Private vs Traditional Coaching

It is said that a man with a watch knows what time it is, a man with two watches is never sure.  This can easily be seen with young athletes today who go through three or more coaches a year, many times in sports that overlap or even in the same sport but on different teams.  It seems that at times these coaches can have philosophies that are very dissimilar and sometimes conflict, especially when they are playing/practicing for the same sport with two different coaches.

This sometimes happens with club athletes in track, and as a coach who works with kids at a school as well as club kids, I can tell  you that maintaining an open dialogue with the kids and the other coaches are a must. The two do not necessarily have to be at odds with other, but if there aren't clear cut rules issues can arise.  This is usually the case when an athlete from a school team chooses to train with a club or private coach as well.  Many school coaches see this as a distraction from the team and find it difficult to arrange training if the recovery periods are being disrupted by extra training.

Conversely, a club coach may be an athletes only access to the training and technical work an athlete needs due to a more specialized approach or because the school coach has little knowledge about proper training.

I see both of these often, but surprisingly I find that when the coaches are open and discuss the training with each other, great things can happen.  Some of the top local hurdlers train under two, sometimes three coaches but they are always in communication with the whole group so that their is no overtraining.  In some instances, the private coaching frees up the scholastic coach to work with other athletes that need more attention.

The key is to know boundaries, and have the athlete understand those boundaries.  As long as all the coaches are working towards the best interest of the athlete, it can work out.

Balancing Motivation

One thing that is hard for a track coach is balancing the motivational tools you use on an athlete.  They usually don't have the "do anything to be on the team" attitudes that you will find in the major sports, so finding how to encourage them without frustrating the athlete or making the athlete complacent is very important.

The truth is there is no quick and easy answer.  Everyone is different.  Some athletes only getting motivated by knowing how far off their competition they are, while others could care less about their competition and just want to set personal records.  Some athletes enjoy challenges, while others just want to be part of group.  Being too critical can cause some athletes to leave the sport, while not being critical enough may cause an athlete to think he or she has seen all the sport has to offer.

Find out what causes each athlete to tick.  Remember that girls are different than boys and high school athletes are different than middle schoolers.  It takes a lot of effort but a good coach will work hardest to leave no stone unturned and find how to properly motivate his team.

What is talent?

I used to think talent in track and field was solely straight line speed.  There is certainly big correlation between speed and performance and that is an easy talent indicator to judge an athlete off of, but by far not the only one.

The more I work with different types of athletes, the more I understand that talent can vary and manifest itself into vastly different forms.  I've worked with athletes who had horrible sprint mechanics and were slower than their distance counterparts, yet could reel off great splits in the distance races and be highly successful.  I've also seen athletes that had a high tolerance for work without necessarily the fastest footspeed or great endurance.  These athletes excelled at the 400 and 800.  And then you have the field events where speed may be just a very small portion of the recipe needed to to excel.

So what exactly is talent?  Is the guy who seems to never get injured no matter the training considered talented?  Is the kid who is mentally tough and doesn't mind hurting in a race talented?  And then what about the kid who drops thirty seconds off his mile time his senior year despite doing nothing different?  Is he talented?

My premise is that talent is not necessarily a myth, but the myth that speed is the sole indicator of talent should be cast aside.  Everyone is an outlier for a specific aspect of training.  The key is finding out what that aspect is and addressing it.  This is what makes talent identifying a major aspect of coaching.  The best coaches won't press an athlete in a bad event for his talents.  Learn to find your athletes talents.

The Convergence of Art and Science

I am not a exercise physiologist.  That is not to say I don't use science when discerning my training for my athletes though.  I have a specialist certification from the USTFCCCA for endurance events, two personal training certifications, and worked under an exercise physiologist and physical therapist for a year and a half. Science in the crux of the training design I put together for my athletes.

But that matters little if you can't put the art behind it, or rather, in front of it.  I've tried to plan training strictly on science and it never works because young athletes aren't robots and will rarely be mentally apt to doing what science says they can do day in and day out.  There is also the factor that certain kids will have certain desire to participate.  I have had varsity athletes decide to pick up and leave the sport because they were "bored" or for other reasons, but almost any coach will come across those issues here and there.

