What’s been coming up for you and your athletes this week?

One for everyone who does their best coaching education on the drive to training. Next time a podcast or clinic talk lands an idea you want to keep, give it a five-minute transfer step while it’s still fresh. Grab the transcript — most podcast apps and YouTube have one built in — and paste it into AI with a prompt like this: “I coach youth sprinters, 12–16, two track sessions a week. Pull out the three ideas from this transcript most relevant to my group, and turn each one into something I can run on Tuesday: a drill, a cue or a constraint. 🚩Flag anything that contradicts how I currently coach.” That contradiction line is quietly the best part. The gap between content we rate and content that reaches the track is usually just this step — a plain summary reads nicely and changes nothing, while the Tuesday version (and the contradictions) gets the idea off your phone and into the session. I keep the output in a note called “to trial” and give one idea a run each week — third rep on film, so there’s evidence either way. What’s the last podcast, book or talk that changed something real in your sessions — and what was the one idea you took from it?

Something I keep coming back to with the sprint groups, and it saves a lot of talking. When an athlete’s posture breaks at speed — low hips, arching or excessive forward lean, head back— give their eyes a job before you touch anything else. In acceleration, eyes on the track a few metres ahead, so the body can stay in its push and rhythm. As they come upright, have them pick one fixed point at eye level well past the finish and run at it. Head settles, spine aligns and posture corrects. It works because it’s an external target, not a body-part instruction. “Chest up” and “stay tall” ask a kid at full speed to think about their torso, and you usually get tension or a “head back” position. A target out past the line gives them something focus on and lock on to a 🎯 Costs nothing, works on an eight-year-old or an open sprinter, and you can layer it under almost any other fix you’re working on. What’s the external cue that earns its keep most with your group — the one that quietly fixes two or three things at once?

With comp season ramping up, most of us put real thought into the pre-race talk and the post-race debrief — and then the athlete hops in the car and the most influential conversation of the day happens without us. The car ride home shapes how young athletes remember a race more than anything we say at the track. So this season I've started coaching the parents, not just the athlete. At the start of the season I give them one question to ask on the drive: "What was the most fun part of today?" That's it. The results chat can wait until the athlete brings it up themselves. Why it works: it hands the debrief back to the athlete, keeps the emotional temperature down after a rough run, and after a great one it anchors the memory to the experience rather than the time on the clock. Most parents are genuinely relieved to get a script — they've been guessing. If you want to go one step further, pop the question in your pre-season parent email or the squad group chat so everyone's rowing the same way. What's your version — what do you tell (or wish you could tell) parents about the post-race car ride?

Following on from the wickets chat a few weeks back — here's the same principle applied to the very first step out of the start. When an athlete's first step skims low and the torso pops straight up, the fix I keep coming back to is a single mini hurdle placed right where step one lands. The task does the talking: to get over it, the knee has to drive up and through, the shin stays projected, and the body holds its angle a beat longer. No cue barrage required. The setup rule matters more than the hurdle itself: set it low enough that they clear it without thinking about it. If they're jumping it, it's too high — drop it until the movement changes but the effort doesn't. One cue max, then let the drill talk for a few reps before you say anything. It's the same idea as the wickets: build the constraint so the movement you want becomes the easiest option, and save your voice for what the drill can't fix. What's your go-to constraint for the first three steps out of the start?