Functional Path Training

!!!!!!!!!!!

Whatever you do each day put an exclamation point on it. No matter how small or big. Make a difference.

You can!

Leadership through Respect

I saw this in the current  Sports Illustrated in an article about the young NFL head coaches. I thought it was quite enlightening given the prevalence of military metaphors in coaching.

Bob Mayer, a former Green Beret who writes books about leadership, says coaches get military authority backward, viewing players as infantrymen—interchangeable and replaceable—rather than as Special Forces elites. Mayer says coaches typically demand respect as a condition of employment. Instead, they should award respect up front and challenge players not to lose it. "A lot of these younger coaches are operating off a World War II mind-set," Mayer says. "They're about 60 years out of date."

Success, Failure and Learning

I am always interested in learning. I want to learn why teams win and why teams lose. Over the years I have found it interesting when and how coaches and teams learn. I am reminded of an incident about twelve years ago with the Tampa bay Mutiny in the MLS. The previous week we had lost a match one nil and the head coach went ballistic after the lose. The following week we won a match one nil and the coach was ecstatic, jumping up and down and praising everyone in the locker room. Walking off the field after practice of the game that we won, one of our forwards a veteran player from Italy who had player for several top teams in Serie A and on the Italian World Cup team said to me: “ Prof (In Europe the fitness guys are called Prof) we win everything good, we lose everything bad, not so.” He was spot on in the “win” we had played terrible, no team concept, poor execution of basics but had been lucky and scored on a mistake. In the lose the opposite was true. We had played brilliantly, great team play, crisp passing and execution but the other team scored a lucky goal. The coach had missed the opportunity for two teachable moments.

The moral of the story, if you look at great teams and coaches, they maintain an even keel. They learn from both the successes and the failures. Improvement is all about constant learning. The great ones focus on the process. Sure winning ugly is still winning, but generally it does yield championships. Consistency is what is rewarded, consistently both mentally and physically.

Evaluating Results – Follow-up from Jim Ricahrdson

The following is from Jim Richardson, Women’s swim coach at University of Michigan. I have had the pleasure of working with Jim in an advisory capacity for the last six years as he has evolved and fine tuned his total program. It has been a great educational experience for me to work with a coach like this who is a true professional, willing to share and keep innovating. I know if I were a young coach I would be hanging out in his office every free moment I had, eager to learn.

Jim response to the post from a member of the Michigan S&C staff disparaging his swim program and my involvement:

Well I guess it would be appropriate for me to have some comment here, even though I have more important things to do than to defend my program and philosophy. 

While I appreciate the statistical analysis of our Big Ten performances through the years, my primary goal was always to perform our best at the NCAA Championships.  Most years we have a number of swimmers who do not peak for the conference championship and that certainly has an effect on our conference placing, especially in years when we are not as talent laden (i.e. 2006).  If you look closely at our NCAA placings we were trending down beginning in 2000 and bottoming out at 27th in 2002.  During the 2002-03 season I began to reassess every aspect of our program.  At the end of that year I asked Vern if he would consider working with us because what we were doing was not working - over 60% of our swimmers had recurring shoulder problems and we were not improving at the rate I thought we should.  We began a basic functionally-based program designed by Vern in the fall of 2003.  That program ensured that we would have a logical progression from basic strength to strength endurance to event oriented power.  Within 3 months our shoulder problems all but disappeared.  We swam faster in practice, in meets, and we had almost universal breakthrough peak performance swims.  From 2004-2008 our NCAA performances were very solid based on our talent level (excepting 2006 when I screwed up our parametric progression, and 2009 when we were without our top 2 swimmers).  In 2007 and 2008 we were the highest placing Big Ten team (9th) at the NCAA championships, which was one of our goals for each of those teams.  In addition, in that time period we were the only Big Ten team to have an NCAA and USA Swimming individual champion - a swimmer who developed within the program.

