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Coaching athletics in Ireland
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09-03-2017 9:54am#1
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cheating a bit on the "no additional resources", but at the moment we have a lot of juvenile coaches, and even though most of them are inexperienced it really helps. Sometimes it means that instead of 3 coaches with 30 kids, you have 2 groups of 2 coaches with 15 kids - suddenly you're able to coach, not just do crowd control. (It can take a bit of prodding sometimes to get the newer coaches to split like this
) So it is really worth chasing up parents as much as possible to get them to help. Especially in the younger groups, the parents are more likely to accept that as normal!
And following on from that, what we're trying to do more of is get the new coaches to shadow the experienced coaches in more technical work. That's obvious, I know, but it usually means getting people to switch out of their regular age groups - the more experienced coaches all tend to move up to older kids, the newer coaches are often parents of younger kids and tend to stay with them.
Putting on my adult hat - we've an ongoing problem with a lack of coaches in the distance runners group. Most of the time, people want to run themselves, not stand around and watch. And yes, the adults are more self-sufficient, but it would be good to have people watching to give advice, tell people to move up or down groups, adjust sessions when necessary etc.
We're thinking of getting in a "professional" to come along to some sessions, maybe once or twice a month. Has anyone tried this? Good and bad points?
We do pay someone for strength and conditioning coaching each month, so it would be the same kind of thing.
(this comes back to the paid coaches idea. I think it's less problematic to get someone external, part-time like this than paying someone in the club)0 -
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Getting more parents involved is a no brainer but should we just be trying to keep the kids in the sport or is there a way to keep these parents (now coaches with a couple of years under their belt) in the club instead of having to upskill the next batch of parents?
The new coach serving an apprenticeship is a great idea from Raycun and one that I've fallen upon by luck, firstly with Jonny Fox (over 50 yrs in the game) and then most recently with Eddie McDonagh and Donal Hennigan.
Are we getting the most out of our International/National - senior/master runners?
Doesn't even have to be coaching, could be a monthly talk on a particular section. We're lucky to have a sub 4 miler hanging around our training as his daughter is in the club and he gave a talk about his time in the U.S on scholarship, the kids were engrossed.
Being able to ask him questions as a coach is priceless and it's not just him. We are one of the biggest clubs in the country, so perhaps very fortunate to have a lot of top athletes about.
Do neighbouring clubs help one another or is there a fear of athletes being poached? Are kids from all clubs being sent to development squads or does the same fear exist?
Why not work alongside each other every now and again and learn from each other. I'd love to be able to teach one of my U14 girls to jump over 5m
I think we need to do a better job at developing a more complete program that develops a pathway to get a kid from 7 into the senior ranks and have their love of athletics intact.
Are we doing a good enough job developing our kids physically and emotionally?
I see no issue with kids competing at 7 but lets make it a stress free environment for them. Have an ice cream van at the side of the track.
Do we sit the kids down and talk about expectations, does a kid realise that if he's last, that he's not really last?
It's very important that if a child isn't winning that they understand that that's ok, not to compare one's self to others but to their own improvement.
What do kids need out of Athletics to help them to keep going?
A social side - If you start them early enough, most of their friends will come from this group. I've had a group since they were 7, they live in each others houses, they go to discos together, they have a 600 day snapchat streak with each other
Role models - Take the same group above, they're now training in the same group as some of the country's best U17 & 18 middle distance/distance runners. They see them going to Sardinia and Portugal most recently, of course they're thinking "I want some of that". They travelled over to the UK with them at the end of last year and the older girls were cheering them on as they raced.
A purpose - What's it all for. Have they got clear goals?, do they understand the health benefits? Do they realise that kids in organised sports perform better in school. Can they see progression in their training or is it all just rolled into one.
Post above is a bit all over the place, apologies.0 -
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I think more clubs need to start little athletics programmes. As said above, other sports are starting early, if you don't take kids until 8 or 9, a lot of them will have their week booked solid already
needs a lot of coaches 5-7 year olds are hard to handle get bored easy get teary easily if turns are skipped etc
i would say 1 coach for every 8 kids max
youl get a few parents to do the course but what ive seen is that as the kids move up mum or dad want to move up too so you need a constant stream of people
the loo... cant be letting 5-7 year olds wander off to the clubhouse on their own so someone needs to go with them more bodies needed
sessions need to be thought out before hand even if its just in your head just to be clear on whats going to happen if you leave them idle for 2 seconds theres madness
whatever equipment needs to be out for at least the first 10 minutes should be out beforehand again small kids waiting round standing still is not good
( ive had to warm up 50 odd small ones on my own whilst waiting for other coaches to arrive .. ive learned the hard way
)
i said in the last post i think we ran it almost across the school year maybe end october to easter and it was too long we went indoors in the winter things got very repetitive kids got bored the next summer we ran 2 blocks of 6 weeks and we limited the numbers of kids in line with how many coaches we had worked far better
junior parkrun is another great idea if you can get a club to give a hand in getting it going0 -
Child protection guidelines for that age are 1:8 anyway
Going back to the older kids, here's just an example, my own kid, about to turn 14.
What do the AAI guidelines say? That at 14, he should be doing a range of events (and other sports), and that he's training now to peak in about 10 years time.
