Functional Path Training

Good Coach - Bad Coach

Phillip Bazzini wrote the following in response to my post about Jim Steen : Which leads me to a thought I have been pondering; if coaches’ success is measured almost exclusively in wins/losses, how do we measure our success as coaches of athletic development? Phil, this is a great question. Especially in light of the fact that I think we are in a crisis situation in regard to caoching today. There is a distict lack of trained coaches accross sports at the developmental level. The attitude is "anyone can coach." I don't think so. Just becaue you plyed the game at any level does not qualify you to coach. (That is another topic for another post)

Let me begin by giving my opinion of a what makes up a good coach in general and then I will get specific to the Athletic Development coach. This is something that puzzled me from the day I got into coaching in 1969. I saw coaches that were recognized as great coaches that could not coach their way out of a wet paper bag. My observation then and now is that they were blessed with talent and were smart enough not to screw it up. I saw this at the high school where I coached. They were dominant in football for a long period, but when the talent ran out, the same coach doing the same things was terrible. He was not a very good coach. he coach football, not the people who played football. A good coach coaches people not the sport. I am also convinced that recognition does not necessarily make a good coach. There are so many coaches at junior high schools, high schools, small colleges, swim clubs and tennis clubs that consistently do a great job of developing the talent they have. Helping them to be the best they can be. There may not be any DI athletes come out of those programs but the kids learn their sport and have a great experience competing and improving. Good coaches are good teachers of fundamentals, they have discipline that is fair and firm. Great communication skills are very important to be a good coach, communication with everyone, the administration, parents, assistant coaches and most importantly the athletes.

What makes a good Athletic Development coach? The same as above, the coach who makes the most of the talent they have to work with. Do the athletes consistently improve? Are they free of preventable injuries? At the pro level do they actually work with the players? In so many situations the AD coach is a figurehead that the players avoid like a plague because they do not have faith in the coaches ability. I know one coach who is considered a great S&C coach because of the championship teams he ‘worked “ with,  who never worked with more than four players on the team on a regular basis. So winning is not a validation of a good AD coach. How about being S&C coach of the year? Most of the time those are popularity contests, if you drink and socialize with the good old boys then you are a candidate for coach of the year. AD coaches are part of the support team. As support team members they should be anonymous, not upfront. The same holds true for doctors and trainers. The focus should be on the athlete. A good AD coach is organized, and knowledgeable. They have ability to communicate and motivate the athlete. They should have a growth mindset. They have a thorough plan and then implement that plan. They thoroughly understand the sport they are working with. 

These are my opinions, I would be interested in your thoughts and ideas.

Jim Steen - Master Coach

This is from today's New York Times. I think it really captures what Jim is about . It makes me count my blessing that I am able to work with people like this.

New York Times February 25, 2009

Coach Keeps Truths and Swim Titles Flowing

By KAREN CROUSE

GAMBIER, Ohio — A two-lane highway that accommodates Amish buggies and cuts through the farmland of central Ohio may be the road to success. One day last spring, Ohio State’s football coach, Jim Tressel, made the hour-long drive from Columbus to learn from the coach Jim Steen, whose Kenyon College swimmers have won 47 N.C.A.A. Division III men’s and women’s team titles.

Tressel, who has guided the Buckeyes to five Big Ten titles and three Bowl Championship Series title games in eight seasons, sat in Steen’s office and scribbled pages of notes one afternoon as Steen shared his philosophies.

“Jim is one of the most intriguing people I’ve ever met,” Tressel said recently by telephone.

Steen, 60, bears a resemblance to the actor John Lithgow and stars as Kenyon’s version of the absentminded professor. He is 6 feet 5 inches but walks with a slouch, as if he cannot bear to tower over others. His work attire is shorts and flip-flops, but he exudes a formality that is rooted in good manners.

During the season, which runs from September through March, Steen frequently misplaces his cellphone or his eyeglasses, and he often forgets to eat. But his focus on his swimmers is so keen, it cuts through the chlorine haze of their lives.

Many of the 33 women and 29 men on this year’s teams speak of Steen as if he were the Stroke Whisperer. They say he can finish their sentences, articulate their unspoken fears, read their minds.

Kellyn Caldwell, a freshman, recalled a story told by her mother, Kris Kennard Caldwell, a former Kenyon swimmer who spent one season as Steen’s assistant. Her mother said that Steen studied one of his relay swimmers as she stood behind the blocks, then said: “She’s going to false start. I can tell.” Sure enough, she did.

