About Toyo University Alumni Report:Hiroyuki Yamamoto(Track and Field and Ekiden Club Head Coach, Toyo University Ushiku Senior High School)

Track and Field and Ekiden Club Head Coach, Toyo University Ushiku Senior High School
Hiroyuki Yamamoto

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2009 Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics graduate He belonged to the Track and Field Club at Toyo University and ran in the three major university ekiden. During his fourth year, Yamamoto ran the second section of the Hakone Ekiden—ran by teams’ strongest runners—and led Toyo to its first overall victory. After graduating, he joined Konica Minolta, and in 2016 he finished 4th in the New York City Marathon, the best ever showing by a Japanese athlete. He also took part in the 2019 MGC (Marathon Grand Championship). He retired as an athlete at the end of March 2021, and he began his career as a coach.

Becoming a head coach straight after retirement as an athlete, and appreciating the difficulty of coaching high-school students.

In April of this year, I became the Toyo University Ushiku Senior High School Ekiden Club head coach. It was straight after I had retired as an athlete, and I had just been appointed as a coach of the corporate team that I had belonged to. I was offered the position despite having zero experience as a coach. I thought it was important to build experience gradually, but the manager of the commercial team that I belonged to advised me that it could be good to devise ways to learn to think from a coach's perspective. I also thought the connection of receiving an offer from my alma mater and the timing was equally important, so I decided to start my journey as a coach.
I had a major injury when I was an athlete. I broke my femur and underwent two surgeries. After my operation, I could not move my leg, and I had to start rehabilitation from there. This was a sobering and challenging experience for me as an athlete at the time. But I battled through the rehabilitation, and gradually I became able to bend my leg. I started to train again, and ultimately, I was able to complete as an athlete until the age of 34. It is often said that perseverance leads to strength, and this experience was an important lesson that will be a significant asset to me as a coach. Injuries are unavoidable as an athlete. I believe it is my mission to use my experience to guide athletes when they hit a wall or are struggling with rehabilitation. Also, I can coach the high school students while I run with them because I have only just retired as an athlete. I also think it is one of my strengths that I can still show and teach the students how I ran at the top level of Japanese running, including participating in the MGC* and finishing in the top eight at marathons overseas.
After I became a head coach, I felt that there was a positive attitude in the Ekiden Club. For better or worse, the most important thing is enjoying ourselves and getting along with one another. I think I became a head coach at a difficult time, with the club’s top athlete having graduated and there being no athletes showing strong leadership in the team. Enjoying club activities is an important factor, but the true enjoyment of sport comes in giving it your all in training and producing results in competitions. I also wanted the students to understand why Toyo University Incorporated Educational Institution recognized the club as a priority club. My first job was to raise the athletes’ awareness. Also, I started track and field seriously from university, so the training regimen that I set out was based on the training for university and corporate team athletes that I had experienced. But this proved to be too much for high school students, so adjusting the amount of training to the students who are still growing is a challenging task for me.

*Trials for the Japanese Marathon Team for Tokyo 2020 held in September 2019.

 

The importance of thinking for yourself. Cultivating athletes who have developed the habit of thinking for themselves.

In coaching, I place the utmost importance on thinking for yourself. These days, we can quickly check anything with one smartphone, and people has stopped scrutinizing information. For example, there are even athletes within corporate teams who, when it comes to training methods, do not consider whether the method is appropriate for their body and think they have established a good training regimen. Since I was appointed head coach, I ask the athletes every day after training, “How was it today?” At first, they only had simple answers, such as “They broke away from me in the second half.” But as I continued to ask them, the athletes gradually became able to think about reasons why and give specific answers like “I used too much energy and lost time in the second half. I wasn’t able to recover due to a lack of sleep.” If you can acquire the habit of thinking for yourself by identifying your condition, health, and ability, this will also be useful to you outside of sports. That being said, producing results is essential for an athlete to grow. We could not produce results until the summer, but we finished second in the October prefecture tournament, and a sense of tension has begun to emerge in a good way when we approach tournaments. I have been giving the athletes daily chances to grow by providing individual advice, and none of the athletes were satisfied with the second-place finish, and I felt a change in the athletes themselves. If we only consider their running times, all of the athletes did their best. However, the club is making big strides. Not only the athlete who was overtaken at the finals stages, but even the 1st year student who set a new record for a section took the results seriously, stating that “it was frustrating not to produce results as a team.” There were also athletes who asked if I could put them in the same time trial as the 1st year student who set a new record for a section. We have grown from a team where everyone is friends, to one where a strong mentality of never wanting to lose is starting to develop. A very positive growth cycle has started within the team, and my job from now is to maintain this state. My next goal is to develop the team to break into the top half on the grand stage of the Miyako-Ōji (The All Japan High School Ekiden). Also, I want to coach to enable the younger generations to have a wonderful life through running.