While I am not naive enough to believe that a team's performance depends totally on any single variable, I do believe that the selection and integration of those variables is the key to improved performance.  Each of us (sport coaches) has to determine what we believe and why we believe it.  Having a formal education background in exercise physiology and biomechanics I believe I have a fair grip on what we are trying to accomplish in the developmental process.  Nonetheless, I have tried to remain open to different methodologies and philosophies.  However, in the end there is only so much time and I need to ensure that we are getting the biggest "bang for our buck" - need to do versus nice to do, as Vern often says.

I have tried a number of approaches to dryland performance development in my 39 years of coaching swimming at the international level.  I have been influenced by many people in my career.  All I can say is that I have great confidence in the things that Vern and I have implemented.  I also understand that many others have contributed to this knowledge base and that it continues to be a work in progress. 

A final word on "success."  Some of us are blessed to work with highly talented individuals.  I've never believed that the performances of the most talented or placings at championships are the best criteria to use to evaluate the “success” of a program.  Talent has a way of "forgiving" a number of mistakes in the training process (not to mention the recovery process).  I look at the slower, less talented swimmers in our program and ask - "Are they getting faster?"  To me, they are the most accurate measure of whether what we are doing is working or not.  So when we have swimmers who have never placed in the top 24 at the US Junior Championships prior to coming to Michigan, now placing in the top 16 at the US World Championship Trials or qualifying for the NCAA Championships - well, they are getting faster.  In swimming, at the end of the day, that is the only performance measure that really matters to me.

Back to the Roots

My roots are as a coach are deep in Athletics (Track & Field) so the opportunity to spend three days in Puerto Rico totally immersed in Athletics was a rich and fulfilling experience. In Athletics, I believe because of its very subjective nature, how fast, how high, high far, there is no BS. You need to do basic things very well and be able to repeat them consistently to have even moderate success. Listening to Wolfgang Ritzdorf, Gary Winckler and Klaus Bartonietz speak and getting to hang out with them was a great experience. It reminded again of the necessity to balance all components of training to insure success. Strength must be in context of all the other biomotor qualities. If you want to get to the essence of training immerse yourself in Athletics, the mother of all sports.

2009 NACACTCA Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico

This is the outline of my presentation to the 20th annual NACACTCA Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico. I am honored to present. This group has really raised the standard of coaching in the the whole region that includes North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Victor Lopez, Gary Winckler, myself and Dennis Landry were the four founders of this organization. It is unfortunate that Dennis passed away last year, but he would would be proud of the accomplishments of the group. He will be in our thoughts this weekend.

Training in the New Millennium

I.             Innovation and Change

Where will innovation come from?

How will change occur?

Is innovation and change really necessary?

Beware of the tyranny of dead ideas

            Build on the past and learn from it, don’t repeat it

            Too many coaches still act as if the world is flat!

    The Medici Effect

        Connect seemingly unrelated fields by stepping into the intersection             of fields, disciplines or cultures

        That allows you to combine existing concepts into a large number of             new ideas.

        Look at different disciplines and search for places where they         intersect. At these intersections there is a myriad of new ideas and             applications to be explored.

Complexity Science

The study of systems composed of many and varied parts that interact in complex and non-linear ways.

Systems cannot be understood simply by understanding the parts - the interactions among the parts and the consequences of these interactions are equally significant.

II.           Coaching

Art or Science?

Coaching is not something you do, it is something you are!

Beliefs and Mythologies versus Facts and Best Practice

Who are the coaches today?

Where did they come from?

Where will the next generation of coaches come from?

How do you coach?

      Are you a Simplifier

      Are you a Complexifier?

Be a Generalist

A generalist has the skill of making connections among seemingly unrelated information.

It's not the links, but the linkages that make the system.

The specialists focus on the links, generalists can stand back and see, in the bigger, "holistic" picture, how they work together.

Recognize that coaching is management

      Managing Training

      Managing Injuries

      Managing Competition

III.          Talent Identification and Development

Nature or Nurture – The Talent Code (Coyle)

2012 Olympians are twelve years old today!

What is the plan for their identification & development in Athletics?

Who are you coaching today, right now?

Who will you be coaching, five and ten years from now?

We must recognize that are competing with other sports for talent.

            How about the Balyi model of development? Is it valid? Does it work?

