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Track and Field stuff

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psycho_dad

Well-known member
Last season at the Regional, Austin Town Fitch forced us to use their blocks and would not allow block holders. After a rain delay, my 100m kid had his block slip out. (Very powerful start) They recalled the race, but he injured himself. (hamstring) Is this something we can have changed? Our blocks are different and the pads have the spikes in them, so they don't slip even without a block holder. Fitch has nice blocks, but not allowing block holders seems a bad policy. The state meet has holders. If they are not going to allow holders, they should allow us to use our own blocks. I believe there were at least two other block issues in other races.

We had an anything that could go wrong did go wrong end to a season where we could have won the state, and this was a big reason. Took us out of 4 high scoring events.

Is this something that we can do something about, or is it really up to the meet management? Fitch does a nice job and this was somewhat fluky, but It's the only meet the entire season we are not allowed to have block holders and I find that unacceptable. I'm not thrilled that we can't use our own blocks, but I can live with that. I understand not wanting to check spikes for every block. Not allowing block holders even after a rain delay is negligent IMO. Not just for my kids, but for all kids.
 
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Rule 3-2-4 says the games committee may provide batons, starting blocks, and throwing implements.
Rule 5-7-7 allows the starter to authorize "an attendant to support or hold the blocks."

At the Regional level, the games committee SHOULD include a boys coach and a girls coach. Use those contacts to convince the rest of the GC to allow other blocks. Alternatively, there are several decisions that are reserved for the GC in the rule book that are essentially decided by Columbus at the Regional and State levels. Ask the OATCCC to get allowing other blocks included in those decisions.

If that doesn't help, ask the starter to authorize block holders. The GC has no authority to disallow this. This is authorized solely by the starter. (Note that neither the GC nor the referee has no authority to allow this either. If you have a thick-headed starter...he or she is the boss when it comes to this).
 
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Thanks. It was one of those things that happened too fast last year. I will let it be know ahead of time that at a minimum, we wish to use block holders with the starter. We literally had someone in every event at the Regional and there were a lot of things to take care of after the rain delay making sure all the kids knew what was going on. Had I been paying more attention, I would have tried to insist on block holders, but the race started before I even thought about it. Live and learn. I was very disappointed with myself. I under coach more than over coach, and I do not get wrapped up in the blocks and stuff like that. The kids usually can work all that out. We had a lot of moving parts in relays and the 100 was on autopilot and then BAM all plans blown up.
 
Weight room tracking.

We are old school in that I just pass out what I have planned for the kids on 3 sheets of paper at the start of the season that they can fill out or not fill out. I don't really stress over it. Just like on the track, if they want to get better, they will put the work in. I do not micro-manage. We might also write some special things on a white board for a specific day. Throws coach does that every day. I put the entire season on paper so that Football kids and coaches could see what we were doing and see that it's beneficial to them to come out for track and field. Waste of time.

My question is, do any of you use apps the kids can pull up on their phones to track weight room progress? Is it any better than just a piece of paper? Just trying to think if there are ways to engage all of the kids. I'm not a weight room guy. I almost have to force myself to go in there to show the kids I'm interested. I pair kids up, give them what I expect them to do and hope they do it. Eventually, they pair themselves up in different pairs or groups. I really can't demonstrate things anymore, so I just sort of observe and encourage. Is there something to make something I can't stand, better and more interesting/ fun for the kids? What I am doing seems to be working, but it could be a lot better IMO. I've got my track stuff down. Still working on long jump. We don't do as good a job there as we should.

How do we engage track and field kids in the weight room?
 
psycho_dad said:
Weight room tracking.

We are old school in that I just pass out what I have planned for the kids on 3 sheets of paper at the start of the season that they can fill out or not fill out. I don't really stress over it. Just like on the track, if they want to get better, they will put the work in. I do not micro-manage. We might also write some special things on a white board for a specific day. Throws coach does that every day. I put the entire season on paper so that Football kids and coaches could see what we were doing and see that it's beneficial to them to come out for track and field. Waste of time.

