Author: Vernon Gambetta
Reflections on Being a Coach
I have been thinking a lot about coaching recently in preparation for some projects I am working and as part of the process of continual self-improvement. It has made me realize how fortunate I am to be a coach. Here are some of my reflections on what it means to be a coach: Being a coach is special. It is an incredible opportunity to change people’s lives. Being a coach implies responsibility. It is a responsibility to be at your very best and to realize that sometimes that is not good enough. Coaching is a partnership with the athlete, it not something you do to the athlete it is some you do with them. Certainly everyday you coach is an adventure; it is an adventure in exploring possibilities and potential. Treat it as such and enjoy the process. Coaching is exploring and exploiting your strengths and recognizing your weaknesses. Coaching is constantly honing your communication skills because communication is the key to effective coaching. Cultivate your listening skills. Remember you have two eyes, two ears and one mouth for a reason. Technical knowledge is a given to be a good coach. It is important to stay current and constantly experiment and prototype. If you don’t the world will quickly pass you by. Be yourself. Be consistent. Have a plan, execute the plan and then evaluate it. Know what you know and what you don’t know. Surround yourself with people who know what you don’t know. Specialize in being a generalist. If you are specialist have a generalist’s attitude. Network – you can’t do it alone. Get past the score and competition result, everyone can’t win, but everyone can do their best. Coach the way you would like to be coached. Show respect in order to get respect. Be flexible without compromising your core beliefs in terms of behavior standards and beliefs about training. Be humble and honest. You need help from others to be the best, acknowledge others and seek their help. Recognize that natural ability is a gift and not a sign of superior achievement. Learn to sense the intangibles – they are there so be aware. Lead by example – Actions can speak louder than words. Beware of recycling – hit the refresh button occasionally. Practice Kaizen – Everyday get better at some aspect of what you do, seek continuous improvement. Be Patient – Recognize that performance and achievement take time. It is a process with small steps that lead to big gains. If is to be it up to you – the buck stops with you! You are the Capitan of the ship, you chart the course and steer the ship.
Teaching/Learning Skills – Creating Robots or Artists?
Specific sport skills are a combination of patterns of complex motor programs. They are patterns that can be reproduced when we tap into the wisdom of the body. Though experiencing a variety of different patterns of movement we learn to let things happen. We learn to let the motor program run. We cue an action that results in a “chain reaction” of efficient movement. The question quickly arises: Should we try to teach every movement and then coach it? Or should we allow the athlete the joy of discovery through exploration. There seems to be a worry about them getting it wrong! My answer to that is: What is wrong? There must be a spontaneity and anticipation in movement, not a robotic-programmed approach. It has been my experience working with athletes at all levels in a wide variety of sports that athletes will find their own best way of doing something if they are put in a position where they have to adapt. They are very adaptable. Every athlete has a movement signature which is unique to their body type, mindset etc. We need to encourage an extemporaneous approach much like a great jazz musician improvises. At the younger ages we need to emphasize a free play approach that results in fluidity and improvisation in movement skills as a basis for specific sport skills.
