Raced yesterday at our League Championship. I feel that the girls on our team aren’t willing to race hard, be competitive and push themselves. They are in great shap and running well, but not racing. Any advice on what to tell them to get them mentally ready for the rest of the season.
I don’t have this problem with the boys team, they’ll kill themselves in a race.
Get Ugly!
Love, compassion, kindness. Girls respond when it is fun and they feel close to the team. If that chemistry is not there it is hard to get them to perform up to their ability.
That is the case for boys and girls, its just that boys bond over hard work and sweat. Girls bond over the social aspects of the sport.
What I mean by "fun" is not childish games but getting in the van or bus and going to trails (rather than running the road from school). The magic of cross country is the bus rides. And the fun part of cross country is getting out there and experiencing the trails. Teach them that running is fun.
When it is fun, you can then help them realize that summer is the most important part to cross country. When the buy in teach them that being on the team is a privilege and that how they perform is not just for themselves but for those who are on their team. When they have that friendship, love and compassion for their fellow teammate they will go to the well for them.
But after a whole year of investment it could all be ruined because someone asked their crush out to the dance and he said yes.
Good luck!
I agree that girls do respond well when they feel close to their team and that team chemistry is important. But I think boys feel the same way - they will race harder if they feel they are part of the team and that the effort of all is important. Making sure each kid feels that they contribute to the program is an excellent way to get them motivated to do their best, even if they aren't actually scoring for the team (yet).
I've watched two very successful programs recently and was surprised at the differences. The girls team has a ton of girls out, so their success is partly due to sheer numbers. But the coaches try to "raise" the game by isolating the top girls and giving them special privileges in order to get the others to run harder. (I've actually read recently on this board that that method was the best way to get girls to run faster -- make being on varsity special). But it doesn't work - it creates resentment among the girls, creates a spirit of divisiveness and most girls don't race hard. (Since they don't really work with the "almost in varsity, but not quite" girls, they don't really get kids with potential to improve (they just bring in fast new ones). It's pretty sad.
OTOH, a different successful program makes an effort to tell all its kids that each one of them is important, even if they aren't scoring. The kids (boys in this case) are told that each person pushes the guy in front of him to be better and therefore even the slowest kid on the team is helping the group be better. As a parent of a slower kid, I've noted that he feels a sense of ownership in the team and has exhibited the desire to do his best and race hard even if he's no where near varsity.
As an athlete, I've always run a lot better when I feel like I'm a real part of a team and I think that is true for most people and both genders. Be inclusive, create unity (bus rides and road trips are very helpful) and you will see them start to push harder (not just to be beat their teammate so that she gets more attention from the coaches) but because it helps the team goal.
My HS coach used to say, "I'll never understand how women can handle the pain of childbirth, but you can't get them to run three miles hard."
Jokes aside, the majority of the girls on my HS team trained and raced very hard. I'd recommend emphasizing the team score, as people are willing to push themselves when they are afraid of letting the team down. It also helped that we had some big rivals that we hated losing to. Also, the privileges that come with being on varsity can be motivators. It's not good to make the JV girls feel cut off from the varsity girls or unimportant, but getting to go to the better meets, racing during the championship season, getting jackets and such can push people who maybe aren't naturally as competitive. Getting everyone excited to compete in the races and making them big events rather than just a workout against other schools might help.
Wasn't there a study mentioned on the lrc home page on this a year or so ago? It was on the difference between the motivations of girls and boys. it was a little surprising if I remember it correctly.
Something like - boys can be strongly motivated by the need to perform for the team. Think how men bond in wartime and make sacrifices for their fellow soldiers.
Girls were more self-motivated - to get the most out of it for their own sake. Think the endless self-improvement articles in magazines like Cosmo and Seventeen.
I may have it a little wrong, but I think that is it. it is a little different than the conventional wisdom of 'girls like the social aspects of running.' While a bad social environment can no doubt hurt a girl, that may not be the positive motivation she needs.
Don't tell them anything. If they are in shape, they'll be fine. The excitement of the year-end events will give them a natural boost.
I was at a HS meet yesterday. At least in our league the girls ran hard.
I was working the chute. Some of them could barely stand after they crossed the line.
there's the study. It doesn't actually say what does motivate girls, just that the team motive doesn't do much for most girls.
Last Chance Runner wrote:
I was at a HS meet yesterday. At least in our league the girls ran hard.
I was working the chute. Some of them could barely stand after they crossed the line.
