Author: Vernon Gambetta
Nurturing The Athlete
An athlete’s development is an organic process. It takes time and timing of the appropriate stimuli for the level of the athlete’s stage of development. My father was a gardener and I remember the first time he took me to work with him, I was probably ten or eleven years old. As any youngster, I was impatient and full of questions. I wanted to know why this patch of garden had no plants. Why we had to water this area and fertilize another section. Why we had to trim these plants and let others grow. I wanted to know why he didn’t plant all the seeds at the same time. He explained it to me but I must admit that I did not fully understand it until years later after I had started coaching. The carrots had to be planted at a certain time. The winter and summer squash were different. Some vegetables thrived in the cold of winter and others need the heat of summer. The same is true with the nurturing of the athlete. You must carefully cultivate the soil by developing physical competencies. Then you plant appropriate levels of training of the various physical capacities. You allow those capacities to grow and develop and then you carefully harvest them in competition. Nowhere is anything forced, it is a long-term time consuming process that requires constant attention from the gardener/coach.
The Truth
Ultimately in training the truth is what works. All the theory in the world may not translate into results. It is up to the coach and athlete to figure out what works for them and then to systematize it so it will produce consistent reproducible results in the competitive arena. It may not look like what everyone else is doing and that is OK, because the proof of the pudding is in the outcome. Think what would have happened if Dick Fosbury had yielded to conventional wisdom or if Roger Bannister had listened to naysayers. Each coach and athlete needs to seek “The Truth” for them.
Start with a Dream
It all starts with a dream. The dream can be big or small. The dream ignites the passion. Passion is the fuel for success. After the dream and the passion comes the plan. The plan gives direction to turn the dream into reality. Remember Martin Luther King did not give an “I Have a Plan” speech on that July day in 1963, he gave an “I Have a Dream” speech and that speaks volumes. It all starts with a dream – so dare to DREAM BIG!
An Exercise in Reflection
An essential part of effective coaching is reflection. Yesterday I was speaking to one of my mentors and professional colleagues Frank Dick and he suggested a simple three-step process that he uses for self reflection. He suggests using it monthly but I think it would be very effective weekly or sometimes even daily. Ask yourself three questions: What is the target? Are you on or off target? What evidence do you have to show you are on or off target? It demands having a target (goal) that is clearly articulated and measurable. Yes very simple but I believe this can be a very effective step in self improvement if it becomes part of the coach’s routine.
Singing or Screaming Muscles?
This segment NPR Weekend Edition Saturday March 26, 2016 got me thinking. The segment was titled Glitch In Your Golf Swing? Listen To It Sing “Stanford professor Jonathan Berger turns golf stroke data into sound. A nice sound means it's a good swing, a sour sound means something's not right. In this revealing piece he tells Scott Simon how that helps people learn.” The same can be said for EMG data. If you isolate a muscle and put it a position of mechanical disadvantage it will scream at you – in other words it will show high level of activity. On the other hand when that muscle is integrated into a functional movement it will sing, it will show periods of high activity, less activity or even no activity when it works synergistically with it’s partners to produce smooth efficient coordinated movement. So the take home message when interpreting research from EMG data ask if the muscle is screaming or singing. If the muscle is singing then the EMG data is more valuable than if it is screaming. Just because you have high muscle activity does not mean it will transfer to efficient movement.
Fake Fundamentals
Tony Liebert, a youth hockey coach in Madison Wisconsin coined this phrase to describe fancy drills that look cool but have no carryover to what happens in the game. How much of your practice consists of “fake fundamentals”? Once again it is important to remember that drills do not equal skill. More drills make you better at drills not the sport. Think about what you are doing and why and how you are doing it. Ultimately the game or the skills of the sport are the best teachers, so don’t stray to far from there.
What Are You Really Doing?
Is what you are doing making your athletes better or is it just making them tired and predisposing them to injury? I have asked this question numerous times in this blog. I keep asking it because I see more highly specific work being done without the commensurate return in results and an alarming rise in training related or training caused injuries. The current trend is to be more sport specific in training. I get it to a point, but there are definite perils and pitfalls of uber specificity. You must ask yourself if you trying to be too sport specific? My approach is and has been for many years to train for the demands of the sport and be sport appropriate not sport specific. The actual practice of the sport is specific preparation. Training should be preparation for the demands of the sport. Too much specific work will add stress to stress and lead to injury and stagnation. Soccer right now is a good example with the overemphasis on small-sided games and highly specific preparation. They are adding stress to stress and not preparing for the higher speed demands of the match. I think of it as a three-part process: #1 General work that includes a huge dose of athleticism development and has little or no resemblance to the actual sport but serves to establish pristine movement skills to help bullet proof the athlete in the long term. General work is a staple of a sound training program. #2 Special work that incorporates similar movements and is higher speed and higher force. #3 This is Specific work that consists of the actual sport and movements of the sport. This does not mean to imply that there are periods where the emphasis is on just one area. Throughout the training year including during peak competition there must be a careful blend of general, special and specific work based on the status of the athlete. This demands careful record keeping, close monitoring of training and competition. Ultimately it comes down to knowing the athlete and what they need physically, psychologically and emotionally to be at their best.
What if?
What if there were no strength coaches? What if there were no personal trainers? What if off season football was playing baseball or running track? What if there were no NFL or NBA combine? What id there were no Nike, Reebok and Under Armour throwing money around? What if there was mandatory daily Physical Education from kindergarten through twelfth grade? What if coaches were trained teachers? What if sport were school based? What if there were no travel baseball, soccer and basketball? What if there was no freshman eligibility in college? What if there were no Internet or social media? What if there were no 24-hour news and sport channels? The list could go on and on. I know this was the “good old days” when I started coaching in 1969. Maybe an old being nostalgic. We cannot turn back the clock but we can learn from the past. There are many lessons from those days that apply directly to the problems we face in sport coaching today. Sport does not exist outside of society; it mirrors and magnifies the good and bad of society. Hopefully this will get all of you thinking about solutions.