Functional Path Training

Historic Literacy/The Classics

As part of my education I studied the classics. I read Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. I studied Shakespeare’s plays and read his sonnets. I read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer for insights into the culture and time they were written. I must admit that at the time I sometimes struggled with what I perceived as the lack of relevancy of some of the classics. I get it now, clear as could be.

In coaching there were classic works that I read when I was starting my career. Some of them I read because they were assigned and I had to read them. Much like the classics is literature I see their relevance more now through the prism of time. Some of them were not classics at the time, but to younger coaches today they would be considered so. Many in my generation are concerned that historical illiteracy is a huge threat to progress. This transcends coaching. There is an ignorance of key events, ideas and basic concepts. Whether you like it or not the past determines contemporary choices. You certainly can’t over rely on the past, but it is important to use the past as a reference point. Be aware of it, not trapped by it. Why repeat mistakes from the past, learn from them. Frankly without understanding the past you will be starting from scratch, you will make unnecessary errors. Take advantage of the experience of others to build your experiences upon, you don't have ti reinvent the wheel.

In a later post I will share with you my recommendations of classics you must read to be considered literate as a coach and why I consider them important? It is going to take me a few more days to compile the list.

Some More on ACL Injury Prevention

I thought I would share with you several pictures of my athletes doing what I consider essential exercises the female athlete must do for lower extremity injury prevention. This is in not intended as  a comprehensive list, that is for another time and place. Consider it a snapshot of some of the movements that must be done. All of these movements are never presented to the athletes as “injury prevention”, they are woven into the workout and the warm-up. In my experience this insures better intensity, concentration, effort and as well as compliance. I also believe some of these basic movements are daily diagnostics, tests if you must, to provide feedback as to adaptive response as well red flags indicating excessive soreness or fatigue. I look for amplitude of movement, rhythm and constantly assess overall quality. I believe testing = training and training = testing.

I have one other observation regarding ACL injuries in the female athlete. In my experience  (I have seen this five different times now first hand) the athletes at greatest risk are those that “play out of control.” They are reckless and take unnecessary risks. I don’t have a solution for this, just an observation.

Enjoy the pictures; I hope they trigger some ideas for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Specialization in Coaching

We certainly do live in an age of specialization in all fields of endeavor. I would argue that in coaching, specialization is a negative not a positive trend. I look at the coaches who have mentored me and great coaches I been around during my career. They were all generalists. Even though they were very successful in their chosen sport and discipline within the sport; most coached multiple sports or multiple areas at a very high level. The trend toward specialization has stifled development and innovation, not enhanced it. Look outside your sport or specialization for ideas and inspiration. If you are a swimming coach talk to the track coaches, if you are a throws coach in track & field coach go talk to the gymnastics coach. All of us should look at martial arts for concepts regarding attention, focus and body control. Athletic development coaches should go to dance instructors to learn rhythm and tempo. I am a big believer in going outside the world of sports for ideas, look at art, architecture, design, music, and film. Some of my best ideas on long term planning and project development have come from reading and talking to people in business. Creativity transcends disciplines. There is so much to be learned if you get outside your narrow area of specialization. Challenge yourself by exposing yourself to different ideas and approaches; believe me it will open up a whole new world for you. Specialize in being a generalist; there will never be a dull moment. You will make connections and see things you never thought existed.

ACL Tears in Female Athletes - The Problem & Some Solutions

This article http://nyti.ms/hUy9pi and some of the information (misinformation) in article in Sunday New York Times sports page is disturbing. The topic of the female athlete and ACL injuries is complex and sometimes controversial. It is a real problem and a crisis given the economic and human cost.

Let’s look at a couple of the points of emphasis in the article and then I will look a bit more globally and offer some solutions.

The following is often offered up as a solution to prevent ACL injuries: “bend at the hips and knees to softly absorb the load, keeping their knees behind the toes, striking the ground toe to heel.” Watch a game or practice you will see it is impossible to keep the knees behind the toes and still play the game. You may do it a completely controlled artificial environment, but in the real world at game speed the knee will go where it has to go. It will go into extreme valgus and varus positions. The knee will go way out beyond the toe. The key is that the knee goes where it needs to go with control. As far as foot strike, it is completely dictated by the movement requirement, landing from a rebound could be a different foot strike than on planting and cutting. This strategy will robotize the player by taking instinctual and reflexive movements and making them cognitive, conscious and mechanical. In my opinions (I emphasize it is my opinion) we may actually be predisposing the athlete to injury with these types of prevention programs. It is certainly not time well spent.

