Author: Vernon Gambetta
So, You Want a Coaching Job?
In the course of my fifty years of coaching I have been fortunate to have had great mentors, influences and role models. I learned very early that I was not entitled to anything I had to pay my dues and earn the right to move forward. I constantly had to prove my competence and continue to improve. In today’s world with increasing specialization and fast tracking I worry about the up and coming generation of coaches. This is an attempt to help guide this generation as to what matters in coaching. Start here with this as a self-evaluation exercise. Use this to create a profile of yourself beyond your resume’ Statement of Philosophy of Training and Coaching (Two Paragraphs Maximum) Specific Short Term and Long-Term Goals Education and relevant course work All Coaching Experience – In any sport at any level Specifically, whom did you coach What were your actual coaching responsibilities? Teaching Experience – Formal and informal (Sunday School counts) Areas of Coaching Expertise – Be Specific & include examples What are your Strengths? What makes you special and stand out from your peers? What are your Weaknesses? Where do you need to improve? How do you plan to address your weaknesses? Appearance – Do you look the part? Are you fit, and do you present yourself well? Skill Proficiency – Do you have the ability to demonstrate what you are teaching? Work Ethic – Are you willing to go the extra mile and work until the job is done? Give examples of how and when you have done this. Certifications & Accreditations – List all in any field List three books on Training or Athletic Enhancement that you have read in the past three months List three books not related to sport or training that you have read in the last three months? List three refereed journal articles that you have read in the last three months What are you doing on a regular basis to improve your knowledge and ability as a coach? What is you action plan to improve your skills going forward? What will you do that will be special?
The Athlete’s Growth Process – Making the Champions Choice
The athlete’s growth process is by no means linear or clearly defined. In my experience there are three steps of indeterminate length: First Step: Your start out on the journey. Basically, you physically show up. You do what you are supposed to do and for a little while you get better. Not significantly better but enough to keep you coming back. That is the “doing the workout” stage. The Next Step: Now you not only show up physically, but you are all there in body and in mind. You listen, you absorb what is going on. You process why. You leave the workout thinking about what you have done well and what you can do better. I call that “Training the Workout.” The Third step or leap is quite different: Now you think about what you are going to do before the workout, you set objectives and measurable goals for yourself. You are fully engaged and aware. When the workout is over, you review the workout, you reset goals if necessary. You put each workout in the context of the big picture. I call this “Winning the Workout.” When the athlete gets to this level they have a realistic chance of being consistently competitive in the competition. It is a process. Some athletes spend little or no time in in step one or two, they go straight to three and never look back. For others it takes time, maturity, and understanding. Many are called, and few chose to make the champions choice of being at step three. That demands being comfortable with being uncomfortable all the time. As coaches we guide the way to help the athlete make the champions choice. We lead by words and action. If we don’t make the champions choice how can we expect our athletes to?
Who Am I?
I am possibly going through an old age identity crisis, but I have been thinking a lot lately about how people define themselves or let other define them. It got me thinking about how I define myself, so at the risk of coming across as vain and self-centered I thought I would share how I define myself. This is partially as a result of spending too many years letting others define me. I have learned to have a chance to make an impact and lead a purposeful life you must define yourself and stay true to that definition. Here goes: I am a coach who specializes in being a generalist. I do this by being a synthesizer, connecting the dots in seemingly disparate areas looking for similarities, differences and patterns that may not be readily apparent. I am a connector of people, believing in the powers of networks. I am also a simplifier, there is no need to make things more complicated. Performance is by its very nature chaotic so to most profoundly affect performance staying simple focused on the basics works for me. Last but not least I am an informed skeptic thoroughly schooled in the school of hard knocks through success and failure. How do you define yourself?
Read this Book! The Playmakers Advantage
For the past fifteen years I have been focused on what to do to get better at getting better. I have explored cognitive neuroscience, recognizing that the brain and how we train the brain is the key to getting better at getting better. In that pursuit I have read numerous books, devoured research literature, attended seminars and talked to as many experts as possible. The deeper I got into the process I knew I was on the right path. This is why I am encouraging you to read The Playmakers Advantage – How to Raise Your Mental Game to The Next Level. Len Zaichkowsky AKA Dr. Z and Dan Peterson have done a masterful job of compiling the research and their extensive experience into a comprehensive informative guide to the latest information on training the brain to improve sports performance. This is a terrific resource for coaches. They go into detail as to the what, the how and very importantly the why of training the brain. The material in Playmakers Advantage represents what we have to do as coaches to optimize what we are doing. It is not a simplistic self-help motivational work, there are too many of those and they are ineffective in changing behavior. This has breadth and depth reflecting the latest research and best practice. It is one of the most valuable books I have read in a long time. How often as coaches have we said it is all in your head. Playmakers Advantage shows how to use what’s in our head to our competitive advantage.
Fit for the Test or Fit to Play for the Game
Do you want your athletes fit for the test or fit to play for the game? There is a real and distinct difference on one hand and some real lessons to be learned on the other. It all depends how the “fitness” tests are used and how they are framed in the overall context of the annual and career plan. The goal is accurate feedback in a competitive environment of the physical qualities that could determine success in the game. Selection and timing of tests sends a message. Therefore, decide what message you want to send. If you are going to use a two or three mile run test upon reporting for practice, then you are sending a message to the team that it is an endurance sport and they need to get ready for that. The game could be the opposite, but if their place on the team depends on it they will train for the test!
