How do you coach a practice group that spans a beginner and your fastest athlete?
One group, one clock, and two athletes who need completely different things from the same rep.
Most programmes do not have the luxury of separate groups for separate levels. One lane, one set of hurdles, one throwing circle, and a group that includes a kid who joined three weeks ago standing next to the athlete who will score points at the championship meet. Running the same workout for both wastes one of them most days.
Group by the task, not by the speed
A drill teaches a position, and a position does not care how fast the athlete doing it is. A-skips, wall drills, block starts at half effort, standing long jump takeoffs: everyone in the group can do the same rep, at their own pace, and get something real out of it, because the thing being trained is the pattern rather than the time on the clock. Save the sorting for the part of practice where speed is actually the point.
Separate the technical work from the competitive work
The fastest athlete in the group can lead warm-up and technical drills just as usefully as the coach can, because the beginner needs to see the position done correctly more than they need a lecture about it. Once the session moves to reps that are actually about pace, the group splits by what each athlete is training for that day: the beginner working on finishing a rep under control, the faster athlete working on a specific split.
- Open practice together: everyone does the same drill, at their own pace.
- Split for pace work: set targets as a percentage of each athlete's own best, not one fixed time the whole group chases.
- Close together again: cool-down, and whatever gets logged that day, so the group leaves as a group even though the middle of practice didn't look like one.
None of this is about holding the fast athlete back or dragging the beginner along. It is about recognising that the workout and the rep are not the same thing, and a group can share one without sharing the other.
A clip or a logged time tells you an athlete did the work. It does not tell you whether that work was the right dose for where they actually are right now, and that is a conversation a coach has to have, not a number a camera produces.
Time your next meet with the phones you already have
Timing, the Film Room and the speed gates are free forever, with no account. A Club plan, $71 a month, puts your meets on your own results page, and one plan covers every phone.
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