Athletic Training Author:Michael C. Murphy Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IH PREPARING FOR ATHLETIC CONTESTS After the athlete has gotten into condition and has trained faithfully for his event he is ready for competitio... more »n. But to know how to run a race properly or to do the best work in a field event requires a knowledge that cannot be obtained entirely from faithful training. I have seen hundreds of races lost through inexperience, nervousness, and ignorance of racing knowledge in general; also field events in which the better man did not always win, for the same reasons. Consequently I shall give a few words of instruction about the final preparation for a race or other athletic contest. First of all, the athlete should aim to have himself in perfect control. He should not worry about his coming competition. Themoment he violates this rule he reduces his chances of victory. Of course, some athletes are of such a nervous temperament that they find it hard to obey this rule. The best way to insure going into a competition in the proper frame of mind is to keep busy until the day of the contest. I always recommend that the athlete do absolutely no "work for at least two days preceding his contest. And if he has had a long enough period of training, say from two months to ten weeks, it will probably be found that it will not be necessary to do very much work the last week. This is the rule I have always adhered to, and in training my teams for the Intercollegiate Championships none of the athletes, except under unusual conditions, did any hard work for five days before the meet, and then only a little jog or very light work. It has been my experience that more athletes suffer in actual competition from too much work than from too little. This applies particularly to those who have been troubled with sore shins or muscles. Consid...« less