Would you recruit a star runner if they didn't want to follow your training plan?

lease wrote:

Joe Newton said it many years ago: "Resisters will *always* fail you in the clutch." I resisted(!) this wisdom when I first heard it, but after another 20+ years of coaching I can say that he was right.

Neither this kid nor the coach's team would be well served by having the runner in the program. The benefits that one would expect (of having an übertalented kid who's already better than the conference champs) would *not* be forthcoming.

Not saying the kid, or the coach, are "bad" people--just that the situation would be a bad one.

hmmm..just like Galen rupp and oregon, right?

No. Nobody knows more about running than me. I have experience, that means I'm smart. Haven't you ever heard, "Age is knowledge, knowledge isn't age?" I haven't read any books, nor do I have any good runners, but I can guarentee any runners, no matter how well they're running on their own training, would be better off running my way, and since I AM the coach, it's my way or the highway. Who the f*** cares if you're a 4 minute miler on your training and a 4:15 miler on my training. You can go somewhere else if you think I'm gonna listen to anything you have to say.

Ha! You say you feel worn out and overtrained and that's why you're running poorly? Bullshit. You must just not be in shape and need more workouts to get in shape. What, you say lots of hard fast 400s have burned you out in the past? Bullshit! You probably just drank and partied too much. Maybe if you actually did your job you'd run better...

Al Gore Obama wrote:

Jimmy Chitwood?

Nice Hoosiers reference! Too bad nobody else got it.

Also, Typical Coach, I think I ran for you in college ;)

Bob Kirk is that you?

i am that kid and i left because i didn't know if the coach knew what he/she was doing. the coach had no proven track record (pun), except that he/she coached at other school. there was no record of who the best runner was that they had coached so i switched schools and went to a coach with a good record that i could trust.

everybody on the team that i left will have fun but they won't reach their potential because they will think that's it's ok to be running 24:00 for 5k as long as they are the best in the school (a small one).

Fargotex wrote:

I was that runner. My Coach learned from me, applied it, and the entire program rose to a new standard. He ended up with a team of monsters that not only brought home his 1st NCAA x-c plaques over a 32 year span, but my own records got taken down by my own teammates the year after I graduated. I think I opened a mental block in those guys and they achieved great things beyond running as a consequence of the experience.

My Coach was my God anyway. I trained harder for him because I enjoyed bringing him more joy.

A Coach who dismisses this kind of athlete shouldn't be a Coach as far as I'm concerned. It's a statement that the Caoching position is about their fragile ego first and not about the team at all.

Yes, your coach was described in part 1, he didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

We're assuming the original poster actually does know what the hell they're talking about.

I've had some personal experience with a similar kid. "My high school coach did this and I ran 19:02!"

"Great, I've been coaching 10 years and had a girl go from 21:03 to 16:54..."

At that point I should have yanked her money. Instead, she poisoned the kool-aid for the next season. Stuff wasn't right until she graduated.

Frankly, if winning is THAT important to you, you do need to get out of coaching, because your priorities are all messed up, for more reasons than I care to elaborate on.

The kid may be a great runner, but they don't get some critical parts of the process called life.

Why some modifications can, and should, be made for individuals (look at Rudy Chapa and Salazar at Oregon), the basic plan should be the same.

What does total control mean? He'll race when he wants to?

I would rather have a team full of average runners who show up everyday, work hard, and race hard over a some kid who thinks that the the world revolves around him.

I coach HS, so I don't recruit in a way that college coaches do, but I do recruit out of gym classes and other sports. I'm going through a similar issue right now in that the family thinks that "Johnny" is special and should be treated differently than everyone else. Well, it's not like Johnny is running 15 for the 5K while everyone else is running 21. In the last race, Johnny was only 7 seconds ahead of the next runner on the team.

The parents want rules like:

1. No one runs ahead of Johnny on repeats. Since Johnny is the fastest on the team, it bothers him when others are ahead of him.

2. Johnny should be able to start his workouts before everyone else so that he can have more time to get ready in the mornings.

3. Johnny should be named captain of the team (we have no captains).

The list goes on and on. Basically, they are trying to live their lives through Johnny and want him to be a big man on campus. I finally told Johnny and the parents they had 2 options: 1. Do it my way or 2. Go find another school to run for. I have better things to do than cater to one athlete when I have 42 in the stable.

How will the other runners react if this recruit gets to do his own thing? Will they want to do their own thing?

I would suggest getting a workout schedule from this recruit to see what he's doing and whether it can be included in the team's workouts.

I am that kid mainly b/c of the coaching I had in Hs was nonexistant. But I grew out of it with my college coach and trust him completly now. Another thing to consider that if you are having a problem with developing runners, then maybe a change in methodology is in order?

loz800m wrote:

I am that kid mainly b/c of the coaching I had in Hs was nonexistant. But I grew out of it with my college coach and trust him completly now. Another thing to consider that if you are having a problem with developing runners, then maybe a change in methodology is in order?

