Functional Path Training

Learning to Coach

What is the best way to learn to coach? The answer is quite simple, get out and coach. There is no substitute for being on the firing line. Not only to write the workout but to coach the actual workout. To make it happen, to make adjustments, change exercises; manipulate rest intervals, to discipline an athlete, whatever it takes. No textbook, no online tutorial can prepare you. Certifications will not prepare you. Internships at palatial training facilities will not prepare you. You must get out in the real world. What do you do if you don’t have a weight room, or a track? What can you do?  The best teacher is experience. If you want to be a coach, then start to think like a coach, act like a coach. I knew I wanted to be a coach by my senior year in high school, so I started watching how coaches coached, how they organized practices, how they communicated with their athletes and I coached. During the summers I helped my high school basketball coach. I had coaching classes in school where we had to coach. Gather experiences, put yourself in situations where you must innovate, must organize, must lead. You can never know too much, you must keep learning. Learn from your successes and failures. Above all remember coaching is so much more than the X’s and O’s, those X’s and O’s are people, they have feelings, they have lives. Coaching is about helping to make people better, not just better athletes but better people. I learned very early on that coaching is not something that you do it is something that you are.

The Individual Athlete

Each in individual we coach is unique.  Each athlete will respond slightly different to the same training stimulus. Some athletes are fast adapters and others are slow adapters. This is a fact; it is a fact that coaches seem reluctant to acknowledge as a fact. Coaches will talk about it but when push comes to shove it is much easier to have the same the program for all the athletes, essentially one size fits all. What happens then is that you get a leveling effect. Some athlete’s get better in spite of the training other stay the same and some regress. I have heard all the excuses about why you can’t acknowledge the individual and meet individual needs. The most common is: How can I do that with a team? I have too many athletes.  If you working with a large number in a team sport then group the athletes, group them based on individual needs determined during the Physical Competency Assessment and in performance testing. The groups need to be dynamic, for example one athlete may need more acceleration so that athlete is in that need group and then may shift to another group in the weight room where he has different needs. It can be done. Sometimes it is as simple as changing the rest between runs or reps. It is not hard to do once you recognize the need to train for individual needs.

 

The athlete must be an active participant in the process, coaching is not something you do to the athlete; it is something you do with them. They need to understand their individual goals and needs and be taught how to manage their workouts so they are not coach dependent. This is true at any level. When you have ninth graders starting in a program this should be part of their orientation to the routine of training. It all starts with a good thorough Physical Competency Assessment (PCA) – that will help them to understand why they are doing certain exercises. For example why they are doing overhead squats and their teammate is doing regular squats. Once the athlete is totally involved in the process then it will make it much easier for the coach to individualize.

 

Renew your commitment to training the individual and you will see more consistent measurable results. When you commit to the individual then at least everyone has a chance to improve, which is all you can ask for.

Whats New?

Just reading some more from Fred Wilt, in his introduction to How They Train – Second Edition he wrote “Regardless of their event specialty, ancient Greek athletes sought first to develop a firm foundation of general physical fitness by running, walking, jumping, wrestling, games, calisthenics and weight lifting, before progressing to workouts more specifically related to their competitive specialties.”

 

He goes on: “ The specialized training for running used by the ancient Greeks included the “anatrochasmos” (running backward), “peritrochamos” (running in circles), “ekplethrizin” (running forward and backward over a few meters distance, lessening this each time to zero length), running in sand, running on hard surfaces, hopping, jogging, skipping, and running with large hoops which they rolled in front of them, especially during warm-up.”

 

As far as planning the Hellenic runners trained using a strict four day cycle called the “Tetras”. “The first day was preparation or easy training, consisting of a number of short, brisk exercises designed to motivate the athlete in anticipation of the next day’s efforts. The second day was concentration, involving hard all-out effort, leaving the athlete in a state of extreme fatigue. The third day was relaxation, during which the athlete recovered by only very light training or rest. This sequence ended with the fourth day, moderation, which was devoted to moderate training.”

 

It is so trite to say that everything old is new again, but it is! I just finished a booklet on training written by someone who has coached for seven years! This guy had all the answers. It was a mish mash of pseudo science and marketing, it was typical in so many ways of what we are seeing more and more of today. I truly wish that the new generation of coaches would take the time and effort to understand the origins of current training concepts and methodology. As I am reading and  researching for some projects that I am currently working on I am truly appreciative for the perspective that was instilled in me when I began coaching and teaching. Honor and respect those who have come before you, recognize that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Somewhere, sometime, someone has probably done what we think is new. Learn from the past – there is so much to be learned.

