics is a major part of developing trust including letting them see you are human as well.

It's generally expected that when there are large numbers on a team, there's a division of levels of interest. There's always the group that cares and will try hard no matter their age or talent level. Then the group that might be involved for social reasons first but figure out how to be competitive with themselves and others at their level with encouragement. Then the group that has a lot of other interests and are running to stay active, maybe their parents are making them do it but they are compliant. Then finally, the kids that really don't want to be there, don't try and take short cuts trying to drag others down with them. They are quickly identified and strongly encouraged to pursue other interests. They self eliminate, no need to get upset about them or give them any more attention than they deserve or earn. The rest of the team is glad when they go away even though they are a minority but easily recognized by their peers for what they are. No different than in the classroom.

Talking to young people like adults brings them further along at a quicker rate. You get better results sooner. Holding them back early and focusing on the championship season performances when they are ready to physically, mentally and emotionally ready to turn it all loose has always worked for me. The trick is bringing them along at the rate they are ready for in all three categories so they are able and motivated to take ownership of where they are and willing to take an educated risk they deem appropriate without regrets.

I've never stepped to the starting line for any of my athletes but I remember what it was like and what would have worked best for me if I had my ideal coach. As a result, I have a large number of former athletes that have continued competing well after high school and have chosen teaching and coaching as a profession. That is what I am most proud of.

Experience with Age wrote:

It's been my experience with 30 years of coaching young people that it's the coaches job to build confidence and create ownership on the part of the athlete. Whether they perform well or not in practice or in competition, they own it. .

Nothing is truer than this simple statement. It is the essence of coaching.

Great thread.

I would sit down within 20 minutes of the race with my athletes and ask them the following questions;

1. How would you grade your race?

2. What did you do well?

3. What would you do differently?

4. What do you think we neeed to work on?

It allowed them to own and grow their running.

Heps video was great too!

malmo wrote:

"He'd let you know he was disappointed but that things would be okay," says Knight, adding their relationship has evolved with a shared appreciation of other sports and music. "He would never yell, belittle you or make you feel bad about yourself.

I must have run in an entirely different crowd than you guys. Throughout my career, going back to junior high, I've never had a coach who was "disappointed", or "yelled, belittled ...or made me feel bad about [myself]". Moreover, I've never heard of coaches from apposing teams (yes, all the way back to junior high) who acted in a similar manner.

Where the hell do you find those guys? How do they get coaching jobs in the first place?

The guys that do this spare the top/elite runners. They know those guys are better than they ever were and don't mess with them. It's a dominance thing.

Also elites are more likely to wind up with the good coaches.

You were an elite runner and that was surely clear early on in your career.

Chris Fox is a straight shooter! Back in early 90's when I was beating all the guys he coached but couldn't beat him. When he found out I was going to be a dad his comment was ' there goes your running career' he was right. 3 foot surgeries ended it then and there!

Sometimes things happen for a reason and the best thing that ever happened to me that physically I had to walk away from the sport. I have made more of a difference in other areas than I would have made as an athlete without a big enough engine. I mean how many coaches can say yea one of my students who I coached won the Green Jersey in the Tour de France?

back woods wrote:

The guys that do this spare the top/elite runners. They know those guys are better than they ever were and don't mess with them. It's a dominance thing.

Also elites are more likely to wind up with the good coaches.

You were an elite runner and that was surely clear early on in your career.

All the way back to junior high, all of my prescient coaches knew that one day I'd become elite, therefore I ended up with even more prescient (and good) coaches? That's amazing!

But that doesn't reconcile with all of the other DC area coaches who never had athletes who went on to become elite, and yet all of them were great coaches too.

I'm confused. ;-)

He jacked you up against the wall??

All jokes aside, dominating kids in this way is seriously one of the things that pedophiles get off on, and used to get away with b/c people would just accept their eccentric behavior.

And separately, sorry bro, but I just don't buy this whole 'back in my day coaches were tough and now you're all snowflakes' BS. I'm 45 myself, and had my fair share of tough coaches. But kids are being raised today to a higher standard than when we were kids. A coach or teacher acting as a bully is just a coach that doesn't know how to teach/train and is taking out their own frustration.

Every year, I hire a fresh new crop of 22 year olds. They may be a bit entitled and idealistic... but life will pound that out of them. What they are though is smart. Smarter than I was at their age, and frankly smarter than I am now. It's probably as a result of the fact that teachers and coaches do a better job than they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

I've coached XC the past 4 years at a high school that hadn't had any boys or girls XC team makes states in 30 years before I accepted the job. They had basketball coaches who coached XC to get their players in good shape and coaches who flat-out had no idea how to coach and motivate young distance runners. The past 4 years have yielded 4 top ten finishes at states and a state title. I never yell at or berate my athletes and when they have a bad race, I don't tell them I'm disappointed, because I'm not. I had my running career, this is their time. I don't think there is anything overly special that my assistants and I have done regarding training, although I learned a lot about what good training consists of because I had great coaches in HS and college myself when I was younger so maybe I take what I know for granted. Rather, I think a big part of our success is that we focus almost entirely on keeping a positive culture, keeping it all about how the team not who is ahead of who in the pecking order, and we inject fun into the practices and races where ever we can.

