Types of Track Athletes
by Steve McGill
Now that I’m in my second year as head coach of my school team, I’m becoming keenly aware of the different types of track athletes there are on a team. I was always aware of this from all the years I’ve spent as the sprint/hurdle coach on previous teams, and in my years coaching for youth clubs. But being a head coach magnifies everything, because you have to manage all these personalities instead of just focusing on your specific group, like an assistant does. In this article, I’ll talk about the variety of athletes I’ve noticed, although I’m sure there are some categories I’ve left out. So this is a fun article but with some serious undertones.
The Last Rep Hero
These athletes are so frustrating to coach. They have talent, they complete workouts, they’re not sassy or disrespectful, but they never give it everything they have in any given workout. I always tell the athletes on my team, “don’t waste a rep, don’t waste a step,” which means give it all you got every step of every rep. Don’t finish a workout knowing you could’ve put forth a greater effort. The last rep hero ain’t tryna hear all that. The last rep hero is more afraid of pain and fatigue than of not improving and developing. That’s why the last rep hero will always wait until the last rep of any given workout before putting forth a maximum effort. So, if we’re doing something like 6×200, the last rep hero will run the first five in, let’s say, 27, and then run the last one in 24, beating everybody else on the team. He expects everyone to be proud of him for finishing so strongly, when the fact of the matter is he was holding back the whole workout and wouldn’t have been able to run that 24 if he’d been doing what he was supposed to do from the beginning.
The Lazy Know-it-All
This athlete is extremely annoying to coach. He knows everything, When he runs like crap he has a rational explanation as to why. He wants to give input on workouts, and he presents himself as someone whose knowledge of the sport is on an exceptional level. Even when it comes to basic details about when a meet starts and what the meet program consists of, the lazy know-it-all has already looked it all up and can tell you everything. Last week we had a meet that started at 4 pm, like all our weekday meets do. So, the lazy know-it-all on my team, who throws discus, says to me, as we get off the bus at 3:15, “Coach, I gotta hurry up and warm up because the meet starts in 15 minutes.” I looked at my watch. “Know you don’t,” I said. “You got 45 minutes. Meet starts at 4.” But he persisted, “It starts at 3:30, Coach.” Ready to blow my top, I simply said, “Okay, you’re right, you know everything.” Of course, the meet started at 4.
The Hard-working Know-it-All
This athlete would be a dream to coach if he didn’t think he knew more than the coaches. This athlete puts maximum effort into every workout. In addition, he is very diligent about getting work in off the track — lifting weights, stretching, icing sore muscles and joints, etc. The hard-working know-it-all never misses a day of practice, will train through minor aches and pains, and is even a good leader when it comes to pushing teammates. The problem with the hard-working-know-it-all is that he doubts the usefulness of every workout and is always asking negative questions about why we’re doing what we’re doing instead of doing something else instead. Anybody who knows me knows that I’ve always been big on explaining the why behind the what. With every workout I give, I’ll always explain how it’s going to be beneficial. I had an incident with an athlete this year who runs the 1600 and 3200. In the off-season, she runs all the time on her own in the mornings and in the afternoons. Her conditioning is out of this world. But her speed isn’t. So my assistant and I were giving her a lot of workouts earlier this spring that were intended to improve her speed and develop that weakness. The result was that she set a personal best in the 3200 in the first meet and set another personal best in the 1600 in the next meet. So I was very surprised when my assistant informed me that he had received an email from the athlete asking him why we had her doing so much speed work. In the email, which my assistant shared with me, the athlete was saying that her private coach said that she should be doing more mileage. We had a conversation the next day and worked it all out. I basically told her that as long as she’s getting better, she should trust us. I explained to her that I’m not a my-way-or-the-highway kind of guy. Someone like her who puts in the work deserves to have her voice heard, but to question our knowledge, I said, was insulting. She got where I was coming from and we’ve been cool ever since, and her times have continued to come down.
The “Just Out There” Athlete
Most athletes fall into this category, honestly. That’s been my experience whenever coaching for a school team, and also during the one year I coached for a large youth club team. Which is why private coaching is still what I enjoy the most. The just-out-there athlete is neutral. Does the workout and goes home. Isn’t really interested in getting better and joined the team more for social reasons than anything else. They like belonging to a group and being a member of a team. Ask them what their personal best is and they have no clue. Nor do they care. They’re not troublemakers, they’re not distractions. But any attempt to motivate them falls on deaf ears. When you tell them they have potential they smile and nod and say thank you, but they’re content with mediocrity, and there’s nothing to be done about it.
Student of the Game
The student of the game is one of my favorite athletes to coach. These athletes don’t think they know it all; instead, they’re eager to learn it all. They’re constantly asking questions in the pursuit of excellence. They’re analyzing running mechanics of sprinters on YouTube, and hurdling mechanics of hurdlers. They want every practice rep to be filmed so they can go back and critique their own form. The students of the game are on a never-ending quest to get better. As a coach, you can engage in deep, intellectual conversations about running and training, and, where it applies, hurdling. You can provide them with advanced-level instruction without fear of overwhelming them with information. The only problem with this type of athlete is that they can be so cerebral that they forget to turn into a beast when the gun goes off. They don’t know how to turn off the thinking mind and to set the body free to do what it has been trained to do. Josh Brockman, who made the finals last year in the 110’s at NCAA’s, and again this past indoor season the 60H, was this type of hurdler when I coached him privately in high school. He was as talented and as knowledgeable about the event as any hurdler I’d ever coached, but he’d make mistakes in races because he’d be thinking instead of just racing and reacting.
Coach’s Dream
The coach’s dream has all the qualities of the student of the game when it comes to absorbing and seeking knowledge on a regular basis, and of being coachable to an extreme. The coach’s dream also has an unquestionable work ethic, absolutely loves to be at practice and wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. The coach’s dream is always locked in. Conversations with a coach’s dream feel like peer-to-peer conversations in that I feel like I’m growing as a coach just as much as I’m imparting wisdom to the athlete. The coach’s dream is so fully engaged that I find myself being challenged to be more creative with coming up with new workouts and new drills to keep this athlete feeling stimulated and challenged. On race day, the coach’s dream does not need a pep talk, does not need to be reminded of when to start warming up or what his warmup should consist of. He knows who his opponents are; he respects all of them but fears none of them. He knows what heat and lane he’s in, and he never lets pre-race jitters get the best of him. When the gun goes off, he trusts his body to do what he’s trained it to do. Johnny Dutch was that way when I coached him, Keni Harrison was that way when I coached her. There have been others, not so well-known. There’s a freshman on my school team who’s that way. In cross country, he started the season as our fifth-best runner and ended the season as our second-best runner. Simply because he didn’t waste a workout. This spring, he ran a 5:07 1600 in our first meet, and he’s now down to 4:54. I’m sure he’ll get under 4:50 before the season is over. Though this is his first year running track, he never gets flustered, he never gets too hyped, and he never overthinks. He exudes a calm focus. That’s the kind of athlete I call a coach’s dream.