My question is, do any of you use apps the kids can pull up on their phones to track weight room progress? Is it any better than just a piece of paper? Just trying to think if there are ways to engage all of the kids. I'm not a weight room guy. I almost have to force myself to go in there to show the kids I'm interested. I pair kids up, give them what I expect them to do and hope they do it. Eventually, they pair themselves up in different pairs or groups. I really can't demonstrate things anymore, so I just sort of observe and encourage. Is there something to make something I can't stand, better and more interesting/ fun for the kids? What I am doing seems to be working, but it could be a lot better IMO. I've got my track stuff down. Still working on long jump. We don't do as good a job there as we should.

How do we engage track and field kids in the weight room?
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Like most things, the best choice is finding someone to run the weight room who (a) knows what they are doing and (b) is enthusiastic about it. We got lucky a couple of years ago when the district decided to hire someone from an outside company to run weight room sessions. Before that we were also lucky, and had an assistant coach (former athlete from our team) who was enthusiastic about the weight room. Having someone knowledgeable and enthusiastic is the best choice.

But if you are not lucky (see the couple decades pre-2019) enough to have a good weight room coach fall into your lap, here are things we did that seemed to help.
• Keep sessions shorter. Our standard summer evening weight room sessions were 40 minutes. Hour max. It makes it easier on you and easier for the kids to stay focused and enthusiastic. Having a short time period forces them to get to business.
• Talk to people who know what they are doing to get a good plan. We had a football coach who is very knowledgable about lifting, and I would get his advice a lot.
• Appoint a couple of weight room captains. This helps a ton in lowering your stress level. And you can lean on them for enthusiasm.
• I would use the last 10-15 minutes of off season lifting to talk about race strategy and other things running with kids who wanted to chat. I would look forward to that and it seemed like the kids did too.
• Focus on getting the most enthusiastic kids a good experience. Over time, more kids will engage because they want to be better.
• We don't mandate the weight room. The unfocused, unenthusiastic kids just suck up your attention and don't generally get much benefit.
• Apps are useful, and by all means kids who like them should use them. But a lot of our kids just use their paper running log to record their work as well. We do use the whiteboard to write out the day's lifts for them.
 
When I coached, I wrote the programs, dictated what an athlete would lift on a given day based upon my evaluation of where they were strength-wise at any given point in time. I micro-managed as I knew how important it was to control a weight room environment in many ways. No way, no how, would I allow minor athletes to control their own strength-condition programs.
 
For my sprinters, I have a written program. General outline for off season. That is really only for kids that do not do other sports. If they do other sports, I do not get involved until they start Track practice. They have the general outline with written explanations of what and why. Once they leave me in June, they go to football, wrestling, Basketball, XC and I have very little contact. I have a written explanation of what to do in the summer and Winter but it is general. Then, I have a specific in season plan. Detailed and written out. It's been working ok. Our performances have been very good. The problem I have is that during the track season, I don't have a 100% buy in to the weight room. I have kids I just don't seem to get engaged.

I do allow the kids to own their plan. I plan it out and give them the tools, but then it is up to them. I will step in and offer advice and will help modify the plan for an individual if they need and ask, but each kid is as much in charge of executing their plan as I am. Same on the Track. I have a workout and if they pull themselves out, I don't get bent out of shape. They know what we were supposed to get done and I continue without them. They will make it up if they are motivated/ dedicated.

We do not have a strength / Weight room person, so it's on the coaches for now. Multiple sports using a pretty limited space. I'm just wondering if there are specific APPs the kids like and help or if the way we are doing it is as good as we can hope. Again, not my favorite place to be, so ways to make it better is the goal.
 
Long Jump

We/ I have done a terrible job of developing Long Jumpers. I think we do a very good job in nearly every other event, but Long Jump escapes us.

For the boys, our best jumpers at the end of the season are our 3, 4, 5th sprinter that has an event. I will throw them in the last meet before conference and they will outperform our normal jumpers every time. Now, we have started to have them learn more technique in MS, but that just started last season. I know with every other event, it's a 4 year process and perhaps we pull the plug on guys too soon, but we have had maybe 1 kid long jump as a freshman and as a senior and be any good at it. Our school record holder just got thrown into the event as a senior.

