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Are You Satisfied With a Personal Best?

1/12/2018

1 Comment

 
This past Sunday we held club practice at Nazareth College.  We had a little break during practice, some downtime if you will, where I asked about track schedules and upcoming meets.  One of the young throwers that was in attendance said, “We are competing against (insert rival name here) this week, and I just want to beat them.”  I then asked, “Will that help you achieve your throwing goals?”  I got a very quizzical look back.  The athlete asked me what I meant by that.  It got the attention of the other thrower there, who before my comment was scrolling through Instagram.
 
​The thrower I was speaking with then asked me, “What’s the difference between the two?”  I’m not going to quote the rest of the conversation, however I do believe there is a difference between wanting to beat someone and achieving your goal.  What follows is my perspective on the difference between achieving your throwing goal and simply trying to beat someone.
 
​My philosophy on the example between winning and beating someone is this, specific to throwing.  Non-conference championship meets are better served with trying to hit or chase the big mark, or to work on a new technique, or to try something you might not want to try in a championship meet.  Basically, coach and athlete have a conversation about it, agree to try something new, and maybe give away a meet in order to experiment with something new.  What I mean by giving away a meet is to sacrifice a potential good performance to experiment with a new technique that may not produce an extraordinary result (trying a four turn throw in a meet for the first time, or trying the rotational shot when you are primarily a glide thrower). 
 
I think most coaches would agree that the goal of the championship meet is to win.  You can set a personal best at a conference championship meet, but still not throw far enough to win.  That certainly happens from time to time.  From my previous conference championship experiences, the winner does not always hit a personal best.  Therefore, if there are a couple of throwers within 50cm of each other in the Weight Throw, it may not take a gargantuan effort to win, because more often than not your competition won’t set a personal best either. 
 
When Luis and I went to Indoor Nationals in 2016, the goal of the meet was to win.  Rather than discuss the idea of trying to hit a mark or distance, the goal was the win and leave as the National Champion in the 35lb. Weight Throw.  We could have said the goal was to throw 20m, or to set a personal best.  Yet, what if he did throw 20m, but someone else threw 20.01m?  You hit your goal, but you didn’t win.  Would you be satisfied with that?
 
I’m not sure if I did a good job explaining this example.  There are other coaches that probably could better explain this than the way I attempted to.  Has anyone else ever been in this situation?  How did you handle it?  Would you handle the conversation differently depending on the age of the thrower (high school compared to collegiate thrower)? 
1 Comment
Sean Foulkes
1/12/2018 01:27:27 pm

I had a situation like this just this past season. I had two athletes that were chasing different goals (one a state qualifying throw and the other a state championship throw).

For my first athlete, we never really focused on hitting the qualifying distance in any meet other than the one we where we needed to qualify. Our thought was, as long as we were comfortable with pushing for big throws (not necessarily P.R.'s) in our invitationals leading up to regionals, that we would be in the right place mentally as well as technically when the time came. Sure enough, he threw his best throws of the season at each invitational, and threw a P.R. on an absolutely miserablly rainy and windy day that was about 10 inches shy. He was the only discus thrower to PR that meet, but he couldn't enjoy it as much because it wasn't his goal for the year. I know it still bugs him that he didn't hit the qualifier, but time has given him the perspective to appreciate what he did.

My second athlete was a fella that was shooting for a state title, the very minute his JR season came to a close. With him, we were more concerned with qualifying for Nationals and to that extent, would sacrifice some dual meets here and there and even give up what could have been big throws at invitationals. We kept telling him "The name of the game is 'Extend your season'. Force us to have to keep taking you to meets because you keep qualifying for them". So we would give him a range of distances for set meets and say "We need you to be between this point and that point, at this time of the season, and we should win the invite/conference/region/state." He used to live & die on whether or not he got a P.R., but in the end, by giving him ranges of distances that could possibly get the job done, he was more confident and able to relax more in competition.

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    Dr. Charles Infurna

    Charles Infurna, Ed.D., is the owner and lead coach of Forza Athletics Track Club.  Dr. Infurna has coached National Record Holders, National Champions, All-Americans, and Conference Champions at the Post-Collegiate, Collegiate, and High School level.

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