Stages of Development

Initiation

FUNdamental – Fundamental movement skills

Learning to Train – Fundamental techniques of track and field

Training to Train – Build a good engine

Training to Compete – Optimizing fitness preparation

Training to Win – maximize performance skills

Retirement/Retainment

The Goal

At the end of the journey all physical limitations are eradicated and is the athlete full ready technically, tactically, physically and psychologically to compete to win in the competitive arena.

IV.         Planning/Periodization

When are we going to recognize that periodization is concept not a model?

Why do we still teach antiquated periodization models and concepts in our coaching education programs?

Must recognize that Periodization is not about time it is about timing

Gap Analysis - The difference between training and competition

Are we planning for continual adaptation?

V.          Technique

Where will innovations and breakthroughs occur?

How can we be technically sound without being technique bound?

How can we better adapt the technique to the athlete?

Skill Acquisition and perfection

Continual process of solving increasingly complex movement problems

Progression

            Stable/Predictable >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Unstable/Chaotic

            3 R’s

      Routine

      Repetition

      Refinement

VI.         Training

Where will training innovations and breakthroughs occur?

Are we building complete and adaptable athletes?

Does your training reflect the current science of training?

Training myths and beliefs versus training realities

Stretching – How and Why?          Max VO_{2 –} Random number or relevant?            

Lactate – Friend or foe?                  Energy Systems – So What?        

Max Strength – How Much & When?

VII.       Summary

We are fortunate to coach a great sport – ATHETICS – The mother of all sports, so let’s honor that sport by giving our athletes the best of our knowledge and wisdom. NCACTCA has played a major role raising the standard of coaching in this the last twenty years, let’s all insure that that we continue the quest for knowledge to allow our athletes to run faster, throw further and jump higher and longer.

A Means to an End

Strength training and for that matter all training is a means to an end – improved injury free performance in the competitive arena. Because of the emphasis on this area, I am going to focus on strength training. For over 40 years I have searched for the answer to the question of how much strength is enough. I am convinced now that there is no single answer. I now think of strength training as coordination training with appropriate resistance and assistance that will put us on the correct path to designing effective strength training programs that complement the other physical qualities and transfer to the competitive arena. Appropriate is a key word – Certainly appropriate for the event or position, definitely appropriate for the individual, the time  of the year and the stage in a career. This is the opposite of chasing numbers in the weight room on specified lifts, it much more about quality of movement, rhythm, tempo and controlling their bodies, not to mention more mindfully challenging to the athlete. We should NEVER lose sight of the ultimate goal.

The Generalist

A change that I have seen over the years is a transition from the generalist coaches of my generation to the specialist coaches of today. I am not sure this is a positive trend. If I have choice of hiring a coach I will always lean toward the generalist. I know most of my colleagues, the ones that I lean on the heaviest, are consummate generalists. Certainly the coaches that changed training and changed their sports, Bill Bowerman in Track & Field and Doc Councilman in swimming were generalists. The generalist has the ability to:

To make connections among seemingly unrelated information.

For the generalist it is not the links, but the linkages that make the system.

The specialists focus on the links, generalists can stand back and see, in the bigger, "holistic" picture, how they work together.

I made the choice to be a generalist 40 plus years ago. Certainly no regrets on that choice, it allowed me to better understand movement and all the permutations. I would urge those of you who are early in your careers to look at this option, it is more FUNdamental, there is never a dull moment because rather being hung up on minutiae your are constantly making connections. Those connections translate into results.

Evaluating Results

“If you don’t test max’s and lift heavy weights then how do you evaluate results?” In essence this was the question posed to me by a “Lost generation” strength coach. My answer was simple – I just pointed to the pool (In this case the sport was swimming).The ultimate judge of an Athletic Development program are the results in the competitive arena. First are the athletes healthy and able to train optimally so that they can do the daily preparation for competition? Second are they improving? Third is the coaching staff fully on board and do they link the training program with what they are doing in their sport? Simple! Prepare the athlete for their sport, not how to lift more weights or run more drills. Once again it comes down to adaptable or adapted.