Track & Field – Running | Teach kids to love running

Getting kids to run is first learning what makes them want to run. T-shirts, water bottles or entering some big kids’ events may hold their interest for a while but they don’t make kids want to run. The triggers that start kids running, and will keep them running, are having fun, being with friends, setting and accomplishing simple goals, enjoying success and having ownership of their running. For parents and coaches, it is helping children discover that running isn’t a program with a starting and ending date, nor is it something they are expected to do because mom or dad does it. It is understanding what motivates children and applying those principles to running.

Making Running Fun

When children are having fun, they will likely continue doing whatever they are doing. For parents and coaches, this means if you want children to run, you have to make running fun. Forget about drills and warm-up routines, distances to be run each day or preparing for an end-of-the-program race. These will be dealt with later. The only thing that matters is making every run a fun run. If you want kids to have fun, you have to be having fun yourself. Be ready to laugh and enjoy the moment, whatever the moment brings.
Start with running in different places as often as possible, including a few unusual places where kids wouldn’t think of running. Keep changing the focus by running on a trail one day and going to a track to learn starts and relay exchanges the next; have special holiday runs, and periodically have a team picnic or go to a local pool or lake on a hot day.

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Instead of just running laps, set up a playground obstacle course; plan a Scavenger Hunt Run in a local park; do continuous relays to set team records for how many miles or laps completed; have a pajama run or a flashlight run; host a kids pentathlon; do a Prediction Run or a running version of King-on-the-Mountain. And don’t forget simple games like an Indian run or a running version of Red Light, Green Light or Simon Says. They will get the kids laughing, even the older ones.

If the kids greet each other after a run by giving each other high-fives and chest bumps, are cheering for each other, or staying around after each run is finished, then whatever effort is being made to make running fun is probably working. Keep it up!

Friendships and Belonging

Being with friends and enjoying a sense of belonging are far more important to get young children running, and keep them running, than any incentives you may use to get children to run. With friends, kids are anchored, secure, comfortable and ready to be engaged. Without them, kids are uncertain and less ready to take on new challenges.

If all the kids come from one school or a neighborhood, friendships and belonging can happen naturally. If not, coaches should make the process of building friendships and creating a sense of belonging a top priority. Form new groups or pairings with each run so the children get to know each other, design team challenges that make the children work together to accomplish some task, form relay teams made up of kids of different abilities and prompt each runner to cheer for his or her teammates.

Belonging is triggered by creating a team atmosphere, even if the team doesn’t compete. Teach kids to run together, as a team, rather than everyone running at a different pace. Build a team identity with a name, team colors, a team slogan and a logo for T-shirts. Keep team records, like how far the team ran on a special night, and plan team parties or trips to the local swimming pool. For special runs, like a kids fun run attached to a local road race, have the runners wear their team T-shirt. It will make the kids feel special and allow others to see these kids are part of something special.

Engineering for Success

Experiencing success is a very powerful motivator for anyone, and especially for children. Cunningham and Allington, in Classrooms that Work, a book about fourth- and fifth-grade grade reading programs, say, “Success precedes motivation and once children see they can be successful, they will participate; thus teachers must engineer success.” Their message also applies equally well to kids and running.

Engineering for success starts with designing a running program built on incremental steps, with opportunities for each runner to succeed at each step. When kids do it right, tell them they did it right. Do not just tell kids, “You did great today,” but tell them what they did that was great, like running an even pace or running as a team or doing an obstacle course faster the second time than the first. Make a big deal out of it and make it sincere.

Another aspect of engineering for success is creating runs where the same children are not always bringing up the rear. You can find many ways to do this. One is to imagine the spokes of a wheel. Each spoke is a different route with the coach standing in the center. One route may be out around a tree and back to the start. Others can be up a short hill and back or to the playground to do the monkey bars and back. Send a different child off on each spoke and rotate so each child does them all. If there are more kids than spokes, send them off in waves 30 seconds apart. Another is the cloverleaf run. In this, the coach sets up three loops, all coming together where the coach is stationed. Each loop is a different distance with the shortest one being for new and young runners or slower runners. Let the kids run the same loop four to five times with a rest between runs. The kids who are running the short loop may do it in, say 1:24. The other runners, those on the longer loops, also may be hitting the 1:24 range. Although the kids aren’t racing per se, they generally respond to the challenge of running as fast as the others, even if their loop is shorter. Setting Goals

It is never too early for children to start setting goals and working to accomplish them, providing they are appropriate goals — ones that can be accomplished in each run or at the next run. Big goals, like running a 5K even before they can run a half-mile, are too hard for kids to visualize and too far in the future to have meaning.

For young runners, running the same pace each time for a short trail run, doing one more run up and down the bleachers or finishing together in a group run are all goals that can be accomplished within a single run. The runners adopt a goal and they master it, all in one practice. Doing a circuit three times on one night and setting a goal of doing it four times a week later also is a doable goal, one that most young children can understand and relate to. Earning a medal in a kids run several weeks away is not as relevant. Kids need to experience success today, and some goals, especially those looming down the road, may produce stress in children. Just forget about the medals until the day of the run and give the children only the intermediate goals that will work toward it.
Setting and meeting goals are integral to experiencing success and need to include both team and individual goals. Some children may not be ready to run as far as others, but together they can set team records for how many laps they completed on a favorite course. Congratulate them, give high-fives, shake hands, or whatever else conveys your support for a job well done, for doing what they were trying to do.

