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Here be ... not dragons, but Mike & Frank's Weekly Coaching Schedule & Availability for Little Athletics at Knox Park! And some other random inspirational & informational tidbits.

See the latest Weekly Schedule below by clicking here
See some Throws Coaching & Parents Resources here
See some Throws movies here

Mike Donato (0414 888 563) & Frank Bathgate (0414 515 153) are Coaches at Knox.
Frank coaches Discus, Shotput & Javelin
Mike coaches Discus, Shotput, Javelin, Hammer, Multi-Event & is the Strength & Conditioning coach for Knox.

Mike Coaching Days/Times 2008 Aug-Dec (Relay season). 2009 to be advised ...

Frank Coaching Days/Times 2008-2009 T&F Season.

Throws Coaching
These sessions, which are open to all athletes, start with a warm up and progressively go through agility & balance drills, throwing exercises and practice, strength conditioning, stretching & finally a warm down. Sessions will help athletes advance their throwing ability in all throwing events. Athletes who commit to come to training regularly will be given a Throws specific training program to follow.

Multi-Event Coaching
Multi-event coaching involves 60 or 90 minutes of training broken up into three roughly equal parts. The first part is warmup, basic strength & conditioning, agility, throwing, running & jumping fundamentals. The 2nd & 3rd parts are rotated amongst discus, long jump, sprints and some endurance running. This training is focused towards all around athletic abilities and for those who are competing - the State Multi-Event Championships. For junior athletes in Little Athletics this involves 5 events : Long Jump, 100m, 80m Hurdles, Discus and 800m. Mike doesn't do hurdles - see Steve Cowburn's hurdles team for hurdles training on Tue & Thu.

Strength & Conditioning
Gym places are currently full as demand is very high and Mike is the only qualified coach. Priority of places is in the following order - throwers, then sprinters/jumpers and finally endurance runners. Strength & conditioning programs can be prepared for athletes or other coaches if required. Programs are more specific than those normally found in gyms and are focused on functional sporting performance for junior sports. For more information about resistance training at Knox pls see here. Resistance training is only for older junior athletes aged 12 and older.

AFL
This typically caters to older athletes who in addition to competing at Little Aths in Summer also play AFL in winter. This covers sprints, agility, basic plyometrics, strength & conditioning, stretching & some endurance work all with an emphasis towards improving athletic abilities specifically for Aussie Rules. In fact the training is relevant for most team sports - soccer, netball, hockey, etc.

Famous Quotes : (see some more sporting / famous quotes here)

"If you're going through hell, keep going." - Sir Winston Churchill

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...Who knows the great enthusiams, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt (or in the words of Nike - "Just Do It!")

You are all Champions in your own way. That doesn't mean you have to be number 1 or be the best. Just do your best. If you aren't first, then make those people ahead of you break records by pushing them with your personal best. Consider for a moment what we achieve from athletics - the sheer fun of competing - the building of a healthy and alert mind and body - stamina, courage, perseverance, dedication, commitment, selflessness and most importantly, the will to excel.

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie – From the Greek poet - Simonides.
Spartan Epitaph from the Battle of Thermoplylae in 480 BC. 300 hand picked Spartan soldiers led by King Leonidas II and some several thousand auxiliary troops held off more than 100,000 Persians for 7 days, dying to the last man, no surrender asked or given. A short time later on the plains of Plataea, the combined Greek Hoplite Army, numbering less than than a third of the opposing forces (including 5,000 Spartans) led by the Spartan General Pausanius crushed the more than 300,000 strong Persian army commanded by the Persian General Mardonius under the banner of Xerxes, son of Darius, King of Persia.
Interesting to think what must have been going through the Persian soldiers' minds when the two armies were facing off across the plains of Plataea - hmm, it took 7 days to kill 300 Spartans and now we have 5,000 of them just outside of arrow range and with 90,000 of their friends along for some fun. We might outnumber them but I'm not really feeling confident. The mental battle would have already been lost I believe.
If you ever travel to Greece and are in the region of Thermopylae, an ancient stone monument apparently still bears the engraving of perhaps this most famous of all warrior epitaphs. You may wish to stop and ponder the path that western civilzation & democracy would have taken if the Spartans hadn't been there. Which leads to another historical event just ten years earlier ...
Prior to the Battle of Thermopylae, in 490 BC, Darius of Persia attempted to conquer the free Greek states. His forces, outnumbering the Greeks by around 5 to 1, were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by the Athenian Army commanded by the General Miltiades. Marathon has been immortalized by the Olympic marathon that is named for an event after the battle. The myth goes that Pheidippides ran the 34 kilometres from Marathon to Athens to report the glorious victory and dropped dead a moment after the announcement. This legend inspired the poet Robert Browning in his 1879 poem, "Pheidippides" which was in turn the inspiration for Baron Pierre de Coubertin and other founders of the modern Olympic Games to invent a running race of some 42 km called the Marathon. Here endeth the history lesson.

Athlete’s Training & Competition Tips
Work hard to be the best you can be at everything you do
Set weekly, monthly & season goals, write them down and work hard towards ticking them all off
Think big, have amazing dreams and goals and stay excited about achieving them, but break down these amazing goals into small achievable steps along the way
Never take anything for granted
Train hard prior to competition
Concentrate fully on the task at hand
Knowledge of the basics are vital
The game isn’t over until the game is over (or the fat lady sings)
Character is important
Be optimistic, confident, competitive, even aggressive but not arrogant
Play with enthusiasm, passion, aggression, take risks & go for the win
Good habits last a lifetime
Ignore the opinions of the ignorant, uninformed or pessimists
Success is the catalyst for working even harder
Have a balanced life - all things in moderation - most of the time!
Say no to drugs - both recreational and performance enhancing
Eat a balanced diet & get enough sleep
And dont forget to check your shoelaces ...

LEGEND