You're still assuming that the coach doesn't know what they're doing!

There are conferences out there with good, if only decent, coaches who don't get extraordinarily talented kids. And when they do, those kids are outliers. They win everything for four years, and then they go back to the way it was.

You can have a fine system, fine methodology, and good science on your side. If you only get 10:00 two milers, you're not going to have a ton of sub-15:00 5k guys. It just doesn't happen.

It sounds like the kid is going to pick a school based on the fact that he knows he can push around the coach.

And for those saying, I was that kid. Guess what, I was the fastest miler/two miler in my high school. I was faster than our relays. I coached myself for the better part of the last two years. But I didn't have my head up my ass and think I knew more about training than a college coach.

This kids hubris is going to make him totally unreasonable to work with, unless, like someone else suggested, you let him run everything, in which case, WTF are you doing coaching?!

haha, this thread is funny. Most of the people on here sound like they have a bit of that typical coach personality in them. A kid has been coaching himself and has been very successful. He wants to stick with what's working... hmmm, WHAT AN ARROGANT LITTLE BASTARD! I realize when running a team you can't have one guy doing his own thing, but it's stupid to screw with a good thing. Too many people want to mettle with someone else's success just to say they had a part in it.

Maybe you could talk with kid, see what stuff he has in mind, pick a few of your runners who like the same kind of stuff, and have them do the same workouts together. I've seen this happen lots of times with head coaches who let their assistant coaches take some of the athletes. It's just like two separate training groups. They're still on the same team, they just do different workouts.

The OP didn't say the kid is coaching himself. They said "he wants to control" the training.

Maybe the kid is a brainwashed PAAVO kid and has no idea that he's about to crash and burn when he bumps up to the 8k/10k. Maybe the kid just thinks that their h.s. coach knows everything...

Either way, if you're so bent on letting the kid do whatever he wants, you're not a coach at that point.

pogo wrote:

The OP didn't say the kid is coaching himself. They said "he wants to control" the training.

Maybe the kid is a brainwashed PAAVO kid and has no idea that he's about to crash and burn when he bumps up to the 8k/10k. Maybe the kid just thinks that their h.s. coach knows everything...

Either way, if you're so bent on letting the kid do whatever he wants, you're not a coach at that point.

Okay, let me add some details about Jimmy. He ran pretty well as a freshman and sophomore, but got a different coach his junior year and went downhill fast and stayed there until his senior year of track when his coach gave him a lot of influence on his own training. He immediately turned around and ran PRs, obliterating his times from the year before (2:03 to 1:55 to name one, and he's a distance guy). Well, he went to college and ran like shit except for the month of January. He ran so poorly the rest of the time that he quit and started running unattached. He's been running unattached for one year and has bettered his HS PRs and keeps improving.

Since I know this will come up, he did not try and mix his own training with the coach's while in HS and college. He did everything they told him and nothing more, nothing less. It just didn't work for him. Since it didn't work, and his own training has worked, and since he has experience with a variety of training systems, he feels he knows what's best for him.

Now what do you say?

For guys (less so for girls), the act of growing from 15 years old to 19 years old is one of the best training moves they can make. It's very, very easy to get faster just by getting older during that time period, no matter what training you're doing. So I'm not convinced that this kid has some mystical insight into his own body.

Lots of runners have specific needs that don't fit well into a given training program, so individualization is certainly an important part of a coaching program. But if the guy just wants to have complete control over his own program, then you've got to ask what you're bringing him in for. If having him win some races for you would be valuable, then great. However, consider whether the rest of the team is going to have faith in the training you give them when the fastest runner doesn't think that training is good enough for him.

My advice: talk to him about what elements of a training program are important to him. Find out whether what he wants to do is slightly different from your program, or completely opposite. Will he be able to run two out of three workouts a week with your guys? Do all the easy runs with them? If there's some overlap, give him some autonomy (he sets his own weekly mileage, you won't force him to run specific paces in workouts, you'll get his input). But in the end, you still have to have some authority, and he needs to be able to work out with your team.

Make a compromise.

Bring the kid on, let him have influence over his own training.

To avoid having the rest of the team become disillusioned with your coaching, personalize EVERYONE'S training so that they all feel as though they're getting specialized training, just as this kid is.

Keep the fact that this kid is setting his own sessions on the down-low for now (again, to avoid bad vibes toward you by the rest of the team).

You don't have to pain-stakingly devise an entire schedule for each runner, just vary each one's routine a little, according to the individual's strengths and weaknesses.

Let's say Bobby is a real speed guy, well let him do more strides and drills. Let's say Frank is a real distance guy, so let him do a bit more mileage and maybe longer repeats. Nothing extreme, but enough so that it's "personalized".

Chances are, people will tend to improve, and Jimmy will continue on his merry way, and everyone's happy.

Sounds like he should be his own coach.