Clearing the Path or Preparing the Athlete for the Path
This post reporting Tony Strudwick’s comments is what prompted me to write this post. http://trainingground.guru/articles/tony-strudwick-why-sport-science-has-lost-its-way Let’s stop putting inordinate amount of time in clearing a smooth and direct path for the athlete. All it does is set up unrealistic expectations. No journey toward athletic excellence is straight and narrow toward the destination without any bumps in the road, detours or breakdowns. Instead let’s shift the emphasis back to where it should be: preparing a robust adaptable athlete to negotiate any path put in front of them. To quote my colleague Bill Knowles what we have today is a "Medicalization of sport (sports medicine/sports rehabilitation): The process by which sports specific conditions and problems come to be defined and treated as medical conditions, and thus become the subject of medical study, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment." This has resulted in reducing practice time by spending an inordinate amount of time on nonfunctional injury prevention programs, all of which detracts from what needs to be done to make the athlete better and less fragile. All this work preparing the perfect path is weakening the athlete and detracting from the ability to tolerate an adequate workload to get better. You don’t prepare the athlete for heat stress by training indoors in a controlled low humidity seventy-two degrees temperature-controlled environment or training is a weight room with temperature set at sixty-eight degrees. To get a training adaptation it is necessary to impose a training load that is age appropriate, meaningful and challenging in preparation for the chaotic uncontrolled environment of competition. I am in no way proposing that we go back 50 years to my college football experience which did nothing but break us down. I believe there is a happy medium. We have gone overboard with our concern for athlete welfare to the point that we are placing them at risk by putting them in the competitive environment without being ready for the demands of competition. We are being overprotective. Training load must be high, in fact it must at times be an overload to prepare for competition. We need to do a better job of using all the measuring and monitoring tools at our disposal to be prescriptive, not restrictive. We also need to measure what is meaningful and actionable. Just because it can be measured does not make it meaningful. It is time to shift the emphasis back to preparing a robust athlete capable of travel on any road. Special thanks to Kelvin Giles, Dean Benton, Nick Garcia, Martin Bingisser, John Pryor, Steve Myrland, Bill Knowles and Patrick McHugh for their input on this post.
Current Reading
Since I last reported on my reading in April I have read fifty-one books. The topics represent a range of interests beyond sport. I find myself reading more history going back to my roots as a social science major. Here are some that stood out for me. Giant – The Making of a Legendary American Film by Don Graham The Performance Cortex – How Neuroscience is Refining Athletic Genius by Zach Schonbrun The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything – A Spiritual Guide for Real Life by James Martin. SJ Masters of Modern Soccer – How the World’s Best Play the Twenty-First Century Game by Grant Wahl Jerusalem – The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore The Hope Circuit – A Psychologists Journey from Helplessness to Optimism by Martin E. P. Seligman Heroic Leadership – Best Practices From a 450-Year-Old Company That Changed the World by Chris Lowney On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis Fact Fullness – Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World and Why Things are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund Human Movement – An Integrated Approach by Joseph R. Higgins The Mirage Factory – Illusion, Imagination and the Invention of Los Angeles by Gary Kirst The Comeback – Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling and The Legendary Tour de France by Daniel De Vise’ Boyd – The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in Silicon Valley by John Carreyrow Sevens Heaven – The Beautiful Chaos of Fiji’s Olympic Dream by Ben Ryan TAILSPIN – The People and Forces Behind America’s Fifty Year Fall and Those Fighting to Reverse it by Steven Brill The Square and the Tower – Networks and Power from the Freemasons to Facebook by Nial Ferguson Who We Are and How We Got There – Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich Measure What Matters – OKRs The Simple Idea That Drives 10X Growth by John Doerr The Age of Eisenhower – America and the World in the 1950’s by William I. Hitchcock Franklin D. Roosevelt – A Political Life by Robert Dallek Our Towns – A 100,000 Mile Journey into the Heart of America By James and Deborah Fallows
Junior World Championships
Recently the Junior World Track & Field Championships were televised. I watched with great interest. It was interesting to see the wider variation in body types than what you see at the senior level. I couldn’t help but think as I was watching how many of these athletes would go on and be a factor at the senior level. By being a factor, I look at it several ways: How many will go on to compete at the senior level? How many will achieve personal bests at the senior level? How many will achieve a qualifying standard for a senior world championships or Olympic Games? How many will make a final at a senior world championships or Olympic Games? How many will make it onto the podium at a senior world championships or Olympic Games? We know from a large body of historical evidence the percentage who achieve those landmarks is quite low. Why is that? There are many reasons. Like a Mary Cain they could be tapped out with nothing left in the tank. They could have been doing senior level training for a long time. For some it is psychological. They are anointed as the next great one and the sheer weight of expectations holds them back. For some it is injuries. For others it is a change in priorities. We do know for sure that it is a huge jump from junior level success to senior success. It is a process with so many variables. This is very much the case in many sports not just Athletics.