College athletes past and present, what are some things you think college coaches do right, and what do they do wrong?

Considering that the coaches are working with people who've just left their parent's nest and the first adult they now have to go to in person with their problems is their coach, the college coach pretty much has the toughest job on campus. Somewhere between being a parent to more than a dozen, maybe 2 or 3 dozen 18-22 year olds that they're just getting to know, and preparing the athletes to race the following week after week, after week, something's got to give. Some coaches end up sacrificing the athletes's long term running success or long term physical or mental health, or relationship with the athletes.

It's one of the first lessons of joining the adult world. There are no jobs like a multiple choice test. It's not as simple as that and it's impossible to be perfect. It's unfair to expect perfect service. We all have to prioritize what's most important, what's reasonable, and how we can make our best impact with the limited resources that we have.

BINGO!!!!! It's just being lazy. Coaches need to better study the training that made said athlete good/great in the first place, then bring them into a system. i don't think Leo Manzano ran much more than 20 miles in high school. To have thrown him into a 90-100 mpw system would have been dumb but obviously his UT coach brought him in perfect.

The Stache wrote:

Training every athlete on a team the same way.

Having the #6-#10 (or whatever number...the slower runners) train as fast as the top guys because "if you want to be as fast as him, you need to train like him."

I think something that collegiate coaches have a problem with is their focus. I have run for two D1 universities and each has put a large emphasis on having everyone on the team doing the same miles, same workouts, etc. while ignoring things that big time coaches (like Nike's coach Salazar) focus on; which includes a more personalized kind of training plan where things like form, racing strategy, personal mileage plan, etc. are emphasized. Don't get me wrong, at college-level racing you should expect higher milage training and things of that nature, but putting everyone on a near identical plan is a recipe for injury and fatigue. Thats my two cents on college coaching.

From a middle distance standpoint, I think a lot of coaches don't know what they're doing. It's a tough event to coach well and often times it's the distance/XC coach that ends up here.

Unfortunately, these guys typically over-stress mileage and aerobic fitness at the cost of not enough speed work.

You can't run a fast 800 if you can't run a fast 400.

I can't help, but see this thread as a way for a lot of people who have had bad experiences lump all coaches into the same boat. This is why student athletes need to have a realistic expectations of collegiate athletics and do some research before committing to a coach/program. Collegiate athletics aren't for everyone and they are NOT high school anymore. Not all, but a decent majority of SAs don't know how to handle failure, because mom and dad (or their HS coach possibly) ever taught them how to deal with it. It's OK to not be the best. It's ok to struggle. THAT is a part of growing up and will be a part of life forever.

The other thing I noticed with teammates and now in coaching is that students want college to be just like high school...academically and athletically. No extra work required. No extra studying. No extra work in the details to be good athletically. Instead this entitlement comes through that you DESERVE good grades because you showed up. You DESERVE to run well because you came to practice. Because you have a good intentions. Because it is supposed to always be fun and easy. This is not always the case. There are/will be days you don't want to go to class or practice or run or whatever, but you need to. You can't skip out on work just because you are tired or don't want to go.

I just don't want all coaches to get thrown under the bus because a few folks think they have it all figured out. It's very easy to be an "arm chair" coach and assume folks don't know what they are doing or aren't successful. Often there are restrictions and/or expectations placed on coaches that make their circumstances difficult. Add to that some SAs who don't want to try to eat well, sleep well or study appropriately, then it becomes even more difficult. Athletes need to be able to trust the coach, but the coach needs to be able to trust the athletes.

To sum up this thread, the biggest problem appears to be coaches treating the athletes like athletes, and not like people.

Now that I'm a high school coach, I think a lot about my high school and college days.

Things my college coach did right:

-Mixed workouts, and gave easy days (usually MWF). Since they weren't monitored there was some freedom to run at a reasonable pace/how you felt that day.

-Learned from mistakes, mainly that he was overtraining people and that their workouts were better than their races.

-Learned to (sometimes) encourage people with bad races rather than blaming or just purposely showing annoyance and/or avoiding them.

Things done wrong:

-Didn't have any individualization, same workout and same paces (in XC and maybe 2 groups in track).

-Seemed to be threatened by any hint that someone thought it might be better for them to do something another way.

-Early on he expected some of us to run 4 mile tempo runs faster than our 8k PR pace every non-race Sat. Had many do 6 mile repeats (lap jog) at a pace faster than 5k PR pace.

-Didn't provide stepping stones for improvement, but kept giving workouts that the bottom half couldn't do or at least shouldn't have done.

-Didn't stop a bad workout that was only hurting the athlete (whether physically or their confidence).

-Didn't monitor our mileage, how the easy or long days were going, our workout progression, or nutrition.

-Didn't monitor injury or sickness and made it out somewhat like it was a frustration just for him.

-Biggest mistake might've been just not checking in with athletes, and also giving them a chance to say what would help them develop.

It may just be me but having spent a significant amount of time earning a BS and then MS in exercise physiology, it amazes me to see collegiate level coaches so astonishingly ignorant when it comes to how the human body works.

I've competed and coached at the D1 level at a nationally ranked team and the coach could throw out "vo2max" and "energy systems" here and there because he heard them once but he was entirely clueless. His workout decisions had massive logical flaws and the athletes paid the price, over and over again. This may go along with those that mentioned rest never being discussed in practice.

Dear high school senior, please ask your prospective coach that has a history degree some hard-hitting applied physiology questions and watch him drop the ball or hit a home run. Could really save you 5 years of agony and frustration.

ncsa wrote:

Dear high school senior, please ask your prospective coach that has a history degree some hard-hitting applied physiology questions and watch him drop the ball or hit a home run. Could really save you 5 years of agony and frustration.

