Author: Vernon Gambetta
The Creative Process of Coaching
Every composer starts with the same notes. Every author starts with the same alphabet. All artists start with the same palette of basic colors. Then why aren’t there more Beethoven’s, Hemingway’s and Rembrandt's? The answer is genius and the creative process. Coaching is similar; at the heart of coaching is the creative process. The coach is no different than the composer or the artist. The coach’s palette is the human body expressed through movement. Graham, Wallis described the four stages of the creative process. The steps in this process are easily adapted to the coaching environment. It is important to remember that this is not a linear process. The four stages that Wallis identified are: 1. Preparation. This is the stage of gathering information. This is the time to define the problem. You must be well prepared and know what you are doing. Make yourself an expert, this will provide the foundation to be creative and innovative. The process of becoming an expert will ignite creative ideas. 2. Incubation – It takes time, creative ideas do not happen overnight. Sometimes a training method that did not work in the past will work now if placed in a different context. Forcing solutions does not work. 3. Illumination. This is when you get it and the light comes on. Sometimes it is reading something, hearing something or seeing a movement that makes things click. 4. Verification. This is the actual application, where the new idea is implemented to see if it actually works. Great coaches are very creative; it is just that their field of expression is different. You have to see the sport you are working with new eyes.
Winning Culture
It is there and it is important. You can feel it! There is a sense of personal accountability from the superstars to the custodians, they are all in and believe each is equally important. Leadership is from within not from above. The focus is on the task at hand, building on and learning from the past successes and failures but always preparing for the future. Successful cultures are not characterized by slogans on the wall or catchy phrases on t-shirts, it is the actions of the whole organization that speak. There is an atmosphere where champions are inevitable. There is a very strong shared vision where everyone knows their role and respects each other. There is a strong bias toward action – get er done. No one is trying to take credit or place blame. All for one and one for all. There is a high level of expectation that focuses on process, with a faith that the process will yield the desired outcome. Newcomers quickly recognize that they must earn the right to be part of the culture by performing and producing, no entitlement. Calculated risk taking is rewarded!
GAIN 2015 Lessons – Greg Thompson on PE as a Foundation
Greg is a elementary school PE teacher in Farmington Hills Michigan. It is hard to find a word to express this mans depth of knowledge and passion. If there is something more genuine than genuine Greg is it. In addition to teaching PE Greg also coaches soccer achieving USA Soccer A Badge, the highest level of certification in the US. I asked Greg to kickoff GAIN with a presentation on PE as the Foundation. Needless to say he knocked our socks off. He set the tempo for the whole program with his ideas. He started by surveying experts from around the world on what was important in a good foundation established by PE: Moving Well Static Balance – Ability to make a stable base Dynamic Balance Object control skill and ability to combine them with locomotor skills Landing Mechanics Flexibility – Only if you can express with balance, strength and speed General Strength Aerobic Fitness Behavior Some other thoughts from Greg: “Figure it out” – Give them the tools to solve moment problems and let them figure it out. They are OK to express themselves through movement. He treats the body like a paintbrush Create desirable difficulties It is one thing to value it; it is another thing to have a plan for teaching it. Games become an express of skill so teach skill first Behavior must be addressed – Growing people into responsible adults Not sure my brief words can do justice to Greg’s ideas and methods. Greg is the teacher we wish we all had in school and the teacher we want our children to have. Greg came to the first GAIN eight years ago as an attendee. He truly represents what GAIN is about – Quality, excellence, passion, sharing and humanity. Thanks Greg for helping make GAIN what it is.
GAIN 2015 – Wrap-up
It has been over a week since we ended GAIN 2015 our eighth iteration of the annual program. Each one has gotten successively better and this one was the best. It has been hard to get back into the normal swing of things after spending five supercharged days around such great professionals and even more important great people. It is very intense and demanding. I know for the first time attendees it is often overwhelming but we strive to set the bar high to help people improve as professionals. This is an annual event, a gathering of the network, but the network is an going process designed to facilitate communication, share experiences and ideas throughout the year via the online forum and to access high level information through the GAIN library. In succeeding days I will post on some of the highlight of GAIN 2015, in the interim enjoy the gallery of pictures that give a small flavor of what GAIN is about. Next GAIN will be June 2016 – Open by application only to professionals who want to share and learn – Hope you can join us.
