Thoughts From Three: Style and Substance

"Through the exercise of a skill, the self that acts in the world takes on a definite shape. It comes to be in a relation of fit to a world it has grasped."

Matthew B. Crawford

Decades ago, my high school running buddies eagerly awaited Thursday editions of the Somerset Messenger Gazette. That weekly provided the most local scholastic sports coverage, so, if lucky, your name might appear as a first-place finisher in a track event or as a team top-5 cross-country runner for a dual meet. If really lucky, with some important team contribution in victory, you might get an entire sentence with your name included. That was it. Some might wonder how we ever managed to survive such a dearth of publicity. Fortunately, we did not know what we were missing and so were able to avoid irreparable emotional angst. We, in fact, flourished in our tightly-knit anonymity.

Flash forward to the modern era. ITEM: The father of a cross-country runner wants that runner, who is not feeling 100%, withdrawn from an invitational rather than making an important team contribution because a less than stellar performance might lower the runner's seasonal speed rating. ITEM: For a while not long ago, a number of athletes (and some coaches) were trotting around with toes exposed in minimalist running shoes. The barefoot running craze had spawned its inevitable commercial monetizing, despite the fact that studies demonstrated barefoot or minimalist running increases foot pronation, and the muscular work necessary to absorb the additional impact forces reduces running economy. ITEM: At a recent indoor track and field 'national' championship (there were three of them), select shot putters were moved from their corner cage to the track infield for a staged throw-off that was moderated in loud fashion by two announcers sounding much like over-enthusiastic game-show hosts. The throwers' actual 'national championship' competition had been contested earlier in the day, but the new show was staged as a crowd pleaser.

Now, more than ever, if athletes are to maintain a realistic perspective on their sport (you can bet the house they won't make a career or living off it), staying grounded in the basic elements of the sport are critical. Call that the substance of a sport, those fundamental components of the activity without which it ceases to be a sport. You cannot, for example, be a track and field high jumper without basic athleticism and the synchronistic motions developed through countless hours of training. Neither can you be a competent or competitive middle-distance runner without the periodized miles beneath the feet and the runner's healthy lifestyle. There are fundamental requirements for becoming---or being---a high jumper or a runner. You can't fake those abilities or pretend to have them. If you want to be a high jumper or a miler, mastering the substance of each sporting event is not negotiable.

So much of the other stuff that surrounds the modern scholastic athlete -the constantly changing style elements---are optional. We can do without them and the sport survives. I think of a recent Media Day in which scholastic athletes were prompted to ham for the camera in funny or imaginative ways, then asked corny questions by reporters, questions such as: "Which teammate do you not want to sit near on the bus?" Both creations would later be regurgitated in print and on-line, providing a moment of notoriety for the athlete, moments also intended to increase the sponsor's viewership, the omnipresent economic side of style. You don't have to be a curmudgeon to question its basic utility, its actual value.

Most of those style elements of our sport---the media attention, the rankings, the paraphernalia-have little bearing on what the substance of the sport demands: those long runs alone in the summer; those hard track intervals; those hours in the shot-put circle. Style elements in any sport seek the athlete's attention in distractive ways and in a manner usually beyond their control. Style elements are merely representations of what someone thinks athletes should assume as important to their sport. And, as we see repeatedly, those style elements are typically monetized.

In the stylistic world of a sport, experiences are manufactured for the athlete rather than by them. Athletes become part of someone else's version of a sport. The irony of style is in its impulse not toward individuality but conformity. Everyone wants to show up in the latest and greatest trainers, the new and flashy miracle fiber singlets. Everyone wants to locate themselves in the rankings, even at #284. (How did the old timers ever enjoy running so much without all that?) The John Hartford song line, "what's the difference being different when it's difference now that looks alike" aptly describes the commercial or cultural victory of a style. And styles keep changing while the substance of the sport remains what it always is--actions wedded to a defined purpose.

Contrast any of those contrived 'sports experiences, those style elements, with the minutes following a draining interval track workout, cool-down and core drills. The athletes laze on the infield for a little, in no hurry to rush out. Most are satisfied with their efforts, a few not, but all enjoy the mild spring weather as they gossip about the workout or maybe complete left-over conversations from the school day before they finally meander off. There is no pretense there, no artifice, no necessary outside audience. All those athletes own their afternoons of genuine personal agency-and sharing them with teammates just makes it all that much better.

Authentic personal agency only derives from real skills exercised by individuals, not from those representations that style elements attempt to shop. Sometimes were get confused as to which is more valuable. The practiced movements of the sport, its organized stratagems and rules of engagement are those fundamentals, the sports' substance, what James Galvin would describe as "the real world." A colleague of mine, a Hall of Fame coach in another sport, once mused to me about how all the championships and the notoriety were rewarding, but what really captivated him were the afternoon practices, being with athletes and teaching the skills of the game-his real world.

The promotion of true individuality in sport-what young athletes desire-is achieved through a submission to a sport's substance, its situated elements that cannot be manufactured or manipulated. Mastering substance-the work and one's personal history in a progression of efforts-is the only process through which an athlete can make a sport truly his or her own. The paraphernalia can only fake it. The mastery process is long and demanding, though ultimately more rewarding than any sports video, interview or ranking.

For coaches, one of the ways to reduce a nyconfusion between the illusions of style and the realities of substance is through principles. Principles declare what you stand for, what you're aiming at with your coaching. They are only as true as your actions that accompany them, and they are, of course, open to debate. Coaching principles should, in theory, address the substantive elements of the sport. They should represent clearly detailed, understood, and directed actions that lead to desired athletic results. The well-known adage, "the process is the goal" is, in reality, a declaration that principles are the drivers. Too few coaches take time to decide on principles. Most believe they know exactly why they do what they do. If they took reflective time, however, some might be dismayed by the disconnect between assumed principles and executed practices-their actual process. We see, for instance, circumstances where athletes early on get pigeon-holed (too slow, not invested enough, etc.) by coaches who profess to seek the potential of all their athletes. In reality, practices become a demonstration of selective attention by coaches, and the hypocrisy of professed principles is exposed. When attending to substance, principles matter. In the best coaching worlds, they lead to routine encounters with all invested team runners, encounters that are productive and valuable.

There is certainly room---and perhaps even a necessity---for style elements, a way to enjoyably 'round out' a sport. But if style becomes the primary means of defining a sport, the pursuit of substance withers and so does the sport. Ultimately, any sport creates commitment by an athlete through its substance, not its style. So, for a coach to do what is best for the athletes requires primary allegiance to that substance, knowing what and why and how to enthusiastically teach the sport's situated elements. And that means encountering athletes not as abstractions or representations of some conceptualized or manufactured notion of excellence, but as humans who are trying. Attention to an athlete's attempt to find a proper 'fit' in the situated elements of the sport is required if moral coaching is the goal. My high school cross-country coach didn't care at all whether we were notorious or advertised. What he really cared about, though, was making us---all of us---really good runners. He knew what mattered most.