My most frequent admonition to athletes and coaches is: train, do not strain.

If you want to be a successful runner, you have to consider everything. It's no good just thinking about endurance and not to develop fine speed.

I have a saying 'train, don't strain.' The Americans have the saying 'no pain, no gain' and that's why they have no distance running champions. They get down to the track with a stopwatch and flog their guts out thinking that it'll make them a champion, but they'll never make a champion that way.

No one will burn out doing aerobic running. It is too much anaerobic running, which the American scholastic athletic system tends to put young athletes through, that burns them out.

Encourage kids to enjoy running and play in athletics. Don't force them to run too much competition.

You must realize one thing. In every little village in the world there are great potential champions who only need motivation, development and good exercise evaluation.

Athletes need to enjoy their training. They don't enjoy going down to the track with a coach making them do repetitions until they're exhausted. From enjoyment comes the will to win.