1. A Workout is Not a Performance

A Workout is Not a Performance

Nothing beats a great workout. You write it out and the athletes hit every split. They look fit, smooth, and confident. When it’s all over, there are smiles abound. High-fives, back-slaps, and laughs are shared by athletes and coaches alike. As coaches, we love those days.

But what about the other days? People are struggling to hit the splits, or they’re working too hard to hit times you though would be cake for them. The athletes are growing increasingly frustrated, you’re becoming confused and irritated; today was not meant to be.

We must not react this way. As coaches, we tend to look at a workout as a performance, and, for most hard training sessions, it’s not. It’s a means to a performance, a step in the process of becoming fit and fast. Yes, we possess a strong desire for the athletes to hit the prescribed paces. That’s why we write them in the first place! But that’s not what a workout is about. Each hard training session should have a purpose, and it is a great deal more important for the athletes to achieve the goal of the workout than it is for them to run a particular split.

Of course, it is not enough for us as coaches to understand this concept. The athletes have to grasp this as well.

This article was prompted by our distance squad’s first workout as a team post-Winter Break.  Most of them were dedicated over the holiday and returned to campus relatively fit. That said, a team workout in a practice has a proclivity to differ from solo sessions in the athletes’ respective hometowns, incongruent in intensity, accountability, and competitiveness. So, despite the fact that we had a group that was in shape, that first day was so-so at best. I was not necessarily surprised given what I just stated, but the athletes were clearly discouraged. They started to doubt their fitness, their ability, and their preparedness for our upcoming indoor meet.

“A workout is not a performance,” I told them. “Are you fitter now than you were when you began the day?’ I elaborated further, explaining that the goal that day was not to see how well they could tackle that set, but to use that training session to aid them in preparing for their upcoming season and races it encompasses. They agreed, and walked off the track with their confidence still intact.

Before I conclude, I would be well-served to note one potential hazard of this concept, and that is that, as coaches, we cannot allow our athletes to become soft. Although I told them off, I loved that they were so displeased after that workout. It validated to me that we have a group of people who want so badly to get better.

Always remember the purpose of the workout you wrote. For the most part, the purpose ought not to be to “run X distance in Y time with Z recovery.” That’s an important piece of the process, but seldom should that be the goal of the session. Our athletes must not train to run great workouts; they should train to run great races. If we remain focused on the purpose of the workout, and the athletes execute that objective, then we have all done our job that day and can walk away with our heads held high.