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New at Coaching
Cross-country
Dear Coach Ed,Hi there! I've recently been asked to take over the cross country training at our primary school as I am a runner (albeit a new one!) and our cross country teacher has left the school. Unfortunately he also took all his material with him (not a very happy chappy you see) and now I am left in the dark. I want to keep the children enthusiastic, but also get them fit and in the process get them to enjoy what they are doing. Where do I start? The ages range from 8 - 13. Thank you. Petro Garcia Dear Petro, Good for you Petro! Look forward to a long career as a youth running coach because you are going to love it. With children this age keep it fun. For cross country you need to make sure your kids can run the distance. For example if the distance they are going to be competing at is 1.5 miles make sure before they compete they can run 2 miles without stopping. (You don't want to have a child discouraged because they can't do the distance). Have new runners start gradually and work up to that distance. If they can run 1/2 mile it should only take 3 to 4 weeks before they can run 2. Do this long run once a week. If you are training 3 days week for the other two days have everyone run 1/2 mile then play speed games. Tag is a big favorite. One kid is IT and in a confined area he or she will try to tag as many other kids as they can in 20 seconds. Then someone else is IT. Go non-stop one kid after another. These kids will get such a great workout and they won't even know they are doing it. Don't forget to take your turn at being IT. Another thing I do every practice is fun relay races. If you have 31 kids on your team break them into 4 groups of 8 on each relay team. Don't forget you're playing too. Set up a cone about 25 yards away and have them run around the cone and pass a baton to the next person in line. Each athlete will be running about 50 yards. Keep changing the teams around until you have close to even teams. Now do the same thing but everyone runs backwards! Be creative, keep it fast, keep it exciting, and most of all keep it fun. Good luck Coach Petro and welcome aboard. Coach Ed
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Ed Poirier, "Coach Ed", recently was invited by the United States Olympic
committee to attend a workshop and training seminar at the Olympic training
center in California. 