Here is another solution from the article: “The knee should be in a neutral position; ideally, … said, the center of the kneecap should be aligned with the second toe.” Neutral is a position the knee passes through in a millisecond. In an artificial controlled environment you may be able to align the kneecap with the second toe, but it won’t happen at the speed you must play in order to be able to execute jumps, stops, starts and turns. It is a dynamic, ballistic environment that is not sterile and controlled. Once again the result will be robotic movement.

The information in both quotes represents what is thought to be cutting edge research, but it does not represent what must be done in the real world in the competitive arena. These types of so-called prevention programs and strategies are fundamentally unsound. If in doubt my rule of thumb is to go back to common sense. If these strategies worked then why aren’t they preventing ACL tears? Everyone is doing some variation of these programs; in some cases devoting up to thirty minutes a day to them, still the rate of ACL tears has not dropped, if anything it has increased.

It begs a simple question: Do these players have the physical competencies and fundamental movement skills necessary to compete? We know they have the basketball, soccer, or specific sport skill, but do they have the underlining physical competencies and movement skills to give them a fair change to avoid injury? Part of the solution is quite simple – identify and assess the physical competencies. Then train those competencies in parallel to the sport skill. The dark hole is what is being done in the off-season, preseason and in- season in regard to strength training. In many situations strength training is only done in the off-season, reduced in pre-season and almost nonexistent in-season.

For the female athlete a commitment to year around strength training is a requirement, not an option. It must continue in-season through the championship season. Unlike her male counterpoint that has a great percentage of muscle mass and higher testosterone levels, the female cannot afford to take off from strength training. Obviously the greatest investment should be on leg strength. The great majority of ACL tears are noncontact and in most of those cases they are a deceleration injuries (As are ankle sprains). It stands to reason then that we should focus on training the decelerators. Stop focusing on the knee and think kinetic chain, emphasize the linkage of ankle, knee, hip and the trunk. The knee is stuck in the middle; it is at the mercy of the joints above and below.

The sports that put the knee at greatest risk are sports that require quick starts, stops and changes of direction off one leg onto the other leg. This  dictates that the training emphasize work on one-leg and reciprocal movements. The single leg squat is the cornerstone (True single leg squat, not some of the permutations labeled as such), lunges in all planes and step-ups at various heights. Double leg squats are important, starting with bodyweight and progressing to appropriate loads based on developmental level and sport demands.

Dynamic balance should be part of daily warm-up, as should a mini band routine to work the intrinsic muscles of the hip. Once a foundation of leg strength is established then progressively add agility work that starts with known programmed movements and progresses to random chaotic movements. Incorporate jump rope as a means to teach good coordination and foot strike. Progress to multi dimensional jumps and hops.

The clincher here is that this must be systematically addressed in the female athlete starting just before puberty. Think of it as preparation to play the game that runs parallel to skill development. In most cases it should slightly precede skill development. The two must go hand in glove, not either or. The functionally strong young female athlete will be more receptive to skill learning and be better able to apply the skills to the game. TRAIN TO PLAY, DON”T PLAY TO TRAIN!

Select movements that link and connect the ankle/knee and hip as a functional unit to reduce and produce force. Include exercises that have a high proprioceptive demand. Above all train on your feet! A simple rule of thumb, if you lying prone or supine or seated you are not preparing to attenuate the ground reaction forces that are demanded in the game. You must train with you feet on the ground to effectively learn to shock absorb and use the ground.

Don’t say it can’t be done, it can. It takes organization, focus and commitment. You don’t need a lot of equipment or huge time blocks. You need to be consistent and relentless. Training can be done anywhere; it can be on the field or on the court if necessary. Apply the  “weight room without walls” concept. Make it challenging mentally and physically to prepare for the stress of competition. The bottom line is that to prevent ACL tears you must train the body for the rigors of competition. The prevention program should be a transparent component of training.