Global Coach Conference Vierumäki 2015: early bird deadline June 30th!
Early bird deadline June 30th! I am privileged to present at this conference , hope to see you there. The early bird deadline for the ICCE Global Coach Conference in Vierumäki, Finland is Tuesday, June 30th. See www.icce-2015.com for all the details and to register. This will be a great opportunity to expand your coaching knowledge and develop your coaching network with an incredible group of coaching leaders: Baroness Sue Campbell, architect of the UK team at London 2012; outstanding coaches including Erkka Westerlund (Finland – ice hockey) Gerard Kemkers (Netherlands speed skating), Per Nymoen (Norway cross country skiing), and Vern Gambetta (USA athletics and physical preparation); applied researchers like Wade Gilbert, Wayne Allison, Pierre Trudel, and Jean Coté; some of the best Coach Developers in the world – Penny Crisfield, Kirsi Hämäläinen, Liam Moggan and Kathy Brook; high performance system developers Leena Paavolainen and Adrian Beurgi; Dr. Frank Dick, motivational speaker and coach of world leading athletes in multiple sports; and many more! Register today – we look forward to seeing you in August! John Bales President, International Council for Coaching Excellence Global Coaching Office Leeds Beckett University Headingley Stadium, St. Michael’s Lane, Leeds LS6 3BU, UK
House of Cards
How can you expect an athlete to excel at the highest level if they are physically illiterate? You would not think of asking someone to write a book if they can’t spell, punctuate or construct a correct sentence. That is what we are asking our athletes to do. Know the basics of movement; combine the basics into more complex movements, but never stray far from the basics. Simplicity will yield complexity. If you try to go too fast too soon without mastery of fundamentals then you are building a house of cards. It is not if it will fall, it is when. This is the genesis of inconsistent performance at later stages of development and definitely the cause of injuries. Injury prevention and performance enhancement start with physical literacy. Not real sexy and exciting but necessary. Build you athlete on a strong foundation and the construct strong walls not a house of cards that will blow over with the slightest breeze.
Discipline – An Outdated Concept?
I spend a lot of time with friends who are coaches. Invariably the topic turns to today’s athletes, and to one question: “Are they different? They certainly are different in many ways from the athletes of 1969, when I started coaching. But the biggest differences are not in the athletes themselves, but in the society we live in. One of those differences has been a breakdown in discipline. Discipline is the foundation for excellence, and self-discipline is the highest form of discipline. Of course, for youngsters to learn self-discipline they must have guidance: what is right, and what is not right? That guidance takes the form of rules. Coaches today have become reluctant to set rules, because then they must enforce them. That could be uncomfortable. What if a parent challenges them? Will they receive backing from the administration, from the school board, the principal, the vice-principal, and the athletic director? That’s certainly a legitimate concern, when anything from an attack by a parent to the coach’s job to a lawsuit could be at stake. My conversation with various coaches who have been coaching for more than twenty years indicates that such backing from the school system, or lack of it, is the basic problem. Coaches believe in discipline just as they always have, but they do not have the backing they used to have. Younger coaches are reluctant to set rules and enforce discipline because they will not be popular and they know they will not be backed. What is the answer? Discipline – Sport is not isolated from society; it is a microcosm of the society in which we live. So it is naïve to think that the problems that exist in society will not exist on our teams and with our athletes. For the young athlete to learn discipline demands guidance. We as coaches must provide that guidance. We must set the standards by fair rules that carefully lay out the behavioral expectations involved in being part of the team. These must be written. They must be clear so that there is no room for debate. Essentially as the coach you are providing a structure to begin to improve their abilities and their enjoyment of track and field. I think many of today’s athletes crave the structure we can give them, even though it may not be part of their everyday life outside of sport. But they have to understand that it’s a two-way street – that they can’t just follow the rules they like, but sometimes they must obey rules they don’t like. That’s the price they have to pay for the structure the coach provides. Discipline is a responsibility of coaching. If we do not enforce discipline then we are shirking our duty as coaches. We must understand that we are not coaching a sport; we are coaching young men and women who are competing in a sport. We owe it to them to provide the most positive experience that we can. Through firm and fair discipline we can create a favorable learning environment