Author: Vernon Gambetta
Sport Appropriate
Several of you have asked me explain what I mean by sport appropriate training. I use the sport appropriate to differentiate from sport specific training. Sport specific is the actual movement of the sport. In swimming it would swimming a specific stroke, in basketball it would be shooting, dribbling, passing and defending, it is practice of the sport. Sport appropriate would consist of training methods and activities that are similar but not the same. Working on component movements, for example running or swimming with resistance. Bounding for a sprinter would be appropriate during certain phases of the year, but not specific, because of the longer ground contact time. The distinction is sometimes fine but I think it is an important distinction. I think that sometimes we get caught up in trying to imitate the movements of the sport and those imitations have very little direct transfer. I always want to be efficient with my training; I want the highest degree of transfer possible. I have found that using the sport appropriate concept as a filter has helped me have a better focus to my training. Once again I can spend time on the need to do rather that just kill time with the nice to do.
Seth Godin Quote
" Most people work hard to find artful ways to say very little. Instead of polishing that turd, why not work harder to think of something remarkable or important to say in the first place?"
Coach Wooden
A sad day, a great man has passed. No words are appropriate or can describe what this man was and what he stood for. All I can say is thanks for the inspiration, direction and guidance you gave us all as a teacher and coach. No doubt you will be missed but the lessons you taught us will last for the ages and continue to inspire coaches and teachers to a higher standard.
Advice – Just do YOUR job
Something I am observing more often is people wanting to be something they are not. Start with the coach – The coach wants to be a therapist or a scientist. The ATC wants to be a physical therapist. The physical therapist wants to be an MD. The MD, well not sure on that one, in many cases they want to be entrepreneurs and some are coaching wannabe’s. The sport scientist wants to be a coach without being accountable for the results in competition unless they are spectacular and they can claim success. Parents, they definitely want to be coaches. Here is a simple solution. Everyone do your job and do it well. Know enough about what everyone else does so that you can communicate with the other professionals, parents and boosters, but do your job. Know what do you know and you don’t know and do the best with what you have.
Where Have All the Coaches Gone?
I feel like a voice crying out in the dark again. I have never been one to hold my thoughts in, so here goes. Where have all the coaches gone? I see a plethora of Exercise Science, Human Movement Science, Sport Science, and Kinesiology graduates, but where are the coaches. No one wants to sweat, no one wants to get dirty and rake the long jump pit. I am definitely not anti sport science; I think my record speaks for itself in that regard, but who is training coaches? What happened to the good old fashioned coaching methods classes taught by coaches who were coaching? I really don’t care if you can diagram the Krebs cycle foreword and backward or any other scientific minutiae. Can you teach? Can you coach? Can your demonstrate the activity you are teaching? We need to get way back to basics here. When I watch sports at every level I see poor coaching running rampant, poor basic movement fundamentals, poor sport skills, poor practice organization and on and on. A huge reason why is that we no longer have coaches who are trained as teachers. They don’t know how to teach, because they were never taught how to teach. (same thing in the classroom, but that is another topic for another time) You should never criticize without offering a solution. Unfortunately the solutions are somewhat expensive and complex. With all the cutbacks in education it would be tough to require coaches to be trained, right now. Many sports, schools and clubs will take anyone they can get for low wages or for free. It is going to take time to rectify this situation. Certainly USOC and the various sport governing bodies could play a much more active role, but I am not sure they recognize the problem. You can’t go to the cause of the problem for a solution. Over the next few weeks and months I will post some of my and my colleagues solutions for this crisis. Here is a challenge – food for thought – You want to start a track program, but you don’t have a track. You have an asphalt area with twelve basketball courts. You have a large grass field that is big enough for a track but it is on two tiers with the upper tier around three feet higher than the lower tier. What would you do? By the way track practice starts next Monday. Have at it.
Never too old
The other day I spoke at length to one of my coaching heroes and mentors, Nort Thornton, former men’s swimming coach at Cal and now a volunteer assistant. Nort is in his late seventies, certainly nothing left to prove. He has coached world record holders, Olympic champions, he has done it all but is still curious and trying to improve himself. He is never satisfied that he has the answer. I wish I had a recording of the phone conversation. When I call him I usually have a pad and pen to take notes because I know he will have a profound thought or a challenging question, but I was driving home after a great workout with my Venice VB girls so I could not write it down. He had read a couple of the books that I recommended to him and we discussed some of those ideas. Then he proceeded to share with an idea that he had gotten on putting more pressure on the little finger in the swim stroke. He had gotten the idea from something he had read about strength training. I listened in astonishment and awe. I was thinking who the hell else is thinking about pressure on the little finger to help better engage the lats? I went home dove in the pool and fooled with it a bit. Certainly intriguing, but you know it is really not about the idea it is about the man. People like Nort inspire and challenge me. He is everything a coach should be and still going after it everyday after sixty plus years of coaching. Today when you go out to work with your athletes, regardless of the sport, think of Nort, look at the athletes and the sport you are working with differently. How can you get better to make the athletes better? Challenge yourself like he challenges himself. I wish there were more Nort Thornton’s in coaching.
Strength Training FUNdamental Concept
This is almost more of a tweet than a post. In strength training in a seven-day training cycle make sure to include pulling movements, pushing movements, squat and squat derivative movements, rotational movements and bracing movements. Pick the specific exercises appropriate to your sports and training age. Less is more – hunt with a rifle not a shotgun. Once again simplicity yields complexity. Don’t try to make it complicated.
Focus on the Workout
In many ways just writing a workout is quite easy. Just go to last year’s workouts at the same phase, copy and paste, make a few adjustments and you are good to go. If it is just about the workout, then I guess that is fine, but the workout is so much more than sets & reps, distances and intervals. The workout is the essential building block of the whole training plan. Each workout is a step toward the ultimate competitive goal. This year is not the same as last year, a different group, a year older in chronological age and some more than a year older in training age. I probably spend 30 minutes a day planning the details of each training session, more time if you consider the thinking time before the pen hits the paper. Each workout should have a specific measureable or observable objective. The athletes need to know what that objectives are, that is their target for the day. The workout must meet the objectives of the training phase and be in context of the workout that preceded it and those to follow. Then there is the individual in the group context, I need to make sure and communicate what each individual needs to do, and sometimes this is more a management issue, than one of training methodology. At this time with my volleyball team we are in the middle of finals. I want to make sure that that we stabilize the gains we have made, get them focused for about 30 to 35 minutes and get them back to studying, simply said, but more difficult to achieve. First I need to get their attention, get them focused on the task at hand, not tomorrows exam. That really starts before the workout by engaging each athlete in a short conversation about school, the weekend and then what she needs to do today. When the workout is finished objectively evaluate the workout in the context of the whole plan and today’s objectives. Use that evaluation to begin the process of planning for the next session. Remember a long-term training plan is a collection of individual workouts building toward a specific goal.