Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

I saw an interesting quote today that got me thinking. The quote read like this: “Any man that has himself as a lawyer has a fool for a client.“ Substitute in coach for lawyer and athlete for client. Post thoughts to the forum.
 
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I think the reason behind that quote is that one person will never see all the angles that a team of lawyers or prosecutors could come up with. Yet, in track and field, I could see someone coaching themself and compete at a high level. Kip Janvrin was his own coach for years and made the olympics. Frank Shorter coached himself to a marathon medal. Although, I think you would still need an outside perspective of things, perhaps a camera on yourself while training. Otherwise you are just relying on one perspective.

I think it’s relatively easy for a distance runner to do it. But in the technical events I think it’s much more difficult. Did Kip coach himself for his entire career? He competed for a VERY long time and I could see if he did it at the end of his career but as a former decathlete who coached himself for a long time I look back and see how much I lost out on because of what I didn’t know at the time and didn’t have someone to tell me to stop or rest.

I think he still is competing. I am sure he will run something at Drake this year. Last year he went 1:53-54 in the 800 at Drake. Sick.

I am unsure about whether he was totally by himself, I have only talked to him at length once, I know he mainly traveled/worked with his parents. I need to check with his college coach and get some more insight to this.

Al Oerter had no coach.  Different strokes for different folks.

mortac8 - 19 April 2008 04:21 PM

Al Oerter had no coach.  Different strokes for different folks.

There were actually a TON of guys from this era who didn’t have coaches in the traditional sense. My office mate, Knut Hjeltnes, was similarly a multi-time discus thrower who kinda coached himself. Bruce Jenner was the same. The thing though was that most of the guys from this era seemed to spend a lot of time working out together and would bounce around to various coaches at different times of the year. Kind of an interesting way to do things…not really having a coach but not really being coach-less either.

I rememeber in Jenner’s Book Decathlon Challenge he said he didn’t have a coach because he would go straight to the source when he needed help in an event, i.e. Mac Wilkins would help him in the disc.