Functional Path Training

Brave Enough by Jesse Diggins

I have always been an an avid reader of coaches and athletes’ biographies. Each biography gave me insights into what that athlete tick. How they approached training. How they got into their sport. How they were coached. There is so much to learn  from the experiences of others on the journey to achieve the pinnacle of sport performance. Brave Enough by Jesse Diggins in one of the best I have read in a long time. Her candor is refreshing. She shares her battle with bulimia which makes the book invaluable in itself. Great insights into training and team dynamics with female athletes. Regardless of what sport you coach this is a must read.

Days of Iron Men & Wooden Ships?

I played college football in the mid 1960’s at Fresno State College. My goal from the time I was 12 years old was to play college football. It was a long shot as I did not even start on my high school team until I was a senior. I was ​a​late developer having started high school at 13.5 years old, so in essence I was always a year behind my class. I made it; I was Captain of the freshman team. We were terrible with only 23 players, so I played 58 minutes a game at offensive center and defensive tackle. I was about 190 pounds. Spring practice 1965 I made the varsity and earned a $50 dollar a semester scholarship. I bulked up to 220 pounds. I was the third string center starting in the fall. My goal was to make the traveling squad to play University of Hawaii the last game of the year over thanksgiving break. I made it, got to go to Hawaii and fly in a plane for the first time. I was the youngest on the team. Many of the other players were in their mid-twenties and had been in the service and played two years of JC ball. They rented cars and went out drinking while I went for walks on the beach.  

After the season our coach resigned to take a job as an assistant at USC, so we had a new Coach Daryl Rogers, a Fresno State grad who was a complete asshole. He was a Bear Bryant wannabe. He wanted everybody to lose weight and be fast, here I had spent two years trying to bulk up now I had to lose weight. We had no organized off season program. I lifted with the track guys and started on a journey that continues today of learning about conditioning, speed development and strength training. At one point the head coach tried to discourage me from lifting weight because I would get tight and slow. I was an overwhelming 193 getting my ass kicked every day. I was second string center that year and did not play a minute in a game. I forgot to mention that in my sophomore year I got to play in one game for four minutes in a 56 – 0 route of Washburn University.

After the 1966 season I figured out, given the offense ​we ​were running, that if I ever wanted to play, I would have to change positions. So, I went to the head coach and asked to switch to guard. At guard there was a lot of trapping and pulling so my size would not be a disadvantage and my speed had also begun to develop so I could use that as an asset. In spring practice, much to the surprise of all the coaches except for the new offensive line who actually coached me to be better by teaching me my position. There was no screaming at me and calling me a pussy, I graded out as the top offensive lineman. I earned a $350 semester scholarship and a starting position at guard. Unfortunately, on the last pay of the spring game I threw a block downfield and hit my head on the knee of a defensive back and got a severe stinger. It had happened before, but never like this. I lost feeling in my hand for three-days and could not sleep for a week. The rest of the spring and summer I worked on it. I religiously did neck exercises. When we started fall practice, two practices a day in 100 plus heat I held my starting position, but I knew I was not 100%. The day before our first game against Santa Clara, someone swung a blocking bag and hit me in the side of the head and my arm went numb. I didn’t say anything, I started the game and played awful. I was taken out at halftime. We lost the game. I went to practice on Monday, had a terrible practice after being ripped in the film session and being demoted to second string. The next day I went into a coach’s meeting and quit. That was the end of my football career. I would be lying if I said I did not look back. I made up my mind I would have nothing to do with football in any way shape or form, although I did reluctantly coach on​e​ season of junior high school football, not an especially enjoyable experience.