They'd be able to stand if they trained better for racing or ran smarter races. I was at the local high school conference meet this week and watched the girls varsity teams. Still like it was back when I was in high school. Some girls run the first mile of the meet faster than their track mile PR. Many of the girls finish the 3 miles more slowly than what they've done for a 3 mile training run in practice. They run their dinky 20ish miles per week and then show up to the race and fling themselves at it. After seeing some of them you start to understand why Pre was right to call it a work of art for people who know what they're doing.
I don't say this to diminish the accomplishments of the girls. I just wish they could take that smart heart and put it on top of good training and smart racing.
My high school team wasn't very well-coached and many of the girls were working hard just to finish the race. Although I was willing to do whatever my coach told me, I didn't seem to have the ability to push hard through the middle of races. My coach accused me of sandbagging.
Looking back, my training wasn't such that I could bridge the gap between long endurance and short intervals. I looked good in practice because I could run long easy runs and speed through the interval workouts, but in races, I started out fast as if I were starting a workout, then had no experience in sustaining that effort. I became overloaded quickly and backed off the effort a lot before I could make another surge. No matter what my time was, I was always racing against my own lack of ability to keep up a steady hard effort - never really competing against the other runners.
If your girls are in good physical shape, this probably isn't their problem. But in my experience, a runner can look pretty good at practice but not have developed the kind of accumulated effort needed in racing.
On the flip side, what if you don't have a full team of girls, and are trying to get the one girl on the team to race hard? Trains great, races lousy. Help
fkwsdjk wrote:
On the flip side, what if you don't have a full team of girls, and are trying to get the one girl on the team to race hard? Trains great, races lousy. Help
Is she training too hard to stay up with the boys?
Or maybe her motivation is more about being around the boys' team than it is her personal running success? So she makes a big effort in practice to try to impress the boys, and cares much less about the actual races?
yetanotherchick wrote:
My high school team wasn't very well-coached and many of the girls were working hard just to finish the race. Although I was willing to do whatever my coach told me, I didn't seem to have the ability to push hard through the middle of races. My coach accused me of sandbagging.
Looking back, my training wasn't such that I could bridge the gap between long endurance and short intervals. I looked good in practice because I could run long easy runs and speed through the interval workouts, but in races, I started out fast as if I were starting a workout, then had no experience in sustaining that effort. I became overloaded quickly and backed off the effort a lot before I could make another surge. No matter what my time was, I was always racing against my own lack of ability to keep up a steady hard effort - never really competing against the other runners.
If your girls are in good physical shape, this probably isn't their problem. But in my experience, a runner can look pretty good at practice but not have developed the kind of accumulated effort needed in racing.
This is an excellent post. It accurately describes where many high school runners are at.
Lack of effort during a race itself is extremely rare.
agip wrote:
http://www.letsrun.com/2010/suver0224.phpthere's the study. It doesn't actually say what does motivate girls, just that the team motive doesn't do much for most girls.
I haven't looked at that article, but am seeing the opposite of your comment with the girls I work with. They're all about the team and very supportive of each other's progress as individuals AND for the team.
*Competitive* looks different in girls than it does in boys. OP, don't assume that your girls aren't putting everything they have into a race just because they exhibit different behavior characteristics when they compete.
Also, girls, in my experience, are much more strategic about racing than the boys are. This can be good or bad, depending on how far they take it, and the requirements of the particular event.
Ha. Good luck man. In my experiences girls either compete or they don't. I had a marginally talented girl with no speed set a school record in the 1600 because she was an animal and others that were more athletic (and fast) that couldn't get within 10sec of her time because they were unable to run hard/win at any cost.
Not saying it's impossible to change, but I never could. And the proportion of competitive guys was the exact opposite (I'd say 1/20 is a fair ratio of competitive girls).
I know they care and are putting in effort during a race. Just need a little more. They have a ton of potential. They are very, very close (sleepovers, dinners).
Maybe its because we train very conservative, lots of tempo, a little at race pace, not much faster than race pace.
We also race very conservatively and if we can win races by running easy (most of our league meets) we do.
However, this time of year they need to race hard. Maybe we should have run all out every race of the season?
I’m looking for ideas to get them mentally ready over the next week. Physically I think they’re there.
I find that girls young girls a mentally tougher that young boys. Thats just my observation. If you really want the girls to get on track, run a search on Bill Aris-Stotan approach. Fayetville-Manlius has no problem getting the girls to be race competitively, at least over the last 6 yrs!