Before getting to the Cross-Country notes, if you didn't attend Sunday evening's Athletic First Night, you missed an outstanding presentation; my most enjoyable in fact since I've been at WHRHS. Young Quinton Champagne and his father Mark, each of whom has been heavily active in sports in area high schools throughout their lives shared some of their experiences in the area of mental health. While the article linked here
doesn't really do the presentation justice it does provide some insight into what the Champagnes have dealt with. The YouTube podcast available in the article covers the subject matters in the Champagnes' presentation and is well worth listening to. It really does put sports into proper perspective while highlighting the roles teammates, coaches and administrators can play in supporting mental health objectives.
Following the presentation, we covered a lot of relevant material which included a very entertaining and motivational film message starring Tom Brady in which he expresses the importance of not being the best but giving your best in all you do.
Like I said, if you weren't there you missed a great night. I can't possibly express that adequately.
So, Monday at 2:30, thirty boys and girls attended our first practice. What was great about this practice was that every boy and girl arrived with a smile, performed to his/her capabilities, and left with a smile as well. The coaches were extremely happy with the attendance and attitude of some really terrific kids.
As many of the athletes knew, we are implementing a new system into the program this year. We've invested time and effort this summer with our "Core at 4" program in which we introduced much of what we'll be using this fall in our practice regimen. It represents a substantial change from what we've done in the past and we were happy to see that everybody shared the same excitement as we got under way. Our warmup, the first element of each practice, lasts about 17 minutes and in my opinion is as advertised: "the best dynamic warmup for runners." It can be viewed here:
Muscles engaged, heart rates up, a quick drink, and we moved directly to the front field for the second phase of our practice, running. Prior to practice we'd determined from each athlete what his/her summer training consisted of with respect to running. After taking information from the athletes about the number of days run each week, the average distance/time/pace of those runs and each individual's long run, we determined the average was 2-3 miles, 4 days per week. Of course, some had much higher averages (some had not run at all) but we decided on day 1 anyway, all would run together. In order to accomplish that we set up a quarter mile loop which the athletes would run to their capabilities for distance. We had a wide range in that respect. We also asked, as we will every day, for the athletes to incorporate strides (at this point 15 seconds of up-tempo running) into their run. Many of the athletes accomplished this easily. Some obviously struggled but showed remarkable effort which will ultimately translate well into their training and performances. Everybody finished at approximately the same time, and we headed straight back to the warmup area for our post-run work which is the third and final element of each practice. The focus here is on strength and mobility, and more importantly, injury prevention. The work itself involves a number of different exercises and today's routine can be viewed on YouTube at the following link:
Practice then concluded after approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes of consistent effort on the part of each athlete and as I alluded to earlier; all finished with a smile. The coaches are looking forward to day 2. We'll keep you posted on how they do . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment