Author: Vernon Gambetta
Join Us – GAIN IX
GAIN started in 2007, but the genesis of GAIN goes back to the start of my coaching career in 1969. It quickly became clear to me that anytime I could meet with professional colleagues to exchange ideas that my performance as a coach improved. It really came together for me in July 1972 at the first AAU Learning By Doing Track & Field Clinic. The clinic went for four days from 7:00 AM in the morning to 9:00 PM at night. We all lived in dorms and ate meals together. There were unlimited opportunities to discuss what we had learned and exchange ideas. I came away from that experience vowing to repeat the experience wherever and whenever possible. It was career changing for me. Now I had a network of coaches I could communicate with. In the 1980’s a group of us would convene at every opportunity, usually at National Championships or conventions with the express purpose to share ideas and cross check each others training programs. These occasions were uplifting and sometimes quite challenging when you did not hear what you wanted to hear. In 1992,I started teaching the Building and Rebuilding The Athlete seminar. It was a two-day seminar consisting of a broad overview of all the components of training and rehab for the athlete. The volume of content and format only allowed us to barely scratch the surface. Each seminar someone would ask me if I ever was going to initiate something beyond Building and Rebuilding. Because of various factors, I was unable to do so until 2007 when we had our first GAIN. There were twenty brave souls in attendance; I don’t think any of us had a good idea of what it would become. Nine years later, GAIN has evolved into the career changing experience that I hoped it would be. We have highly motivated attendees who are professionals in their various areas and a superb faculty who are high-level practitioners who have skin in the game. They know through practice-based evidence what it takes to achieve results at the highest levels of sport and they are willing to share their success and failures. Join us in this learning journey of professional development. GAIN IX will be at Rice University in Houston Texas from June 14 to June 18. There is no experience like this total immersion for five days with other highly motivated professionals. I am a facilitator, a catalyst – the strength is in the network and the subsequent connections into a learning community of highly motivated professionals eager to challenge ideas generate new ideas and take a different look at old ones. Go to http://tinyurl.com/nb7rx2jto apply, submit your application now, enrollment is limited.
Competition – The Essence of Sport
Records are not the essence of sport, competition is. A bold and broad statement so let me explain. The more emphasis on an incessant search for world records only encourages athletes to dope. The financial incentives are great and we are forcing athletes to push the envelope every outing, which is physically impossible. Let’s shift the emphasis back to competition. Great close competitions are as exciting as a paced world record that no one outside the sport understands.
Competition Results – Getting Beyond Wins & Loses
It is easy to be fooled by competition results both good and bad, wins or loses. Wins can disguise deficiencies and losses can hide progress. The take home point is to always focus on the process and never lose sight of the ultimate long-term goal. Each competition is a stepping-stone to further excellence. Keep each competition in perspective. Each competition is worth at least five training sessions in terms of learning opportunities so learn from the good performances, bad performances, wins and loses.
Change – The Constant
In high-level sport as in life the only constant is change. If you are the best at what you do you must change and adapt to stay the best. The difference maker in coaching is how you manage and lead change. Change represents a tremendous opportunity to improve. Rather than a time of reaction it is an opportunity to take a step back and reflect on the causes for change and then to plan subsequent actions based on the reflections. In elite sport the focus must be on what needs to be done to produce both short and long term results. The following quote from Walter Isaacson in the forward of Team of Teams – New Rules of Engagement For A Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal contains a powerful message for the necessity of continual change and adaption in today’s world: “Management models based on planning and predicting instead of resilient adaptation to changing circumstances are no longer suited to today’s challenges. Organizations must be networked, not siloed, in order to succeed. Their goal must shift from efficiency to sustained organizational adaptability.”