that will allow them to reach their potential. How can we do this? We can start by getting everyone on our side. You and your coaching staff should decide on the behavior that you expect of your athletes and then set the rules that will define those behaviors. Review them with your superiors. Get them to buy in and support you before any challenges are made. if you coach is a school setting it might be even better if you can get your athletic department to set rules that members of every team at your school must observe, to insure consistency from sport to sport. To those general rules, you can add rules specific to your sport. And if you feel comfortable doing so, you might want to involve the senior athletes and the parents in the process. If they’re part of the process, it’s easier for them to buy in. Once the rules are set, schedule a mandatory parents’ meeting to go over the rules and responsibilities for their youngsters to be on the team. This meeting should also educate the parents to practice procedures, nutrition guidelines, lettering policy and criteria for varsity selection. Take the opportunity to educate the parents about the sport. I repeat this is a mandatory meeting, not optional. Both the parent and the child must sign a statement that they will observe the rules. If they do not they will not be allowed to participate. Emphasize that to be an athlete is special. It is a privilege to participate, not a right. There should also be a pledge from the coaches as to the behavioral standards the athletes and parents can expect from the coach. The ultimate goal is to create an atmosphere of mutual respect. Remember as coaches we have a responsibility to teach our athletes. Very few will compete past the high school level, but they all can have the great growing-up experiences of testing their limits and being part of a team. Discipline will help insure a positive experience. It is not outdated, and it never will be.
Athleticism – Rediscovering the Joy of Movement
Where have all the athletes gone? At first that may seem like a very naïve statement, but lets examine it further. Look beyond the numbers. We have better performances that we have ever had, but there are more injuries and fewer athletes able to sustain high performance levels for an extended career. How have we gotten to this state? What is missing? It is athleticism. We know it when we see it! We talk about it, but do we know how to develop it? What is it? Lets begin by defining the term. Given its widespread use in the world of sports performance I was surprised that I was unable to find an acceptable definition so I came up with the following definition of athleticism. Athleticism is the ability to execute athletic movements at optimum speed with precision, style and grace. It is certainly not a very complicated definition. It is easy to see when someone has it. My observation is that, we have increased specialization and sacrificed overall athleticism. This is the downside of the emphasis on specificity in training as well as the emphasis on early specialization. Sometimes we are lead to believe it is an either-or proposition. Produce a better athlete or produce a better shot putter or high jumper with refined specific skills. Ultimately the goal is to produce the best possible athlete who does a particular event. In this case not only will performance be enhanced, but injuries will be reduced. Some of the downside is the apparent conflict in terms of time and effort. With the same amount of training time available is it possible to train to improve athleticism without sacrificing specific skill training. First of all we need to eliminate the distinction, the two are not mutually exclusive. They are co-dependent and intertwined, one enhances the other. There is time within the context of the existing structure to fit in athleticism components. It just needs to be made a priority. There is a saying that “You don’t need to see different things, but rather to see things differently.” Sometimes we overlook the obvious. In the incessant search to improve sport performance we have gotten away from the essence of it all. The foundation is athleticism. The foundations for athleticism are basic coordinative abilities. According to Drabik (Children & Sports Training) the coordinative abilities are: Balance – Maintenance of the center gravity over the base of support, it is both a static and a dynamic quality Kinesthetic Differentiation – Ability to feel tension to in movement to achieve the desired movement Spatial Orientation – The control of the body in space Reaction to Signals – The ability to respond quickly auditory, visual and kinesthetic cues Sense of Rhythm – The ability to match movement to time Synchronization of movements in time – Unrelated limb movements done in a synchronized manner Movement Adequacy – Ability to choose movements appropriate to the task The coordinative abilities never work in isolation, they are all closely related. They are the underlying foundation for and the prerequisite for technical skills Once the coordinative abilities are developed better athleticism is sure to follow. It is imperative to look for every opportunity to incorporate elements of athleticism in all