Follow up to worst coach: Dumbest thing you've heard a coach say regarding running?

Any quote about sprinting the first lap really i have heard from many a coach. Cause we all know whoever gets to 400 meters first always wins the 5k race.

A coach I once trained under liked to say 'Drop and give me 20.' I never understood this phrase and still find it confusing.

I had a coach that used to always start off practice by reciting the alphabet. He said it was the easiest way to teach us the ABC's of track. WTF?!?!?

The quote didn't come from a coach, but I once had an exercise physiology professor insist the following:

"You should be able to eat a full steak dinner including a baked potato with butter and sour cream, salad with dressing and a roll 30 minutes before racing a 10K. If you throw up at any point during or immediately after the race, it is ONLY because you were not adequately conditioned and trained for the race itself."

coachspeak wrote:

A coach I once trained under liked to say 'Drop and give me 20.' I never understood this phrase and still find it confusing.

Were you in a relay? Did you drop the baton (practice or meet)? One of my coaches always blew his top when he heard a sprinter drop a baton on a hard surface or when in relay practice he saw someone screw up a handoff. And made the whole sprinting team do 20-50 pushups. Maybe that's why we won our section meet every year by the sheer fact our relays were flawless at the high school level.

Also, same coach decided (at 20-30lbs overweight) to run stadium stairs with the sprinters randomly without and sort of warmup or stretching, and tore his Achilles. He was a bright old boy.

One of my old coaches used to tell us 'You can't win if you don't enter.' He didn't understand that just because you enter doesn't mean you are going to win. I think this proved, conclusively, that I was smarter than this coach.

I used to have a coach that would scream "CRANK THE DIESEL! CRANK THE EVER-LOVIN' DIESEL!!!"

not sure that it helped us much.

" White men can"

what a moran

I had a coach that made us do barefoot strides in a parking lot once because the football field was being fertilized and the whole track was closed down. There were other places we could have ran barefoot, but he didn't care. He attempted to do a cartwheel after we won the county championship and managed to dislocate not only his hip, but also his shoulder. (I think he had some medical condition that made his joints prone to this)

Greatest quote was "The Gandhi speech" which he made a routine of performing some variant of about once a month. "Do you think Gandhi considered giving in as he marched three thousand miles for salt. Not a chance in hell! A weak, fragile old man managed the greatest physiological feat of all time, while smiling and inspiring millions, myself included. He went outside of himself and managed the unthinkable, single handedly liberating a feeble, cowering nation from the clutches of its oppressors. Be the change you wish to see in the world. Be the runner you want to see. Go and do likewise, gentlemen."

William Hayseedth wrote:

I used to have a coach that would scream "CRANK THE DIESEL! CRANK THE EVER-LOVIN' DIESEL!!!"

not sure that it helped us much.

Im guessing you're from Texas? I can't picture anybody who wasn't from Texas saying that. One of the UT-A coaches told me to "rope 'em" once. I'm from Syracuse. I was bewildered.

OP you've had the same coach for 50 years?

I'm calling BS.

"run these intervals at threshold pace. That's the pace you can barely hold for 400 meters"

or,

"you have to stretch a lot and be flexible to be a good runner"

Positive Contribution wrote:

OP you've had the same coach for 50 years?

I'm calling BS.

No, I meant to say he has 50 years coaching experience. When I was there, he was in his mid 70s.

Just learned the other day he was in the hospital for 5 months waiting for a heart transplant, and the next day I was told he was out of the hospital and had a successful surgery. I was relieved, besides his stupid remarks he was a good mentor to us and led the team to numerous state titles.

[quote]coach said many things wrote:

"run these intervals at threshold pace. That's the pace you can barely hold for 400 meters"

[quote]

different threshold.

habs wrote:

Positive Contribution wrote:

OP you've had the same coach for 50 years?

I'm calling BS.

He probably meant that the coach had 50 years of coaching experience (not necessarily coaching OP).

+1

runner boi wrote:

William Hayseedth wrote:

I used to have a coach that would scream "CRANK THE DIESEL! CRANK THE EVER-LOVIN' DIESEL!!!"

not sure that it helped us much.

Im guessing you're from Texas? I can't picture anybody who wasn't from Texas saying that. One of the UT-A coaches told me to "rope 'em" once. I'm from Syracuse. I was bewildered.

No, that's the weird thing. This was in Vallejo, CA.

I was assistant XC coach. I would watch the head coach scream at the runners to sprint from the start. To spring up hill, and to sprint on all straightaways.

His runners were not coached properly, and often the better ones began to come to me and ask me to coach them one on one. Which I did, because otherwise this guy was going to ruin them.

It was not funny ha ha, it was funny that he was the head coach and never ran, and typically whatever I said on a Tuesday, he would be repeating to the team on Thursday or Friday and take credit for it.

When I left after 5 years. There was no handshake. He was very pissed. I found out later, why he was mad. He became exposed.

True story... I once heard a coach say that he values the comments on the LetsRun message board. Does it get any dumber than that?!

"If you can't run faster than that get off the track."