We never yell anything but encouragement and advice to our team. We reinforce to them that it's a tough sport and we recognize that. We tell them we've been there and would not want to have been yelled at like that, and we won't do it to them. We talk calmly and logically and to-the-point about what happened when a race went extra-well or extra-badly to focus on what should be repeated and what can be abandoned. We keep the whole program very positive and up-beat. If they don't want to be a part of a positive XC culture, we tell them they can go play soccer or football or video games, we don't care. Just go do something you like to do - XC is tough sport, and it is not for everyone.

We have kicked a handful of runners out of practice because they were whining repeatedly about the sport or the practice or how much they hated running. Some of them were signed up by pushy parents, didn't want to run, and never came back. We can live with that. Most of them just needed to go home and think about whether they still wanted to be on the team. The captains we pick are ones who are not necessarily the best runners on the team but ones who will hold teammates accountable, support the coaches and goals of the program, and care more about keeping a positive successful culture than they do about being popular with their teammates - although it's funny how often the captains with a spine that support what we as coaches are saying are often very popular and well-liked by their teammates. That is revealing.

Keeping it positive and upbeat all the time has worked great for us. I don't know any other way to coach.

I'm in my early 40s, went to high school and college in the 90s, and growing up, I didn't know of any coach who DIDN'T yell at (belittle?) athletes. If we screwed up or had a bad race, we expected to get yelled at. Somehow, none of us had emotional meltdowns.

I was talking to a co-worker recently about the fact that workers 10+ years younger than us can't seem to take any corrective feedback at all, no matter how constructive. We've seen young workers resign when they were corrected on something. I just don't get that.

Maybe it's because they never had coaches teach them the concept of authority.

malmo wrote:

"He'd let you know he was disappointed but that things would be okay," says Knight, adding their relationship has evolved with a shared appreciation of other sports and music. "He would never yell, belittle you or make you feel bad about yourself.

I must have run in an entirely different crowd than you guys. Throughout my career, going back to junior high, I've never had a coach who was "disappointed", or "yelled, belittled ...or made me feel bad about [myself]". Moreover, I've never heard of coaches from apposing teams (yes, all the way back to junior high) who acted in a similar manner.

Where the hell do you find those guys? How do they get coaching jobs in the first place?

I thought the same thing. And this coming from an old school type in Malmo when "hard ass " coaching wasn't met with helicopter parenting.

Yelling at somebody is like drinking poison and hoping they die.

malmo wrote:

back woods wrote:

The guys that do this spare the top/elite runners. They know those guys are better than they ever were and don't mess with them. It's a dominance thing.

Also elites are more likely to wind up with the good coaches.

You were an elite runner and that was surely clear early on in your career.

All the way back to junior high, all of my prescient coaches knew that one day I'd become elite, therefore I ended up with even more prescient (and good) coaches? That's amazing!

But that doesn't reconcile with all of the other DC area coaches who never had athletes who went on to become elite, and yet all of them were great coaches too.

I'm confused. ;-)

The typical future world record holder stands out already in middle school. Most people never meet someone with that much talent at anything. Most schools never have had a 4 minute miler and when they do all sorts of special tjings happen. I'd imagine that most of your early coaches never saw anyone else, before or since, with so much talent. Being elite and having been around a lot of elites probably makes it harder to see how rare they are and how much that talent stands out.

By the way i'm disagreeing that such coaches are horrible, but when I was in school there were a lot of them.

I had a coach in college that would occasionally yell at his athletes after races and occasionally during workouts. I never understood why. Usually after a bad race or workout you are already disappointed in yourself already...especially if you are a disciplined enough athlete to earn a scholarship in the first place.

There was one 8k XC race where I had a decent start but totally fell apart the last few miles.

He takes me a side after the race and yells I've had @#!@# freshman walk-on girls close faster than that!

I was only 18 at the time, I'm pretty sure I cried a bit.

Not to say my coach was an awful guy, in fact I respect him a lot as deep down he kept faith in me and didn't take away my scholarship -- despite performing below expectations early on. I was able to recover from a rough first few seasons, keep my scholarship, and had a pretty solid senior year. However, I believe he could be much wiser in his dealings with athletes after they had a poor race. Why kick 'em while they're down? Most athletes aren't going to respond well to it. Maybe meet with them in a more calm manner the day after?

I pretty much tuned my coach out by my senior year. In my last race at the conference championship 10k, apparently he was screaming and yelling obscenities in excitement as I made a move with about 600m to go. At least that's what my teammates said, I have no recollection of it at all.

Well, Malmo had a HS teammate (Otto Mazzoni) spelling? who ran 4:10 in the mile. He ran in a county with Dave Sandridge at park dale who ran 4:09 for the mile, there was another guy at laurel who ran 4:10 (can't think of his name). Maryland was a hot bed once upon a time.

Runners are soft lol. Thats why multisport athletes kill it in the track and field scene.