aspect of training. Specific sport skills are a combination of patterns of complex motor programs. They are patterns that can be reproduced when we tap into the wisdom of the body. Though experiencing all different patterns of movement we learn to let things happen. We learn to let the motor program run. We cue an action that will result in a “chain reaction” of efficient movement. We need to emphasize a free play approach that results in fluidity and improvisational skills. Should we try to teach every movement and then coach it? Or should we allow the athlete the joy of discovery through exploration. There seems to be a worry about them getting it wrong! My answer to that is: What is wrong? There must be a spontaneity and anticipation, not a robotic programmed approach. It has been my experience working with athletes at all levels in a wide variety of sports that athletes will find their own best way of doing something if they are put in a position where they have to adapt. They are very adaptable. We need to encourage an extemporaneous approach much like a great jazz musician improvises. What has caused this decline in athleticism? There are several factors: Early specialization in one sport, one position or one event is a serious problem that has contributed to the decline in athleticism. The broader range of motor skill developed through free play and exposure to many varied motor programs is a big limiting factor. The choice is to produce better athletes or produce highly specialized athletes with a skill ranges very specific to their sport. Ultimately the goal is to produce the best athletes who participate in various sports. One sided training with an emphasis on one or two components of performance rather than a blend. The components of performance and therefore training are: speed, strength, stamina, suppleness, skill and recovery. There is a synergistic relationship between all components therefore all components must be trained during all phases of the year in varying combinations Monkey See – Monkey Do Syndrome. Just because an athlete has been successful with a particular training method does not mean that the method is the best or should be copied. It is my experience that many athletes are successful in spite of, not because of their training. Make sure that what you are doing is based on sound training principles and a good progression. “Nobody gets hurt, but nobody gets better.” Training that is so conservative or narrow that the athlete is never challenged will not produce results. The justification for many machine oriented strength training programs is that they are “safe.” In fact, because they fail to challenge the athleticism of the athlete they might actually predispose the athlete to injury. It is always easy and convenient to look to the “Good old days” as being better. The simple fact is that before the advent of specialization athletes at the high school level and even at the college level participated in several sports. It was not unusual to see a high school athlete play football, basketball and track. This was not so bad. The athlete may not have been as good early, but once they did chose to specialize they had a broader base of motor skills to draw upon to enhance their specific sport skill. Sometimes it is good to look back to gain perspective to move ahead. We cannot go backward, but we must look for ways to enhance athleticism that has been lost due to early specialization. Training must have a purpose that will transfer the training to the event. With a base of athleticism specific training will be even more purposeful. The basis of training athleticism is rooted in running, jumping and throwing which encompass the whole spectrum of human movement. The body is a link system; sometimes this link system is referred to as the kinetic chain. Athleticism training is all about linkage – it is all about how all the parts of the chain working together in harmony to produce smooth efficient patterns of movement. The brain does not recognize individual muscles. It recognizes patterns of movement, which consist of the individual muscles working in harmony to produce movement. The fact that we live, work and play in a gravitationally enriched environment cannot be denied. Over reliance on machines will give us a false sense of security because they negate some of the effects of gravity. Gravity and its effect must be a prime consideration when designing and implementing a functional training program or we are not preparing the body for the forces that it must overcome. We cannot ignore gravity, it is essential for movement. It helps us to load the system. Therefore we must learn to overcome its effects, cheat and even defeat it occasionally. Understanding and training athleticism is a challenging process. It demands creativity and imagination. It is often contrary to conventional wisdom as represented in current mainstream sport science research that emphasizes specificity and measurable outcomes. Do not be limited by conventional wisdom use it as a staring point and move forward while thinking and acting outside the box. You and your athletes will enjoy the day to day challenges of training with the results a higher injury free performance level.