The La Cumbre Effect
For four years starting in 1969 I taught at La Cumbre Junior High School in Santa Barbara California. My first year I taught history and geography and coached track and cross-country, the next year I started teaching physical education. I taught five classes of physical education and coached cross-country and track at La Cumbre and I also coached the throws at a high school three days a week. Needless to say time was at a premium. During this time I was also training for the decathlon. My aspirations certainly were not to be an Olympian, I was interested in getting better and learning all the events by doing them. I had not competed in track in college; I had played football as an offensive lineman. I had never done high jump, hurdles, discus, pole vault and javelin so I had to find a way to make up for what I had not done in college. I obviously did not have big blocks of time to train so I had to devise a system that would allow me to work on the events and my specific fitness and make it work with my schedule. I was inspired by Roger Bannister the first man to run under four minutes in the mile. He was in medical school and had one hour a day to train, I figured if he could do it, I could it. I had boundless energy, enthusiasm and youth on my side. As I look back on those years I realize I was onto something. Necessity forced me to devise a system where I optimized the time that I had. I made my training sessions short, sharp and concentrated with very specific objectives that allowed me to make significant technical and specific fitness improvements. I improved my total score from 5100 points to 5884, really nothing to write home about except for the fact that I started decathlon at age 22. I also cannot minimize the positive residual effect of being on my feet teaching physical education all day. In the first three months of teaching physical education I dropped off some of my football weight and got down to a reasonable weight for the decathlon, I went from 194 pounds to 181 pounds. Looking back on what I did through the prism of time I realize I probably should have cycled the work to include a bit more recovery, but hindsight is always twenty/twenty. Here is my typical routine: Monday & Thursday before school I would go to the gym and do two rope climbs, two rounds of pegboard, a routine on parallel bars and a routine on the pommel horse. I would teach my first period gym class and then run 600 meters at a brisk tempo and then do 6 x 100 meter hill sprints during my period off from teaching. If I had time I would sneak in a ten minute nap after that. The other mornings before school I would do a ten to fifteen minutes static flexibility routine or in the fall two mornings I would do a 20 to 30 run at 6:15 AM. Each day between classes there was a 15 minutes period where I worked on something related to an event. Between one period I would do a shot put drill, next period a discus drill, next period throw weight balls for javelin and next period something on pull-up bars working on pole vault. In the afternoon when I was done coaching I would go to UCSB, usually around 4:30 PM and work on one event and then do a running workout. Two or three times a week depending on the time of the year I would then do a weight workout. Over the years since then in my coaching I have utilized the La Cumbre training concept quite effectively. My schedule was a bit extreme since I was trying to make up for lost time having not competed in Track in college, but in extended competition season sports the La Cumbre effect has proven to be very beneficial not only to maintain key athletic qualities but also to build them in season. The moral of the story – short, sharp concentrated modules of training can be very effective if timed properly because training accumulates.
The Foundation – Fundamental Movement Skills (Part Two)
Most of movement awareness activities can be addressed daily as part of structured warm-up. Structured in the sense that the thought and planning should be put into the sequence and timing of the activities, not the step-by-step orchestration or choreographing of the movement. The later would defeat the purpose. The goal is to create an environment where the athlete can cultivate as rich a repertoire of motor skills to draw upon as a foundation for specific sport skill. ”Rigorously defining proper form and the use of mechanical stabilization and anti cheating aids excessively constrain athletes exploration and problem solving movements, and bear little resemblance to what occurs in athletic performance.” (Ives and Shelley p182) Body Awareness – this consists of an awareness of the whole body and the relationship to its parts. A key to body awareness is awareness of center. The relationship of hips to feet (base of support) and hips to shoulders as well as eye to hand and eye to foot coordination. Crucial to all movement and an integral part of body awareness is opposition. In gait it is the arms swinging in opposition to the legs. It is not something we should have to think about, but it is something we can train and take advantage of. Spatial Awareness – this is awareness of the position(s) our body occupies in space. It is a sense of where you are in your environment. On the court or on the field it is sensing where you are in relation to the other people around you, even though they may not be in your direct sight. It is also a sense of where you are in tumbling, falling, and acrobatic skills that allows you to control your body. Rhythmic Awareness – our fundamental rhythm is the heart beat, all our bodily rhythms are derived from that. Sport movements are rhythmic in nature. This is highly related to music and dance. Movement