Good Sports Column

                                      by Budd Glassberg

Reprinted with permission from the Zionsville Times Sentinel on November 8, 2006

What do we Love? …… Hills!

 

“My object all sublime I shall achieve in time— To let the punishment fit the crime.” – Sir William Schwenck Gilbert

           

            It almost never fails.  The gym teacher or football coach catches a student misbehaving during class or practice and the next thing you hear is, “All right Sam, if you can’t listen while I am talking, everyone is going to have to do five laps.”  So the entire class or team ends up running five laps to punish the one who wasn’t paying attention.  While I am not necessarily opposed to using peer pressure to keep a student focused, I take exception to using running as a punishment.  Whenever I see running used to penalize a behavior, I begin to understand why so many people have an aversion to the activity.  It changes their attitude toward running.

            I have heard numerous stories about how our youth has been traumatized by being forced to run.  The association with punishment is so strong that it has become quite an obstacle for those of us who coach cross-country or track athletes.  In order to suppress the notion that running is a punishment, we have taken a contrary position.  On our Zionsville Middle School Cross-country team, running is what we enjoy.  We, as coaches, do what we can to nurture a team atmosphere that encourages hard work, improvement and fun with our practices.  Punishment is rarely needed, but when it must be administered, it is in the form of the athlete not being allowed to run that day. 

            Perhaps the most dreaded of workouts in cross-country running is the hill workout.  Our ZMS Cross-country team is blessed with a home course with a ramp taking us down from Nancy Burton Park to Starkey Park’s Eagle Creek.  At the bottom of the ramp, where it meets the trail that parallels Eagle Creek, there is a very steep hill that will bring you back up to the top of the ramp.  Our hill workouts involve going down the ramp and up the hill in a loop.  Most runners would be exhausted after doing five hills.  Ten would seem insurmountable.  Early in the season our 12 and 13 year-old runners begin running five hills in a workout.

            Using the same philosophy as we use for punishment, we begin from day one of our practices, instilling a paradigm among our athletes that hills are fun.  We structure our training such that hill day becomes a festive training day.   We chant “What to we love?”  “Hills!”  “Why do we love them?”  “Because they’re fun!” as we head down our course ramp and yell out the count of each hill as we crest. 

            Early in the season we place a maximum on the amount of hills a runner may run on hill day.  As the athletes become stronger, we raise the maximum.  Soon our runners are requesting a complete lifting of the hill ceiling.  Later in the season we allow them more time to run hills. 

            Late in this season, our middle school team was allowed to go to an optional practice on a day the school had an early release.  Of the 38 runners on the team, 21 showed up to run hills.  While we normally begin practice at 4:00 PM, most of the runners came very early to get in more hills.  One came at 1:00 and stayed until 5:00 PM.  Ten of the runners ran in excess of 40 hills, an amount that used to be our workout record.  Jacob Ressler, an 8th grade runner, ran a record 100 hills.  Again, this was an optional workout where no minimum number of hills was prescribed. 

            It is encouraging to see so many athletes making the choice to do more rather than be forced to do some.  The entire paradigm shift in the athlete’s mind is the result of using running as a reward rather than a punishment.  As coaches, we altered the culture of the runners to entice the runners to want to run.  This simply changed their attitudes toward running hills.  I believe attitude is paramount in life.  My feeling about attitude is perfectly described by the following quote by Charles Swindoll;

            "The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.  Attitude to me is more important than facts.  It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do.  It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill.  It will make or break a company.....a church.....or home.  The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.  We cannot change our past....we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way.  We cannot change the inevitable.  The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have and that is our attitude....I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it.  And so it is with you....we are in charge of our attitudes."

 

           

            Budd Glassberg is a resident of Zionsville who is active in the local running community.  Visit www.runz.com for reprints of all his columns.   You can reach him by email at budd@runz.com.