Author: Vernon Gambetta
Coaching Pitfalls – Taper and Pre-season Training
Over the years, I have seen that there are two periods of the year where good coaching can go awry: The pre-season training period and the taper. Both are essential but both are fraught with perils and pitfalls characterized by the same root cause – the willingness/desire/need/obsession to do more than is necessary. Ultimately do to insecurity and lack of trust in the process. In the pre-season, there is a tendency to overdo and overwork. It is often seen as the last chance to add more before the actual competitive season begins. It is common to use two sessions a day and sometimes three sessions during this period. This fails to consider the work done in the off season and the overall cumulative effect of training. The extra training often has a negative effect sometimes doubling volume. The result is a tired dead athlete going into the competitive season when you want a fit lively excited athlete starting the season on the upbeat. This should be a time for specific training to take advantage of the off-season work. Think optimum not maximum and train to the athlete’s capabilities to effectively adapt. This is also the time when new athletes to the team need to be on ramped into the program. This must be gradual and progressive to not deaden them for the upcoming season. In summary, the goal of pre-season is to get each athlete to the start of the competitive season completely adaptable to the competitive demands and to be able to train sufficiently to sustain a high-performance level throughout the season. The taper period represents a very similar pitfall. In this period, you should not try to do more or do something that you have never done before. It is a time to trust the preparation and fine tune. One more of anything is risky. What is most important in the taper often is what you are not doing rather than what you are doing. How do I know these pitfalls? Simply because I have succumbed to them myself. There was a time when I did more in the pre-season and buried the team for the first third of the season. In taper several times I did “one more” hard session to insure they were ready and took away the edge. I took the competition away from the athletes by doing too much. Less is more or to quote the Texas Tornados “A little bit is better than nada.”
Changing Practice
We all practice with the intention of getting better. But can we do better at practice? Can we get more out of practice? Changing practice offers the possibility of changing the game. Here are a few thoughts/ideas that will help make practice sticky and more effective: Don’t try to replicate the game – distort it. Competition is chaos! Use distributed practice. Make mistakes – No perfect practice, instead think perfect effort. Use interleaving – Leave and come back to it. Use games for understanding. De-emphasize Drills – Drills do not equal skills. Be a twitter coach – Get your point across in 140 characters. Learn how to use feedback. When to give immediate and when to delay feedback.
Paths to Performance
There are many paths to performance. Note that it is plural, paths not path. There is no one way, in fact it is highly individual. This is perhaps the biggest conundrum in coaching – How to fit/tailor the training to the individual athlete to achieve each athlete’s optimum performance level. There are fast responders, slow responders and a few non-responders. Each athlete brings their individual qualities to their sport or event. We must recognize and account for this. You can have the wired explosive athletes and you can have a slower less explosive athlete – they can achieve very similar results in competition but must take different paths. Athletic development is a process not a model. Certainly, not driven by an algorithm. It is nonlinear although at times somewhat predictable. The actual components are clear and well defined, however the means of developing those components is fluid and dynamic. No secret sauce, just a well-defined adaptable plan and a lot of smart work.
The Profession of Coaching
Coaching is a profession, not an industry. The younger generation of coaches who have been heavily influenced by social media and 24 hour sports channels do not seem to understand this. As a profession, there are standards and expectations. Coaching for me has never been a job, it has been a way of life, a lifestyle. Coaching is what you are with every fiber of your being. Coaching is special because you are impacting lives in a very direct way. Honor and respect the profession, be thankful for the privilege of being a coach.
Old Coach – Young Coach
As a young coach, I was sure I knew everything and I was dumb enough to tell everyone who would listen and some who would not. I thought a lot of the old coaches were out of it, behind the times. They did not subscribe to the latest fads and speak in fancy jargon, they just consistently produced results. My biggest regret is taking too long to figure this out. Those old coaches knew what they did know and they did it very well they seldom if ever strayed from the basics. When they did speak, it was with wisdom and authority. Most of the time they just listened and occasionally asked questions. When they did ask a question, it was very incisive and to the point. It was something they wanted to know. Now as an old coach I realize there is so much more that I don’t know than I do know. As I continue the journey I am working on closing the gap. Learning to ask better questions and eternally thankful for the continuing opportunity. Be sure to listen to those old coaches they probably have made mistakes you don't have to repeat.
