Track and Field – Process Driven, Science Based, Experience Shaped!
“Oh, coaching track and field athletics is your hobby”. This is often said to me by people who
track and field
find out that I coach performers in the greatest of all sports. My usual answer is that hobby does not even scratch the surface. It is, quite honestly, an all consuming passion, that drives my direction in life more an more with each passing year.
Why a Track and Field Website?
I started this website for several reasons. One, like many track and field coaches, I have searched and searched the internet for ideas and techniques to improve my track and field coaching. However, while there are some outstanding sites they are really few and far between. With this website I hope to change that by developing pages that will support coaches and athletes with clear, concise and informative content that includes video demonstrations.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not think I know it all. I personally feel that if you, as a coach, think you have learned all their is to know in this sport, then you need to retire as you are no longer any use to the athletes you coach.
I have however, been blessed to have been coached and mentored by outstanding practitioners in their field. This site serves a second function of allowing me “pay it forward”, so to speak, in terms of coaching development. The site also gives me a forum to share my continual athletics coaching journey as it unfolds.
No matter where my journey takes me I have developed a basic philosophy that drives my coaching, and as a result, will inform the content of my site. Its best described
Track and Field Skill 1 – Process Driven
I was educated early as a coach to take nothing at face value, and not to blindly copy drills or anything else used by other coaches.
It is important that, as a coach of track and field, you understand the process that you are trying to achieve and develop everything from the training plans, workouts, drills and conditioning to allow that process to happen.
If you don’t have a sound reason why an athlete is doing something, then they should not have to do it!
Track and Field Skill 2 – Science Based
As an athlete, I was blessed to be coached by coaches whose process driven coaching was underpinned by an outstanding command of anatomy, physiology and biomechanics. I firmly believe that science should be the basis upon which track and field coaching is based, informing the process we use to develop the athletes we work with.
Track and Field Skill 3 – Experience Shaped
Despite what science tells us, we cannot totally rely upon it. If we had to wait for science to prove all that we do as track and field coaches we would never do anything! Once again my coach mentors, despite having excellent science backgrounds, were not slaves to science and utilised experience built up over decades to inform what they were trying to achieve.
While our coaching of track and field athletes is process driven and science based, it must also be experienced shaped, learning valuable lessons from our success and, more importantly, from our failures. Ensuring become better at coaching track and field athletics.