TRAINING & COACHING QUOTES

           TRAINING & COACHING QUOTES

"...it takes physical toughness to create mental toughness...You and I understand that you've got to get up and go do a job every day. You are accountable to that job. If you don't do it, you get fired. Well, young people haven't faced that accountability, and so it's our job as coaches to put that pressure on them so they understand their responsibilities...to understand what their assignments are so that we can win...."
Ernie Kent, Coach of UO Men's Basketball Team

"Wellness is the key to a long and healthy life. Many people have the wrong perception of it. Wellness is from the neck up, and fitness from the neck down. Too many people work out every day, but go around with the worst attitudes, which just wastes all their physical efforts."
Reader's comment sent in to Bob Welch, columnist for The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon (2/5/04)

"You don't have to be a stud to be a good wrestler...I recruited everybody because anybody can get to a level where they're able to compete if they're willing to put in the time."
Scott Cardwell, former Oregon State wrestler and Wrestling Coach for Springfield High School in Springfield, Oregon

"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."
Beverly Sills

"During the hard training phase never be afraid to take a day off. If your legs are feeling unduly stiff and sore, rest; if you are at all sluggish, rest; in fact, if in doubt, rest."
Bruce Fordyce

"If you don’t have confidence, you’ll always find a way not to win."
Carl Lewis

"You only ever grow as a human being if you're outside your comfort zone."
Percy Cerutty

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Mark Twain

"It is only through work and strife that either nation or individual moves on to greatness. The great man is always the man of mighty effort, and usually the man whom grinding need has trained to mighty effort."
Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech about Grant, delivered at Galena, Illinois, April 27, 1900

"You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things."
Ken Kesey

"Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong."
Winston Churchill

"The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt."
Max Lerner

"Spirit...has fifty times the strength and staying power of brawn and muscle."
Unknown

"Continuous effort -- not strength or intelligence -- is the key to unlocking our potential."
Liane Cardes

"Making an animal of yourself relieves the pain of being a man."
Manciata

"If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat."
Herschel Walker

"Train, don't strain."
Arthur Lydiard

"I have always been regarded as a mad trainer. The older, the madder."
Juha "the Cruel" Väätäinen

"Number one is just to gain a passion for running. To love the morning, to love the trail, to love the pace on the track. And if some kid gets really good at it, that's cool too."
Pat Tyson

"I tell the kids to have 'wide eyes,' to run light as a feather, to get high on their toes, and to dig deep, dig deep, dig deep! Dwell on the positive, but have controlled, passionate anger."
Pat Tyson

"A great coach is an artist. You have to be creative, and you have to capture enough kids to create your artwork."
Pat Tyson

"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."
George S. Patton, War As I Knew It

"Run hard, be strong, think big!"
Percy Cerutty

"Don't attack a hill from the very bottom—it's bigger than you are!"
Harry Groves, Penn State Coach

"The more I train, the more I realize I have more speed in me."
Leroy Burrell

"Obstacles are those frightening things that become visible when we take our eyes off our goals."
Henry Ford

"If you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of life; in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you will arrive at little. And in the course of years when you come to look back, if you have not done what you have heard from your advisers,—and among many counsellors there is wisdom,—you will bitterly repent when it is too late."
Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh University

"In the midst of your zeal and ardour,—for such, I foresee, will rise high enough, in spite of all the counsels to moderate it that I can give you,—remember the care of health. I have no doubt you have among you young souls ardently bent to consider life cheap, for the purpose of getting forward in what they are aiming at of high; but you are to consider throughout, much more than is done at present, and what it would have been a very great thing for me if I had been able to consider, that health is a thing to be attended to continually; that you are to regard that as the very highest of all temporal things for you [Applause]. There is no kind of achievement you could make in the world that is equal to perfect health. What to it are nuggets and millions?"
Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh University

"On the whole, I would bid you stand up to your work, whatever it may be, and not be afraid of it; not in sorrows or contradictions to yield, but to push on towards the goal."
Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh University

"Seekest thou great things, seek them not."