Looking back here are some things that I learned. Football is ​a​brutal violent sport that is not fun in any way shape or form. I learned about racism firsthand. The black players were treated very differently. They lived in a different part of town. Our line coach Bob Burgess was an alcoholic redneck racist and he did nothing to hide it. The N word was an integral part of his vocabulary. If you were injured, you got shots and played. Our team doctors nickname was needles Knutsen, he would shoot you up anywhere anytime including in the locker room at halftime. You were encouraged to take mickey classes to stay eligible. I was yelled at one day when after almost three hours of practice I asked to leave practice because I had a midterm in a night class. The coach asked me if there to get an education or play football. I answered to get an education. I was labeled an intellectual after that (also because I read my assignments before practice while waiting an hour every day to be taped). I was labeled soft and a pussy because I would not do the stupid illegal stuff the redneck line coach taught us. Then and there is where I formulated my philosophy of metal toughness. To me it was being mentally strong and being able to perform under pressure, not screaming and yelling and frothing at the mouth. Football is, at least the way we were taught, was not a game that formed friendships and camaraderie. It was brutal competition every day. We wore full pads every day and hit live every day. In preseason practice my junior year we actually had three practices a day in pads. The morning practice was 93 degrees and the other two practices were 100 degrees plus. We had one water break ​each practice. Looking back, it was a miracle that no one died of heat stroke. Concussions – that is another story. Looking back, there were at least three practices I cannot remember. Everyone just laughed, ah you got you​r​ bell rung. No such a thing as helmet fit. I learned that good coaching can make a difference. The new line coach who came in was a teacher, he related to me as a human being. What a breath of fresh air. He called me by name instead of you pussy. He was also the tennis coach. Next year he won the only NCAA championship Fresno State has ever won.

So, it was a time of iron men and wooden ships. It was macho to be cruel, racist and misogynistic – that was and is the culture of the game. I am hoping that a benefit of Covid 19 pandemic is that there will be a pause button on football at all levels and there will be a total reexamination of the sport and its surrounding culture. I realize I am writing through the lens of my personal experience but hopefully it will stimulate some thought and discussion. The days of iron men and wooden ships should be a thing of the past.

Stay Backstage or Bring Out the Clowns

https://www.si.com/college-football/2019/04/16/strength-coaches-oregon-florida-maryland-aaron-feld

To say that I was upset when I read this poorly written and researched article is an understatement. It is an affront to all of us who care about the coaching profession. This is not coaching, what they are talking about is entertainment and cheerleading. I know many of you twenty & thirty something “strength coaches” see nothing bad in this because these guys are getting paid a lot of money. Making a lot of money does not define a profession, behavior and professional standards do. Look closely at this picture, it is Jimmy Radcliffe from University of Oregon watching the players he helped to mold into champions celebrating after winning the PAC XII championship to advance to the first BCS Championship game. A picture is worth a thousand words! Stay tuned we will be doing a GAINcast on the state of S&C with some ideas of where we need to go.

The Wizard of Foz – Dick Fosbury’s One-Man High Jump Revolution by Bob Welch with Dick Fosbury.

You can learn a lot from athletes’ biographies, especially from someone who innovated like Fosbury did. There are many lessons to be learned from this book both about sport and life through the chronicles of his rise to Olympic Champion and beyond. It is well framed in the context of growing up in the fifties and coming of age in the turbulent sixties. Fosbury developed his technique without coaching and in many ways in spite of coaching. This is a little pearl I go from the book regarding Fosbury’s in competition mental approach in preparation for a jump:

“First, the corrective. Fosbury would think: What if anything needs fixing from my previous jump? Often, for example, it was a reminder not to drift into the bar and instead, to jump vertically, not horizontally.” (P. 123)

“Second, the connective. Once he’d determined what needed to be fixed on this coming jump, he would connect the action to the particular part of the body responsible for making that happen, to feel it. To think that thought – more pronounced arch, for example – would help the body rehearse, or memorize, what it needed to do.” (P. 123)

“And, finally, the disconnective. In the final few seconds before the jump, he wanted nothing more on his mind regarding the past. All of his energy needed to feed his now. “I never started forward on my approach,” he said, until was absolutely convinced I was going over the bar.” (P. 124)

Enjoy the book it is an entertaining and informative read that brought back many memories from a bygone era in track and field.