Creating Ownership

If kids are going to start running, it should be their decision to run — not their mom’s or dad’s, but theirs. For adults, this means instead of encouraging (i.e., pushing) children to run, start creating opportunities for children to discover running. Take them to places where they can see runners or to places where other kids are running. Play running games with them, walk/jog to the store together rather than driving, or take them to watch a kids fun run. Let them make the decision to enter the next one.

For a parent who runs with his or her young child, make it the child’s run, not yours. Run with your child either before, after or completely separate from your own run. You can’t make the child the center of attention when you are doing your own workout. And be sure to make the run simple and fun. Improvise an obstacle course that the child will likely do better than the adult or do a walk/run on a trail through the woods, stopping to explore nature. Just make whatever you do, theirs.

For parents running with their child in a kids fun run, first be sure the child really wants you to run. If they want you, then get them settled down so they don’t go out too fast, run beside your child or even slightly behind and let them set the pace. This is their run. Let them own it. If your child has left you in a cloud of dust, your job is done. Just get over to the side, jog to the finish and discreetly step off the course.

Building Motivators

When children run because of the feeling of satisfaction and the simple enjoyment they get out of it, they are intrinsically motivated. Bravo! This is as it should be. But, we do recognize that the promise of a water bottle, T-shirt or Feelin’ Good Mileage Club Toe Tokens — extrinsic motivators — have gotten millions of children running.

The question is not whether extrinsic motivators are good for running. The question is what extrinsic motivators are appropriate for young children and what role do such rewards play in motivating them?

I have three simple rules here. First, anything and everything has to be earned. No one gets anything just for showing up and participating. Second, always keep the motivator fairly simple, at the very low end of what is a tangible reward. Third, when using extrinsic motivators, even the very low-end kind, recognize they tend to lose their value if overused.

It is amazing what joy kids get out of earning a Toe Token, colored shoe laces, a sweat band or some zany prize from the local dollar store drawn from a grab bag. Forget the fancy medals or trophies. Keeping it simple and fun ensures that the kids don’t focus more on the prize than the run, and distract from their opportunity to discover the intrinsic values that running offers.

The real danger is when such prizes become more important than running itself. When this happens, children will stay motivated only as long as they continue to enjoy the perks. When the perks stop, or they no longer are seem important to the child, running will stop.

Achieving Variety

For some children, especially younger children, running around cones on a playground day after day may be a necessity. If so, this is all the more reason to incorporate games, challenges, obstacle courses, relays and anything else the coach can think of to make every run unique. Otherwise, kids will tire quickly and soon be looking for something else to do. And who can blame them? Running in little circles day after day is boring.

For running programs where children are transported by parents, building in variety is easy by not only changing what they run but also where they run. Allow the children to discover running on grass, on dirt trails and asphalt, on a synthetic track and on flat courses and hilly ones. Let them experience running in the early morning or in the evening and never let a little rain cause a run to be canceled. Mix it up; never repeat the run from yesterday or even one from the week before.

That said, repeating some runs is important in order to allow the kids to measure progress. Find a few runs that kids like most and repeat them every few weeks. Encourage the kids to run farther or faster or with less recovery between efforts than what they did last time and make a big deal out of it when they succeed. The variety is created by changing the challenge. For these runs, keep simple records to help the kids identify what they need to do to improve. To add importance to these runs, give them special names and speak of them in reference to the challenge they offer.

Discover Running

Although most everyone agrees that it is not OK for adults to push kids into running, it is certainly OK for adults to organize kids running programs: to make running fun, to offer small challenges that allow children to experience success and to make running a social experience, something every child needs.

It also is OK to let them see and experience that running goes far beyond the playground or neighborhood park and to help them discover that running isn’t a program with a starting and ending date nor is it something they are expected to do.

For parents who run, be sure to not let your running be the only running your children see. If you run on the roads, great, but find someone willing to work with your kids on shorter track distances. If you were a sprinter at one time, let a trail runner work with them for a while.

If a road race in your area is looking for volunteers, consider having your kids staff an aid station along the course. Let them hand out water cups and, of course, clean up after. The kids will love it, plus it gives them a unique exposure to running, far better than just watching the action from the side of the road.

Take them to a track or cross country meet. If there is one for middle school runners, that works best. Why? Because the kids will be able to better identify with those runners than they will at a high school or college meet. Watching kids who are just a little older than they are triggers “that could be me” motivation.

Keeping Kids Running

When planning a running program for children, first think along the lines of letting running become a simple pattern in the life of the child, not some form of commitment or expectation. Allow running to come in and out of their life alongside all the other things that children experience in a similar way. The kids come, run, have fun, renew friendships and then go off and do something else for a while before running again.

Consider organizing a series of runs tied to each season of the year, each designed to keep kids excited about running and each offering a new challenge, such as preparing them for a special team-only event, a destination run, a field trip somewhere or entry in a kids run attached to a local road race. Go watch a cross country race and then run on the same course or take advantage of the holidays by having the kids get ready to run as a group in a local parade.

Another possibility is to create a theme built around running at places of unique local interest or places that let the kids discover different natural habitats or maybe a series of runs, each in different neighborhoods, to see where their teammates live.

Create certificates of completion for each season, but even before completion, start building interest in the next season or series of runs. At a summer run, tell them about the nighttime flashlight run they can do in October or the evening run through holiday lights to see the lighting of the town Christmas tree in December. Let the kids know what is coming, pump them up a little, but then give them some time away from running so when they come back, they will be energized and ready to go.