Learning to Coach - Part Five

The UCSB Track

What a place the UCSB track was in the 70’s. Sam Adams, the head coach at UCSB had an open door policy as far as allowing non-collegians to train. There was a thriving community of decathletes training there attracted by then world record holder Bill Toomey. Hansreudi Kunz was a Swiss decathlete that trained there in winter and spring of 72. He was doing graduate work in biomechanics at Federal Technical Institute in Zurich. He really opened my eyes to the application of sport science. He got me to think more about why and he made all my reading come alive. The lesson I learned from him, that was confirmed by observation of the other European athletes that trained there, was that it was not about max strength and the weight room. Don’t get me wrong they used the weight room, but their emphasis was on what we now call multi-throws and multi-jumps. Very high intensity, low volume, explosive and ballistic with everything measured. In contrast we were investing large amounts of time in the weight room lifting heavy.

TuS 04 Leverkusen the German (West Germany at the time) track club would come for a month in the spring to train. Gerd Osenberg was the coach. Once I figured out what they were doing and what I could learn by observing him coach, I called in sick from teaching and followed him around for two days observing and taking notes. Everything was timed and measured, very methodical. He worked with three athletes every hour from 9:00 AM in the morning until late afternoon with a break for lunch.  He coached all events, no specialization here, although later his greatest success as a coach came with high jump. I spoke no German and he spoke no English but verbal communication was not necessary, just watching and listening was enough. It was efficient training that stressed quality. There was a clearly defined system. The warm-ups were choreographed, active and dynamic. The pattern of the warm-up I learned from them is the basis of the warm-up I still use today. 

“Pete” Petersen was the coach of Club West, the track club that Toomey had founded and many of us competed for. He was coaching quite a talented group of middle distance and distance runners. I learned a lot about changing tempos and the actual application of Igloi’s effort descriptors. It was my first exposure to "effort” based training. He used descriptors like swing, medium, medium hard, hard and race to describe the effort he wanted on the various intervals. It was simple and made sense, it was something I incorporated in my training and continue to use today. Greg Brock, a very successful distance runner at Stanford was training there (Fifth in 1972 Olympic Trials Marathon) and also getting his masters in exercise physiology at UCSB. We had some great discussions on training and he had a big influence on my philosophy of training for middle distance and distance. Later I used his ideas and concepts and the effort concept I learned from Petersen for endurance development in other sports.

What an eye opener it was watching Jan Merrill who ran 4:02.61 at the 1976 Olympics and her coach Norm Higgins. They trained at UCSB in the spring on 1976. The training they did was nothing like I had ever seen before or since even from the African runners I have seen train. The intensity was off the scale. Everyone would stop and watch her workouts. She did unbelievably high intensity short rest intervals’ that she cranked out like a machine, day after day. I don't think easy or ecovery was on their radar scope. Seldom have I seen an athlete with the focus and concentration that she had.

For three summers the San Francisco 49er had training camp at UCSB. It was great watching those practices. It was a different time and place, you could get right next to the drills and hear the coaching.

The 1972 Olympic Trails in Eugene Oregon was a pivotal experience in my coaching career. There was a great clinic featuring a who’s who of American track coaching at the time. For me the meet, the warm-up area and the coaches in the stands were also like a big clinic. I was all eyes and ears, soaking up everything I could. Everyone and everything was much more accessible than today. I remember watching Bud Winter coach – The lesson was relaxation, relaxation, relaxation, let your eyelids flop and Dr. Leroy Walker work with Larry Black on his turn technique in the 200 and on and on.

AAU Learn by Doing Clinic organized by Fred Wilt at Sacramento State in July 1972 after the Olympic Trails. It was five more days of more of total immersion in track & field technique and training with the greatest coaches in the world as teachers and many future greats as fellow pupils. I would have to say that what I saw and learned in the month of July 1972 was  like graduate school. Some of the lessons I was not able to immediately apply, others had an immediate impact, but as I look back I can’t believe the experiences that were packed into that month.I can't believe how fortunate I was to be there at that time.