Judy Holdener, an associate professor of mathematics at Kenyon, said there was no scientific formula for Steen’s success.

“You can copy his methods, but it’s the intangibles that set Coach Steen apart,” she said. “He has this ability to connect with people, to figure out what makes them tick. He’s a genius when it comes to that.”

Before last week’s North Coast Athletic Conference championships, Steen met with the 14 men and 12 women who had surpassed the qualifying standards for the Division III national championships in March. They would not need to shave their arms or backs or training mileage for the conference meet.

Steen, who speaks in a raspy voice and run-on sentences, emphasized the importance of qualifying four more men and six more women to reach the team cap. He was counting on the top swimmers, he said, to provide the waves of enthusiasm and inspiration that their shaved and tapered teammates could ride to national cuts and best times.

Though swimming is an individual pursuit, Steen treats it as a team sport. He preaches to his athletes that everybody has a redeeming quality; as teammates, their job is to find the positive in one another and let go of the rest.

“We need to be ready,” Steen said. “You guys as much as anybody will set the tone when we go into the conference meet.” He added, “We could not win it.”

Then he reiterated one of his simple truths: “Not winning the war is not nearly as bad as not winning the battles.”

The men and women finished second, behind Denison, while adding six automatic N.C.A.A. qualifiers: two men and four women. The loss ended the men’s conference winning streak at 11 and the women’s at 4.

Steen, whose wife of 32 years, Marcie, and two daughters swam for him, is a big believer that the result should never overshadow the process. It is why he rarely mentions his 29 consecutive national men’s team championships or his 22 overall women’s crowns in his 33 years at Kenyon. (He arrived in 1975, and has taken two one-year sabbaticals.)

Sitting in his office at Kenyon Athletic Center, which houses a beautiful 50-meter indoor pool, Steen swiveled to meet a visitor eye to eye. He leaned in close and said the pursuit of a single goal often inhibits the risk-taking and creative thinking necessary for personal growth.

Steen challenges his swimmers to reshape their contours of success. In one mass e-mail message to them, he wrote, “Find a place within yourself where success and failure don’t matter, a place where you can engage in battle without compromise.”

For the senior Michael Machala, success and failure last year became as blurred as his vision through his tears. Machala was caught in a numbers crunch, which happens regularly at Kenyon because more swimmers are on the team than are allowed to compete in a meet.

After failing to achieve a national qualifying standard his first two years, Machala surpassed the cutoff time in the 100-yard butterfly at a last-chance meet. Machala was ecstatic. “Then reality set in,” he said.

Machala was the Lords’ 19th qualifier, and they could enter only 18. He attended the meet as a spectator after accepting another of Steen’s simple truths: it is better to qualify for nationals and not swim than to have never swum fast.

This year, Machala qualified for nationals in multiple events. Looking back on last year’s experience he said: “It was a really big time for mental growth. I don’t think I’d be where I am today if that hadn’t happened.”

Steen preaches the art of adaptation, of reinventing yourself as circumstances dictate. One of his best breaststrokers, Tracy Menzel, a senior, came to Kenyon as a freestyle sprinter.

Her best events were the 50 and 100 freestyles, but she hit a plateau as a freshman and declined. At Steen’s suggestion, she started training in the breaststroke. In four years, she has lowered her time in the 100 by more than six seconds. As a sophomore, she won the national title.

Menzel said, “I wonder what would have happened if I had been at another school and hadn’t had a coach who said, ‘Let’s do something completely different than what we recruited you for.’ ”

Asked which of Steen’s simple truths she has most tightly embraced, Menzel did not hesitate. “The one that’s really stuck with me,” she said, is, “you can approach anything two ways: under a threat or for the challenge.”

The best swimmers at Kenyon would be challenged to make the traveling squads for the top Division I programs, though not for lack of training. They spend as much time working out as their counterparts at powerhouses like Michigan or Stanford. The difference is they are swimming for personal satisfaction and not for fear of losing scholarships, because no athletic scholarships are awarded in Division III.

“Swimming here is like a partnership you enter into with Coach,” ” said Nat Carruthers, a junior from Boulder, Colo.

The investment that Steen makes in each of his athletes seemed to impress Tressel.