The key factor for a coach is to determine two philosophies they have to stick with.  An artful one, and a science based one, and then reconcile them.  How do you react when your kids only like to do certain types of workouts and don't give their best effort in others?  They are missing something in their training from a biological standpoint if that is the case, but how do you approach the issue?  There is a tough line, but you have to determine how much bend you can have between the two.

If a coach is only out to make kids happy, he will soon find that his practices are short and uneventful but may have less kids likely to quit, or perhaps more when they get bored because of lack of progression.  If a coach is only out to have his own way on the team he will have just a few athletes to work with because not many kids like to work under dictators.  It is important to factor both aspects into the training design you create for your athletes in order to get them to their peak levels under your guidance.

Balancing four seasons

My athletes run cross country, indoor track, outdoor track, and summer track each year.  To some coaches that is an abomination.  Some coaches will say that is too much racing.  I've heard it all.  There is one key factor people don't account for when they hear a kid is racing year round:  the coach isn't trying to peak them four times.

My athletes build their base in the fall and have some fun on the cross country course (although many loathe the longer workouts) and then transition to some quicker workouts, but almost exclusively on grass, for the indoor season.  We have a faux peak, just a slight tapering with a couple quicker workouts the week of state, and then progress onto the outdoor season.  And even for outdoor, we are only doing a hard anaerobic oriented workout once a week.  This will change the final two weeks of the season as my athletes may do two hard workouts on the track in the same week.

And finally summer track isn't oriented the same way the other seasons are.  Fitness is simply maintained while the athletes enjoy summer breaks, and hopefully mature in their racing strategies.  Summer track is the time for the athletes to find out ways to race effectively rather than carry the burden of a state championship on their shoulders.  And it works too.  We have seen almost every athlete progress each season, and through summer track they also maintain their racing senses and can experiment to find out their most effective racing strategy.

Finally, you also need to look at the amount of times we race.  Since the beginning of the school year, one of my top athletes who placed on the podium both in cross country and indoor track has raced in less than 20 competitions in the last calendar year.  That is only one race every two and a half weeks.

Don't believe the hype.  Athletes can race and train year round if they have a strategy and are looking to only peak once or twice a year.  It keeps them in touch with their fitness and their racing skills, and also gives them something to look forward to in the summer.

Everyday is a training day

Recently I was in NYC for the New Balance Indoor Nationals, enjoying street food, having snowball fights, and chaperoning a distance runner and a six and a half foot giant who throws the shotput in over 60 feet.  At the hotel we made use of the weight room since the weather outside wasn't conducive to preparing for a major meet.  Anthony, the thrower, made a joke that had a bit of truth to it.  Watching him do some light arm exercises he looked at me and said "Everyday is an arms day."  I laughed, but while his intention was simply for humor, it rings true in the sense that everyday is a training day.

Now don't get me confused, I am not saying every day is a weight room day, or a long run day, or track workout day, etc., but everyday is a chance to do something to get better, even if it is a recovery day.  We need to think about what we can do to maximize the goals for the day.  There is always a course of action we can take to make sure at the end of the day we fully took advantage of our training.  Did we ice?  Did we stretch?  Did we hydrate?  Even on recovery days you can make sure your routine is efficient.  Diet, sleep, and icing can be factors that you look at to make sure you are the most prepared you can be next time you toe the line.

Strength Training for Endurance Athletes

Strength training for endurance athletes is a hot topic amongst the coaches in the athletics community.  You have coaches that have their athletes in the weight room several times a week to others who simply do some core work a couple times a week and leave it at that.  The whole topic is tricky because it isn't as cut and dry as some make it out to be.  Some factors in the amount of weight training an athlete should do include age, training age, event the athlete is training for, previous experience with strength training, accessibility to equipment, and experience a coach has implementing strength training in his or her program.

