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Yesterday was a speed day at practice. The sprint athletes worked on block starts and exchanges.
While that happened, another coach (Coach Kernen - a previous athlete that is in her first year of coaching) and I set up for the long and triple jump practice and talked about how the season has progressed.
We talked for something like 20 minutes about the past, the present, and the future of the jumps program. We (and the other jumps coach - Coach Cross) are already building our future plans and practice progressions.
As a coach you always need to have "one eye" on the future. You have to see the larger picture while not losing sight of the present. Everything that happens at practice or at a meet needs to mentally or physically recorded for future use. If you want your program to evolve, you need to be an extremely observant student of the events.
We have already chosen a few new triple jump drills that we feel will better prepare our jumps for the forces experienced in the first and second phases. As well, we discussed how to change some progressional things to better help long jumpers understand how to perform the proper takeoff angle.
Although I have this website, help multitudes of coaches and athletes, and have had a very successful career (thus far) I am still learning each and every day. That is what ALL coaches should do - learn. There is no perfect coach out there. There is not one person out there that knows it all (although I strive to). We as coaches need to be in a place in which we don't mind learning from others, and never state that we "know it all". Those coaches continually let their athletes down with that arrogant approach, and it has no place in sports.
Back to practice...
Since it was a speed day the biggest focus was on approaches. The athletes also had the option to do short approach takeoffs (with landings) as well as triple jump progressional workout with the hurdles. I assigned a number of approaches and takeoffs that I wanted athletes to perform based on their competition schedule. Kids competing on the 25th were told to do less total reps to help them stay as fresh as possible.
Once that was done, the kids were dismissed (early) to pick up (and hopefully deliver) their cookie dough orders from our fundraiser.
RANDOM THOUGHT:
Yesterday I was researching apps for my newly acquired iPad. I found one called BaM video delay. Basically, it delays playback so that athletes can perform a certain action/drill and then head over to see how it went.
I immediately purchased it with the idea of using not only at practice, but also at meets.
At practice I could set up the ipad while kids do pop ups for triple jump drills so they can get instant feedback of how things looked/went. They would perform the drill and immediately head over to see how things look before performing another rep.
At a meet I would just leave it by the pit and kids could go straight to it after they jumped to look for things like posture, head position, arm drive, knee drive, etc.
I don't know if this will work at a meet, but I know for sure it could be a game-changer at practice and I am very excited to try it out sometime next week!
Just wanted to share...
TODAY/TOMORROW:
We have meets the next two days. Athletes that stay behind will simply work on board awareness and approaches. Since I'm unsure if any jumps coaches will be there, approaches are simple enough for athletes to do on their own. Plus, the more approaches the better they are (generally) on the board - which means more marks! Can't wait to update you on the meets - they're going to be GREAT!