“One of the things that jumped out at me was Jim’s passion for working to be certain that his young people reach their potential,” Tressel said. “It’s even agonizing for him the thought of that not occurring.”

Steen said that he told Tressel that he stopped watching the telecast of the 2007 B.C.S. title game because the favored Buckeyes were well on their way to a 41-14 loss to Florida.

“I felt physically ill,” Steen told Tressel. “Because I could imagine that being us two months later: being heavily favored and losing.”

Another of Steen’s simple truths comes from the Bible: The exalted will be humbled and the humble will be exalted. The road to success, he will tell you, has no neon signs to herald your arrival.

Out of Nowhere

Out of Nowhere is a book about Nike written from the perspective of one of the earliest and most loyal employees of Nike, Geoff Hollister. I really enjoyed this book even though I am no longer much of a believer in the Nike story. I think Nike is the 800 gorilla that has corrupted track and field. That is something that happened beginning in the late 1980’s and continues today, but this book is about the founding of Nike and the influence of Bill Bowerman. It brought back a rush of fond memories for me of the days when the sport of track and field still had a bit of purity and interest in the essence of the sport - competition. It is a good read. Geoff is battling cancer and that is the focus of the last two chapters. The following quote is the last two paragraphs of the book, I thought they were worth sharing.

“…Life thrusts you into a competitive environment. How do you prepare for the realities and the unknown? Hopefully you have a mentor, a Bowerman who pushes you at that critical time. A time when someone has a belief in your future more than you do. it’s not about how long you live but how you contribute. It’s about doing your best and doing the right thing. It’s about recovering from your mistakes and not giving up. It’s about the baton pass to a new generation. It’s about the realization that you cannot go it alone. It takes a team.

In the end, you are somewhere in the middle, part of a never ending process. The future will never remember what was in your bank account or what kind of car you drove. The future will remember that wild ride of life where you believed in others and left a gift behind for someone else to dream the impossible. The gift was your own life. It does not matter whether it was long or short. What did you leave behind?”

Football Follies

The latest word from that iteration of the circus known as the NFL Combine is that the theme of this combine is “Fluid Hips.”  I was channel surfing yesterday and landed on several of the ESPN pundits talking about the combine. I sat forward in my chair hoping I would learn something about talent selection and identification when they started talking about “Fluid Hips.” What the hell are fluid hips? I think I have an idea of what they are talking about but do they know? Does this  represent another example of NFL group think and double speak? I think they are talking about hip mobility. If that is the case is what they are doing really measuring and evaluating that quality. I guarantee that the hurdle hip mobility test originated by Steve Myrland and Bill Knowles (Athletic Development page 63 & www.gambetta.com/books ) will measure that. How about doing a complete Athlete Profile following the Kelvin Giles model  http://movementdynamics.com that is now used extensively in rugby.

The combine and so called pro days are now marketing events. Do they really have anything to do with the game? I am convinced that most coaches really have no idea of what happens in the game. They think they do because they either played the game or watched thousands of hours of film so they could better imitate what other are doing - sheepwalking. They coach what they think is happening rather than what is actually happening. When they talk about speed of the game do they have any idea what they really mean? Does anyone know how fast and how many yards and at what speeds a wide receiver runs in a game versus practice? What kinds of loads are imposed on planting and cutting? What is the cumulative load of the collisions? What are the physical demands of practice and training versus the game?

It all comes down to a simple question – Do you want to innovate or imitate?

Evalutating a Training Program - Part 4 - Summing Up

If in doubt use the the old reliable 3P criteria. The the training program does meet the 3P criteria it is probably flawed.

Practical - Can you do the program with the minimal facilities, equipment and supervision. Simplicity yields complexity.

Personal -Is is individualized? Does it fit you or is it one size fits all?

Proactive - Is there a clear plan and a progression?

Evaluating a Training program – Part Three – The Who

Do you know the origins of the training programs or system you are using?  Who designed it? What is their background? What are their credentials and experience? Beware of certifications disguised as qualifications. I value experience and academic credentials over commercial certifications. I am always wary if a person has too many letters after their name.

Is this a commercial venture that requires you to purchase equipment? Who are their sponsors? Who actually designs and writes the training program? If is a training center who actually implements the program – it is a qualified coach or an intern? Do they actually coach or do they just lead you through the workout?