Some Coaching Advice to Make You A Better Coach
Here is some practical actionable advice from an old coach raised in an analog age: Leave your iPhone and iPad in the office. Put the Go Pro away. STOP! LOOK! LISTEN! Heighten and sharpen your observational skills Don’t worry about bar speed. Watch the lift Turn off the GPS and watch the athlete move – See how they generate those numbers you have been gathering Throw away the wellness questionnaire – Talk to the athlete. Get to know them as people. Forget the Triphasic workout – all movement involves coordinated eccentric, isometric and concentric muscle action. JUST COACH!!!!! You will be surprised at what you have been missing. Use technology to complement what you do, not to replace it. Know yourself and your athletes, never forget you are coaching people who run, jump, and throw.
Coaching Excellence – Part Four
Change is a constant. One of the discriminating factors that differentiate between a good and great coach is how they deal with change. Good coaches are reactive and change manages them. They fear change and go out of their way to avoid it. Great coaches lead change they are proactive and embrace the challenge of change. In fact great coaches are change engineers, they are at the cutting edge always looking for a better way. Coaching is learning to manage risk. For athletes to improve they must push the envelope in training. It is the coach’s job to know the athletes and they capabilities in order to guide them in their quest. Sometimes we undershoot and sometimes we overshoot but in either case if we have a good plan then it becomes a learning opportunity and another experience that makes the coach and athlete better. Failures are learning opportunities if they are put in context. From the ashes of failure rises some of the greatest success in sport. Objective evaluation of success and failure and understanding the why is the characteristic of coaching excellence. The highs are not too high and the lows are not too low because everything has a context – the pursuit of the ultimate goal. What is the measure of coaching excellence? Oftentimes we measure a coach by wins and losses, by championship trophies lifted. To me that is not the sole measure of a coach. Some the greatest coaches are coaches you have never heard of they are not in the EPL, the NFL, they may never have had an Olympian but they are still great. How can that be? They take the talent they have and make it better everyday out of the spotlight. They consistently do the most with what they have. Preparation is a given in coaching excellence. John Wooden would spend two hours planning a two-hour practice. He was the best of the best partially because of the impeccable daily preparation. It helps to think of preparation this way – tomorrow began yesterday. Preparation is an ongoing process. Make self-reflection part of the daily routine. Don’t be afraid to be hard on yourself. Each training session is not only an opportunity for your athletes to improve it is an opportunity for the coach to get better, to learn what to do and what not to do. There are lessons in and opportunities in each training session. My mantra is to try to do something that no one else in my world is doing and to do it better everyday
Coaching Excellence – Part Three
Good coaches have mentors and role models. My first mentor and role was my high school basketball coach. He was the most influential person in my life up to that time aside from my parents. He taught me the value of structure and self-discipline. He also instilled in my teammates and me that it is was more than the ninety minutes of practice that made you better it was lifestyle. He did not call it the twenty-four hour athlete but that was what he was teaching us. It was a total commitment to the pursuit of excellence. We cannot do it alone. It always helps to have guidance from someone who has been there before. No need to make the same mistakes and relearn the lessons they learned, learn from others experiences. That being said it is important to forge your own coaching style that suits your personality that maximizes your strengths minimizes your weaknesses. Seth Godin put it quite well when he said “don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.” Be yourself. Excellent coaches are learners. The learning can be formal or informal, the key is to keep learning and growing. Arie de Geus said it best “Probably the only sustainable competitive advantage we have, is the ability to learn faster than then opposition.” To be the best demands that you expand your horizons that you go outside you’re your coaching specialty and outside of sport to seek continual improvement and find new ideas. I will never forget asking Eddie Jones, current coach of England Rugby, where he got an idea and his answer was quite revealing: from the Belgium women’s filed hockey team! That is why he is a great coach; he leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of being the best. Frankly great coaches who epitomize coaching excellence innovate, they are open to new ideas and are constantly learning. The coaches who are average imitate, they do what they have always done, and they never risk and try anything new for fear of failure, so they end up failing. How much time do you devote each day and each week toward your professional development? Joe Vigil PHD, a great coach and mentor does an hour of professional development reading each morning at 5:00 am. He has been coaching for close to 70 years and is now 88 years old! Nort Thornton, one of the greatest swim coaches ever, shares ideas from books we have read and challenge each other’s ideas on training on a periodic basis. He has been coaching for sixty plus years and is in his late seventies. You are never too old or too knowledgeable to stop learning. Keep learning and keep growing. Never stop learning and challenging yourself to get better. Just about the time you think you have it figured out, some new ideas will arise to challenge you. Stay ahead of the curve, be proactive, do not copy and follow, innovate and lead. Get out of your comfort zone, for me it is mastering technologies that will make me better and more productive. The only way you can do that is continual professional development. Christopher Morley said it best "Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."