Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together
by Steve McGill
Of all the things I like about coaching hurdlers, probably the one thing I love the most is the problem-solving element. Hurdle coaches are no different than auto mechanics or medical physicians in that once we identify a problem, we have to decide whether what we are seeing is the root problem or a symptom of a larger problem. From there, we have to provide a diagnosis and then develop a plan to address the problem. For the auto mechanic, all of that should add up to a car that is repaired and ready for the road. For the physician, all that should add up to a patient who is on the way back to a full recovery. For the hurdle coach, all that should add up to an athlete who is faster, more efficient, and more confident than ever.
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One hobby that I have immersed myself in for the past few years that has helped me to grow as a coach is that of solving jigsaw puzzles. It has helped me to become more meticulous, more persistent, and more confident that even when I start to feel like I can’t find a solution, I will find a solution. In a jigsaw puzzle, every piece is providing you with clues as to where it fits. Its color and/or its shape is giving you clues. It’s just a matter of reading the clues, giving yourself the freedom to misread the clues, and staying confident that answers will emerge and that breakthroughs will come.
I enjoyed solving jigsaw puzzles as a child, but then I got away from it when I started reading a lot, around the age of 10. As an adult I got back into solving jigsaw puzzles during summer breaks from teaching, as I found that doing so centered me while also presenting a healthy challenge. But it wasn’t until the quarantine year of 2020, when the Covid 19 pandemic took over the globe, that I dove head-first into solving jigsaw puzzles all of the time. I discovered a website called puzzlesprint.com that converts photographs into jigsaw puzzles. All I had to do was upload the photo to them, and it came back to me a week or so later as an unsolved 1,000-piece puzzle. During quarantine, between the months of March-August of 2020, I completed a whole bunch of puzzles – one of my dad and a friend of his from my dad’s younger days; one of my mom in her later years; two puzzles of one of my sports heroes, Julius Erving, who used to star for the Philadelphia 76ers during the years of my adolescence; puzzles of hurdling heroes Renaldo Nehemiah, Edwin Moses, and Rodney Milburn.
When the school where I teach returned to in-person learning the following fall, I borrowed a table from another teacher that could serve as a good puzzle table, and placed it in the corner of my classroom. One of my students, Mallorie Haines, who starred on our basketball team, informed me that she too was a puzzle-holic, and that she too had solved a truckload of puzzles during quarantine, so we decided to do some puzzling together. The first one we did was of a photo of her grandfather who lived in Alaska, and whom she visited for a few weeks every summer. The second one was of a photo of Mallorie herself, playing basketball for her AAU team.
At first, it was just a me-and-Mallorie thing. But then other students started helping out on the puzzles during their study halls or during lunch time. By the end of the year, my students and I had completed about ten puzzles. Some I hung on my wall, some I gifted to others.
Now, two years later, almost the entire back wall of my classroom is filled with puzzles, and there’s always a new puzzle we’re working on. Students are sending me photos, and now there is literally a waitlist because of the high number of photos I’ve received.
At the puzzle table, I’ve had many profound, meaningful conversations with students as they go through the emotional instabilities that come with being a teenager in a post-quarantine world. I’ve also had many good laughs with students while puzzling. And I have also observed how students will often come into the room and head straight to the puzzle table. For many of them, the puzzle table has become a safe haven from the stressors of the grind of school life.
Puzzling has taught me, and continues to teach me, the importance of persistence, of developing strategies to tackle difficult situations, to stay relaxed and confident when things aren’t clicking naturally, and many other lessons. Puzzling with other people has taught me to be a team player, to learn from the techniques and strategies that others employ, to take over when I need to take over, and to take a step back when I need to take a step back.
It’s cool when a puzzle is completed and shows up on the wall beside the other puzzles. When a puzzle first arrives in the box, it is comprised of 1,000 pieces of chaos. But gradually, piece by piece, that chaos becomes more organized. Shapes start to appear, and a picture begins to emerge. The whole process does involve plenty of frustration, and there will always be moments when self-doubt creeps in, but the beauty of puzzling is that pushing past those moments forces you to grow in ways that you wouldn’t have grown otherwise. Puzzling used to be just a hobby to me, but now it’s a way of life, and a way to tell a story.
As a hurdle coach, I’m always applying the lessons that solving jigsaw puzzles has taught me. Right now I’m working with two 11th grade girls, neither of whom has ever three-stepped in a race, and one of them has never hurdled at all before this year. So, I’m constantly troubleshooting issues, constantly trying to figure out how the pieces fit together. In hurdling the pieces consist of the lead leg, the trail leg, the upper body posture, the lead arm, the trail arm, the speed between the hurdles, the sprinting mechanics, the dorsiflexion of the ankles, force application, etc. And in training the pieces consist of sprint drills, hurdle drills, sprint workouts, speed/endurance workouts, upper body weight room work, lower body weight room work, core work, full-speed hurdling workouts, etc. As a coach, I have to take all these pieces and put them all together so that they all fit together smoothly. It’s hard to find time for everything, but we have to find time for everything. Just like with a jigsaw puzzle, if one piece is missing, people who see the puzzle for the first time won’t notice the 999 pieces that are in their proper place; the first thing they’ll notice is the one piece that’s missing. Similarly, if we don’t get in enough core work, or enough speed/endurance work, or enough block start work, that weakness will be exposed in races and it’ll stand out more than any of the hurdler’s strengths.
When a puzzle is completed, the observers can’t even see the pieces; they only see the picture. They don’t see 1,000 pieces. They see a unified whole. That’s what a hurdle coach must do. I must fit all these pieces together so that the outside observer only sees a unified whole. The observer in the bleachers shouldn’t see a lead arm, a trail leg, etc. That observer should only see one fluid continuous motion at the hurdler heads down the track.
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