Author: Vernon Gambetta
The Triple Jump Encyclopedia
This is truly an encyclopedia of knowledge about one of the most physically and technically demanding events in track & field. The spectrum of requirements including speed, rhythm, explosive power, maximum strength and finely tuned technique are presented here along with much more. I have had this book since it was first published in 1977. My original is worn and dog-eared from constant use. For me it was a resource beyond the triple jump. It was really a handbook of all I needed for power, speed, and technical development for all the events in track & field. The authors Larry Knuth, a fellow Fresno State Bulldog and Ernie Bullard, formerly head coach at San Jose Sate (Where he succeeded the great Bud Winter) and USC are both great coaches who share the thoroughness of their overall approach and practical orientation in this book. Everything is covered, nothing is left out: history & background of the event, how to coach in general and the triple specifically, obviously a thorough mechanical analysis of the event, how to start a beginner, technical fouls and their correction, how to improve strength, speed, skill and flexibility, the various schools of triple jumping. There is some really neat material from training expert John Jesse and a good review of Bud Winters sprint drills. There is also an amazing center foldout sequence of Victor Saneyev – poetry in motion. A bonus available now with the book, certainly not available in 1977, is a CDROM with the some of the greatest triple jumpers of all time. In August I had lunch with Larry Knuth when I was in California. He told me there was 150 copies left of the last printing still available. I feel this book is as valuable and some areas more available than when it was first published. It is a window into another era, an era that offers us as much knowledge today and a valuable historical context. To purchase the book go to: www.gocollegetrack.com It is $25.00 not including postage and handling. It also comes with a 17 min. DVD of TJ greats including Edwards, Butts, Wellman, Oliveria, Perez, Saneyev, etc. For you track coaches, Larry Knuth just completed, in spring 2010 a monumental work called California Community College Track & Filed Hall of Champions. Available at www.gocollegetrack.com It is a history of California junior college track & field. He honors the state champions, notable performers and Olympians who competed for California junior colleges. It also honors the great coaches who coached there. Reading it brought back a flood of memories. If you love track and field you will love this book. Thanks Larry for all the work you put into this and your contributions to the sport of track & field.
Game Changer – Woldemar Gerschler
I define a game changer as a person or event that has caused us to change the way we train, exercise, prepare and play the games and sports we play. Some game changers are radical ideas or big breakthroughs in performance others are gradual and almost transparent. This is the first in a regular series on game changers. My motivation is to provide a historical context for many of the training methods and ideas that we use today. To understand the present we need to understand the past, those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. Lets stand on the shoulders of these giant game changers, honor them, learn form their successes and failures and build a better future. Eventually I plan on turning this into a book, using the blog as the basis for my research. I already have a long and interesting list of game changers that I am excited to share with you. Some of them you have never heard of or thought of, others are very obvious. I decided to start with Woldemar Gerschler, a German physical educator and track & field coach at the Freiburg Institute for Physical Education, where he was director. He is considered the father of interval training. He certainly was the first to organize training into a systematic organization of all the components we use today. He used extensive physical and psychological tests to help guide and advise his runners. He and his colleagues Herbert Reindell, a medical doctor and physiologist and Helmutt Roskamm authored a definitive work, Das Intervall-training, published by Barth publishers, Munich, in 1962. The athlete who brought focus on his breakthrough thinking was the German 800 meter runner Rudolph Harbig. Harbig set the world record in the 800 meters at 1:46.6 shattering the previous record of 1:48.6, his record then stood for 19 years. He also had a 400-meter best of 46.0. After WW II Gerschler also advised Josef Barthel, 1952 Olympic 1500 meter champion, Roger Moens world record holder in 800 meters and Gordon Pirie who broke the 5,ooo meters world record. Given what we know today and the fact that interval training is commonly accepted, it is amazing that his ideas were quite controversial at the time. Much of what we take for granted today was unexplored territory them. They just did not have the body of research in human physiology that we now have available. His system was focused on cardiac physiology and the adaptations that could be made in training the heart. The system was based on three principles: 1) Exercise increases heart rate and rest slows it down. 2) Repeated physical exercise will slow heart rate while pumping the same volume of blood. 3) The volume of blood for each individual is constant. Based on his work with Dr Herbert Reindel they arrived the Gerschler-Reindel Law. They found from their experiments that the heart rate did not surpass 180 BPM – that represented the limit. From this point they allowed 90 seconds to return to 120 -125 BPM and then the next interval could commence. If it took longer it was because the effort was too hard or too long. Gerschler felt is was the recovery that strengthened the heart. He felt that there was a strong stimulus of the stroke volume immediately after the beginning of the recovery phase, so the recovery became a big focus hence the name interval training. The recovery was a walk in the beginning stages and then a jog as the runner gained fitness. The early ideas on interval training were very rigid, strictly guided by the Gerschler-Reindel Law, but as more coaches began to experiment and go outside the strict guidelines the value of interval training grew. In my opinion it was the swim coaches who began to push the limits with interval training and showed us all it’s true potential to expand the performance envelope. Forbes Carlisle in Australia and Doc Councilman in the US lead the way in this regard. We now have a plethora of research to verify and validate the value of interval training. Today when we use interval training and its various permutations we owe a debt of gratitude to Gerschler and his colleagues for paving the way.
