developing the whole athlete

I know I have written about this before but the more I work with distance runners and especially distance runners of the computer age I realize that you need to develop athleticism. As distance runners we spend so much time moving in the sagittal plane and some don’t even do that properly. There needs to be time spent working on becoming more athletic. Now don’t get me wrong you don’t get better at running by doing drills. But the more you can do the more you can do. If you cant stay healthy running miles you will never reach your full potential. In order to stay healthy or get stronger so you can run more you need to spend time doing functional strength and conditioning. I think you can do a lot of functional strength through incorporating into warm up and cool down activities. You can do a different series before easy runs, long runs, workouts, weight sessions. You can make some of these movements or drills core work, plyos, flexibility all wrapped into one. Functional strength should be worked on daily. Like running this is not something that can be improved immediately but you need to pay attention and make deposits in the bank often. Start simple and work to complex when the movements are mastered. Just remember the more you can do the more you can do. My two cents for the day.

Self education, expanding my horizons

I am trying to take advantage of this time as a volunteer coach at a D I school to expand my horizons as much as a can. We have such a great staff at Wichita State and I am very fortunate that most are willing to share there knowledge with me. Some areas I am trying to expand on are functional strength training, new/different methods of athletic training, marketing of track meets and recruiting.

Weight Room
Being down in the weight room while other teams are lifting has afforded me the opportunity to watch Adam Ringler http://www.adamringler.com/in action. Every time I see his groups at work I pick up some new things. He has been nice enough to let me pick his brain and is going to teach me the basics of Functional Movement Screen and go over some of the basics of his philosophy. I get to do this tomorrow and I am very excited. This is an area I feel I have a good grasp on but could use some work on how to “put it all together.”

Training room
Our training staff does some very cool things that previous schools I have worked for have not done. Mainly Graston and Kinesio taping. I have been teaching myself how to use Kinesio tape on myself and some of the kids on my team last year. I have some basics down but hope to pick the brains of Jeff Deits http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=athletictraining&p=/FacultyandStaff/Staff/jdeits/ who has more practice and has read more about the subjuect. He also said he would be willing to spend some time teaching me some of Graston techniques using Guasha tools http://guashatools.com/ So I am excited for some of these new lessons.

Marketing
I have been put in charge of coming up with creative ideas on how to get peoples butts in the stadium at our home meets. We have some good ideas but we have 2 home indoor, 2 outdoor regular season and our conference meet. Ideas range from HS invite sections at indoor meets, to tailgate party, carnival and music at outdoor meets. There are a lot of conversations I need to have but it should be very interested to see where it all goes from here.

Recruiting
I am not allowed to recruit. Which for me kind of stinks. But I am involved in conversations and brain storming sessions with fellow coaches in the office at practice or lunch and have been coming up with some good ideas.. Coach Wise also let me barrow Meat Market which is a book about college football recruiting, great stuff.

All of these have been in addition to reading as many articles and journals as I can find about all things running etc… I feel like I am expanding and become more educated so if and when I get a more permanent gig I will be able to have informed conversations with all the different people Coaches have to interact with on a daily basis.

new goals, fresh starts

Wow, it has been a very long time since I have updated this blog. I have a new goal of writing in here every day. So along with my goal of reading more everyday we shall see how this goes.

Since I last wrote in here Becky got a new job working for Sedgwick Co in the city of Wichita, so we have moved to Wichita and I have started as a Volunteer coach at Wichita State University with the cross country and track and field program. I have had people since I started coaching 7 years ago tell me that I needed to move to Division I. That was easier said than done, but WSU was nice enough to bring me on and it has been a terrific experience so far. Their coaching staff has over 90 years total experience at DI level and I have been trying to soak in as much as I can from the whole staff. I find myself following the different coaches around at fall track practice asking questions ranging from why this drill to what is next, and how do you progress from here.

So from here on out my goal is to write about my thoughts and experiences with this level. I hope you like it and if there is something you would like me to write about please let me know. I am excited to get back to writing. until next time......