Heart Rate/Smart Rate

Sarasota Florida where I live is an area rich in circus tradition. Many circuses and circus performers still winter here.  When I read all the nonsense regarding heart rate monitoring and it’s various permutations I am reminded of the carnival barker at the sideshow here at the circus. Just imagine that we are at the strength and conditioning circus walking around looking at all the freaks when you hear the side show barker call out: “Pick a number, any number, we will find a meaning for it! We can teach you to fool anyone with the numbers we can generate on our magic machines. Come on folks, step right up and we will hook you up. See the magic beating heart. Step right up and pay the pretty lady.” In the best Barnum and Bailey tradition we now have the fully integrated heart rate side show complete with freaks and clowns. It is amazing what marketing and hype can do. Is heart rate a valuable training metric? It certainly is not as valuable and important as some are making it out to be. It really depends on what you want. What are you looking for? You can do whatever you want with the numbers, just look around and see what people are doing. It is borderline ridiculous. It’s a convenient measure, relatively easy to monitor even without technology, but is it really meaningful as a measure of training intensity or workload? As coach I have been fooled by it. I over relied on it; I took it out of context. I learned the hard way that it is not a  stand-alone measure or even something to use peripherally.

I certainly would agree that HRV is intriguing. It seems to make scientific sense, but so did simple heart rate at one time. I respect the sport scientists, who have commented positively on it, but I am still skeptical; I want to see more real world evidence and valid scientific studies. Not pseudo scientific studies sponsored by a companies that manufacture monitoring technology or anecdotal reports from a coach or scientist who is being paid by a company. Before you jump on the heart rate bandwagon study all the research and then draw your own conclusions to see if you think it can be a useful measure for you in the sport you are working with. I have done that and for 95% of the sports and situations I work with it or have worked with, it would not enhance my ability to more effectively monitor the training and coach the athletes. Pass up the heart rate sideshow and go watch the lion tamers.

You Can’t Hurry Love or Training

I don’t mean to be disrespectful by taking some lines from the great Supremes song and reinterpreting them, but that song speaks volumes about training the athlete. Here are some lyrics of the song as the Supremes sang them. You remember momma said:

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said to trust, give it time
No matter how long it takes

You can't hurry love
No, you just have to wait
She said love don't come easy
It's a game of give and take

Now here is the coaching version sung to the same tune. You remember the old coach said:

You can't hurry training
No, you just have to wait

Adaptation takes time
He said to trust, give it time
No matter how long it takes

You can't hurry training
No, you just have to wait
He said success don't come easy
It's a game of give and take

Developing an athlete takes time, don't be in a hurry. Time is on your side, make time your friend by using it efficiently. Next time you are tempted to hurry things up or look for a quick fix remember what the Supremes said.

 

Eat Your Spinach

Spinach is good for you or so I have been told. When I was kid I was constantly admonished by my mom to eat my spinach so I could have muscles like Popeye, but I didn’t like spinach, I did not like the taste of it. I tried closing my eyes and holding my nose, that didn’t work. I tried mixing it up with stuff on plate that I liked but that did not make it any more palatable. Finally my mom gave up and we all moved on. Certainly there were no dire consequences. Today I actually like spinach. Why? Yes I know it is good for you if prepared properly so that all the good nutrients are not cooked out of it, no that is not the reason. It is simple I acquired a taste for it. I found different ways to prepare it and ways to mix it with other veggies. It is much better in a salad that boiled.

So what does this have to do with training? Pretty simple actually. There are many “spinach like” elements in training, things that we just don’t necessarily like to do, but must be done. Sometimes it is mundane things and other times more significant things. The difference from spinach is that if these things are not done there are consequences; some are dire like increasing potential for injury and some just manifested as performance decrement. You certainly can’t wait to acquire a taste for these things. They must be on the plate and eaten with regularity. The secret is to sequence them with other components that are compatible. They must be put in the plan and supervised. They must be measured so that the athlete can see the importance. In training so much of the “spinach” is doing the little things, like thorough post training static stretching or a complete warm-up. Not eating the training spinach means cutting corners. Sometimes it is only eating what you like on the training plate and ignoring everything else, for example an overemphasis on one component that you are good at and ignoring something else you not good at and don’t like. The solution is simple, mix it in a salad, flavor it with a salad dressing you like and eat the whole salad!

