Where Your Dreams Become Reality

Non-SMA120x60NT

What's Let's Run.com?

Highschool Front Page

Training Advice

More News in Our:
News Section!

Message Boards
Main Message Board

Turn Back The Clock! Today's Top Runners Talk About Their High School Careers

RECOMMENDED
READS

Comments, questions, suggestions, story you'd like to submit?
Email us
 
 You are reporting the following post to the moderators for review and possible removal from the forum

Poster: Richard Cheese
Subject: RE: Why is it wrong to train high school kids ambitiously?
Body:
Ace in The Troll wrote:

You know what drives me crazy? Is when people say "Do A and you will succeed, do B and you will burn out". That is craziness. Very few things in this world are a perfect cause and effect relationship, and running is not one of them. There are so many factors that determine a persons level of success. Many of them are uncontrollable. It is good to debate, but when you argue that there is a perfect way to coach everyone, that makes people sound very ignorant.

I say, train kids ambitiously if they want to be good. Desire is the biggest determiner if a kid is going to reach their highest potential in running. If a kid is happy with what they are doing or don't really care, you can't do anything in the world to make them want to run more or faster. All you can do is be patient and hope they come around. I agree with more long runs and tempo runs than intervals for HS distance. Only the most dedicated runners can handle a heavy load of intervals AND races concurrently. All about individualizing.


What if the team goals are ambitious and a few guys "just want to do it for fun". Keeping those guys around "for funsies" may hurt the team if you have to take time away from the serious athletes to work with the guys just doing it for their academic transcript.

Just because the coach can't force a kid to have high goals and ambition, by the same token the coach shouldn't have to foster a kid with the same intensity just because he shows up everyday but doesn't have any desire.

I hate that people try to make cross country and track out to be the "inclusive" sport. You think football, baseball, and basketball are keeping kids around who don't want to work? The school I coach at has practice at least once a week that lasts 4+ hours for football. They are also the best in the state. The "let's just get the kids out" mentality is hurting the sport. You should train a kid to maximize his potential while under you because if you don't do that there is a 90%+ chance he won't continue anyway.
Hit the submit button below if you want us to review the post. If you feel this is urgent or want a reply, email us at letsrun@letsrun.com about the post and please include a link to the thread the post is on and what page number/post on that page it is
Your name:

 

Quantcast