Author: Vernon Gambetta
Thoughts on Testing
When you are testing it is important to consider all of the following: Know what you are looking for, there are periods of training where you should see marked improvement and other times when you should see stabilization or even slight regression on certain tests. Remember the tests should reflect the training. Know what you are going to do when you find it. If you see regression then what adjustments will you make, conversely if you see unexpected improvement what will you do? Regular monitoring is necessary to determine strength and weaknesses and progress of training. The goal in training is minimize weaknesses and to maximize training, testing can be a valuable guide to this process. Testing helps to individualize training. There is much individual variability in adaptive responses to various training stimuli. Two individuals could have the opposite response to the same training session or training cycle. Testing can identify how each individual will respond and allow training adjustments to be made accordingly. Testing will give constant feedback to the athletes and coaches as to the effects of training. Do not wait until competition to ascertain training response, use testing to be proactive. Testing must dovetail into training. It is an integral part of the whole training spectrum. Do not use testing to: Select a team; team selection should be based on results in the competitive arena of the actual sport. Tests can verify what you see or do not see in the competitive arena, but they should not be the sole criteria for team selection. Predict performance. However it can give a statutes report as to progress toward a goal. Actual competition in the game, match or meet performance is dependent on so much more than the physical capacities identified through testing.
Mental Toughness, Boot Camps, Navy Seal Training and Other Nonsense
I have said many times in this blog that mental toughness is in many ways is a myth. In my experience as a coach and athlete the athletes who produce in the competition are the ones who are there everyday physically and mentally in training doing what they are supposed to do with concentration, intensity and effort. They are focused and make each drill and each rep count. So called boot camp workouts made up of mindless repetitions of drills designed to make the athlete tired do exactly that, they make the athlete tired. But training without a purpose will not make an athlete better or mentally tough. What you find that the athletes do in those workouts is that they tune out; they do what they have to do to get through the workout. That is not what you want them to do in competition, you want them to do more than get through it, you want them to excel. As far as Navy Seal training I have the utmost respect for the Navy Seals and their mission, but their mission is to fight and kill if necessary. Sport is not a life or death proposition. What they do has little or no transfer to athletic competition so to imitate or adopt their training is fallacious. I understand that training at times must be hard and sometimes harder than what the athlete will face in competition, but everything has a place and a purpose in a well-designed training program. I want training to be a mindful experience that grows adaptable athletes who are ready to thrive in the competitive arena. Getting tired is easy training is difficult.
Testing – A Perspective
It is important to remember that testing is the highest form of training stress outside of the actual Competition. Testing is important to determine the individual athlete’s athletic qualities relative to the demands of their position/event and the sport. I am not interested in comparing an athlete against some arbitrary norms, but I am interested in intra individual comparison, comparing them against themselves. We must be careful not to draw too many conclusions from a one off series of tests. Only after several tests are conducted periodically throughout the training year can an in depth profile of each athlete be determined. In most instances the test will indicate deficiencies that were already identified through observation of training and game performance. They will serve to further highlight those deficiencies and provide direction to address those deficiencies in training. The tests give specific numbers to compare for improvement and motivation, but remember the ultimate test is the competition itself.
To Do or Not To Do
Yesterday as I was working on some new training programs and evaluating the past training cycle when I came across a “new” exercise that I thought might solve a specific problem one of my athletes was having. The dilemma in this case always is, will the new exercise do a better job than what was being done before. It started me thinking that maybe I should keep the old exercise and change the emphasis; make an adjustment to address the particular issue. At the sake of making this more complicated than it is I thought I would share my thought process. It is important to consider the athlete's psyche. The athlete does not adapt well to changes so that weighed heavily in my decision-making. When I looked more carefully at the new exercise I did not think it was significantly better than the old exercise. In some ways the new exercise was a bit of a wildcard coming out of left field, my past experience with this type of situation was not positive. I had to ask myself was I changing for the sake of change or would this make a significant positive difference. The final decision was to stick with the old exercise and modify it over the next few microcyles. In summary when you you are thinking about making changes in exercise selection or training programs ask yourself the following: Is change really needed or is it just something nice to do? If you make the change and add something then what are you going to take out? Will the change make a significant difference?