Learning to Coach – Part Four

UCSB Fall 1968/ Spring 1969 & La Cumbre Junior High 1969 to 1973

I was fortunate to walk into a new program at UCSB, a minor in coaching. I was the first graduate of the program, mainly because my classes as a PE minor at Fresno State carried over. It was a very innovative program and looking back a very fine program. They covered all the bases, in many ways it was ahead of the times. Along with my coaching classes I took the required education classes in preparation for teaching in the classroom. The class that stood out was Educational Psychology, not so much for the content but because of the professor, Ruth Wilvert. She was a neat little southern lady who could really teach. She had knowledge, enthusiasm, passion and a real drive to make her student’s great teachers. As part of her class we did an observation that started in the morning at a traditional nursery school, followed by an observation at a Montessori school, then an elementary school, followed by a junior high school and culminating in the afternoon with an observation of a high school class. What an eye opener! It was a brilliant teaching tool to introduce us to the whole developmental spectrum. I distinctly remember after the junior high school observation thinking to myself that I would never want to teach that age group. The lesson here is never say never because one year later my first job was teaching junior high school!

Mrs. Wilvert was also my supervising teacher for student teaching. I loved her philosophy about testing: it was pretty simple she said that that the purpose of testing was not to find out what the students did not know but to find out what they did know. She emphasized that as teachers we should guide them to fill in the gap and build on what they knew. This not only helped me in the classroom, it carried over directly into my coaching. It was so much easier to teach and motivate when I started them on tasks that they could do. She was a very smart lady; I can still hear that southern drawl in my mind.

As part of the coaching minor there were some outstanding classes and professors:

Foundations of Coaching was by taught by Dr Art Gallon. He had been the basketball coach at UCSB and at one time had been an assistant to legendary basketball coach Pete Newell. He had a wealth of experience. Very much the wise man, a yoda like individual, He started each class with what he called platitude preachments. These were aphorisms that he used to set the theme for the day. One that sticks in my mind today and is particularly appropriate in today’s world of hype and marketing was” Beware of false prophets bearing gifts".

Foundations of Conditioning taught by Sherm Button. Coach Button was new to UCSB that year, he had been a high school track coach and teacher in Portland Oregon. What a class! You name it about conditioning the athlete, we learned it in that class. Our assignment was to prepare a year long training program for our sport. I poured my heart and soul into it, my program ended up over 100 pages long. ( I still have it in a file somewhere today) I realize that this assignment started me on a path to recording and writing out everything I did, a process I continue to this day it. It taught me about the necessity of planning and integrating all components of athlete fitness to make the complete athlete (Sound familiar?).

We were also required to take an athletic training class. The class was taught by Harry Callahan, the head athletic trainer. Harry introduced us to ice, cryotherapy, a whole new concept in 1969, everything up to then was heat, hot whirlpools and hot packs. What a difference that made with my athletes.  I learned how to tape, an invaluable skill that came in handy over the years. The skills I learned in this class helped me keep my athletes healthy, we did not have athletic trainers in the schools in California, coaches had to take care of their own athlete’s injuries.

Also had class in Sport Psychology taught by Dr. Bill Hammer. The textbook was Problem Athlete’s and How to Handle Them by Tutko and Ogilvie. That class was an insight into a dimension of performance that was unexplored at the time. Sport psych was a new field at that time.

In the spring of 1969 I did my student teaching and student coaching. I student taught modern US history to seniors at Santa Barbara high school. Some of the kids in the class were only three years younger than me, which made it interesting. In the afternoon I student coached track under head coach Bill Crow. What an experience. I coached the jumps (except for pole vault) and the shot put. On of my athletes, Sam Cunningham won the California Sate Championship in the shot put, a great tribute to Sam’s athletic ability, certainly not my coaching ability. Bill Crow taught me so much about leadership, organization, and motivation. He taught me how important it was to calm down (although it took me a long time to apply it). He taught me how important it was to be consistent in your approach, to be a rock, not all over the place.

My plan worked, I got a job in the Santa Barbara Unified School District. I taught eighth grade US History and seventh grade World Geography at La Cumbre Junior high school. I was in the chips now; my starting salary was $7,600. I was single and lived with my parents to save money. With my first paycheck I bought a Kodak M95 projector (It had the ability to reverse – it was state of the art at the time) so that I could watch Super 8 films. It cost $495.00, with my next paycheck I bought a Super 8 camera and I was on my way. I coached cross and track and trained for the decathlon.

