The Good

Last Sunday the athletes who competed in the 4×200m
relay on the team in which I am one of the coaches
ran the #7 time in MA State History, smashed the
all time Division II state record by 2.61 seconds and
the school record by 1.15 seconds. Incidentally
the school record has been lowered by 3.79 seconds
in the past 14 months.

Not bad considering the kids said it was too fast
of a time to break when I arrived last year.

So hats off to all involved…

How did they drop so much time so fast? It started
with raising the level of expectation, a topic
I discussed on my radio show Wednesday. You can
listen to it here. Follow the links I mention
in the show. Hook yourself up.

But beyond the mental approach, learning how to
run correctly and having a good system of program
design in place didn’t hurt.

The Bad

On Monday I sent out a survey asking who gets
‘credit’ when teams/athletes perform at a high
level.

Apparently I haven’t mastered the art of satire.
Because some people entirely missed the
point. We’ll call it my bad on that one.

You can see the results and feedback from that
survey here.

The Ugly

I do a lot of consults with coaches, parents,
trainers, etc. And I run a monthly live Q&A with
customers of Complete Speed Training and Complete
Program Design for Sprinters.

This month’s broadcast was Wednesday night.

With all these conversations from every walk of
life, I pay attention to the patterns.

I’m paraphrasing here, but the biggest question
I get is this (watch the replay for more details):

“How do I convince the coach to update their coaching
and training so that they don’t keep running
an old school, outdated program?”

I used to suggest rationalizing, common sense,
opening up a dialogue, etc. The obvious things
you would try if you lived in a world where
people made decisions out of logic and reason.

But I’ve changed my mind on all that. My answer
is this:

You can’t get blood from a rock. So don’t keep
squeezing.

Therefore you have one of two choices:

1. Play the hand you’re dealt and do the best you
can with the situation you’re in. You’ll still
get good results if you use a 21st Century approach.

Not optimal results, but good.

Because it’s better than what most of your
competition is doing.

2. Fold your hand, cash in your chips and find
a better table.

Like I’ve said, I talk to parents, coaches and
trainers from all over the world each and every
week.

There’s a lot of people out there waking up. And
once they do, they can’t go back inside the Matrix.

So if you look, you’ll find them.

Of course, there are pros and cons to both. So
do your due dilligence.

Sticking with the playing cards theme, I’ll end
with a classic video that I hope you appreciate
on multiple levels:

To your success,

Latif Thomas

Pass this on!

When Patrick and I were at USATF Level II school
many of the college coaches had a ‘holier than
thou’ attitude toward us plebian high school
coaches.

Until it came time for everyone to present their
final projects where we realized that a lot of
coaches from so-called big time colleges hadn’t
really been doing their homework.

It was an eye opening experience.

The other day I got a message from one of
‘my’ former athletes. This kid was All State Champion
at both 300m and 400m and of course went off to
run in college.

Here is what his message said:

“Listen to this one. I asked my coach the other
day if we (us 400m runners) were ever going to
do a speed workout. He says “No, you never run
full speed in the 400, so theres no reason to
do any speed workouts.”

Yeah, I was so confused thinking about his
response for the rest of the day.

We havent done any speed workouts yet this year.”

Interesting theory.

Incidentally, he was faster when I had him in
high school.

Now the old Latif would go off on a rant here.

But the kinder and gentler Latif doesn’t believe
in that.

So I’m not saying this approach is wrong. I’m
just saying I disagree with it.

I wrote an article recently that breaks it down
in detail.

To your success,

Latif Thomas

Pass this on!

Raising Your Expectations
We all know that speed, strength, coordination,
flexibility *and* endurance must be *specifically*
developed if we expect our athletes or programs
to keep up with the competition.

But I don’t think this is the most important
area to place your focus if you want to dominate
the competition.

Those 5 biomotor skills are a secondary issue.

Instead, the foundation of your coaching and
training must be raising the level of expectation
of every athlete.

Your athletes can only compete to the level they
honestly believe they can achieve.

And it’s up to you to not only set the standard
of expectation, but get your athletes to buy
into those expectations on a daily basis.

Tomorrow, Wednesday February 25, 2009 from
1-2pm EST, I’m going to lay out the specific
(easy) strategies I use to get my athletes to
perform at levels they used to think were
unrealisitic.

Your athletes can run ‘video game times’. But
only if they think they can.

Join me tomorrow at 1pm Eastern Standard Time
to learn how:

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Call in at 1pm EST:

NUMBER: 1 888 346 9144

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/cod9xu
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I’ll be taking your calls, questions and comments
live on the air.

To your success,

Latif Thomas
.

Pass this on!

Here’s an issue that I’m amazed is an issue,
because it shouldn’t be. And since it’s been brought up to
me a few times lately, that must mean it’s time
to take the issue to the people.

So I want to get *your* opinion on the subject.

Click here to take my quick survey.

Before I send you to the results, here’s my take:

First, I don’t really care who gets credit. You
want it, take it. You don’t want me to have it?
Cool. Because I don’t really care. All I really
care about is whether or not the athletes I’m
paid to coach achieve the objectives they set out
to achieve at the beginning of the season.

Beyond that, everyone’s Ego can battle to the
death to make sure noone else is perceived as
getting a little to big for their britches.

That’s why I believe:

The athletes get all the credit. It’s my job
to make them fast. Why should I get credit for
doing my job? Why should the parents, school
or head coach get all the credit for doing their
job?

All I say is “Run 30 meters and tell me what it
felt like.”

The athlete has to execute, perform under pressure,
run the workouts, lift the weights. They get the
credit. All credit should be deflected to them.

If I say “My 4×200 team ran the 7th fastest time
in state history” that’s not me taking credit.

It’s pointing out a fact. My job was simply not
to screw it up for the athletes.

Sure, you could argue I should have said *THE*
4×2 team instead of *MY* 4×2 team.

But I’m not going to get into the psychology
behind why that minor semantic issue would
bother someone. I want to, but I won’t.

That said, I can agree that everyone should get
the credit. But that’s just too clean and nicey
nice for me. If everyone gets credit than noone
gets credit. Therefore just give all the credit
to the athletes.

Without them we couldn’t even have this conversation.

View survey results here.

To your success,

Latif Thomas

Pass this on!