David Oliver Talks Olympics, Training, Mindset, and Pre-Meet Rituals
110H World Champion, 4x USA National Champion, 3x Diamond League Trophy Winner, and current Director of T&F at Howard University🦬
Another surprise guest coach is here to share insight on hurdling, being a professional athlete, and coaching NCAA D1 qualifiers to the SIC community! He is a man with a strong history in our sport, and I’m grateful he took the time to answer our questions! So without further ado, welcome 110H World Champion, 4x USA National Champion, 3x Diamond League Trophy Winner, and current Head Coach at Howard University🦬 👏DAVID OLIVER👏
What are three key principles you brought from your professional athlete career to your coaching career?
I believe the key principle I learned early on in my coaching journey was to leave pretty much everything I did as an athlete on the highest level, in the rearview mirror. It had zero bearing on my ability to get 18-22 year olds to do what I was asking them to do. Operating as an elite athlete, some things such as muscle memory and possessing the ability to have your body make corrections on the fly might not come as innate to an athlete that I would be working with on this level. Early on in my profession journey, I could never understand why some of my training partners took so long to understand and apply what we were being taught. My coach said something very simple, something that always stuck with me to this day. He said “You have to realize that everyone is not you”. So I approach every new encounter with fresh eyes and try to leave all biases and preconceived notions at the door and just follow the science.
What are your predictions for the Olympic hurdles, specifically 110H and 100H?
Ah man, this is extremely difficult and I truly don’t have a clue! We can look back at every single Olympic final and if you asked this question in March, everyone would be wrong, but I’ll give it a shot.