Simplicity – The Basis of Sound Training
Start basic, use sound, proven scientific training principles coupled with best practice – then you can add complexity as needed and necessary to achieve the desired training objectives. Remember simplicity yields complexity; you don’t have to try to make it complex. This has been a fundamental training guideline for me ever since I can remember. I know that when I needlessly added complexity that is when training did not work. It seemed the objective was lost in the shuffle. For example I can't be to concerned it it is myofibrilar or sacroplasmic hypertrophy, that is a level of complexity that will take care of itself if I focus on the need to do activities guided by my training objectives. The Ultimate Goal is to design and implement an effective, practical training program that produces measureable and visible results in the required time frame. The essential elements of simplicity in a training program are:5S’s + R, that is Speed, Strength Stamina, Suppleness, Skill plus Recovery. All these elements must be trained at all times with different emphasis depending on the athlete’s level of development, training age and the phase of the training year with recovery planned to insure adaptation. Then be sure to account for the 3M’s, what you do must be Manageable, Measureable and Motivational. Last but not least follow the 3P’s, Practical, Personal and Proactive. You can take these simple concepts and ideas and get as complex as you need to be to help your athletes solve every movement problem as they encounter. It was Leonard Da Vinci who said: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Collegiate Sports – A Ship Without a Rudder
I can’t stomach the stuff that is going in collegiate sport. The tail is wagging the dog. We have anointed the players and are not holding them accountable for their behavior. Forty Florida players have been arrested during Urban Myers tenure at Florida and they preach family and values. You could go down the list, it not just Florida, but since I live in the middle of gator nation I see more of them. Reggie Bush returning the Heisman trophy and making sure to tell us it was not an admission of guilt. In his eyes he did nothing wrong, hell he did what USC football players have been for as long they have had football at USC, got paid by the boosters. Tennessee and Florida could have a great game this weekend outside the stadium with the players both programs have had arrested over the past few years.I am sure they could find an ESPN channel to broadcast it. Why don’t we just recognize it for what it is, a roman circus These guys and & now in some cases women are not student athlete’s, they are mercenaries, hired guns, entertainers paid to put 100,00 plus people in the stadium on Saturday afternoon. Why don’t we stop the charade and have the NFL, NBA and the other pro leagues subsidize these as farm teams. They could wear the school colors and play in the stadiums. They would not have to class, not like many of them do anyway. It would save the schools money and they could still license the merchandise, get the gate receipts. They could have their cake and eat it too. Maybe they could get the fat cat alumni to pony up for better pay for professors, more academic scholarship, thing that would make a make positive contribution to society and that are congruent with the mission of education. I want to end on a positive note, my good friend, colleague, and mentor Dr. Joe Vigil is being honored for his achievements as a teacher and coach at Adams Sate College in Alamosa Colorado on November 12. At that time there will be an unveiling of a life size statue of “Coach.” I am honored to I have been chosen to be one a group of people who have worked, were taught by or were coached by Coach Vigil to do a small video tribute. Coach Vigil stands for everything collegiate athletes should be. He is the consummate coach and teacher. There is hope for collegiate sports because of people like Dr Vigil and the people he has taught, coached and inspired. We need more Joe Vigil's in leadership positions. Joe thanks for the wisdom and information you have shared with me over the years.
Getting Better or Getting Tired
I see so much ”stuff” out there now that just makes the athlete tired. Just making a workout hard on an exercise an ass kicker does not make it a productive workout or a beneficial exercise. Each exercise should be carefully chosen to fit into the overall program. Each training session needs to be strategically placed in the context of the previous workout and subsequent workouts, in other words as part of an overall plan of development to meet the athletes’ needs. Focus on the need to do activities that relate to sport, the positional/event demands and above all meet the needs of the individual athlete. If you are logging onto the Internet each day and downloading the workout of the day, you are not meeting the above criteria. It is just work, just training, in all probability it is hard, just like yesterday and the day before and the day before that, all hard. Step back and take a close look at what you are doing. In all probability you are probably just finding different ways to make your athletes tired, but are you really making them better? Instead use good training principles, use your creativity and make the training challenging and appropriate for the sport you are preparing for. Make sure you have a rhythm of a hard workout followed by easier workout to insure adaptation, do not look for quick fixes or rapid results, good training takes time.
Now What?
