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Having just gotten back from the MF All-Star Track & Field and Cross Country Clinic in Atlantic City, I’m confronted with a number of tasks. First and foremost is to get some writing done. After two days of listening to some of the best clinicians and technicians in the sport, my mind is about to burst. Posting some thoughts for my readers will help me to sort through the maze of ideas and pass on those I feel are most interesting, practical, or at least thought provoking. I find the last category the most useful because it jump-starts the process of synthesizing the information, accepting or rejecting theories (and some of it is pure theory) and determining the practical application to my own needs and special set of circumstances. I most appreciated the speakers that made me reflect upon what I do as a coach.

I have often heard it said “If I can bring one useful idea back from the clinic I’ll be happy!” I agree with the speaker who remarked that it is an awful lot of money to pay for one idea. More so, it is a very long drive and time consuming way to only get one idea. Due to the hard work of MF Athletics and Bill Falk,I didn’t have to settle for just one. The flow of ideas was endless – even for those of us who have gotten to that level in life when we start to feel we know nearly everything. The great cast of speakers reminded me of how much more there is to know.

Before I get to the details, I’d like to share some thoughts that put clinic attendance into perspective.

#1. Coaches must improve gaps in knowledge

Prior to his first presentation, I was talking to Mark Young about the results of his participation in this week's distance summit in Las Vegas. His thirty plus years of coaching experience at both the high school and the D1 collegiate level, his record of creating All-Americans in a non-scholarship program, his own experiences as a national caliber athlete (try 46-point indoors in the 440) and his experience as an Olympic coach should make him secure and confident in his expertise. Yet, only half in jest, his first comment to me was how his colleagues at the summit made him “feel so dumb.” The truth of course is that everyone with that type of experience knows something others don’t. And in some cases they know the same thing, but in different ways! So, when they hear another expert speak the natural inclination is to think, “Why didn’t I know that?” The learning curve may get flatter as you get more experience, but it never stops climbing.

#2. Coaches must be receptive to new understandings

Besides taking the opportunity to hear new science, innovative techniques and/or new approaches to teaching them, coaches have to be prepared to listen to the same things they have heard before. There is the chance that a coach’s level of personal learning readiness will be ready to understand an old concept in a deeper way. Coaches must let ideas twist around in the mind, and see if a different angle sheds new light on something they thought was fully understood. Just as with the well-documented “reading readiness”, for any growth of knowledge or skill there is a number of building blocks that have to be in place. Without them a person may think they “have it” – but they really only have part of it. I can remember one day of high jumping in my sophomore year at Uconn. Bill Kelleher told me the same thing I had been hearing and reading since freshman year of high school. I thought I understood. And yet on this one day I thought, “Aha!” I finally knew what they really meant. So Friday I was sitting outside Xanadu thinking about what Gary Wilson had said about feratin stores. I caught myself saying “Aha!”

#3. Coaches must learn, but also remember to appreciate time-tested ideas

Without jumping the gun on my article about the distance summit, the theme “Return to the future” was an apt description of the experts’ perceptions on the sport’s future. There are old systems and approaches, many sitting unused, that created better results than some newer and more popular ones. Look at the fact that of today’s reunion of the four high school athletes to run under four minutes in the mile, only one of them is under 50 years old. Training science, shoe technology, tuned tracks and monetary enticement hasn’t made sub-4 scholastics any more prevalent! Salesmen can make any new product sound better than the old, but when it comes to new coaching techniques let the buyer beware. Some work great, but coaches have closets full of gimmicks that couldn’t stand the test of time. It may be time to revisit some proven standards and at least be mildly skeptical to training fads.

#4. Coaches should always work to increase their repertoire of techniques

Mark Young recounted a story about the 2000 Olympics. While he coached the distance crew in Australia, all three 800M runners trained under J.J. Clarke. Two were his sisters and one was his wife. J.J. couldn’t arrive at the same time as the team so Mark was entrusted with the task of putting them through their daily practices. The three runners were similar in times and preparing to run the same distance on the same day. Yet, they had three different workouts, each tuned to the individual runner. In some ways their workouts were parallel, but each needed additional and unique tasks in preparation to utilize their own individual strengths. This is but one example that there are many ways to accomplish the same task. Coaches need to develop alternate ways to maximize the abilities of athletes with disparate skills. Individualization requires a varied repertoire.

Replete with my internal motivation for improvement, I headed off to Atlantic City.