Do we need to come up with year long training and by god stick with it for 4 years. (The problem there is that the kids will develop as Regional Qualifiers in 4 other events before they are even close in the LJ) We have had success with our 6th 800m runner jumping 20', but have not gotten that kid that we can put over there and consistently win with.

What is the plan?
 
psycho_dad said:
Long Jump

We/ I have done a terrible job of developing Long Jumpers. I think we do a very good job in nearly every other event, but Long Jump escapes us.

For the boys, our best jumpers at the end of the season are our 3, 4, 5th sprinter that has an event. I will throw them in the last meet before conference and they will outperform our normal jumpers every time. Now, we have started to have them learn more technique in MS, but that just started last season. I know with every other event, it's a 4 year process and perhaps we pull the plug on guys too soon, but we have had maybe 1 kid long jump as a freshman and as a senior and be any good at it. Our school record holder just got thrown into the event as a senior.

Do we need to come up with year long training and by god stick with it for 4 years. (The problem there is that the kids will develop as Regional Qualifiers in 4 other events before they are even close in the LJ) We have had success with our 6th 800m runner jumping 20', but have not gotten that kid that we can put over there and consistently win with.

What is the plan?
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Long Jumpers are sprinters first. They should be training with the sprinters most of the time. A good long jumper is someone that is fast has a good "pop". If you find kids with that attributes, train them as a sprinter so their "pop" can be unleashed with their newfound speed.

In terms of certain training methods/drills. We have done sled pulls with 10% of the athlete's bodyweight for 30-50 yards with at least 4 minutes recovery in between each. With really no more than 6-8 reps. This is something that should be done twice a week in the preseason and the beginning part of the year and concluded by mid-season. We also do a lot of falling box jumps, start on one box and land with both feet on the ground then immediately jump and onto another taller box. The goal is to be on the ground the shortest amount of time as possible. This is a great drill to do throughout the season.

Long jumping is definitely one of those events where less is more. Targeted training with days in between with no jumping is key. This keeps them fresh and saves that "pop".

Long jump is also one of those events where you will see increased results with taking meets off. You should really only jump one meet a week. And at some point in the season take a whole week off of long jumping, even in training. Usually about one or two weeks before the conference meet.
 
Look for kids that aren't just "fast", but have coordination. I've seen tons of fast kids over the years that have extremely little coordination in events other than sprinting. Good hurdlers typically can do multiple events because their natural coordination. They are in fact the prototype athletes to recruit into the decathlon because of their overall abilities. Long jumping is one of them.
 
Trying to remember is it best to set up a meet in Milesplit with the seated events as a different division?

I seem to remember that the database would come through with all the kids mixed together for the 4 seated events. What is the best way to set up a meet with registration done through Milesplit?

Thanks. I promise to remember this time.
 
KingHorn419 said:
Long jump is also one of those events where you will see increased results with taking meets off. You should really only jump one meet a week. And at some point in the season take a whole week off of long jumping, even in training. Usually about one or two weeks before the conference meet.
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This absolutely crucial. If these kids are in multiple events that's alot of wear and tear in a short season. Same for high jumpers.
 
My annual "the more injury prevention we do, the more kids seem to be injured." I still don't get it. Chicken or the Egg?! Is in mental? IS it mob mentality? One kid says his shins hurt and that plants the seed to other kids that their shins hurt? Should I cut skips out all together? Are they too taxing on kids? I do not think I could ramp up any slower than I have this last 3+ weeks. Is it me? Do I just need to realize that kids are going to hurt an complain and sit things out? Come to grips that some kids will look great on Thursday and Friday and then wake up Sunday and have something wrong with their ankle that sits them out a week from any work outs?

Horrible walking around shoes is still one of my theories. Football players that have injuries from football that never healed and throw off their gate and cause issues.

Half my kids feel great and don't have any issues. the other half have issues. Should I just expect that? The ratio seems higher every year.

Now, we have been performing very well each year, so it's not like we are falling apart. I just have way too many kids with shin issues. Ankle and hip issues. I have four kids that have almost made prevention a religion. All 4 are already injured. Warm up great! Cool down great! Stretch afterword great! Protein 30-60 minutes after workout! Check the stuff off the list and they do it. Still injured to some extent.