is just a series of synchronous and asynchronous rhythms linked together. Directional Awareness – this has two components: laterality and directionality. Laterality is awareness of both sides of the body. Directionality is a sense of where we are going, forward, back, right, left, up and down. Effectively being able to move in all directions is a prerequisite for effective skill development. Vestibular Awareness – this is the information based on feedback from the vestibular apparatus located in the inner ear that provides information about the body’s relationship to gravity. It is closely related to balance and body awareness. The vestibular sense provides two key inputs: the position of the head in relation to the ground and the direction of movement in space. Todd summarizes the physiology quite well: “However the result is accomplished, the fact is well established that the otoliths and semicircular canals are the seat of impressions of position and direction of motion in space; and they are combined in the brain with the kinesthetic sensations of movement, weight pressure, and relative position, coming from other parts of the body, to give us our minute-to-minute information as to the movements of our limbs, neck and trunk, where we are at any given moment, and how we can get somewhere else.” (Todd, page 28) Visual Awareness – vision is a dominant factor in motor skill. Some experts have estimated that as high as 80% of all information we perceive is derived from visual feedback. Vision is closely tied to spatial awareness. It is the sense that modulates or regulates the other senses. This is a quality that is very trainable. It is also a quality that if taken away by simply closing the eyes can be used to heighten awareness. Temporal Awareness – this is a sense of timing. This awareness is crucial for performance where there are time constraints or a sense of pace is required. Auditory Awareness – this is the ability to discriminate, interpret, and associate auditory stimuli. For smooth efficient movement auditory awareness must be highly developed. Hearing allows us to get feedback as to the rhythm of movements. Something as simple as the sound of a foot strike in running is tremendous feedback to both the coach and the athlete. Tactile Awareness – This is a sense of feel and touch. There is a tendency to think of this as only the hands, but feel and touch with the feet is also very important. The whole body is a giant sense organ, so try to get away from thinking of tactile awareness as the exclusive domain of the hands. Ultimately, what links this into a complete functional program is proprioception. Proprioception is awareness of joint position derived from feedback in the sense receptors in the joints, ligaments, tendons, and muscles. It is a highly trainable quality. It is almost too simple. We must strive to constantly change proprioceptive demand throughout the training program. In fact this variable should be manipulated more frequently than change in exercise mode or change of exercise because it adapts so rapidly. References Ives, Jeffrey C. and Shelley, Greg A. “Psychophysics in Functional Strength and Training: Review and Implementation Framework.” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Vol. 17 #1 pp 177 -186 Todd, Mabel E. The Thinking Body. Princeton Book Company Publishers. Highston, NJ. 1937
The Foundation – Fundamental Movement Skills (Part One)
Effective athletic development is based upon the principle of the development of fundamental movement skill before specific sport skill. In generations past this was something that everyone took for granted because the demands of everyday living took care of fundamental movement. People at all ages were much more active. Children grew up active, free play was a major part of daily activity. It was natural to crawl, jump, hop, run, reach, lift, throw, etc; it was all done in a spontaneous playful environment. Even in the adult world there were less “conveniences” than today. People walked instead of rode. Physical labor was part of society. People generally participated rather than watched. As short a time as thirty years ago there was mandatory physical education from kindergarten through twelfth grade in every state in the nation. The athletic realm does not exist independent of the rest of society; athletes are a product of the society they grow up in. There is no longer mandatory physical education to provide a foundation of movement skills. There is less free play and more organized sport activity. The net effect of all of this is a significant decline in fundamental movement skills. A sound athletic development program is founded on the basic locomotor skills developed to their highest level. These fundamental skills must be incorporated on a daily basis into the athlete’s training program regardless of the level of development. Obviously as the athletes progresses in training age and skill development fundamental skills should assume proportionally less of the training time. It is ironic that in my work with high level professional athletes that I have to spend a good portion of their training on fundamental movements because they never acquired these skills as part of their foundation. Instead they specialized early and refined their specific sport skills. Fundamental movement skills fall into three broad categories: locomotor skills, stability skills and manipulative skills. Locomotor skills are as the name implies. They are the skills that get us from place to place. It encompasses the spectrum of the gait cycle from walking, to running, to sprinting. It also includes swimming in order to move in the aquatic medium. Since we are terrestrial beings the emphasis in our