Coach Carter

The Times recently published a series of articles on the philosophies of five coaches working with top athletes in UK sport today. Dan passed them on to me, and I have been spending some time reading them and reflecting no how my approach differs / overlaps with theirs. What I have done in this week's blog is to take one quote that really resonated with me from each of the five articles in the series, and give you my perspective on it.

Its always good to keep open to new approaches, and in particular, I think its always worth looking outside your own sport. It would be easy to only read around the sport of cycling - but each sport is steeped with its own tradition(s), so dipping into other sports can bring a fresh approach. I've done this previously, reading a lot of work by Clive Woodward - my work with teams in the past has been heavily influenced by his methods. Therefore, I found it very appropriate that the series kicked up with his take on coaching....

"Coaching is about the skill in how to educate your athletes"

Sir Clive Woodward, Performance Director for the British Olympic Association

I've thought a lot about this lately. I see part of my role as coach to 'empower' the athlete - to become less dependent on me almost to the extent that over time they can coach themselves. My role becomes as 'advisor'. Indeed, I have a few athletes developing that way now. It means we are working more as a team: they bring their self-expertise; and I bring the latest knowledge in sport science. We share the responsibility of their goal. In order to bring that about though, I know I have to give the athlete the tools - it might be helping them understand why I structure the training week the way I do; or introducing tools like measuring heart rate variability to monitor their state of 'rested-ness'. Overtime, if they understand the WHY, they can then buy wholeheartedly into the programme. And, if they know what I am trying to achieve in each training block, they can give me specific feedback on if we are hitting the spot.

But 'educating' means more than just knowledge transfer - I also see a responsbility for me helping the athlete gain a bigger perspective. In this sense, educating takes on a more reflective nature. Helping the athlete to self-assess, review and then feedback. To see pursuit of their sporting goal just as a way to challenge: the attainment of the goal is not just the be all and end all of their athletic career....its about getting curious - what is limiting performance, and how do we get around that. I think that is what brings an athlete to a sport scientist for coaching. 

"A talented person is like putty...if you coach correctly you can end up with a beautiful vase"

Andy Banks, coach to Olympic diver Tom Daley

I liked this analogy, because it gets across the 'moulding' that we coaches can apply. Yes, we need good material but we also need to be creative and to handle the material carefully. What is coaching 'correctly' though? That is the difficulty, there are no rights and wrongs that you can apply across the board. For me, this quote made me reflect on my coaching method, 'coaching style' as most of the textbooks refer to it as. I am different in all of my coach-athlete relationships. I play the roles of advisor; assessor; counselor; demonstrator; friend; facilitator; fact finder; fountain of knowledge; instructor; mentor; organiser and planner; role model; supporter. Also, the role is never static - one day I can be the fact finder, the next day the same athlete might need 'the supporter'. I have to be open to what the athlete needs right there and then. Interestingly, sometimes that might conflict with the role I think they need there and then!

What do I take from this? I think its about being honest and open - for the coach and athlete to have the space to have open dialogue. I will ask my athletes how they think I am doing; what can I be doing better for THEM. The athlete needs to tell me what is 'coaching correctly' as applied to them.

"As an amateur, you are a sprinter; but as a pro, you have to be more like a marathon runner"

Jim McDonnell, coach to Olympic middleweight boxer James DeGale

When we pick up a new hobby or in the case of the athlete, a new sport, there is a tendency of wanting it all 'now'. We spend hours reading about our new passion, surfing on the internet to pick up the best tips, or contemplating the all the new kit we can buy to make us better. In some respects, we seek instant reward - in cycling I see this a lot. A rider starts the sport, and they follow the tradition of falling into the race season. When you start riding your bike, you also start racing it. I'll come back to this a little bit later...