You have max heart rate, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability. You have total distance moved in a practice. You have blood lactate during and post workout. So you have pages of spreadsheets filled with numbers, now what do you do with this data? How can you translate all these random numbers into useable information? This is the million-dollar question. It is not a matter of what you can monitor, it is what you can use and interpret. There is an explosion of technologies available today that enable us to monitor virtually any parameter we want to, but before we go further down this path we need to take a step back and ask why? On one level it is very straightforward 1) We need to get accurate feedback to guide and shape the training process and 2) We need to understand individual response and adaptation to various types, volumes and intensities of training. On the next level we need to determine the absolute need to know information that will help us accomplish those two objectives. Monitoring more parameters is not the answer, just because it measureable does not mean it is meaningful. You need to ask yourself is the data helping to make your athletes better? Can you translate the numbers into actions that will significantly impact the athletes training? If you find yourself inundated with random numbers without context then you need to step back and ask yourself why? I love data, it is interesting and challenging to find meaning in data you gather. But and there is a big but here – have you lost sight of the forest for the trees. You can get caught up in generating random numbers that you take your eye off the ball. You need to watch the athlete as a person, as an individual, how they handle the stress of training and competition. Closely observe body language. Ask them how they feel. Educate them to read their bodies and how they react to training stress. Put the focus squarely back on Hu, the human element, not the technologies and the subsequent numbers. Don't be a mad scientist, be a coach. Use technology to measure what is meaningful and appropriate. Less is more. Focus on the need to know and stop there. Look closely at the tools available to help you do this. How much time do you have? How much help do you have? Then carefully choose how and what you are going to monitor. Then have a plan to turn that data into information that you can use to modify or change your training. Remember just because it is measurable does not mean it is meaningful.
What is the functional Path?
The other day someone asked me what the functional path was? Good question and certainly a legitimate question. The functional path is a metaphorical journey in pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and understanding of the fundamental truths of training an athlete for optimum performance. The journey began in the early 1960’s, actually well before I even started coaching, as soon as I started training as an athlete around the age of 16. I started looking for the best way to train, I did not have much guidance aside from some coaching in the actual sport techniques and tactics, but there just was no help on speed development, strength training, flexibility etc; So to improve athleticism I had to go on my own. I was determined to find out everything I could to improve myself. The more I learned the more determined I became. When I started coaching in 1969 I had moved onto the functional path. Honestly, then it seemed pretty clear to me I had all the answers I thought I needed. It was going to be direct and straightforward, wide and fast like a superhighway. I had done more reading and research, some of my classes in college helped and I had been experimenting on myself for a few years and I had improved my speed, strength and flexibility. What I had really done was make a bunch of mistakes (I did not know they were mistakes at the time) but I worked very hard and improved. Unfortunately instead of learning from these mistakes I kept repeating them for my first several years of coaching. The athletes improved, but certainly not at a rate and magnitude commensurate with the work. This was the first exit off the functional path. I had no road map, my compass was oriented to magnetic north and I ended up on a dead end street. I needed to get back on the main road. When I did I got in the slow lane, bought a current road map and reoriented the compass to true north. I also got some good guides (mentors) and listened to them. So with more research, more observation of great coaches and great athletes and I got back on the main path again. It seems that this has been an ongoing process, a continuing journey to learn and improve my coaching. As I gathered experiences, made more mistakes and learned from them, the path opened up and destination became clearer. There were many road blocks and detours and there have been times when I have had to blaze a new path, because no one had been there before. At other times I found that many had explored and blazed the path before me and all I needed to do was learn what they had done and apply it. As I more forward in the later stages of my career I heed the wise words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” There are new worlds to explore and ideas to learn, that is what makes traveling on the functional path so challenging and motivating. I hope to have the continued opportunity to share my travels on the functional path and blaze some trails.
Can You Play the Game?
Is not the ultimate test of a player’s ability their ability to play the game? You can do all the fancy and involved combine type tests and fool yourself into thinking that there is direct transfer to the game, but there is not. The cones don’t move and the big bags don’t hit back. We now have a parlor industry that has developed called “combine prep” where players are essentially training like trained seals to perform a very narrow range of movements that appear in the various combine tests. Some of the movements may help prepare them for the game, but most are very specific to the tests. Don’t get me wrong I believe that it is necessary to have a very specific battery of performance indicator tests to determine baseline athletic qualities like acceleration, top speed, explosive power, Agility (whatever that is) and functional flexibility. These should be administered in strictly controlled environments with well-defined protocols that are valid, reliable and repeatable. This information can be used to determine an athlete’s baseline measures, determine progress toward specific goals and above all used to define a training program.This is part of a sound training program with day to day coaching to prepare the player for their game. However with the combine phenomena we have a bunch of random tests that do not meet the criteria of validity and reliability. They are done under vastly different conditions, on different surfaces with varied random people administering the tests, some times are hand times, some are electronic, there is no consistency. All of this makes comparison of scores very suspect at best. I even question some of the scores, times and radar gun readings of velocity I see from some of these combines. Do you know how fast 4.3 something really is? How about 92 on a radar gun? The bottom line here is we have another big con game going here to take money from kids and naïve parents. If you want to get faster and more powerful go out for track, the cool thing about that is will also learn how to compete. Somewhere you have train for the game; combine training is not preparation for the game.