athletic development program is on variations of gait. In its most rudimentary forms it includes crawling. Stability skills are those movements executed with minimal or no movement of the base of support. Balance is a key element. It is an important foundation of many sports skills especially those encompassing finer motor patterns. The third broad category of fundamental movement skills consists of manipulative skills. This is simply control of objects with the hands or the feet. The application to sport skill is obvious. In our society the emphasis in manipulative skill is on work with the hands to the exclusion of the feet. This is a deficiency that must be addressed in a sports development program. Throwing and striking skills fall into this category. Better awareness and use of the lower extremities will pay rich dividends. In order to effectively transfer (translate) the broad movement categories into refined movement patterns we need movement awareness. Movement awareness consists of those abilities necessary to conceptualize and formulate an effective response to sensory information necessary to perform a desired task or motor skill. This is FUNdamental work. It should be fun and mental in that it requires concentration. In order to train the components of movement awareness it is best to create an environment where the athlete is given a task orientation. This means that the athlete is given movement problems to solve that will enable them to discover movement skills in a “play like” environment. “… one goal of functional training is to practice movements in order to make them automatic. Second, even though accomplished athletes may have little idea of what they focus on during skill execution, at some conscious or subconscious level they are focusing on relevant cues. For this reason, Singer et al advocated that skilled motor performance can be best achieved if learners adopt a nonawareness type strategy. Nonawareness refers to a lack of attention placed on the activity while it is in progress, but learners are instructed to preplan the movement and focus on a specific situational cue. “(Ives and Shelley p180) Nonawareness means having the athlete focus on solving a particular movement task rather than focusing on how they should move “correctly.” Movement is natural; by making it conscious there is a high risk of making it robotic.
This I Believe – An Athletic Development Manifesto
I not writing this to tell you how to train your athletes but I am asking you question what you do, why you do it, how you do it and when you do it. Think and question, seek answers. On whose authority do I speak? Frankly I speak on the authority of wisdom based on experience and common sense. I have a passionate belief in defining the field of athletic development and of the importance of coaching and the role of the coach in the whole process. I am a coach. As a coach I have tried many methods, explored many disciplines and fully explored the science of training. I choose not to be constrained by conventional wisdom; rather I choose to use conventional wisdom as a starting point. I specialize in being a generalist. Being a generalist allows me to focus on the big picture, the connections and relationships that define athleticism. The arena of athletic competition on the track, the fields, courts and pools of the world are laboratories to test these concepts. There is no hiding in this arena; it is a results driven world where flawed concepts, training mistakes and inadequate preparation are quickly exposed. The basic concepts of athletic development are quite simple; you don’t have to make it complicated. That is why being a generalist is so important; it allows you to make relationships and connections that the specialist because of their narrower vision will not see. Over reliance on tools and technology will not get the job done. You need a coach with experience to ask the hard questions and interpret the data. Without that, high tech tools are no more than random number generators that confuse rather guide us. Much of what I stand for is not new it has worked in the past in a myriad of environments but has been rejected by some as old fashioned, not high tech and scientific enough. Certainly in every field of endeavor everything old is new again, but because of our society’s rejection of the past we have not studied the coaches who paved the way for us. It is trite to say that we stand on the shoulder of giants but without coaches like Bill Bowerman, John Wooden, Doc Councilman, Geoff Dyson, Franz Stampfl, and Percy Cerruty where would we be today in terms athletic performance. They were innovators who were not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom. I have been very fortunate to learn from many people. Most importantly I have learned from the athletes that I have coached. Who better to learn from? They were the ones who did the training; they were the ones, who competed, they lived it. My concepts of training are based on study of past training methods, sports science research, proven practice, and practical experience working with all levels of athlete across a spectrum of sports from the speed/power end of the continuum on up to the marathon. Like the athlete the coach also learns through deliberate practice, through repetition and trial and error. You learn in the trenches, not from textbooks or in a laboratory. You learn form your mistakes and your successes. Modern society and conventional wisdom in training has dulled our instincts. The key is to unlock these instincts and allow the body to solve movement problems the way the body was designed to function. It is essentially what children do in free play when unrestrained by adult supervision