Coach of the Progressive Youth Club and one of the country’s top athletic coaches, Corporal Lynden Wilson, has come out swinging against unqualified coaches who he feels are doing more harm than good for local athletes.
“One of the biggest problems that our young athletes encounter is that too many unqualified coaches are damaging their progress in more ways than one,” he said.
“Most of these coaches have not been trained and therefore cannot assess their athletes’ skills and weaknesses and formulate a suitable training programme that specifically targets the needs of the athlete,” he added.
“In order to fill this void, these self-proclaimed coaches just copy training programmes from the internet, not realizing that those training programmes/workouts on the internet have been created with factors such as climatic conditions, time of year and most importantly that they address the specific needs of the athlete,” Wilson argued.
Wilson is affiliated to the Athletics Association of Guyana and has, in many instances, willingly offered his services to some of the rising young athletes in brief but important training workshops throughout the year.
He said he was very pleased with the progress made by the junior athletes and feels that they are slowly raising the level of the competition locally.
He added that although the standard was not quite where it should be, he felt none-the-less that it was constantly progressing despite the many hindrances.
While poor facilities and lack of necessary equipment were also hindrances to an athlete’s development, Wilson felt that the issue of unqualified coaches, if it was not addressed, could pose serious problems to the small reservoir of naturally talented athletes.
He identified a number of qualified coaches in Elton Smith, Robert Chisolm, and Wanda Richmond, who he opined were among the country’s best active coaches.
“The other fallacy that these substandard coaches have been brain-washing their athletes with is that they just need a few weeks or maybe months of training to achieve greatness.
“However, this is not so. The full development of athletes is not something that happens overnight but it takes the following of a structured plan over a number of years,” he said.
Wilson said he had experienced significant improvement in about 75 per cent of the athletes at his club which he felt was a very positive sign to start the new season.
Wilson advocates that a squad of the best local athletes be assembled in much the say way as the AAG’s Gold Squad with support from the government and the private sector in order for their to be some progress.
He said in that way competing athletes from different clubs would see each other not as opponents but as training partners thereby creating a better atmosphere for progress.