And high school students are supposed to know these questions and the correct answers to them?

I can think of many things I did wrong as a college coach, but here are two biggies:

1) Someone alluded to this above: I've been told that ~85% of distance runners' injuries occur from the knee down, yet a similar percentage of injury-prevention work (if any is done at all!) occurs from the knee up. I do think core work is important (though I don't think it should be fetishized), as well as an appropriate level of overall body strength, but I think it's absolutely essential to do specific work for the feet/ankles/shins. For much of my time in coaching I didn't emphasize this.

2) For a year or two I required each athlete on the team to come in, on a weekly basis, and speak with me for ten minutes (no more) during office hours. When I polled my athletes (at year's end) on what they thought we did well and what could be improved, several mentioned the weekly ten-minute sessions as a good thing. But when you have dozens of athletes, even ten minutes for each adds up, and I felt that it kept me from getting other things (recruiting and administrative stuff) done. So I dropped those.

In retrospect, I wish I'd stayed with the 10min/wk in an outside-of-practice setting. Seemed like the kids I most needed to speak with would never come in unless it was required.

I agree with you in general about physiology.

Coaches must know APPLIED physiology. To attempt to use the science without any idea what it means is completely irresponsible. I don't think it is necessary to have done a complete MS thesis, but an advanced grounding in the subject while keeping up with the current literature and advances in the field is absolutely essential.

I will say this:

The coach I know with the best knowledge of applied physiology has a grad degree in history. This is, of course, excluding some that have grad degrees in the subject. Others I know he dominates. My wife is a doctor, and she said his knowledge is far beyond any 3rd year med student.

He's a freaking genius who made a huge effort to learn it. Despite being a history major, I know he took a ton of math and science as an undergrad, so I'm sure that made it easier.

When an assistant or another coach gives the athlete unsolicited advice. Whether it's training, racing, or behavior STFU. Have a suggestion?? Bring it up with my event coach.

The biggest issue we had on my team, and contrary to many post my school was NOT a power, NOT well respected, and NOT very successful.

We were a small team, at a small D1 school with a limited budget, and 2nd tier athletes.

That being said, we were all still trying to be the best we could be. Nobody on my team was going to the Olympics or thinking they could get a shoe contract. We all knew this was it.

The biggest failure I saw was the lack of support outside of athletics. We just churned through people like crazy. I was shocked at how we just went through runners like water. Our coach wasn't a touchy feely guy. He figured it was up to you to make it. The time for hand holding was over. I can respect that, BUT a little hand holding might have helped some people make it through 2 years and actually contribute to the team as Jrs & Srs.

ncsa wrote:

It may just be me but having spent a significant amount of time earning a BS and then MS in exercise physiology, it amazes me to see collegiate level coaches so astonishingly ignorant when it comes to how the human body works. ...

Dear high school senior, please ask your prospective coach that has a history degree some hard-hitting applied physiology questions and watch him drop the ball or hit a home run. Could really save you 5 years of agony and frustration.

Ha.. I'm just picturing Coach Gags and laughing my @$$ off at the prospect of this scene.

MYOB wrote:

When an assistant or another coach gives the athlete unsolicited advice. Whether it's training, racing, or behavior STFU. Have a suggestion?? Bring it up with my event coach.

Head coaches that hire assistants and then don't want them to assist with the program and require everything go through the head coach.

zohan wrote:

ncsa wrote:

It may just be me but having spent a significant amount of time earning a BS and then MS in exercise physiology, it amazes me to see collegiate level coaches so astonishingly ignorant when it comes to how the human body works. ...

Dear high school senior, please ask your prospective coach that has a history degree some hard-hitting applied physiology questions and watch him drop the ball or hit a home run. Could really save you 5 years of agony and frustration.

Ha.. I'm just picturing Coach Gags and laughing my @$$ off at the prospect of this scene.

Besides Joe Vigil, which other college coach is extremely successful and has a degree in exercise physiology? What degree did Mark Wetmore, Martin Smith, Vin Lananna, and Jerry Schumacher graduate college with?

What I think my coaches did wrong:

-Workouts were too short. For example, what do you think you get a greater stimulus from, 3xmile at 5k pace with 90 seconds rest or 5xmile at 5k pace with 3:00 rest?

-Too little focus on tempo/threshold running

-Having people of very disparate abilities run workouts together while simultaneously stressing the importance of group training. Led to people getting burnt out from trying to keep up with much faster runners.

-Too much tapering. My sophomore year xc was the worst. The workouts dwindled to merely glorified strides and he encouraged us to cut our mileage in half. He got better about it as my time went on, at least in xc season. In outdoor track it's still a problem to this day, 4 years after I graduated.

-Greatly overstimated the abilities of the athletes, aggressively overseeding us in track races and encouraging suicidal opening paces in xc races.

What I think my coaches did right:

They emphasized keeping easy days easy. That's pretty much it.

The Oklahoma State coach has a Doctor of Pharmacy degree.

Art or Science? wrote:

zohan wrote:

Ha.. I'm just picturing Coach Gags and laughing my @$$ off at the prospect of this scene.

Besides Joe Vigil, which other college coach is extremely successful and has a degree in exercise physiology? What degree did Mark Wetmore, Martin Smith, Vin Lananna, and Jerry Schumacher graduate college with?

Art or Science? wrote:

Besides Joe Vigil, which other college coach is extremely successful and has a degree in exercise physiology? What degree did Mark Wetmore, Martin Smith, Vin Lananna, and Jerry Schumacher graduate college with?

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