Author: Vernon Gambetta
What Makes Champions?
My interest in what it takes to be a champion started early. As a youngster I was always questioning why? Why was that player better? Why did that team win all the time? As I got older and played football in college there were clear differences that became apparent. At first, I thought it was just talent. If you have talent you were successful, it was that straight forward or was it? If that was the case, then why was one of the most physically talented guys on the team sitting next to me on the bench? Then why did teams that appeared to have less talent consistently win? This whole search about what is the difference in the champion became a borderline obsession with me. As I got into coaching the picture became clearer to me. It clearly was a process and those that exceled as champions have certain commonalties. I do not pretend to have all the answers as to what makes a champion, but I do have some ideas based on my study, observations and my years of experience. The biggest commonality that I have seen is that champions chose. Yes, you read that correctly, they chose to be champions. They make champions choices. The choices at times are very simple and clear and other times difficult and uncomfortable. It is a journey to becoming a champion. Like any journey you need a current up to date map and a working compass to guide you. To facilitate the journey, it helps to have the compass oriented to true north. It is a journey that many others have traveled. It is a journey with a high attrition rate. The cost is high because it is not an easy journey. Over the next several months I will post on the concept of Champions Choice to help lend some credibility to my argument and to stimulate thought and discussion.
GAIN 2020 – Join US
GAIN 2020 will be held June 16 to 20 at Rice University in Houston Texas. This is the thirteenth year of GAIN; it started 2007 with twelve attendees and four instructors and has grown to ninety attendees from all over the world and eighteen faculty. GAIN is a community of professional’s eager to learn and willing to share ideas and information. GAIN is not about more exercises, sets, reps and training methods it is about passionate people who pursue excellence with honesty, integrity and respect to make a difference in the lives of the people we coach and teach. To learn more about GAIN go to https://thegainnetwork.com/ or call 941-378-178. Applications will open on January 15, 2020. Don't miss out on this career changing experience. GAIN is open to Strength & Conditioning/Athletic Development coaches, Sport Coaches, Physical Therapists, ATC’s, Chiropractors, Doctors and Physical Education teachers. Those who attend are professionals seeking career advancement & renewal through a networking experience and who are interested in getting out of their comfort zone.
What Really Matters
In life and in coaching it is important to focus on what really matters. What matters most is relationships – people – the human element. In today’s world of instant information and big data it is easy to forget that the numbers, data, scientific measurements are one-dimensional – we coach people who are multidimensional. They are not machines; they respond to care and concern. Good coaching is about developing trust and working together with the athletes to guide them to grow athletically and personally. Every truly effective coach I have known knows what matters and focuses on what matters. They are sharp observers and astute listeners. A simple guideline to help focus on what really matters is to remember and practice the 3 C’s connect, convey, and convince.
2019 Best Books – My Picks
These are my picks for the best books I read in 2019. As you can see I am light of sport and heavy on history and biography. Coaching Children in Sport – The Carver Framework by Paul Kilgannon El Norte – The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America by Carrie Gibson The Passion Paradox by Brad Stulburg and Steve Magness Working – Researching, Interviewing, Writing by Robert Caro The Patch by John McPhee Genesis -The Deep Origin of Society by Edward O. Wilson Churchill – Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts Range – Why Generalists Triumph in A Specialized World by David Epstein The Dreamant Land – Chasing Water & Dust Across California by Mark Arax This Land – How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West by Christopher Ketchen Fire & Fortitude – The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941 – 1943 by John C. McManus The MVP Machine – How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players By Ben Linbergh and Travis Sawchik Educate – Memoir by Kara Westover George Marshall – Defender of the Republic by David L. Roll The Night Fire – By Michael Connelly Dreams of El Dorado – A History of the American West by H.W. Brands My Life and Rugby – The Autobiography by Eddie Jones Science and Application of High Intensity Interval Training – Solution to the Programing Puzzle By Paul Larsen and Martin Buchhiet
Load Management – Walking on Egg Shells
The whole concept of load management as it is being interpreted and implemented is beyond me. Frankly, it makes no sense. Call me old school, but isn’t good planning and training design that prepares the athlete for the rigors of competition what we are supposed to be doing? We have reduced the quality and intensity of training to meet magic numbers developed by flawed measurement devises based on artificial algorithms. We are walking on egg shells, afarid to push the athlete. Sometime in the process you have to train hard and push beyond your perceived limits in order to force adaptation. We are now well into our second generation of fragile athletes that are victims of underwork. Injures are not being reduced, although I have no stats to back this, it is my observation that severity of injuries has increased. There is a threshold of training that you must achieve to become competition hardened. For me fifty years into this journey it has been quite a simple proposition – do the necessary work that exceeds game demands, that meets the needs of the individual athletes, that has a transparent injury prevention component, emphasis fundamentals and never strays far from fundamentals of the sport and movement – this approach has produced injury free robust athletes ready to thrive in the chaos of competition. Load is planned and adjusted daily informed by the response of the athlete and the close observation of the coaches, seldom if ever is it driven exclusively by numbers. A healthy athlete should not be held out of competition – that is what we are training for, lest we forget.
Good or Great – Your Choice
It is always interesting to see how great teams and great athletes always find a way to prevail. They can be banged up, tired and off their game and yet they still perform at a high level. To me that is a crucial difference between good and great. It all starts in what they do every day in practice, the little things matter – being on time, wearing the proper uniform and giving perfect effort. This all creates positive habits that carry over to competition. They are champions every day not just on game or meet day. They continually make the champions choice; they are not always comfortable in fact they are comfortable with being uncomfortable all the time. They definitely make their opponents uncomfortable. In the end they maximize their chances of standing on the podium.
Trapped
Developing weight room strength for the sake of developing strength is a trap. Too often there is no thought to transfer and application. Numbers go up in the weight room without any commensurate improvement in performance. Stop and think – What are you getting strong for? Strength you can use is the goal and it is coordination with appropriate resistance that allows the athlete to make better shapes appropriate for thier sport. It is a straightforward proposition, get maximum return on your investment. Escape the chasing number trap.
It’s a Big Dance
Every sport skill has a basic technical model that a beginner can master in a relatively short time. What is the difference then from that and the master – the Roger Federer in tennis, Usain Bolt in sprinting, Simone Biles in gymnastics or Michael Phelps in the pool? What makes them masters of their craft? Certainly, they have refined technique, that is a given. The longer I coach and the more I reflect on this I am convinced it is rhythm and tempo. Like great musicians it is the space between the notes that makes the music special. Like great authors it is the choice of words and punctuation or lack thereof that distinguishes their work. Great athletic movement is a highly choreographed dance with effortless control characterized by rhythm, flow and smooth connections seemingly without tension. Often it is not as apparent to the untrained eye. When you are in proximity whether it is the court, pool or track you can feel it, you can hear it – it is special. The question for me always has been, can you coach it or is it just a gift that these great ones have? I like to think you can coach it to a degree. It all starts with how these skills are taught. Too often we take a young athlete and try to fit them into a mold instead of letting them explore and feel the movement. Let them experiment and forget about getting it right, instead work on getting a feel. You don’t teach running mechanics, instead you make it a game, a dance an exploration of how the body moves. It may look messy and chaotic at first, but it will quickly smooth out. It’s all just a big dance.