Contemporary Coaching Challenges

This is an excerpt from my book Athletic Development – The Art & science of Functional Sports Conditioning that I thought was particularly timely.

“We do not coach in a vacuum. Within our society we have some contemporary cultural, athletic, educational, and economic obstacles that coaches from past generations did not have to contend with. A colleague of mine, Steve Myrland, has identified and articulated these challenges. Within our culture: We sit too much. We are what we eat, and we eat too much resulting in a lethargic overweight society. We are a result-oriented society with little appreciation for the process, we want it now. Failure (at anything) has a social price tag attached to it. Boys will gladly demonstrate proficiency; but will often quit before having to reveal deficiency. Girls often fear success if it places them “apart.”  Girls must try to resolve the conflict of working to be strong, fit, and fast, and a social order that offers few rewards for these qualities.

Within the context of the athletic arena: We play to train; rather than train to play. We specialize before we develop athleticism and competitive maturity. We emphasize game-skills before and often to the exclusion of fundamental movement-skills. We evaluate before we teach (always trying to find the next prodigy). Physical Education isn’t physical, and it is not educational. In training and competition: We value quantity over quality, more is better. We are (generally) forced into a one-size-fits-all model of drills and exercises, even though one size never does fit all. Play has disappeared, if practice is not organized and there is not coach present, there is no practice. We prefer to watch rather than participate. In marketing health, fitness and sports: We are led to depend on “things” and on venues more than on athletes and coaches. Recognize that in the athletic arena the young athlete may have different goals than we have.”

The Bowerman Influence – 50 Years Later

Bill Bowerman had a huge influence on my decision to be a track coach. In the winter of 1968; my senior year in college at Fresno State Bowerman came to speak as the featured speaker at the first ever Fresno State Track & Field Clinic, he was brought to Fresno by Red Estes, assistant track coach at Fresno State (later to be head coach) who had competed at the University of Oregon under Bowerman. What can I say; Bowerman was Bowerman, passionate, direct to the point, outspoken and strong in his beliefs. He was obviously very knowledgeable in all disciples of Track & Field even though he was known as a distance coach. After the first night of the clinic as I was walking back to my apartment through the cold wet San Joaquin valley fog I made up my mind to be a track coach. I wanted to be like Bowerman, I was so impressed with his knowledge and passion I could think of no other way to go. Over the next few years I read everything about him and his program, heard him speak numerous times, but that presentation that first night of the clinic still sticks with me. He and my father had a huge influence on my thinking that there are no shades of gray; it is right or wrong, no argument. Not that I have ever have achieved what Bowerman did in his career but that has stuck with me.

These quotes capture a little of Bowerman. The first quote is not directly from Bowerman but you can clearly see his influence. It is from Oregana, 1962 University of Oregon Yearbook “World record shattering potential is not easy to come by, and even after it is found it has to be developed to realize its maximum potential. This potential is diverse in its many forms and a knowledge of the components that make up this potential is essential to successfully exploit it.”

"Victory is in having done your best. If you've done your best, you've won."

“It is quite simple to observe that great middle distances runners have usually been medium to just above average in height, slightly below average in weight, slight of build, with well-defined musculature. They also usually have a somewhat lower pulse rate than average. But to select runners purely on the basis of these characteristics would probably result in little more success than choosing them by the color of their eyes and hair.”

“Champions and potential champions must have an abundance of energy and tenacity. They must be willing to stick to workout procedures that would seem grueling to the average person, to perform them in fair weather and foul. Furthermore, they are eager, not only to defeat opposition, but to push themselves to full capacity on the competitive field.”