Window of Adaptation Concept

At different stages of the athlete’s development there are different size windows of adaptation. The window of adaptation concept has some profound implications for directing training based on the athletes training age, level of development and biological age. For the younger developing athlete, especially the male at peak height velocity (growth spurt) the window of adaptation is huge. Conversely for the high level elite athlete who has an advanced training age the window of adaptation is quite small.

So what are the training implications of this? For the developing athlete it means that they can handle and in fact thrive on larger more general workloads. They have an anabolic advantage (The young female athlete less so) that allows them to recover quickly and handle the workload. There is greater margin of error. With the developing athlete, to some extent, anything you do will make them better. That is why you see some ridiculous programs achieve success with athletes at this stage of development. I do not condone that; I think you should be thinking long term and how the work done when they are developing will eradicate all deficiencies so they arrive at the elite level fully prepared to thrive.

At the elite level because of the accumulation of work the training should be very specific and directed. For the high level athlete the window of adaptation is quite small, so the loads must be more intense, very focused and specific to the individual. At the elite level more general work is not better, in fact it can be counterproductive. Because the window is quite small there is virtually no margin of error, therefore detailed training monitoring and planning are essential.

Fred Wilt – Game Changer

Fred Wilt was an Indiana University graduate where he won two national titles, one in cross-country and one in the two mile.  He went on to compete in the 1948 and 52 Olympic games in the 10,000 meters. He was the 1950 winner of the Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. By occupation he was an FBI agent. Fred Wilt was a game changer because in many ways he was responsible for raising the level of technical and training awareness in the US. Through his contacts around the world he began to gather information on training methods and training systems. His first book How They Train – Half Mile to Six Mile was compilation of the training of many of the great runners up to that time. In the introduction Fred wrote: “I do not recommend that any athlete copy the training procedure of another, but I do maintain that the material herein will suggest many ideas which may be adopted in formulating workout programs suited to an individual runners needs. Just as no two athletes have identical form, so no two athletes need have the same training program. Literally as well as figuratively, there is more than one road to Rome.”

 

 

I was introduced to the work of Fred Wilt through a high jumper at Fresno Sate, Larry Alexander. We used to lift weights together and talk about training and try to come up with new ideas. I asked him where he got all his information and workouts. He brought a copy of Track Technique to a training session. This was the publication Fred founded and edited in 1960, it was published by Track & Field News. It was amazing stuff. There were articles on strength training, technique, Periodization, speed, and how the top athletes trained. In 1968, my senior year when I decided that I wanted to be a track coach I borrowed all the back issue of Track Technique from Red Estes, assistant track coach at Fresno State and devoured them. For graduation I asked my parents to get me a subscription to Track Technique, little did I know that nine years latter I would take over the editorship from Fred, a terrific honor and a privilege. The back issues from the sixties, seventies and eighties are still a tremendous resource for training information. Fred’s knowledge of training and technique in track and field was encyclopedic, it is reflected in the journal.

 

 Fred’s book Run, Run, Run published in 1964 was my bible for coaching the running events. It is a resource that I find myself still using today. I think it should be required reading for every coach who coaches middle distance and distance. In 1973 he brought out the second edition of the How they Train and split it into three volumes: Middle Distance, Distance and Sprinting & Hurdling. Another of my favorite works by him was the International Track and Field Coaching Encyclopedia that he edited with Tom Ecker. It has a wealth of information with contributions by legendary coaches.

 

The first time I met Fred was at the AAU Learn By Doing Clinic at Sacramento State College in July 1972 . He organized the whole weeklong clinic and assembled an amazing staff. The program went eight hours during the day with field sessions were you had to go through all the teaching progressions for each of the events. It was rigorous and demanding. Then came the evening sessions. The first two evening sessions were by Tom Ecker presenting on what we now know as biomechanics. The next two nights Tadeusz Starznski from Poland, coach of two time Olympic gold medal winner in the triple jump Josef Schmidt, presented on his training system. It was awesome; he showed 16-millimeter movies of all his exercises and progressions. Fred Wilt was the unifying presence during the whole week. His energy was amazing, very inspirational. The coaches in attendance at that clinic represent a who’s who of coaching in American track field in the late 20^th century.

 

When Fred retired from the FBI he worked in Canada for a period of time on their track & field coaching certification program. He then became the  women’s cross country and track & field coach at Purdue University. During that time I was coaching at Cal Berkeley and would see Fred at national championships. In 1982 in College Station Texas at the last AIAW National Track & Field Championship I had two long discussions over breakfast with Fred and his wife. It was great getting to know him better. He was a game changer. If you can find the Track Technique issues he edited, or read the book Run, Run, Run, there is much to learn from the information this man compiled and the experiences and wisdom he shared.

Getting Faster – The 10 % Solution

The so called 10% rule is a guideline for applying resisted and assisted training as a means to making the athlete faster for their chosen sport. Here is the 10% rule as I have taught it and applied it over the years. In adding resistance it is best to not exceed a weight that that is greater than 10% of the athletes bodyweight or that will result in a time that is 10% slower than their best time for the distance run. In assistance, towing or downhill, I never want the athlete be be towed faster than 10% of their best time for that distance. Pretty simple, now you can call it a rule, but it is just a guideline.

 

Now you have to coach. You need to clearly understand the dynamics of the start, early acceleration, transition to top speed and top speed. Get them in an optimum starting position based on their strength and explosive qualities, their body dimensions – leg length, torso length and arm length and make sure that fits with the sport. Obviously, aside from track you do not have a block to push against so that will impact your angles and weight distribution. Once that is established remember the goal of the start is to overcome inertia by taking advantage of the “stumble reflex” you displace forward and get the first step down to create a positive shin angle to facilitate triple extension “extension reflex”. Then you are off to the races. The first contact is the longest time on the ground and as each succeeding step gets longer the ground contact time get shorter as you transition from pushing to running over the ground. You do not try to stay low, rather you let you hips run under you until you are virtually upright. As far a cuing, for me it is initially a push/push/push/push/action (Four to six steps depending on the distance and the athlete) gradually transitioning to running over the ground – striking (not pawing).

 

So this begs the question why heavy sled pulls or pushes? If you consider what I said above then they really have no place in a program to get an athlete faster. If you are training for a truck pull or your an offensive lineman that has to drive someone for three yards then use it. If you want to make someone faster at sprinting, don’t use it. Someone asked me about using heavy sled pulls to elicit a PAP response before sprinting. A better way is to do a standing long jump or a standing long jump onto one leg and sprint out, or bound into a sprint. A contrast harness (Bullet Belt) will also do the trick.  Use movements that are dynamic and are closer in the range of motion and speed of movement to the desired end result. In my 45 years around training, a great many of those as a track & field coach, I know of no elite sprint or hurdle coach that has used heavy sled pulls. In my world that speaks volumes. Take that training time and work on mechanics, coach em to be better not tired.

Gambetta Sports Training Systems Dartfish.TV Channel

Take a few minutes and check out my Gambetta Sports Training Systems channel on Dartfish TV. www.dartfish.tv/gambetta

On the channel there is free content. Current free content includes includes:

Cuban Jumps

Some of my Volleyball players squatting with good technique

Supine Crossover Reach and Twist

Jungle Gym Rows

High “Y” Fly

Arm Step-up

Star Drill – Simmulcam view

Funnel Drill Stroh motion view

Volleyball Hitting Stroh motion view

If you have any questions about Dartfish and how I use it and plan to use it please feel free to contact me at [email protected]

 

There is also a secure room (password access) for those in the GAIN (Gambetta Athletic Improvement Network) and there is the store where video is available for purchase and download. The latter includes all the videos I have ever done. This is a wealth of information and resources now available in one place. There are some coaching classics here that have stood the test of time. Take a look at them; what is especially appealing is that now you can buy clips of individual exercises and build your own exercise library.

 

I was the first athletic development coach to buy and use Dartfish nine years ago. It has been a tremendous coaching and teaching tool for me and I have not even scratched the surface in terms of using it's capabilities. I am amazed at the things that can be done in terms of visual analysis and presentation of training exercises and methods. Go to the Dartfish www.dartfish.com/ site and explore, there is so much there that will make us all more effective coaches and teachers.

 

According to information management expert Stephen Few: “Vision is one of five channels through which we sense the world; it is by far the most dominant and powerful sense. Vision provides more information than all the other senses combined, not only in terms of sheer volume but also in subtlety.” Dartfish can significantly enhance the visual medium.

 

As an endnote Dartfish is a real fish. It has built in antenna, it is the color of rainbows, it has big eyes for vision, it is swift, and it hits like a dart.( I learned this at the Dartfish users conference.) I also want to personally thank Victor Bergonzoli, CEO of Dartfish for his support over the years, especially his sponsorship of the GAIN Apprentorship program.