Was I that injured as a kid and just didn't know it? I did nothing correctly as far as prevention went. When I got injured, it was pulling muscles almost out of the bone. 3 real bad injuries. 1 JR high, 2 college. Never these little nagging things.
 
We share your frustration. We also have become much more diligent in all of the prehab and warm up stuff, yet are facing increasing injury rates, particularly with our sprinters. Our distance runners who are engaged in the sport year round through XC and track are more durable.

1. The shoes kids walk around in are terrible. The Crocs, slides, etc. aren't doing us any favors.
2. Our kids are pulled in too many directions. For many of our sprinters, track is a secondary activity to soccer or football in the fall. So they'll show up wrecked from a five-hour Sunday skill session with football or a five-game weekend soccer tournament and have to sit our workout. As all sports demand more time from the kids year-round, this is increasingly a problem. We have kids who take a 90-minute weight lifting class during the school day, come to track practice after school, then go to another sport or some sort of skill training in the evening, and then fill every minute of their weekends with tournaments, showcases, 7-on-7, AAU basketball, etc. My hamstrings hurt just typing that out.
3. On the other end of the spectrum, we are also getting way more kids who are brand new to all sports and have never run, jumped, kicked a ball, or done any other organized activity. They've played video games at home, and then decided to try our sport to get a PE credit. They are not used to being active in any shape or form.

The amount of stress we put on the kids bodies at track practice is probably 25 percent of what it was even 10 years ago and our emphasis on prehab, form, recovery, etc. is 500 percent what it was 10 years ago. And the injury rate still climbs.
 
Bad walking around shoes are a culprit. There is a fair amount of research to support this. Crocs are the devil. One thing I do is record each day a kid has to miss a workout, modify a workout (decreased volume or intensity) or cross train. For example, yesterday out of 68 distance kids we had 2 completely not running, 5 on reduced mileage and 3 cross training. Which is pretty normal for a few weeks into outdoor season. At the end of a season it is interesting to look at when you have big spikes in the number of days lost or reduced. It is also interesting that there are times when it feels to me like we are having a rash of injuries, but when I look at the aggregate data it is not actually a significant change from normal. For the kids who get shin splints every season, we have started just having them build in cross training a couple of times per week. Actually, since we have moved to 11 day training cycles it has been a little easier to manage. Mostly those kids will cross train 3 times per 11 days. We make the parents and athletes of any kids doing club sports during our season meet with us to make a plan for managing their training volume. Because mostly the club coaches won't do that.
 
Distance kids are more overuse injuries and there are a certain number you can expect. The sprinters are the ones that have a much higher number than what I would expect, and just a higher number in general. Football players seem to be abnormally high. IMO.
 
psycho_dad said:
Distance kids are more overuse injuries and there are a certain number you can expect. The sprinters are the ones that have a much higher number than what I would expect, and just a higher number in general. Football players seem to be abnormally high. IMO.
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The last few years we generally have had more shin issues with sprinters than distance kids. It is the high-impact nature of sprinting. Also probably because they, on the average, don't do as much off season prep work on avoiding shin problems. Our football players definitely had a lot of issues in the past, but so far this year that seems to not be the case. (Probably a lot due to their not having to lift immediately after hard track workouts now.) Our sprint coach has been doing some different stuff this year as well, so overall shin issues are down a bit.
 
psycho_dad said:
My annual "the more injury prevention we do, the more kids seem to be injured." I still don't get it. Chicken or the Egg?! Is in mental? IS it mob mentality? One kid says his shins hurt and that plants the seed to other kids that their shins hurt? Should I cut skips out all together? Are they too taxing on kids? I do not think I could ramp up any slower than I have this last 3+ weeks. Is it me? Do I just need to realize that kids are going to hurt an complain and sit things out? Come to grips that some kids will look great on Thursday and Friday and then wake up Sunday and have something wrong with their ankle that sits them out a week from any work outs?

Horrible walking around shoes is still one of my theories. Football players that have injuries from football that never healed and throw off their gate and cause issues.