My first year teaching I taught in the classroom, and the next three years I taught a combination of history and physical education. I also coached one season of football and basketball during that time. After my first eyar teaching I got married and I am still married to the same women forty years later. She is a saint to have put up with all my craziness! I was driven, actually borderline obsessed. My goal was to be a college coach. I also set a goal of scoring 6,000 points in the decathlon (nothing special, but for someone who did not compete in collegiate track it was reasonable). My typical day was a twenty-minute training session before teaching my first period class. Usually rope climb and some gymnastics. Second period, my free period, I did hill sprints. Between classes I had 15 minutes so I used that time to work on my throws. One break would be for shot put, the next for discus and the next for javelin. At lunchtime I looked at films of the events with the kids. After school I coached. When I was done coaching I drove out to UCSB, usually around 4:30 and trained for about 90 minutes, I did one field event, some hurdle work everyday and running. A couple of days a week I lifted weights after dinner. It was crazy, but I was young and driven to achieve my goals. Now looking back on this I don't know if I would have or could have done it any differently. I learned you could make big improvements with small concentrated and focused periods of training, a concept I still employ today. I did not achieve my goal of 6,00 points, I scored 5984 points in 1972, but I did achieve my goal of being a college coach. Looking back I never allowed myself to get comfortable, in the process I made people around me uncomfortable with my intensity and drive. I think I could have tempered this a bit and still achieved my goals. I probably still have not learned this lesson well.

In my next few post I am going to highlight a few events and people who helped me on my journey of learning.

Learning to Caoch - Part Three

Fresno State Spring Semester 68

In the fall I completed all the classes for my major – Social Science with an emphasis in Latin American history so in the spring I turned my attention to my minor in Physical Education. I had decided I wanted to coach and teach, but I was still a little unsure what I was going to coach. I was thinking about basketball, but when I went to the first Fresno Sate Track and Field Clinic that January and heard Bill Bowerman (University of Oregon) and Ken Shannon (Assistant coach at UCLA) speak, I decided to coach track and I have never looked back. It was a great choice. After my  football expereince where coaching decisions were at best subjective, the objectivity of track and field appealed to me. If I ran faster, jumped higher or threw farther I was better, no arguments. That also made coaching more interesting, I could accurately measure my performance based on my athlete’s performance, no BS, no politics. If I did a good job they would get better, that appealed to me.

I loaded up on theory classes. Except they were not theory classes, we learned how to coach, we had to show proficiencies in skills and the ability to teach the skills how organize and run a practice.

Theory of Football taught by Daryl Rogers, head football coach. What I remember most about this class was guest speaker who was an assistant coach for the Green Bay Packers. It was the first time I heard the term “speed of the game.” He talked about how much faster the game was played at the pro level. It took me a long time to understand it, but his ideas stuck with me.

Theory of Basketball taught by head basketball coach Ed Gregory. This was an amazing class. We had to compile a complete playbook, offense and defense including progressions and drills. We had to scout both a high school and a college game and compile a complete scouting report. Coach Gregory went onto be a scout in the NBA for many years. I saw him at the NBA pre-draft camp in 1987 and thanked him for the great class. This class really opened up my eyes about the importance of being systematic in your approach and the importance of organization and attention to detail. It reinforced what I had seen in high school with Mr. Kuehl, now I knew more of the why.

Theory of Track and Field, taught by assistant track coach Red Estes. This was one of the best classes I ever had. We had to learn each event and were graded on our proficiency in each event. We had to compile a notebook on training that I still have today. Red turned me onto coaching; he encouraged me to try the decathlon to learn to be a better coach. The text for the class was Ken Doherty’s classic Modern Track & Field, a great book that is a must read for coaches today.

Track & Field Officiating Taught by head coach Dutch Warmerdam. Dutch was the first man to clear 15’ in the pole vault and one of the greatest athlete’s of his era. We learned to drag, water, and line a track. We leaned all the rules. We had to officiate at meets. One of those meets was the West Coast Relays held in Fresno at Radcliffe Stadium the first weekend in May. That meet in 1968 was unreal, getting the opportunity to be on the field, listen to the coaches, watch the athletes warm-up and see the great competition up close was inspirational and confirmed that coaching track was the correct choice.

I graduated that June and headed back home to Santa Barbara. In California to get your teaching credential you have go a fifth year, so I decided to go to University of California, Santa Barbara. My plan was that if I went back home and did my practice teaching there I would have a better chance of getting a job there. That summer I started my immersion in track & field. I introduced myself to Sam Adams the track & field coach at UCSB, he encouraged me in my training for the decathlon. At age twenty-one I had it all figured out, or so I thought and I was home.