Fads & Fallacies versus Facts

How and why do some of these crazy ideas that take on a life of their own get started? There is so much pseudo science and instant information without anything to substantiate it once you must look past the headlines and look at the research design or the results. Once again I quote Sergeant Joe Friday of Dragnet fame “Just the facts”.  Why can’t we just look at the facts? Throw out the marketing and the hype, look at results. Look at performance over years. Before anointing someone an expert look at their body of work. Just because you hitch your wagon to a star or luck into working with a championship team does not make you an expert. I know I was there once, an athlete I coached won the California State meet in the Shot Put my first year coaching. In retrospect that probably set me back two years as a coach. I thought I knew much more than I did. I am always interested in learning and finding better ways to do what I do, but I learned many years ago that bouncing from idea to idea, fad-to-fad did not get the job done. I refuse to do something just because it is what everyone else is doing or it is the "hottest" new idea. Look for substance – Is there any there beyond the hype and marketing? Step out, be an independent and critical thinker. Try it yourself before you ever try it on an athlete, that is what the great pioneers in distance training Arthur Lydiard and Bill Bowerman did. They tested the ideas on themselves. I will leave with this quote from that famous coach, TS Elliot who said: “We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.“

Sprinty

Sprinty, what is that? No I have not lost it yet, don’t run to your Oxford English dictionary for a definition, you won’t find one. Sprinty has been in my coaching lexicon from the time I started coaching my daughter. She used " sprinty"  to describe how she felt when things were humming, when she was explosive, light, fast, quick like she was floating over the ground. I noticed this quality with her as I had noted with generations of other athletes before her. When she was sprinty, ground contact was quieter; every movement was more connected and flowing. There was a sensation of minimal effort. Kristen did a great job of articulating, in one concise term, a phenomenon I had seen over the years. I wish I had a good scientific definition for you, but I think sprinty falls into the art of coaching realm. We need to learn to recognize it and then build on it. I know it is easy to train out of the athlete by trying to do more, that is for sure.

 

In the training process you can’t always be sprinty, that would be unrealistic but you don’t want to get too far away from it, because if you do it is tough to get it back quickly. I have found that I need to so something that elicits sprintyness as part of each training session – something that excites the nervous system, something that gets them wired and connected each day. It does not have to be much, but it needs to be sharp and contextual. I want to have the athletes leaving the workout more often than not like big butterflies, light and bouncy rather than like ponderous elephants, slow and heavy. If each workout is an end unto itself and they are constantly being hammered in workouts, then they will be slow, unresponsive to the ground, disjointed and out of sync. Sound familiar, we have all done and call it a good training sessions. No, that is not the way to do it, get them sprinty and to quote Muhammad Ali, they will ” Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.”

The Triple Jump Encyclopedia

This is truly an encyclopedia of knowledge about one of the most physically and technically demanding events in track & field. The spectrum of requirements including speed, rhythm, explosive power, maximum strength and finely tuned technique are presented here along with much more. I have had this book since it was first published in 1977. My original is worn and dog-eared from constant use. For me it was a resource beyond the triple jump. It was really a handbook of all I needed for power, speed, and technical development for all the events in track & field.

The authors Larry Knuth, a fellow Fresno State Bulldog and Ernie Bullard, formerly head coach at San Jose Sate (Where he succeeded the great Bud Winter) and USC are both great coaches who share the thoroughness of their overall approach and practical orientation in this book. Everything is covered, nothing is left out: history & background of the event, how to coach in general and the triple specifically, obviously a thorough mechanical analysis of the event, how to start a beginner, technical fouls and their correction, how to improve strength, speed, skill and flexibility, the various schools of triple jumping. There is some really neat material from training expert John Jesse and a good review of Bud Winters sprint drills. There is also an amazing center foldout sequence of Victor Saneyev – poetry in motion. A bonus available now with the book, certainly not available in 1977, is a CDROM with the some of the greatest triple jumpers of all time.

 

In August I had lunch with Larry Knuth when I was in California. He told me there was 150 copies left of the last printing still available. I feel this book is as valuable and some areas more available than when it was first published. It is a window into another era, an era that offers us as much knowledge today and a valuable historical context. To purchase the book go to: www.gocollegetrack.com  It is $25.00 not including postage and handling. It also comes with a 17 min. DVD of TJ greats including Edwards, Butts, Wellman, Oliveria, Perez, Saneyev, etc.

 

For you track coaches, Larry Knuth just completed, in spring 2010 a monumental work called California Community College Track & Filed Hall of Champions. Available at www.gocollegetrack.com  It is a history of California junior college track & field. He honors the state champions, notable performers and Olympians who competed for California junior colleges. It also honors the great coaches who coached there. Reading it brought back a flood of memories. If you love track and field you will love this book. Thanks Larry for all the work you put into this and your contributions to the sport of track & field.