Growing the Athlete
Growing the athlete is an organic not a mechanistic process. For years I have used the metaphor of building the athlete but over the past few years I have become increasingly uncomfortable with that metaphor. Certainly building is part of the process, but I find that building evokes a mechanistic image of constructing, of replacing parts as opposed to the cultivation of synergistic relationships between training means and methods and the systems of the body. Certainly the whole is much more that the sum of the parts as the athlete is nurtured and develops throughout their career. It takes time and timing of the appropriate stimuli for the level of the athlete’s stage of development. My father was a gardener and I remember the first time he took to work with him, I was probably ten or eleven years old. As any youngster I was impatient and full of questions. I wanted to know why this patch of garden had no plants. Why we had to water this area and fertilize another section. Why we had to trim these plants and let others grow. I wanted to know why he didn’t plant all the seeds at the same time. He explained it to me but I must admit that I did not fully understand it until years later after I had started coaching. The carrots had to planted at a certain time. The winter and summer squash were different. Some vegetables thrived in the cold of winter and others need the heat of summer. The same is true with the nurturing of the athlete. You must carefully cultivate the soil by developing physical competencies. Then you plant appropriate levels of training of the various physical capacities. You allow those capacities to grow and develop and then you carefully harvest them in competition. Nowhere is anything forced, it is a long-term time consuming process that requires constant attention from the gardener/coach.
Middle Distance & Distance Running & Speed
Speed First! Yes you must work on speed first and foremost. It must be part of every training cycle. I find it quite amusing when I hear a runner say that I have been working on base work, but I have not started speed work yet. The problem with that approach is that they are not training to run fast, they are training to run far, and they hope that the fast will come. The inevitable result is undue soreness and greater risk of injury because of the abrupt change in the training program when they do start to run fast. The key is to never get too far away from running fast. It should be part of the first training cycle of the year and be a part of each subsequent training cycle. Speed development work can be as simple as sprint drills, light acceleration drills, or simply finishing each run with 8 –10 x 100 meter fast strides. It may be a coaching cliché, but the winner of the race is the person who slows down the least. Therefore I think it helpful to think of running at a percentage of the individual maximum velocity. The goal in training is to continually strive to run longer at a higher percentage of peak velocity. Rather than focusing on pace, it is better to focus on distribution of effort. Races at any level are seldom run at the physiological ideal of even pace. The goal should be to distribute the effort as efficiently as possible over the entire race distance.
Food for Thought From Martin Bingisser
Martin Bingisser is a Swiss hammer thrower and coach. His blog http://www.mbingisser.com/ is on my must read list. I think Martin is one of the bright young minds in track & field. I find his ideas informative, stimulating and challenging. Here he is talking about his coach Anatoly Bondarchuk, a true coaching legend – “Dr. Bondarchuk’s coaching method: our focus is always on the speed of the hammer and not the speed of our body. It is easy to read the data, but much more difficult to put it into practice. Data only measures the effects of a throw, not the causes. Finding the cause is a long process that often involves counter-intuitive changes like slowing down to maintain radius and throw farther (as was seen in the Pars example). This transfer from theory to practice requires a coach, not just a biomechanist. Coaches can learn from experience what the cause might be. (Emphasis mine – VG) Many biomechanists lack this experience or background. Therefore it is often the best to take their data findings and use them as goals rather than relying on them for all technical matters as more and more biomechanists are advocating.”
Random Thoughts, Ideas and Observations
Coaching is teaching, the key to good teaching is communication and the key to communication is not more talking, it is more listening. Good coaches listen more and talk less. Then they act (not react) on what they hear. Nothing ever happens in a vacuum. Everything is related. This is certainly true of the body as a kinetic chain and with the interdependence of the various systems of the body and also true of sports and movement skill. Trying to select the “best” exercise for a particular activity is like putting the cart before the horse. Start with clear understanding of sport demands, then understand the position or event, know the pattern of injuries, then and only then select appropriate exercises that are contextual. Focus on how to do it, the process. Then do it. Evaluate and do it again better. Lean how to ask good incisive questions. The quality of the answer is completely dependent on the question. Don’t just compete separate yourself from the competition. Start in training and it will carry over to competition. Do something everyday that no one else is doing and do it better. Anyone can put in 10,000 hours. It is not the hours it is what you put into the hours. Focused directed deliberate practice with expert guidance is the key. Keshorn Walcott won the gold medal in the javelin at age 19 (First junior to do so) he started throwing the javelin at age 14! Just one of many examples. Lets get rid of the term Core Strength and Stability and replace it with Postural Strength. No clear definition of core anyway. Reading "The Myth of Core Stability" by Eyal Lederman got me thinking about this. Kids don’t need to train, they need to play, free play unsupervised by adults will bring joy and spontaneity to movement. There is plenty of time to direct and guide the play, let them be kids. Provide an environment where they can play. Finally if you get a chance read Patrick McHugh’s Sunday Inspiration Blog blog from yesterday. Outstanding article by John Gardner. It is a great way to kick off a week. http://tinyurl.com/bjteg4a