Half my kids feel great and don't have any issues. the other half have issues. Should I just expect that? The ratio seems higher every year.

Now, we have been performing very well each year, so it's not like we are falling apart. I just have way too many kids with shin issues. Ankle and hip issues. I have four kids that have almost made prevention a religion. All 4 are already injured. Warm up great! Cool down great! Stretch afterword great! Protein 30-60 minutes after workout! Check the stuff off the list and they do it. Still injured to some extent.

Was I that injured as a kid and just didn't know it? I did nothing correctly as far as prevention went. When I got injured, it was pulling muscles almost out of the bone. 3 real bad injuries. 1 JR high, 2 college. Never these little nagging things.
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I see the same things, and am convinced that kids are plain and simply not trained to deal with pain, and do not know when they are hurt. We sure didn’t have trainers attending to every whim like they do now. We had a coach, a bunch of tape and a huge bucket of atomic balm and cans cinder suds! I knew I was hurt when I couldn’t run and or jump any more!
 
mathking said:
Bad walking around shoes are a culprit. There is a fair amount of research to support this. Crocs are the devil. One thing I do is record each day a kid has to miss a workout, modify a workout (decreased volume or intensity) or cross train. For example, yesterday out of 68 distance kids we had 2 completely not running, 5 on reduced mileage and 3 cross training. Which is pretty normal for a few weeks into outdoor season. At the end of a season it is interesting to look at when you have big spikes in the number of days lost or reduced. It is also interesting that there are times when it feels to me like we are having a rash of injuries, but when I look at the aggregate data it is not actually a significant change from normal. For the kids who get shin splints every season, we have started just having them build in cross training a couple of times per week. Actually, since we have moved to 11 day training cycles it has been a little easier to manage. Mostly those kids will cross train 3 times per 11 days. We make the parents and athletes of any kids doing club sports during our season meet with us to make a plan for managing their training volume. Because mostly the club coaches won't do that.
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I think it’s not only the walking around shoes, but the running shoes like Hoka! The foot can move so much with all of that cushioning has me taking a very hard look at our runners footwear.
 
This is Cross Country. I was told by a couple of coaches over the weekend that the 4 Divisions for CC were sent out by the OHSAA. Does anyone have the breakdown? I assume it's preliminary at this point. I looked on the OHSAA site briefly, but did not see anything. I have e-mail restrictions at work that do not allow me to access my school account in case something was sent out.
 
If I counted correctly there are 81 D1 boys teams and 67 girls. So assume no district meet and 10-12 teams go to state? I would expect 3 regional meets one in each of the big C cities.
 
CC Track Fan said:
If I counted correctly there are 81 D1 boys teams and 67 girls. So assume no district meet and 10-12 teams go to state? I would expect 3 regional meets one in each of the big C cities.
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I agree on no district races.

Please clarify: Will 10-12 teams go to the state? I was told, in addition, that the state will be expanding the number of teams to 24.
 
EuclidandViren said:
I agree on no district races.

Please clarify: Will 10-12 teams go to the state? I was told, in addition, that the state will be expanding the number of teams to 24.
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Are you saying that 24 of the 67 girls (36% if all 67 actual have 5 runners) teams will make the state meet? So making it to state will no longer be that big of accomplishment. To me no more than 10-12% of teams should make it to state but I wouldn't expect them to drop it that low but anything over 12 teams seems way too high.
 
A simple solution would be take total number of teams that competed at the district level and divide by 4. Most D1 schools do not field competitive XC programs so out of the 67 girls teams - 20-30 will not impact the field. Division II is now loaded and hurts every school under 300. This model has more issues than the previous.
 
Run330 said:
A simple solution would be take total number of teams that competed at the district level and divide by 4. Most D1 schools do not field competitive XC programs so out of the 67 girls teams - 20-30 will not impact the field. Division II is now loaded and hurts every school under 300. This model has more issues than the previous.
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I do agree that DII is a tough division now, and I also agree that 67 teams in a division feels very small. And certainly, DI will have some teams that are not competitive at all (as will every division), but a 24-team DI field will be competitive. DI is so deep - that 24th team will will still be one of the top 50 or so teams at the state meet across divisions.
 
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