I’m working with a couple multi-eventers right now who are very raw in most of the technical events. In both cases, the athletes were very accomplished in the jumping events and have made the post-collegiate move to become multi-eventers which has meant learning several events. I like this scenario because it means you don’t have to work against as many bad habits as you might otherwise have to. It does however pose a challenge that is applicable to all coaches of technical events. That is, because there are often several technical problems due to the lower technical competency, the most important decisions a coach often needs to make is selecting which error(s) to correct. Because while we’d all love to give 20 cues and see 20 technical corrections; the reality is that most athletes can only process 1 or 2 things on a given trial or attempt. This means that a coach needs to figure out which problems are the most detrimental. Part of this process involves determining which technical faults are causes and which are effects. When you can do this well you’ll quickly find that 1 or 2 errors that occur early on in an activity can often clear up a host of errors. Early, seemingly insignificant, technical errors often compound later in attempt and show up as a whole host of problems. A good friend of mine once told me that all weeds have roots. This means that even though we see the ugly weeds, if we actually want to eliminate them we need to take out the roots first.