and burdened by having to do the movements correctly. Today even at the highest levels of sport coaches are creating robots. Movement is not paint by numbers, it is an expressionist drawing, it is not a classical music aria, and it is jazz riff. We need to get away from reductionist thinking, stop breaking movement and exercise into its smallest parts in hopes of producing a moving flowing working whole, it won’t happen. It will only happen if there is a quantum approach, an approach that focuses on the big picture and connections. This is where sport science has failed us. In the rush to publish and the desire to show statistical significance we have become so reductionist in our thinking that we fail to see the forest for the trees. Focusing on Max VO2 or trying to isolate the internal oblique and transverse abdominis, while very neat and clean in the lab just do not transfer to the performance environment. We must understand scientific concepts but they cannot restrain us. Coaches and athletes lead innovation in training and technique, not scientists. Science needs to measure an isolated component in order to conduct “valid” scientific experiments. I understand that those are the rules of the game for the scientist, but outside the lab in the real world of performance the rules are different. On the field, track, bike, or in the pool we do not have the luxury to isolate variables. Does that mean we should reject science and rely solely on practice and experience, absolutely not. As coaches we need to travel in both worlds. As a coach, statistical significance does not mean anything to me; I am interested in coaching significance and how it applies to making a particular exercise or training method more effective. Great coaches know the art and science. They know what canvas to paint on, what brushes to select, the brush strokes to use and how to blend the colors to achieve the desired result. In performance the essence is linkage and connections with all the pieces working in harmony. Training should reflect this and focus on muscle synergies and connections. I am alarmed at the biased one-sided training regimens that I see being imposed on athletes today. If you are doing too much of one thing then you are probably not doing much of something else, it is a zero sum relationship. The result is a highly adapted athlete who is fully adapted to that one component being trained. To thrive in the performance arena demands the polar opposite, a versatile highly adaptable athlete whose training is not biased, but reflects the demands of the sport and the needs of the individual athlete. These are not uncharted waters we are not going where no one else has gone before, the path is clear and the destination is obvious. That begs the question then, why with all we know and the supposed progress we have made are results so inconsistent? Why are preventable injuries at levels never seen before in sport? We need to take a different approach. Look back at what worked in the past. Look at those people who are producing consistent reproducible results today. We need direction, definition and leadership, not marketing and hype. We need to recognize and acknowledge the problems and address them with practical concrete solutions. To achieve this we need to shift the focus back on people, not facilities, equipment and training methods. Coaching is a people profession, people working with people to raise performance levels. We must do everything possible to raise the standard of coaching. I hope this stimulates you to help me to define the field of athletic development. We can change and we must change or we will go the way of the dinosaur. I implore you to take another look at what you are doing and go out and work to build highly adaptable athletes that can thrive in the competitive arena. I wrote two or three years ago. I came accross it yesterday when I was working on a project. I think the thoughts expressed are more relevant today than when I wrote it then.
Training Sense and Nonsense
Each training session is a means to an end not an end unto itself. The goal of training is build and grow the athletes capabilities not to bury the athlete in every workout. There are a plethora of commercial programs (well hyped and marketed) built on a “boot camp” mentality that would lead you to believe that training was about putting you over the edge in every session. Training is not about puking, extreme soreness, or ending up in the hospital on a kidney dialysis machine as a badge of honor. It is not a series of random illogical exercises designed to get you tired. This is the nonsense of training, it borders on abuse. A general prescription for exercise where one size fits is a formula for failure and injury. Before you get trapped into this nonsense take a step back and logically review your goals and aspirations. Remind yourself what training is and is not. Use training as a means to an end. Training accumulates, it is more than a series of series of exercises it is a systematic approach to blending all elements of performance in a logical system designed to get the athlete to competition fit, fast, strong, explosive and technically proficient ready to thrive in the competitive enviorment.
Possibilities
Think about and focus on possibilities – what you can do, not what you can’t do. Use obstacles as opportunities. Take changes, risk, get out of your comfort zone, fail forward. Without risk there is no reward. If you do what you have always done, you will get what you always got. Refuse to take no for an answer – test the limits, if you stumble get up and try again. What did not work last year may well be this year’s solution. Do the possible and soon the impossible will follow.