Wise saying quoted by Thomas Carlyle, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh University

"You would fain be victor at the Olympic games, you say. Yes, but weigh the conditions, weigh the consequences; then and then only, lay to your hand—if it be for your profit. You must live by rule, submit to diet, abstain from dainty meats, exercise your body perforce at stated hours, in heat or in cold; drink no cold water, nor, it may be, wine. In a word, you must surrender yourself wholly to your trainer, as though to a physician."
Epictetus, (c.A.D. 50–c.A.D. 138)

"The Truth is that Running Hurts. No one gets faster without meeting their personal pain barrier straight on. No amount of junk miles, fun runs or affirmations are going to get you over the hill at the five mile mark in a 10k. However, what will pull you through is solid prep with hard hill runs and interval work."
Manciata's explanation of the Truth about Running

"I always believe in going hard at everything, whether it is Latin or mathematics, boxing or football, but at the same time I want to keep the sense of proportion. It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object. I want you to keep in training the faculties which would make you, if the need arose, able to put your last ounce of pluck and strength into a contest. But I do not want you to squander these qualities."
Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children (1919)

"There is no need to be a prig. There is no need for a boy to preach about his own good conduct and virtue. If he does he will make himself offensive and ridiculous. But there is urgent need that he should practise decency; that he should be clean and straight, honest and truthful, gentle and tender, as well as brave. If he can once get to a proper understanding of things, he will have a far more hearty contempt for the boy who has begun a course of feeble dissipation, or who is untruthful, or mean, or dishonest, or cruel, than this boy and his fellows can possibly, in return, feel for him."

Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life (1900)

"The greatest treadmill running song, of course, is 'Black Dog' from Led Zeppelin IV."
Pete Pfitzinger, American distance runner who in 1984 had the lead, lost the lead in the last mile and reclaimed the lead to win the marathon at the Olympic Trials. Eleventh place finish in 2:13:53 at Los Angeles Olympics.

"Physiologists and high-performance trainers understand now that the concept of 110 percent is no longer a smart way to train. Fitness is like the blade of a knife; you want to sharpen it without ruining the blade. Give 110 percent, and you won't build your body up, but actually break it down. And be no good to yourself or anyone else."
Sally Jenkins, Sports Columnist for The Washington Post writing about Korey Stringer's death due to heatstroke.

"Just remember this: No one ever won the olive wreath with an impressive training diary."
Marty Liquori

"Thus I urge you to go on to your greatness if you believe it is in you. Think deeply and separate what you wish from what you are prepared to do."
Percy Cerutty

"The more I talk to athletes, the more convinced I become that the method of training is relatively unimportant. There are many ways to the top, and the training method you choose is just the one that suits you best. No, the important thing is the attitude of the athlete, the desire to get to the top."
Herb Elliott

"Training is principally an act of faith. The athlete must believe in its efficacy; he must believe that through training he will become fitter and stronger; that by constant repetition of the same movements he will become more skillfull and his muscles more relaxed...He must be a fanatic for hard work and enthusiastic enough to enjoy it."
Franz Stampfl from On Running, 1955

"To exercise at or near capacity is the best way I know of reaching a true introspective state. If you do it right, it can open all kinds of inner doors."
Al Oerter, won Olympic Gold in Discus four times.

Most track coaches kind of criticize my short gait, and it's so funny, because as a little 5-year-old, when I won my first race, I had this huge, gaping gait and I wore these boots. I still have a picture of it on my window sill. You can see my stride -- it's a mile long. My dad had me do these drills while I was running to school, and just on the field, he's like, 'Sprinters need to have quick steps. You need to get as much turnover as possible,' and he had me do these drills, like, 'Dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah dah-dah' as quick as I could go, and I, like, really consciously shortened my gait. I still remember this as a little kid, thinking, 'OK, to be a sprinter, I need to have a short gait.' I was a very driven kid, and I had much discipline, and I'd do anything to improve."
Gabe Jennings on his early training