Now since we are talking about endurance athletes and not football or hockey players I think we should begin there, began age won't factor in as much as with those sports.  Endurance athletes tend to be ectomorphs, or those who are naturally lithe with a fast metabolism who will usually not gain much muscle unless on a very strict program.  While these athletes can be naturally strong, they usually are starting from a point where they have minimal strength training experience and will struggle with issues dealing with proprioception and kinesthetic awareness and will have a much smaller threshold for tolerance to strength work.  This is true, in my opinion, regardless of age with ectomorphic athletes.  I find my high school athletes without strength backgrounds will struggle equally at the initial strength training phases as my middle school and junior high athletes and at this point we are only talking about pushups and lunges, not even weighted exercises.

From this point I find that most coaches dismiss strength training because of how long it takes to develop those neural receptors that make strength training as natural as walking or running, or because of the necessary technical aspects of weight training.  This is unnecessary as much strength can be gained from simple body weight exercises that can be added to the end of practice a couple times a week.  The technical aspects, while not non-existent, should not be too difficult for a coach to aide his athletes with.  You must remind your athletes that a strong body recovers quicker, is more powerful, and is less injury prone.  The body weight exercises also reduce the need for equipment, can be done regardless of training age or physical age, event, and is the base for potential weighted exercises down the line.

For some late high school and most college aged athletes, a more regimented strength training routine will be necessary, but for the majority of middle school through high school aged athletes should focus on the basics and become proficient in exercises that establish a strength training base.  I will show some sample training regimens for younger athletes since my focus is the age-group athlete in AAU or USATF.  But to be sure, these exercises are the base of the future strength routines the athlete will encounter down the road.  Most can have weight added to them when the athlete becomes mature enough to handle them.  One last thing, this strength plan does not deal with plyometrics with is a whole issue unto itself.  This deals with the basic exercises necessary to develop strength, not simply power.

Here are two strength plans that should only take a few minutes but can help a young team become better athletes:

Workout A-  10-30 pushups, 10-30 prisoner squats, 10-30 lunges, 10-30 crunches, 30-60 seconds of planks on each side and the middle, and 30-60 seconds of Australian crawl

Workout B-  20-40 step ups, 5-20 tricep pushups, 30-60 seconds of bridging, 10-20 dips, 30-60 seconds of pedestal, and 30-60 seconds of scissor kicks.

Have a philosophy, not a blueprint

I admit, in my five years of coaching, I've struggled with creating training plans.  Growing up I followed those three to six month plans often found in Lydiard or Daniels books and I thought that the key was in the depth of the training schedule.  It was a bit easier when there was only one person who had to follow that schedule and that person was willing to do the things necessary to keep the training close to the original.  It may be obvious to others, but it wasn't obvious to me at first that trying to keep a group on the same page was going to be a huge headache.  I had plenty of them.

I would find myself writing training schedules for the month, then three days in I would have to change something.  I felt that the training I wanted was being constantly derailed and my athletes would not achieve what I had originally planned for them.  It took a few years before I fully gave up the idea of scheduling my training more than a few days out.  I understood at that point that as long as I could go back to the roots of my training philosophy, the training would eventually get done in due time, even if I had to constantly switch what days workouts would be done, etc.  And a crazy thing happened, my runners didn't stop improving.  It was a relief to know that I didn't need to be so high strung about the day to day perfections.  I then had time to deal with headaches from other aspects of dealing with teenagers!

My advice to other coaches, especially young ones like myself, is not to worry about missing days here and there in the training program, and following something too rigid will always leave you in disappointment. Stick  with a philosophy and you will end up much happier at the end of the day.

Second year of Southern Athletics

My first year coaching AAU summer track was two summers ago.  I only coached 8 kids, and by the end of the summer around half of that was still training.  I tagged along with a local club I was just coaching a few kids who went to school I just started coaching at, John Curtis Christian in River Ridge.  Last summer I took a big step and started my own club, Southern Athletics, and with the help of head track coach from Curtis, Preston Curtis, worked with over 20 kids who, amazingly, all stuck with it.  So now I've come to 2013 and the second year of the club and this year looks like it will be easily bigger and better than the last two years.  I'm excited and anxious to help the kids develop over the course of the summer and have a solid team to take to the AAU Club National Championship at Disney world in July.  Time will tell how well we do, but either way it should be a fun time.