Some common sense ideas......and some reminders
Hello, and I hope this finds you doing well.
Sickness during the cross country season is something all programs deal with. Ideally, only one or two athletes are sick during the cross country season, and hopefully, the length of the sickness is limited to a handful of days. At the other end of the spectrum is a coach having most of their varsity ill for a week, if not longer.
In this newsletter, I’ll share my approach to helping athletes get back to training and racing at 100 percent as soon as possible following an illness.
A Simple Goal
When an athlete is sick, the goal is two-fold. The coach first needs to lower the athlete’s life stress and increase the amount of sleep. As their cross country coach, you can lower their life stress by either taking away training days completely or giving them extremely easy training days. If you do either of these, the athlete should be done with practice much earlier in the day and if they are serious about getting well, then they can knock out their homework earlier in the night. All this allows them to get to bed earlier, which is the end goal.
The key is that the two of you come up with a plan that has them sleeping significantly more than they normally do. While you can’t change the academic demands they have, you can change the training stress and you can change the number of hours they need to be at practice.
First, Give Them A Day Off
While neither you nor the athlete likes that they are sick, the key is that you don’t make things worse. Sometimes not making things worse is the best you can do. Your job is to accept that and then effectively communicate that to the athlete. If they’re motivated and are dying to improve, they’re not going to like this plan, yet it’s the right plan.
Giving a high school athlete a day off from training and allowing them to get a good night's sleep is the first thing a coach needs to do when an athlete is really sick. If you send them home from practice, they can then knock out their homework, have dinner with their family, then go to bed 1-2 hours earlier than normal. If they are motivated to do some fascial release, work with a foam roller, lacrosse ball or other tools before bed, great, but the key is to get to bed.
If they aren’t terribly sick then they can do 20 minutes of Strength and Mobility (SAM) at practice and then go home and follow the same script as above. For kids who are extroverted, this may be best as they get to be with the team for a bit.
The key is that both you and the athlete have complete faith that a day off from aerobic training is not going to cause a decrease in fitness.
Second, Assign An Easy Day With Strides And SAM
The second day can be an easy day with strides, followed by SAM, then back home with the goal to get to bed 30-60 minutes earlier than normal.
How long should they run today? If they do some dynamic work to warm-up, which takes 5-8 minutes, they could run for 25 minutes and then do strides for 10 minutes. This brings them to 40-43 minutes. Add 15 minutes of SAM and then 5 minutes of chatting with friends and you have roughly an hour of work. The key at the end of this day is for them to go home and do their best to get in that extra 30-60 minutes of sleep.
Key Point: They must get more sleep on this day then they would on a normal easy day in your system.
Both Of You Have To Be Honest
Both you and the athlete have to be honest that their illness is not ideal. As I said above, once you embrace the idea that if you don’t make things worse, this athlete’s immune system should be able to quickly fight off the illness.
Remember, that athlete is going to report that they feel good immediately after a run and some SAM work. What you need to have them do is check-in 30 minutes before bed and then in the morning when they wake up. Those two times are better indications of their health. Use those two self-reports to figure out what the next step is in their training.
When In Doubt, Do Less (#WIDDL)
This is a phrase I use with adult marathon runners, runners who are prone to overtraining. The same phrase applies to you and the sick high school athlete. When in doubt, do less. And 90 percent of the time, that means that even if you assign them the first two days described, the majority of the time they’ll need one more easy day (with strides and SAM) before they’re 100 percent ready for training.
Look at it this way: Would you rather have an athlete who had an extra day of rest and is excited to train or have an athlete who doesn’t feel 100 percent (and may feel less than 90 percent), but is reluctant to tell you because they are dying to get back into workouts and run with their friends? Neither you nor the athlete have a definitive measurement of what percentage out of 100 they are, so the prudent thing to do is to give them another easy day.