The difference with the pro level rider is that they see the sport as their career. When we start at the bottom of the career ladder (may be as a University graduate, or a school leaver) we look at the years ahead and consider how we will move from A to B to C to D. We see it as stepwise: and while we might sometimes wish to speed the process up, we generally accept it will take us time to reach 'the top' - we appreciate we have things to learn through experience (you can't put a wise head on young shoulders!). A young cyclist entering the pro ranks will probably have this view. However, I think the aspiring 'domestic' cyclist can learn something from this - turning their focus from short term gratification (PBs this season please) to a longer term view. There is nothing wrong with setting personal bests each year (or my business name would be misleading!), but sometimes I counsel an athlete to think longer term - to be less sprint, more marathon. Longevity is often rewarded - an example would be seeing a block in a performance that needs something different being applied. Throwing a familiar training / race programme at someone might not be the answer; instead they might need to strip back and rebuild the blocks in a different way in order to reep higher gains. Going back to the pottery analogy above - maybe the putty needs some time to be moulded into a different vase?

 "Some athletes can tolerate tremendous physical pain a few times; but she can do that consistently, every single session. Its that steel she has both physically and mentally"

Bill Furniss, coach to Rebecca Adlington, double gold medallist at the Beijing Olympics

Not so long ago, my athlete Juliette passed on to me an article talking about how athletes typically fall into categories. Essentially it dealt with the differences between naturally talented athletes and those 'work horses' who had to strive for what they wanted. I have always seen this 'work ethic' as a talent in itself. After all, if you don't want to work hard (and sometimes that might mean compromising the 'now' in order to get the bigger picture later) then sport is probably not the right place for you - training is hard, sometimes it even hurts.

I really picked up on the word 'consistently'. I have had many conversations with athletes around whether it is better to have 3 sessions applied each week: week in, week out, 52 weeks per year compared to 2 sessions here, 6 sessions there. You might end up with the same total number of sessions in a given season with both approaches; but I know where my money would be on backing the most successful outcome. The body needs a consistent stimulus to shift it from its current 'comfort zone' to a newer level - over time, that stimulus needs to be bigger to achieve more adaptation. I also sense a big part in success is committing to each session with mind, body and soul. There is a temptation to go through the motions - to see 6 x 3 minute intervals and tick off the reps. Recently, there has been a Specialized advertising campaign using Alberto Contador doing his mountain climb intervals. OK, its only an 'ad' BUT, I think you get my point - look at his face, his body: he is living, breathing and eating that training session - as if his life depended on it. Better to do 3 sessions per week like that, than 6 which you just cruise?

"There is a classic piece of training theory - that it takes 10 years / 10,000 hours to produce something. A child prodigy still needs to put in the time...people are too much in a rush"

Tony Minichiello, coach to Jessica Ennis, World Heptahlon Champion

This goes back to the point made earlier. We start a new sport, and we want success as soon as possible. We talk of what we want this season. I do my best to ask athletes to think further ahead - what is the ultimate goal? For some, they need a few years in the sport to understand what that might be, and I fully understand that. But to achieve the very most you can get from your body takes time. And, targeting PBs (instant gratification!) might compromise the long term ambition and potential peak in physiology.

Dan and I met last week to talk through the process of tapering, peaking and periodisation. We touched on this '10,0000 hours' concept indirectly. In the programme, the athlete needs a multitude of abilities - which the coach must help manage the development of. Sometimes it can feel like the racing actually gets in the way! Now of course, racing IS the reason we train (or at least directs our training) - but, what periodisation allows is the planning of the route towards the goal. A luxury would be for an athlete to give me licence to have those 10 years / 10,000 hours to bring them to a peak - okay, that's extreme, but hopefully you get my point? The Candian's developed the concept of 'Long term athlete development' - it talks of a series of stages which the athlete travels along as they become an expert in their sport: training to train (developing the engine); training to compete (learning more sport specific skills / abilities); training to perform (where things get really specific and racing frequency is less because higher peaks - wins - are sought). When I start with a new athlete, I encourage them to give me a long term plan: whether it be 3 years, 5 years (okay, I won't push my luck and ask for 10!). In all honesty, these coach-athlete relationships can be the most satisfying to both parties: you feel a real sense of sharing the road together.