Coach Carter

I am enjoying reading of the new look Procycling magazine – I have been a subscriber for all my years as a cyclist, but their recent overhaul of the look and feel of the magazine is one I welcome. In particular, there are more features written by people across the cycling industry. The rider diaries have long been in the magazine, and their stories of life on the road were my favourite to read each month. Now though, they have started to include guest contributions across the roles within the Pro scene – each month I read these and reflect on the similarities / contrasts of their world with mine.

This month, there is an article by Joop Alberda – the general manager of Cervelo Test Team. He comes from a background with the Dutch volleyball and Russian football teams. This is his first year with Cervelo, so is getting to grips with how the sport works. A few of his observations are worth comment upon.

“Goal setting, good programme, smart travelling, good equipment, good coaching, good nutrition, load and rest...these are the seven processes that all elite athletes have to use for training”

Pretty much an all inclusive list! But, they do apply to elite and amateur athletes alike, it is just a matter of scale and doing everything you can within your life constraints. I agree it all starts with goal setting  - this is the foundation of the whole journey and process. Where are you going, and when are you planning to get there? The good programme then plots the ‘how’ to get there. The other five are then the facilitators on route – its often these five that become the obstacles if not addressed sufficiently well. I’m pleased to see what I consider the performance triad to be included in this list – the nutrition, the load (training stress) and rest. Equal importance should be given across these 3 – too often we see training as the only input...but I guess this is where ‘good coaching’ comes in, as I need to educate my riders to understand this triad in bringing about adaptation and fitness development.

“Values and goals, you should always stick to these”

Underlying every athlete’s participation in sport is a desire, a motivation to do the sport. Why spend your leisure time (for amateur athletes) essentially involved in another ‘job’? An athlete should spend time looking at ‘why’ they do what they do – what is the motivation to participate? It is easy just to say ‘ because I enjoy it’....sometimes this IS the case, or at least part of the picture. But in my experience, many athletes have an underlying ‘need’ they are trying to meet through sporting success. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but we should be honest with ourselves, and even with our coach. Our needs often come from deep seated values learnt as a child, from our families or guardians. If we don’t know our values, or don’t live by them our goal setting becomes confused. I have noticed in my own life as a coach how if my goals are not set from my values I sense discomfort, a bit like a ‘fidgeting’. An itch that no matter how hard you scratch, it doesn’t satisfy. Check in with your own goals right now – do they fulfil you? If something isn’t quite hitting the mark, go back to think “why am I doing this? What is important to me?”

 “In my experience, the worst thing you can do is to change tack dramatically partway through a programme...this leads to short term gain, long term pain”

I observe this a lot in my athletes. We start with a plan built in the autumn of what is to come that season. By January, things are being refined as we approach the season itself: the athlete is at first excited and then becomes resolute through these two phases – they know their goals, they believe in them. Related to what I have just spoken about above, the goals have been based on their own values. Then Spring arrives – and suddenly, those goals are altered. I watch this with interest. In many ways, this is totally understandable and underlies our tendencies as humans to always be looking at what other people are doing, what other people have. And, we want some of ‘it'. We are then living our lives not by our own values, but by other people’s. Let me give you an example: a rider may wish to spend the season building to the National championships, let us say the 50 mile distance. But, come March, they look at the fixture handbook and they get attracted by the opportunities for a ‘fast 10 mile time’. They then go on to the internet forums and listen to others talking of how this is the last time this course can be ridden because of traffic lights being built. It’s easy to smile at this, but you would NOT believe how often I am spending time re-aligning people back onto their original goal. It is not because I dictate what they should be doing, but because they have spent so much valuable time preparing for the 50 mile champs, and I want to protect them against now sabotaging their preparation by grasping at the short term. As Alberda comments “this often happens when you’re responding to perceived opportunities”. If you want peak performance, set your goals, stick to them – ideas might change, but let those temptations go. Write the ideas down and come back to them later in the season, or even next year....there IS always time.

“My philosophy is athlete-centric, coach-driven, performance-orientated”

This actually follows on nicely from the preceding point. The goal setting is made by the athlete, the programme is then driven by the coach – their job is to then orientate everything around helping the athlete obtain peak performance. Peak performance is the shared project – goal setting is the role of the athlete, the plan to get to that goal is the coach’s role. Using the example above, the athlete brings the goal of the 50 mile time trial championship in June; the coach then puts together a training programme to take the rider to that goal. This will also include a race programme to use as stepping stones towards the ‘50’. In practice, I do negotiate this process with my athletes – but I am noticing that I am becoming stricter with my athletes about this planning process – ‘tough love’! If our shared aim is peak performance, we must stick to our roles and respect each other throughout the process.

“I put a question mark against everything we do. I think its crucial to question why you do things in a certain way and to ask if the reasons for doing them are still valid”

I love this particular comment – its something so close to my own philosophy of how I coach. Across my 20 or so athletes I will never prescribe a programme just because its the way things have always been done. I won’t even give an athlete the same training each year because “its what we did last winter”....even if it seemed to work. In the last few weeks during rider mid-season reviews I have had several conversations with riders about how we might strip back to basics this winter and approach that period differently. We have questioned the logic behind traditional approaches. For example, if a rider wants to do well over long distance events does it always mean we have to focus on long endurance rides? Could ‘shocking’ the body using different types of training bring us some extra watts? Or, rather than follow traditional periodisation, what would happen if we started training with high intensity work in the autumn (the so called "reverse periodisation" model); likewise, we could rotate through the mesocycles faster, so rather than a 24 week approach to the new season building up through the zones, why not perform 12 weeks of faster rotation which you repeat in a second 12 week block (the "block periodisation" model).

Reading and reflecting like this is my chance to step out of the day to day activity of ‘coaching’ itself and keep myself moving on, progressing. Self development is important to me – it is the goal I have set myself based on my own values. In fact, the coming 3 days are providing me an opportunity to expand on this: Dan and I are heading off to Newcastle later today to attend the International Sport Science and Sports Medicine conference – we are both really excited as there is much centred on cycling performance, including a symposium led by many of the British Cycling coaching team. We’ll be reporting back from the conference in the Cutting Edge blog on the website – stay tuned!