Eddie Jones – Building Sustainable Performance Excellence – Part Two
After going through the Japan Way Eddie then went onto to detail the Five Components of Building a Championship Team but before that he underscored the Japan Way values of Pride, Respect and Courage and how important it was to live those values not just speak them. Leadership The ability to get the best out of the people around you Ability to provide a strong cohesive vision that gives the staff direction to follow Need to understand cultural differences He then delineated the key skills of leadership Observation skills – Important as a head coach/manager to step back and see the big picture. Not necessary to be involved in every drill. Allowed him to maintain objectivity Ability to learn and adapt quickly Ability to plan and implement the plan all the while recognizing that no plan is perfect hence the necessity of staying flexible High work ethic Passion for details Management Staff – Get the right staff. No yes-men. Must have difference opinions to create a strong staff. Players – Looking for consistency. Good today, not yesterday! Creating the right environment – Values = Behaviors Know when to let staff go – When to cut the cord. He emphasized this is not easy but sometime necessary. Knowing Your Strength Know your key competitive edge and work constantly to improve it. He knew his team was smaller than everyone else but turned that to a positive by emphasizing a style of play that took advantage of their fitness, quickness and skill. Know where the gaps are – do thorough and ongoing gap analysis of where are you versus where you need to be and act on closing those gaps immediately. Know your opposition – Understand their psyche Plan and prioritize base don your strength. Work on what you are good at. The strength will pull up the weaknesses. Develop a Culture of Discipline Rules – Very few, very clear and easy to be accountable for Meeting – No longer than 15 minutes Communication – Clear and concise Evaluation – Clear criteria, no shades of grey Selection – not easy but you do not always select best players but select the best team. Create a Learning Environment Learn from other sports – When I asked Eddie about the development pathway in Rugby he cited the Belgian women’s field hockey as a model of how they used their coaches in the development pipeline. That blew me away! Learn from other coaches Television – Watch interviews with coaches post match Internet – this is obvious Books – Read everything Have courage of conviction – Always look for a better way than the way you are doing it and be willing to change. Hopefully this captures what Eddie Jones and his system is about. I know many will read this and think so what we do that or there is nothing earthshaking here. Think again, this is just words on paper but to commit and do what Eddie, his staff did takes a 24/7 commitment, a commitment few are willing to give. It is that commitment that truly separates the good form the great.
Eddie Jones – Building Sustainable Performance Excellence – Part One
Eddie Jones is coach of the Japanese Rugby team that has shaken the rugby world by their performances at the 2015 world cup highlighted by their opening match upset of South Africa, a real David slays Goliath moment – http://bit.ly/1LPAdzs. This was arguably one of the greatest upsets in sports history. None of this happened by chance. Last Sunday in Rome at the 2015 IFAC (International Festival of Athletic Coaching) Conference Eddie presented his ideas on what it takes to build and sustain excellence. Below are some of the highlights of his presentations with my comments in italics. In my estimation Eddie is one of the ten best coaches in any sport in the world now. This man gets it and he produces excellence. Background Eddie started his presentation with an overview of the Rugby culture and infrastructure in Japan. There is a historic culture of rugby in Japan. 500 universities play rugby. The rugby players at these universities focus on rugby sometimes training up six hours a day!. In addition there is an industrial league with teams sponsored by major corporations and every high school in Japan plays rugby. The Japan Way This was essentially an update of what Eddie presented at Global Coaches House in London 2012 during the Olympic games. First – They had to be extremely fast and supremely fit to overcome their inherent size disadvantage. They achieved this through the tireless and innovative work of John Pryor their Athletic Development coach. John took a very innovative approach using all elements of athlete development. John told me that in the last nine months leading in World Cup they did not put a big emphasis on traditional lifting. (I will interview John at a later time and expand on this) I have known John for twenty years and worked with he and Dean Benton, these guys think and work differently. Eddie fully embraced what John was doing. Second – They had to change training. The tradition in Japan had been very long three to four hour grinding sessions day after day. Instead they shifted to multiple sessions, sometimes three shorter sessions a day, with each session having a specific emphasis. They incorporated a “Head Start” session before breakfast focused on Athletic Development. Third – They created another line of management by developing a player leadership group to help in decision-making. None of these by themselves are very revolutionary many people speak about doing these things and then compromise when it comes to implementation. It is not convenient or comfortable. Eddie and his staff did it. Tomorrow I will go into the five components of building a championship team in Part Two.
GAIN Introduction Presentation
GAIN is an acronym for Gambetta Athletic Improvement Network. GAIN 2016 will be our ninth year. Each year at GAIN I give an opening presentation on the state of GAIN looking at the philosophy of GAIN and general thoughts on training, teaching and rehab. You can watch the 2014 GAIN opening talk at http://bit.ly/1PRv2FH. If you are interested in attending GAIN 2016 the dates and site will be announced in two weeks. For more information on GAIN in general go to www.thegainnetwork.com
Finishers
If you are doing so-called finishers – Whether they are heavy sled pulls or sets to exhaustion, anything in the form of a so called “gut check” to make the athlete tougher – Think again and ask yourself what you are doing? Why are you doing them? In all probability you are negating the effects of the previous segments of the workout by doing something totally incompatible and contradictory to what came before. For example to finish off a max strength session or a speed acceleration session with very heavy 50-yard sled pushes makes no sense. It is easy to make them tired but it is not making them better. If you are doing it for so-called mental toughness that is even more indefensible, there are better ways to build a complete adaptable athlete ready to compete to win. Mindful always trumps mindless, 99% of finishers are mindless.