“My method of devising a training schedule (specific assignments for workouts) is not very different from a physician's method of arriving at a prescription for a patient. The first step is diagnosis, becoming acquainted with the patients or athlete's abilities and disabilities. The second step is an assessment of what improvement can reasonably be expected and what specific recommendations are needed. The final step is a period of trial and observation to adjust the "dosage" or training schedule to optimum levels for the safest and most rapid improvement of condition.”

If you want to learn more about Bowerman read Kenny Moore’s fine book – Bowerman and The Men of Oregon. What sport needs today is more Bill Bowerman’s who have the passion, courage and knowledge to speak their mind and stand up against drugs and cheating.

Vin Scully – Excellence Personified!

Growing up in California in the late 1950’s and early 60’s Vin Scully was your steady companion on warm summer nights. There was nothing better than listening to Vin Scully on a little transistor radio describe the excellence of Sandy Koufax pitching or the daring of Maury Will stealing a base when everyone in the stadium knew what he was going to do. There was special melodic quality and clarity to his voice, no hyperbole, no screaming, pure class, and the focus was on the game and the players. On Sunday Vin Scully broadcast his last Dodger game bringing to a close a sixty-seven year career! There will never be another like him. He is a man of faith, great character and class. Mr. Scully enjoy your retirement. Thanks for the memories you are a national treasure!

Copycat Training

This is the time when coaches and athletes watch great athletes achieve astounding performances at the Olympic games. It is certainly inspiring and interesting to see what these athletes did in their journey to achieve that success. It is tempting to try to copy their training methods in an attempt to imitate their success. I know that because as a young coach and athlete I did that. Needless to say the results were less than spectacular and in a couple of cases disastrous. While what Phelps or Bolt do in training may be interesting in 99.9% of the cases it is irrelevant with your athletes.

Sometimes in the case of great athletes they achieve in spite of not because of what they did. What they did worked for them, in essence a case study of one. It is necessary to know why they did what they did and when they did it. Context is king! Also it is important to note that when looking at training programs form the former Eastern Bloc countries it is necessary to factor the influence of drugs. I have seen training session on paper and then seen the actual training live up close and personal. Any resemblance between what was written was purely coincidental. It was how the session was coached, how the athlete felt that day and the weather conditions etc.

I do not recommend copying training programs from others. However I do think you can get ideas if you have a context for evaluating what you see. Personally over the years I have learned a lot by studying and observing great athletes and coaches training. Notice I said learned not copied. I have taken concepts, not specific exercises or workouts and then applied them where they fit into my system. It is important to remember that each athlete is unique, a case study of one, so make the training fit the athlete do not try to fit the athlete to the training.

Let the “Games” Begin

As the games begin I run the gamut of emotions from the excitement of seeing the best of the best go head to head to deep despair and disappointment. As young coach in 1972 and 76 the Olympics was pure excitement, it was in my mind the pinnacle of athlete excellence. I trained with some Olympians and getting to see them in the big show was special. I got to go to Montreal as a spectator. It was so exciting I was like a kid in a candy store I was oblivious to the politics going on. I was there, I went to the practice track every day from day literally from dawn to dusk until track & field competition began. When the competition began I would watch the warm-ups at the practice track and run to my seat in the stadium for the competition. What an inspirational learning experience. It was heady times for a naïve young coach who thought it was all about technique and training and good coaching. Little did I know what was to come?

Then I got to the higher levels of the sport of track and field. I was now coaching national and international athletes and was serving on various committees of TAC (The precursor to USATF). It was then that the reality of the cheating and corruption hit me. It was not fun to watch. I saw it first hand when the American track and field athletes were offered so-called “educational testing” leading into the 1984 games. In essence they were being educated in how to beat the system. I saw the inner working of what is now USATF, an organization that makes FIFA look like the boy scouts. I know you are thinking that was almost forty years ago, yes and it is the same people and coaches involved today.

