Importance of Change

Training is about adapting to change, racing is about adapting to change, heck life is about adapting to change. I love the saying here at RPI, that we are trying to produce "change agents" with our students, people that are comfortable with change and can graduate and change the world. That goal is on such a large scale that it takes little changes along the way to become comfortable with that. As a cross country and track and field coach, my goal that I stated on day one is to make the uncomfortable comfortable. Change is uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable to have a season interupted by a coaching change, it was uncomfortable to be introduced to new training and new warmups in September. But our athletes adapted to the change and became better athletes for it. Entering the indoor track and field season now there will be a lot changes, small changes, but still new challenges that we will have to overcome in order to succeed. There is an Albert Einstein saying that I used to have on my old office wall "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." In our sport there is nothing more true. I have not coached a single season or a single team the same way, there is always small changes made that make the athletes a little uncomfortable or make the athletes think a little more. The nature of our sport is adaptation, physiologically speaking or psychologically speaking. In order to get better, adaptation to change must occur. If you fail in a race, you need to change your race tactics, it could be on such a small scale that you wait 50m longer to start your kick, or you go out 1 second slower for the first 400m but you need a change to try and succeed the next time. Adapting to change is what training/racing/competing is all about. Adapting to change is what sport is all about. Adapting to change is what life is all about.