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 Saturday, June 06, 2009
Why Change Doesn't Come Easy
I recently had a talk with a fellow coach who brought up the following point:

“I could not do what you do because I’d be concerned that kids would think my program is a ‘blow off’ program, and I don’t want kids believing that track requires less of a commitment than other sports.  My AD would want to know why track practices are so short, or why athletes aren’t expected to ‘work hard’ every day.”

I found these comments quite insightful,  because they suggest that some inherent ‘fear’ of program perception may be at the heart of why certain coaches feel compelled to provide far more training ‘substance’ than we do.  

Coaches create training complexity because they worry that athletes would think less of a far simpler program-and by association perhaps less of them.  

Some may dismiss this as just ridiculous, but think about it?  Do cross country coaches really need to run two-a-day practices in August?  Do track coaches really need to practice for two to three hours each afternoon?  How is much of that time spent?  Is it all running workouts and strength workouts and drills and technique work?  If so, how much of each is ‘necessary’?  How does the coach know how much is enough?  

I discussed this recently with Barry, because I believe this notion of program image is indeed a reason why we often encounter resistance to what we do.   A ‘simple’ program is a reflection of a lazy coach, and a lazy coach will eventually have a mediocre program.  But is that necessarily the case?  My ASR workouts are often completed within 45 minutes, yet it takes me longer than that to prepare these workouts based on previous data and test results.  Do athletes really ‘get’ what goes into a workout, or is this even a concern for them?

Barry’s view is that this attitude is more in the mind of the coach than the athlete.  Kids just do what you tell them to do.   They may question something that they think is dumb, but if the concept makes sense, and they understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, their focus is not on how much time that workout requires.

Further, Barry touched on two other issues that are worth considering:

Coaches have an inherent fear that they’re not doing something everyone else is doing.  Hence, the more ‘substance’ to the program, the more what they do is ‘like’ what everyone else is doing, the more secure they are thinking they’re doing the right things.

Coaches view change with skepticism because somewhere along the line, somebody told them this is what they need to do.  And there is indeed ‘safety in numbers’ when it comes to training philosophies. As another coach recently told me:  If what you do is such ‘state of the art’ training, how come everyone isn’t doing it.”


Ken Jakalski

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Posted: 6/6/2009 8:10:06 PM UTC  #    Comments [0]