That brings us to today with the games set to begin. We have athletes from the US who are considered potential stars of the games who have tested positive more than once. We have the same drug coaches coaching. We are as far from the Olympic spirit as is possible. It is all driven by billions of dollars of sponsorship and television money. All that being said I will still watch selected events and sports there is still something special about this level of competition. I am looking forward to seeing the athletes that I have worked with compete because I know they have not cheated. I wish good luck to the honest and clean athletes and coaches who hopefully will be able to rise above the madness. My dream, a dream I hope to see in my lifetime is truly clean sport where there are lifetime bans and bans for coaches who cheat. I dream about seeing these young 11 & 12-year-old swimmers I am working with now have a chance to compete on a level playing field. Let the games begin and celebrate the true Olympic spirit.

Two Mornings in February

Let me preface this by saying I am a coaching junkie, my passion is watching coaches coach and learning from them. It is a bonus when the athletes they are coaching are the best of the best. In February of this year at University of Oregon I was able to watch two great sessions.

Thursday morning Track session at Hayward Field in Indoor Track

Harry Marra coaching world recorder holder Ashton Eaton and his wife Briana herself an Olympic medalist and world champion in the heptathlon. At the same time Jaime Cook, Assistant Track & Field coach at University of Oregon was working with his hurdler Devon Allen.

I met with Harry before and I went over what they were going to do. He started the session with a mini lesson on the mechanics of the high jump to review what they had done the day before. Then the session was focused on long jump especially rhythm of last six strides. It was great to see the communication between coach and athletes and Ashton and his wife worked to together to reinforce what Harry was emphasizing. It was fundamental with a focus on the basics, nothing overly complicated. Language was clear and coaching cues were short and on point. It was clear to me that coaching has made a huge difference in Ashton’s and Brianna development and it was abundantly clear why they are champions.

At the same time Devon Allen was doing a hurdle workout. They were working starts over three hurdles and then five hurdles and some running one step drills. I was especially interested to watch Allen because he had torn his ACL on the opening kickoff in the Rose Bowl just thirteen months before. It was quickly apparent there were no residual effects from the injury and subsequent surgery. I came away super impressed with Allen’s almost perfect textbook lead leg action, possible one the best I have seen in 46 years of coaching. This kids work ethic is off the scale doing both his football and track workouts and attacking them.

Friday morning University of Oregon Off season football Training

It was a 6:30AM team off-season training session coached by Jim Radcliffe, Head S&C coach at University of Oregon. It was dark and cold when they started. It was the last training session of the week with a strength training session to follow. Jimmy did a twenty-minute extensive warm-up session. The goal of the session was to break into their position groups and work on specific football speed appropriate for their positions. There was no standing around. They train the way they play - FAST. Before they did the speed development they did a session of throws and jumps again related to the demands of their position. Then they started the speed work and it was fast, I must say that seldom have I seen football players move with the speed and precision of movement these guys were executing, a real tribute to coach Radcliffe and his staff. I also must emphasize that there was no screaming and hollering at the players, just coaching corrections, emphasis on cues, basically good teaching. When the payers were in their groups they were player led! I walked around to watch each group and when I got to the wide receiver group there was Devon Allen, the hurdler running patterns and other speed drills. My immediate thought was this kid is a throwback to bygone days. He did not hold anything back. After the session I was with coach Radcliffe when he called over the football players that also ran track and he spoke to each one and asked how they felt when he got Allen his response was what is tomorrows workout!

I could not help but think of these two workouts as I watched Ashton win the Olympic trials in a world leading score with a dinged up leg. He was essentially 85 to 90% at best but because of the workouts I saw in February and the trust in his coach with the emphasis on fundamentals he was able to execute. Same thing watching Devon Allen dominate the hurdles on his way to making the Olympic team. The strength that he developed by doing the multiple workouts in track and football served him well. It is a tribute to the sports medicine staff at Oregon who got him back 100% from the ACL surgery and his coaches, but above a tribute to his focus. It is going to be fun to watch these clean athletes compete with the world in Rio. Somehow I think those workouts in February will make a difference. Onward, upward, higher, faster and stronger!