Could it just be me or do other people feel as though their high school coach was more of a motivator than their college coach? Many times I have been able to win a race because it was not just me believing in myself, but my instructor believing in me as well. Here, it seems to be more on myself to be motivated and have the strength to perform. If you have experienced this, how have you adapted to still be a good runner?
I have experienced exactly what you've described. My coach gives us solid training, but hardly offers any encouraging motivation or race strategy. I too did well in high school because I knew my coach believed in me and I didn't want to let him down.
It's been an adjustment, but I still find ways to motivate myself to make sure I'm mentally prepared before a race. My teammates offer great motivation and support
College coaches, and professors for that matter, do it on purpose. They are trying to get you find your intrinsic motivation before you go out into the real world thinking like a 10 year old. Intrinsic motivation is much stronger than the extrinsic, doing it for the team, HS motivation. No matter what your HS coach told you, running is not a team sport. The process is an important capstone to growing up.
Same here, my hs coach was a great motivator. His training was enough to win in the small school division we were in, but it was low volume and nothing special. He had a way of taking no-talent guys and making them believe they are runners. At the level we were competing that was more important than the training.
In College my coach was mostly focused on the training. If you didn't show up to practice for a few days he would just take you off his clipboard, and next time you showed and asked what your pace was he would just say "I don't know". There were no speeches or one on one talks. He rarely gave more race advice than just what he thought you could run that day. After the race it was usually just "good job" or "what happened you looked terrible". A lot of my teammates didn't do well with this, they craved the coaches attention or were just mentally weak and needed to be built up.
lkndfg3487 wrote:
College coaches, and professors for that matter, do it on purpose. They are trying to get you find your intrinsic motivation before you go out into the real world thinking like a 10 year old. Intrinsic motivation is much stronger than the extrinsic, doing it for the team, HS motivation. No matter what your HS coach told you, running is not a team sport. The process is an important capstone to growing up.
Quoted for/with emphasis. Excellent post.
dreamin wrote:
If you didn't show up to practice for a few days he would just take you off his clipboard, and next time you showed and asked what your pace was he would just say "I don't know".
How would you still be on the team/on scholarship after not showing "up to practice for a few days"?