I agree with that.
He doesn't.
Ten years is an unimaginably long time away for him. Finished school, finished college, could be living somewhere else
He used to do all of the events, but now he's mainly a distance runner because he's much better at that than at the other events. He'll do sprint training, hurdle drills, general conditioning because he sees how they benefit distance running. No interest in continuing jumps or throws, because he's not going to compete in them, because he doesn't do well in them.
He is going to compete in track championships and cross country, because he wants to. And the closer we get to those races, the more he will want to do specific training for them. Not because I am focused on getting a certain number of medals at the championships, but because he wants to race and he wants to do well when he races.
If he doesn't race, he'll get bored and quit.
If he doesn't do race-specific training, if all his training is aimed at building a base that will pay off eventually, he will get discouraged and quit.
And he is, in many ways, the ideal candidate for a programme based on aerobic development (which is a lot of his training). All the other kids in his age group? They are less interested in middle distance, and want to do more of different kinds of training. Or are at training less often. Or are training at a different standard, and we have to figure out how to make the session work for them too.
(and some of them have the same motivation issues too, of course. They want to compete, and they want to do well when they compete, so we need to prepare them for competition. Some of them need more encouragement to compete, but if they stop competing the next thing that happens is they stop training altogether.)0 -
Child protection guidelines for that age are 1:8 anyway
Going back to the older kids, here's just an example, my own kid, about to turn 14.
What do the AAI guidelines say? That at 14, he should be doing a range of events (and other sports), and that he's training now to peak in about 10 years time.
I agree with that.
He doesn't.
Ten years is an unimaginably long time away for him. Finished school, finished college, could be living somewhere else
He used to do all of the events, but now he's mainly a distance runner because he's much better at that than at the other events. He'll do sprint training, hurdle drills, general conditioning because he sees how they benefit distance running. No interest in continuing jumps or throws, because he's not going to compete in them, because he doesn't do well in them.
He is going to compete in track championships and cross country, because he wants to. And the closer we get to those races, the more he will want to do specific training for them. Not because I am focused on getting a certain number of medals at the championships, but because he wants to race and he wants to do well when he races.
If he doesn't race, he'll get bored and quit.
If he doesn't do race-specific training, if all his training is aimed at building a base that will pay off eventually, he will get discouraged and quit.
And he is, in many ways, the ideal candidate for a programme based on aerobic development (which is a lot of his training). All the other kids in his age group? They are less interested in middle distance, and want to do more of different kinds of training. Or are at training less often. Or are training at a different standard, and we have to figure out how to make the session work for them too.
(and some of them have the same motivation issues too, of course. They want to compete, and they want to do well when they compete, so we need to prepare them for competition. Some of them need more encouragement to compete, but if they stop competing the next thing that happens is they stop training altogether.)
I really don't think our differences of opinion are that big tbh. Just the implementation is where we are getting stuck. I don't see an issue with a 14 year old having a few interval training sessions, my issue lies with having specifically 8-12 year olds doing a good amount of hard intervals and pretty much all kids under the age of 15 doing hard intervals every week all year round. The amount of hard intervals should be age appropriate and never year round, a sprinkling here and there to mix it up. The vast majority of clubs are not doing this and running hard intervals all the time is very monotonous too.
I am not talking about strict base training with no racing or speedwork like you keep saying, I don't know how many more times I have to say this but you keep going back to it. Let the kids blow it out occasionally in a race or training, less often for the very young kids and more so as they get older, mix it up with variety. My ideas are not based around creating long distance runners but in creating healthy young individuals who have the capacity to built for most events for the times when a decision comes to specialise. A balance has to be struck somewhere between different sessions with it shifting slightly as the kids get older.
You are contradicting yourself, you called me out saying that my ideas were too specific (which they weren't) and now you are saying kids need specifity. You disagreed that AI were implenting a poor system of training but now you are saying that what's good for keeping kids in the sport goes against that, my question on that is where is the breakdown between juveniles/coaches and AI guidelines? There has to be one somewhere judging by your last post. What is the point of teaching the coaches one thing if it cannot be implemented successfully at grassroots level? Is this not a problem within club coaching?0 -
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average_runner wrote: »Parents are there all the time to deal with stuff like that.
I was watching my son's karate class once and a little 4 yr old girl needed the toilet and no parent there, just 2 male instructors. They looked around clueless and eventually asked me to bring her. I felt quite uncomfortable about the situation but i did bring her. Thought it was strange to leave a just turned 4 year old there on her own
But i do agree for the most part parents are there and a lot of the time they prefer to do that stuff themselves, toilet runs and dealing with an upset/hurt child.0 -
I was watching my son's karate class once and a little 4 yr old girl needed the toilet and no parent there, just 2 male instructors. They looked around clueless and eventually asked me to bring her. I felt quite uncomfortable about the situation but i did bring her. Thought it was strange to leave a just turned 4 year old there on her own
But i do agree for the most part parents are there and a lot of the time they prefer to do that stuff themselves, toilet runs and dealing with an upset/hurt child.
When they step into the 6-8 year old group its a coach per 6 kids. Parents are asked to ref some matches, which should be fun, can't wait.0 -
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