Author: Vernon Gambetta
Coaching
Coaching makes the difference. The coach is at the hub the athletic experience. The coach’s primary mission is to provide a successful experience and create an atmosphere where success is inevitable in both sport and life. A coach will start out as a guiding light or a beacon and evolve into a mirror for the athlete to reflect off. Good coaches foster independence not dependence on the part of their athletes. It is not about you, the coach, it is about the athlete, they are the ones who do the work, they perform. Sport is a vehicle for self-growth for both the coach and athlete. Sport provides the opportunity to learn about self-expression, self-control, and commitment. Strengths and weaknesses will soon be discovered. Sport allows us to increase our self-awareness. It requires conscious thought, sensitivity, willingness, an openness to receive cues, and an attempt at honest detached objectivity. We must be tough and demanding with ourselves as coaches and be compassionate and firm with our athletes. As a coach you is a leader. Coaches lead through their words, actions and presence. A coach is a teacher. Unlike the classroom teacher you get immediate feedback as to your effectiveness. Your work is on display for everyone to see in every game, match, or meet. Who are your role models? Who do you learn from? Do you coach the way you were coached? Coaches choose the level of achievement by setting their level of expectations. In coaching there must be a willingness to do whatever is necessary within ethical bounds to get the job done. Coaches and athletes become excellent by doing ordinary things consistently and with care. A coach learns from EXPERIENCES. Too much is made of experience. It is possible to have one experience many times or to have many and varied experiences. Experience is not what happens to a man, but rather what he does with what happens to him. Seek out new experiences, keep learning and growing. Challenge yourself, the same way you challenge your athletes to get better at what you do every day. Remember, coaching is not something you do, coaching is something you are with every fiber of your being.
Taper, Peaking and Getting Ready
This is championship season in indoor track and short course swimming so I have been thinking about peaking and tapering. Here are some thoughts on peaking, taper and getting ready for the big competition. This is not heavy on science but leans more on my experience and observations of coaching who have done this well over the years. It directed toward track & field and swimming but the ideas apply equally as well to all other sports. “Sometimes in the peaking process is not what you do it what you don’t do.” John Larralde, track coach speaking at GAIN on preparing his milers to win California State High School championships. What you do NOW is an accumulation of what has been done before Don’t aim to maintain – stabilize Females must stay strong – Strength training must be there, it does not take much This is all about racing your race – the times will drop if you race Race simulation is crucial – get them comfortable with their race plan Technique and coordination must be stressed throughout Touch on all components in the CONTEXT of the RACE PLAN If in doubt DOBT don’t do it. One less rep or set is better than one more Leave them wanting more Strength Training – Recycle through areas that make them feel good – connected, coordinated and synced In this phase the science of coaching takes a back seat to art and feel for what you are doing Clearly communicate the message that the preparation has been done. Get them looking forward to Racing and Competing! Easy Fast Focus on distribution of effort More of the same, rather different – Just disguise it All preparration is about being Race Ready & Race Hardened Reinforce what got there – “Dance the last dance with who brought you to the dance”
A Coaching Philosophy
A coaching philosophy is the coaches guiding light. It is the cornerstone upon which everything else is built. Without a sound well thought out and articulated philosophy you will not be effective as a coach. The philosophy consists of certain foundational beliefs that you will never compromise. They are absolute and will never change. These foundational beliefs are the center of a three concentric circles. Each circle out from the core can be changed and in fact when the outer circle is reached it should be changed as part of the growth process. My Philosophy is governed by the following quote from George Bernard Shaw: " Some people see things the way they are and ask why? Others see things the way they should be, and ask Why not?” This is the attitude that I have taken throughout my coaching career. The pursuit of excellence has it's own rewards. As a corollary to this I am the coach of people not sports. Coaching sports and designing training programs is easy, that is the X's and O's. Coaching people is tough; it demands understanding of what makes each athlete tick. It is a challenge to accomplish this without compromising your foundational beliefs. Do you know why you coach? Do you know why your athletes participate? Your management or coaching style is your means of implementing your philosophy.
How good can you get?
How good can you get? How good do you want to be? There is no doubt that deliberate, directed practice will give you a chance to get better. But and is a very big but, you still have to have the goods. A plow horse can't win the Kentucky Derby, but it can become a faster plow horse through proper training. 10,000 hours is not the answer, it can be part of the answer but if it were just putting in the time then anybody could be a champion and that is not the case. The goal, regardless of your genetic endowment is to maximize your potential through practice. It's not the practice it's what you put into the practice accounts. It must be mindful, purposeful and directed. You have to be willing to take risks and learn from your mistakes. It's not just putting in the time. What particularly bothers me is that fanatic parents are now quoting the so-called 10,00 hour rule as justification for starting kids training younger and specializing early. I heard of some parents counting back from the NFL draft in what would be their son’s senior year in college in order to figure out how much “time” to put in to accumulate 10,000 hours. I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble. But there's a lot more to it than that, you have to have a certain amount of talent to be good at a chosen athletic endeavor. You must have basic physical literacy, the movement ABC’s firmly established as a basis for sport skill. The key is what you do in practice to bring out and optimize your talent. Build a strong, deep and rich repertoire of fundamental motor skills and choose your parents carefully. Read Ross Tucker’s excellent post on this http://tinyurl.com/7jypaaq for more on this perspective.
