Author: Vernon Gambetta
Training Do’s and Don’ts #2 – Hard/Easy
I was first introduced to the concept of Hard/Easy at the first clinic I attended in January 1968 by Bill Bowerman, the coach at University of Oregon. The Hard/Easy concept was a cornerstone of his program. It essentially consisted of a hard training day followed by an easy training day. He was very strict in its application. It made sense so when I started coaching the next year, I began to apply the concept. However, I quickly found out that some athletes needed a hard day, followed by a medium day and then easy and others needed two easy days after a hard day. Regardless the concept was applicable, and it is something I try to observe to this day regardless of the level of athlete and the sport. What I have seen over the years and especially of late is that too many people make the hard day too hard and depend on external means of recovery to get them “recovered.” Thinking they can cheat the body’s natural adaptive response. Conversely the other pitfall that I see is that the easy days are not easy enough. So how do you define hard and easy? I think of it as a ten-point scale of perceived exertion with a ten being very hard, essentially a competitive effort and a 1 being a complete rest sitting on the couch watching TV. The range of hard workouts should fall in the 7,8,9 range and easy should be in the range of 2,3, & 4. So essentially there needs to be a real contrast between the hard session and the easy session to allow the body to recover. Occasionally it is necessary to go two hard days in a row to simulate competition. The biggest pitfall is to get caught in the middle on easy days by doing work in the 5 and 6 range that does not allow for recovery and negligible training effect beyond making you tired. I call this the messy middle, it is where not much good happens. So, the message is to make the hard days hard and the easy days easy and don’t stuck in the messy middle.
Training Do’s and Don’ts #1 – PAL Paradigm (Running Technical Model)
Training D0 – Base your training on a sound technical model and then adapt it to your athletes. The PAL Paradigm is my interpretation of the technical model necessary to run with good mechanics regardless of the distance. That technical model is based on what must be done to sprint at top speed, it can then be adapted according to the distance. Running skill is a motor task! Like any motor task it is teachable and trainable. The system that I have evolved over the years to improve running mechanics is the PAL System™. PAL is an acronym for Posture, Arm Action, and Leg Action. The objectives of the system are fourfold: 1) To provide a context to running mechanics. 2) A systematic step-by-step teaching progression. 3) A context to direct training based on the needs established in the previous steps. 4) A criterion based progressive approach toward getting someone back to normal gait pattern after an injury. Posture is the position and alignment of the body – especially the head and trunk. Posture is dynamic, it changes with each step from the starting position on up to and through top speed. Posture should reflect the alignment of the body from the point of foot contact to the top of the head. The reference points for this alignment are the head, trunk, hip, knees, ankles, and feet Arm Action is the position and amplitude of movement of the arms and hands. The arms help to produce force and aid in balance so that force is properly applied against the ground. During acceleration, the emphasis is on driving the arms down and back to apply force against the ground. The optimum Leg Action is for the foot to contact the ground as close under the Center of Gravity as possible with a piston action from the hip. This is the most efficient stride. The amplitude of the leg action will vary with the speed of the run. Good running mechanics requires an optimum interplay between stride length and stride rate (frequency). During flight phase the knees are farther apart than the feet. In stance the swing leg knee is even or slightly of stance leg. Each person has an optimum stride length in relation to their leg length and the distance they are running
Functional Path Training Blog – Update
Ever since I started this blog in the summer of 2005 an ongoing theme has been exploring myths, misconceptions, half-truths and lies. I doubt that will change. I think because I am informed skeptic who keeps exploring those ideas, people and things that lead us astray from our goal of preparing robust athlete to thrive in the competitive cauldron. Starting next week, I plan on posting regularly on Training Do’s and Don’ts, highlighting what I have learned over the years and continue to learn day to day. I addition I will occasionally touch on the dos and don’ts on the GAINcast. I started this blog 17 years ago as a emotional release after a traumatic six months as a coach with the Nike Oregon project where I saw enough training don’t to fill a textbook. Over the past 17 years the blog has been a means of sharing ideas, challenging conventional wisdom, and learning to ask better questions. In my fifty plus years of coaching I have been exposed to and tried many training methods spanning spectrum from the good to the bad and the ugly. It has all been a learning experience. I think that framing what I have learned as training dos and don’ts is the best way to share what I have learned. I would like to hear from you (email gstscoach@gmail.com) with any questions and ideas to stimulate me to keep learning. Remember – Stay curious and don’t be afraid to color outside the lines.
GAIN 2022 In the Books – Best Ever!
GAIN 2022 was amazing! After being online for two years it was so great to be back together in person. Special thank you to those behind the scenes that helped to make it special: Martin Bingisser who has taken over much of GAIN administration and organization. My wife Melissa who does all the advance work. Ed Ryan who keeps things on time and efficient and keeps me under control. Brek Christensen, assistant track coach at Rice who secures the facilities. Those who make it extra special are the presenters and the attendees. What a wonderful group of professionals. This year’s theme was Coloring Outside the lines, and we did by constantly challenging each other through questions and discussions. The most important part of GAIN is the N in GAIN which is the network. The professional and personal connections that we make are invaluable and in many cases career changing. Enjoy my opening presentation Coloring Outside the Lines by going to this link https://www.hmmrmedia.com/2022/06/coloring-outside-the-lines-2/ For more information about GAIN go to https://thegainnetwork.com/
Building and Rebuilding the Complete Athlete
Interested to hear from any of you that attended this seminar. I started teaching it in 1992. Taught three that year and four each subsequent year until 1996. From 1996 to 2003 I taught twelve a year. It was an attempt to synthesize a large body of work across many fields.It was fun teaching, I learned as much as I taught. Eventually this led to GAIN. There was just too much information for two days and not enough time for participation. This year will be having out 15th session of GAIN at Rice University in Houston Texas. Really looking forward to it after being online the last two years.
Food for Thought?
When you are planning your training program or evaluating your program, I have found it very helpful to ask the following simple and very basic questions: Strong for What? Fast for What? Fit for What? Supple for What? Drill for What? Ultimately, what are you training for?
Learning the Craft – The La Cumbre Years 1969 to 1973
My first four years coaching were at La Cumbre Junior High School in Santa Barbara California, in the neighborhood where I grew up. I taught Physical Education and over the four years there I coached track and cross country each year as one season each of football and basketball. The photo is collage that a friend one of mine put together the year I was coaching football. Yes, we did wear ties when we coached back then – influence of my mentor. It was a real learning experience, learning the craft of coaching with boys aged 12 to 15 in seventh, eighth and ninth grade. I taught four or five periods of PE and then coached after school at the same time I was training for the Decathlon. Time management and attention management were crucial. Looking back on the experience fifty years later I would not trade the experience for anything. I am still in contact with many of the “kids”. Even though they are all grown up now in their sixties I still call them kids. Been great to see their life journeys and how what we did in sport influenced them and reflect on how much they taught me about life and coaching. It was a great foundation the next fifty years and continues to be today.
Body of Work
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 profoundly affect performance staying simple focused on the basics works for me. Finally, I am an informed skeptic thoroughly schooled in the school of hard knocks through success and failure. The picture of the books that I have written are reflection of passions for learning and sharing my craft. I am presentably working on two more books that I hope to finish in the next eighteen months. “The answer is there is no answer” Gertrude Stein. This is truer as I get older in my younger days, when I thought I had all the answers. Now I have more questions than answers.