"Often I visualize a quicker, like almost a ghost runner, ahead of me with a quicker stride. It's really crazy. In races, this always happens to me. I see the vision of a runner ahead of me, maybe just 15, 20 meters ahead of me, and the cadence of that runner, which is actually me in the future, is a little quicker, so if I'm going (his rhythm/breathing), then my ghost runner, the vision of me, ahead of me, like opening up and just going for it, is quicker. It's like (quicker rhythmic noises)."
Gabe Jennings on technique

"Restlessness is discontent—and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man—and I will show you a failure."
Thomas Alva Edison

"Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice."
Minna Thomas Antrim

"Ignore, then, whether you are tall and thin or short and stocky— whether they laughed at you at home (where they are often unkind) or at school (where they are mostly blind, anyway). Indeed—to hell with the lot of them if you 'feel' you can do it."
Percy Cerutty

"Don't be stupid, you can't do that."
"Yes I can, anything is possible."
"We told you that you couldn't do it."
"At least I tried, you bastards."
R.P. McMurphy 's exchange with other patients of a lock down hospital mental ward as he strains to pull a drinking fountain off a wall to smash through a window for escape in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey (the movie starring Jack Nicholson).

"What fun is it? Why all that hard, exhausting work? Where does it get you? Where's the good of it? It is one of the strange ironies of this strange life that those who work the hardest, who subject themselves to the strictest discipline, who give up certain pleasurable things in order to achieve a goal, are the happiest..."
Brutus Hamilton, Coach of Olympic Track Team, 1952 Helsinki Olympics

"If the coach cannot do it, he cannot 'teach' it—only talk about it."
Percy Cerutty

"I'm not interested in athletics, I'm only interested in achievement. Fix your goal and work for it."
Percy Cerutty's training advice to Herb Elliott.

"I was out training one black night when I heard a noise. I turned around and saw a leopard. I threw some stones at him and he went away, so I went on my way."
Filbert Bayi, on training in Tanzania (see The Rage on his run-in with a cougar)

"The most challenging aspect of the decathlon is not the events themselves, but how you train to become the best 100-meter runner you are on the same day that you're the best 1,500-meter runner."
Bruce Jenner

"Everyone has limits on the time they can devote to exercise, and cross-training simply gives you the best return on your investment--balanced fitness with minimum injury risk and maximum fun."
Paula Newby-Fraser

"Your training partner's name is pain. You start out trying to ignore him. Can't do it. You attempt to reason with him. No way. You try to strike a bargain. Hah. You plead. You say "Please stop, please go away. I promise never ever to do this again if you just leave me alone." But he won't. Pain only climbs off if you do. Then you're beaten. "
Scott Martin

"What a player does best, he should practice least. Practice is for problems."
Duke Snider

"I don't generally like running. I believe in training by rising gently up and down from the bench."
Satchel Paige

"All I want to do is drink beer and train like an animal."
Rod Dixon

"Any idiot can train himself into the ground; the trick is working in training to get gradually stronger."
Keith Brantly

"The five S's of sports training are: stamina, speed, strength, skill, and spirit; but the greatest of these is spirit."
Ken Doherty

"The introduction of resistance in form of sand and hill is too important to be ignored."
Percy Cerutty

"If you die, I will bury you in the sandhills with all the other runners."
Percy Cerutty

"My jump was imperfect, my run-in was too short and my hands were too far back at takeoff. When I manage to iron out these faults, I am sure I can improve."
Sergei Bubka (first pole vaulter to clear 20 feet)

"When I'm warming up and look across at the guy...I can tell if he is a good wrestler...
(but) I know there is no way he trained as hard as me."
"Most people beat themselves, and I used to do that."
Jake Ballard of Oakridge, Oregon

(31-1 Record as a Senior Wrestling for Oakridge High School, 1999-2000)

Here's some advice that My Running People should have no problem incorporating into their training regimen...even before we get to the track...
"...At the track, make sure to avoid sprinting off the line like Michael Johnson..."
Terry Mulgannon, Outside Magazine