Strength – Operational Definitions
Over the years I have evolved the following operational definitions of strength. Operational because it is how I classify strength training when I design my workouts. Classically the coaching literature divided strength into general strength and special special. I never felt that was a thorough enough breakdown so I added a third division, specific strength. Visualize the strength classifications as a continuum on the force/velocity curve. On the upper left of the force/velocity curve is low speed, high force work and on the lower right is high speed, high force. The goal of strength training is to develop strength you can use and apply in the sport or event. In order to accomplish that, the goal is to shift the force/velocity curve to the right. It has been my experience that the three classifications that I use give me a better command of the type of loading necessary to achieve that shift and help me design more effective workouts. Three classifications are: General Strength – This consists of methods and exercises that are directed toward the development of the force component of power. This encompasses traditional weight training exercises and other resistance methods including body weight exercises that do not seek to imitate any aspect of specific sport skill. Speed of movement is of little or no concern. This is all about force, not speed. Special (Transitional) Strength – The purpose of these methods and exercises is to transition general strength into specific strength. These exercises could be considered similar but not the same as specific sport movements. Olympic style weight lifting, medicine ball work, stretch cord work and plyometric training generally fit into this category. There is still a force component present, but there is a higher speed component. The exercises are more specific. Specific Strength – This consists or methods and exercises that are characterized by movement with resistance that imitates the joint action of the sport skill. Rather than similar it is very much the same. There is a high degree of specificity in terms of mechanics, skill and above all speed of movement. This obviously will have the highest degree of transfer to specific sport skill. There is an obvious overlap. The amount of this overlap varies with the athlete and the sport. It is important to note that these definitions are meant as guidelines not as strict rules. Over the years I have found that defining strength in this manner helped me stay on target in terms of developing strength that could be applied to the event or sport. Play with it and see how it applies to your own situation.
Coaching & Communication
To be an effective coach you must communicate clearly with those who you are coaching. Communication completes the feedback loop that gives you and the athlete a sense of self worth. Sometimes it is not so much the content of the message, but the mode and medium of the presentation that ultimately determines the effectiveness of the message. It was Marshall McLuan who said: " that the medium is the message." Be aware of what medium you using to convey the message you want to convey.
Priority Training
It is so easy when designing a training program to include too much “stuff.” I know over the year I have been guilty of this. I want to make sure that I touch all the bases so I end adding an exercise here, a drill there and pretty soon I have so much “stuff” I can’t see the forest for the trees. This shotgun approach aims to hit a little bit of everything but mixed training yields mixed results. The result is that improvement is marginal and you don’t really know what training stimulus caused the improvement that did occur. The opposite is what I call priority training. Here the training is very targeted; specific objectives are determined based on sport, position or event demands and the needs of the individual athlete. The objectives are always squarely in the target. The focus is on need to do methods that fit with the target. Eliminate the nice do activities, the busy work that makes you tired but does not contribute significantly to getting better. Another way to set the training priorities is to divide the training methods and means into a major emphasis and a minor emphasis. Major emphasis areas are the priority. These will show up two to three times as often as minor emphasis areas. At the end of the process the result should be as complete an athlete as possible, specifically fit, fast and strong for the demands of the competitive arena. Set the priorities in training and stick to them and reap the rewards in competition.
Grabbing the Brass Ring – Are you ready?
This is post number 1,000 since I switched the blog to TypePad, I think it only fitting that this is about grabbing the brass ring, seizing moment, taking advantage of an opportunity. All the hoopla about Jeremy Lin over the past few weeks got me thinking about this. In my forty-three years of coaching and my time as an athlete in high school, in college and post collegiately I have seen many situations where the brass ring was there to grab and the athlete was not ready to grab it. What makes Jeremy Lin so intriguing to me is that he was ready when his moment came and seized the opportunity and has not looked back. Lets not forget this guy did not just show up out of nowhere. He was in the NBA last year, he did play DI basketball, albeit in the Ivy League arguably not a powerhouse conference, but the point is that he had done the work. This is actually the second time he has grabbed the brass ring, the first was when he outplayed number one pick in the NBA in a summer league game to get the attention of the Warriors. We have a pattern here, he is the consummate example of a growth mindset, where others saw failure he saw opportunity. You would have to be insensitive not to feel good about his success and be inspired by it but let’s get beyond the warm fuzzy feeling and talk about being ready to grab the brass ring when the opportunity presents itself. If you have done the preparation then you are in control and you have given yourself a chance. If you want to be ready look at how you are preparing. Are you preparing or just hoping that luck and fate will favor you? It doesn’t work that way, it is not the hand of fate that will touch you rather your it is your fate that is in your hands. I have seen so many athletes and coaches for that matter who speak about “if only” I would have had a chance or the others who had the chance but think they got the shaft. The fact is the bass ring may only pass once. If you are ready you will be a headline like Jeremy Lin, if not you will be a footnote like the numerous other players who got fifteen day tryouts. It is in your hands, be ready, be prepared, and seize the moment.