Do the results of the program speak for themselves or are there a long list of celebrity and all star endorsers? Is it individual? How much does it cost? Are the claims for the program valid?

Part Two – Evaluating a Training Program – Practical Considerations

Demands of the Sport – Does the program address the demands of the sport that you are training for or is it one size fits all?

Qualities of the Individual Athlete – Does the program consider the physical qualities of the individual athlete. Strength and weaknesses in all physical qualities must be considered. Is there a remedial component to address any deficiencies.

Pattern of Injuries/Injury History – What are the common injuries in the sport you are preparing for? Does the program take into account the individual’s injury history.

“24 Hour Athlete” Concept – Does the program recognize that that you only train a limited number of hours a day, but that you have to work or go to school.

Time Frame Available to Execute the Plan – Is the time frame for the program arbitrary or does it take into account the varied adaptation rate for the different physical qualities. Miracle six programs generally do not meet this criteria.

Specific Goals – What are the specific goals of the program? Are they measureable and achievable given the time frame available.

Developmental Level – Does the program take into account your current state of fitness and current technical development in your sport?

Competition Schedule – Does the program take into account the varied demands of the competition schedule?

Recovery/Regeneration – Is there variation in the program and planned recovery ?

Equipment & Technology – Is the program based on equipment or technology that will not allow you to train if you do not have that equipment or technology.

Part One - Evaluating a training Program - Basic Principles

The following are commonly accepted principles of training. A sound training program should address each of these principles. You should be able to identify these principles clearly and quickly. I maintain that if all of these principles is not observed then the training program is fundamentally unsound.

Progression – The most fundamental of all the principles. Clear progression pathways should be articulated. The goals of the overall training program, the goals of each season should be clear. There must be a means of evaluation to determine a starting point and progress to the ultimate training goal.

Accumulation – Adaptation is a cumulative process. No one workout can make an athlete but one workout can break an athlete. A good program must plan for immediate, residual and cumulative training effects.

Variation – Systematic planned variation will insure continued adaptation. I emphasize that this must be planned, but it does not mean that every workout has to be entirely different and unique. Variation can occur due to type of load, frequency, intensity or volume.

Context – Everything in a program must be in context. It must fit with the objectives of the overall program and the goals of the individual session.

Overload – This is basic, you include a stress beyond a normal stress to elicit an adaptive response. What is often misunderstood is that overload can come from volume, intensity or density/frequency.

Recoverability – The training program must take into account the ability of the athletes to recover from the training load. If the workouts continually bury the athlete then there will not be a positive training response significantly increasing the risk of injury, illness or overtraining.

Evaluating A training Program

This week I plan to write a series of posts that will give you the tools to be able to evaluate a training program. I keep getting phone calls and questions asking my opinion on various popular programs. Rather than comment on Fat Fit or Jungle Jane’s program, I think it is more effective to give you a template to evaluate your own program and other programs objectively. The criteria is based on my experience, sport science, and sound pedagogy, not commercial hype or marketing. I do not have a program or a certification to sell so I think I can be objective. In my 47 years of training and 40 years of coaching I have seen many fads come and go, so I will put a historical context on my evaluation. Tomorrow I will start with training principles.

Training Focus

A mantra that I have lived by throughout my coaching career is that you are what you train to be. If you train to be slow then you will be slow, if you train to be fast you will be fast. This seems obvious doesn’t it? Then why do we persist in looking for secret and magic training methods that are essentially one way dead end streets. When you get to the dead end now where do you go? There is no return. What struck me as I was listening to military presenters at the Combat Athlete Symposium is that they were training for the tests, the traditional PT (Physical Training) tests; this has driven their training down a one way street that they realize is not preparing for the realities of modern combat. We do the same in sports, with combine type testing and emphasizing fitness tests for the athletes that demand they be fit for the test, not fit for the game.

The demands of the game should determine the training and the testing. The older I get and the more I coach the more I realize that even with the game analysis tools we have available to us today that that we are preparing for a game we think they are playing rather than the game they are actually playing. Remember you are what you train to be! Should you test? Absolutely, but the tests should give useful information that relates to the game and the players position in the game. It cannot be effective if it is some arbitrary standard that some coaching legend dreamed up 50 or 60 years when there was nothing (The 40 in Football and the 60 in Baseball).  This is 2009 we have data and detailed sport science information to help determine more exact training and testing let use it.