Coaching: Hazardous to your health?

ESPN has an article on the stress NFL Head Coaches face, for many to the detriment of their health. While not many endurance coaches face the same pressures as big money professional sports coaches such as in the NFL, the 12 month a year, 'no off-season' nature of endurance sports can mean many coaches don't unplug and take a break.

While many endurances coaches also participate in the sports they preside over, thereby keeping a level of fitness, the principle of taking care of ones self remains important to maintain and continually improve coaching standards. The same principles apply as with athletes, regeneration breaks are important for coaches to re-fresh creativity, for critical reflections and to gain new perspectives. 

"I'd lose on Sunday, and I'd spend three days worrying about what I had to do win the next game," he continued. "And the enjoyment of a win would last a half-hour. But I'm not unique. I know two Hall of Fame coaches who came to me and talked about going through similar problems. I told them that there's only so much you can do. It's like an engine. You can blow up a Porsche if you drive it too hard, and a football coach is no different. You have to find a way to turn it off."

Leading into Olympic Games, a principle that often comes up in preparation meetings, is the coaches and staff arriving at the games fresh, fit and ready to perform, in much the same way as athletes must do.

Another great quote from the article is the following:

"you can't worry about every little thing in your preparation that you end up chasing ghosts."

This stands in contrast to the current in-vogue 'aggregation of marginal gains', or, put another way: don't lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Trent Stellingwerff: on the belief effect

Athletics Illustrated has an interview with physiologist and coach Trent Stellingwerff on the 'Belief Effect', delving into psychology working with athletes and coaches. 

Trent works for the Canadian Sports Centre Pacific, the multi-sport sports agency, supporting Olympic sports in Victoria, and Vancouver.

I had the opportunity to work with Trent when based in Victoria - he's one of the few scientists that understands the practicalities of implementation of research into athlete programmes, and gets the coaches mindset, and specific challenges coaches face. 

In this interview Trent discusses the complex relationship between athlete and coach belief in their programmes, particularly in the face of the desire for more practise to be 'evidence based'. In reality often coaches and athletes are 'ahead' of research but believe in their practise, whether there is evidence to support what they are doing or not - see the continual use of altitude training world wide, despite the relative dearth of strong evidence that altitude training 'works'.

This isn't to say coaches should ignore evidence or not question their practises, but that belief is a very important element of coaching, and likewise athletes must believe strongly in what they are doing - and for both athletes and coaches the ultimate evidence base is performance - even if we know performance is so complex and multi-factorial that drawing links to a specific intervention is not usually possible in any case. 

"However, as an applied sport practitioner I am not concerned about bias – I want to leverage all the bias I can get into “belief”.  And that belief is included in myself and belief by the athlete and coach. To me this is not fraudulent.  If I have done my homework (e.g. studied for 20-plus years, looked at all the research papers, reached out to my international network for insider information, done some internal research and trial/error) and I truly believe in an intervention, I want the athlete/coaches I work with to know that I am convinced this will help them, that I have done my homework, and that they are in good hands with me – that they have a strategic advantage by applying new knowledge into a new intervention. In this situation, we have both evidence and belief maximized – which is perfect in the applied sport sciences as both have been shown to improve performance separately."

Follow Trent on twitter. 

Impostor syndrome? It might be a sign you're getting better at your work

Oliver Burkeman has an article on Impostor Syndrome, something that many freelancers, including coaches can feel:

"Impostor syndrome – the feeling that you're a fraud, and any day now you'll be exposed – is presumably even more common than surveys suggest: after all, it's not the kind of thing to which people like to admit."

"The only solution, many experts say, is for higher-ups to talk about their own insecurities much more."

This can be particularly relevant in a world with access to so much information, once a coach gets enough knowledge and experience to understand how complex each individual athlete and situation can be.  

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt," said Bertrand Russell.

If as a coach you don't occasionally lay awake at night pondering the sessions to be delivered the next day, you be find the quote above applicable to you. 

However coach that does feel some doubt, according to this article, it might be a sign the coach is on the right track. 

Athletic Coaches Must Be Open to Self-Examination, Lifelong Learning

This article from Science Daily interviews Jim Denison, of the Canadian Athletics Coaching Centre, is full of great points on the need for coaches to avoid becoming complacent, and instead seek to be continual learning and evolution in their coaching practice:

"Coaching is complex, continually changing and influenced greatly by the context, athletes' circumstances and the developing relationship between the coach and the athlete."

"There's good research that shows that when coaches achieve this expert status they tend to want to maintain that," he says, "so admitting that you don't know becomes a threat to their expertise."

"Often the most successful coaches are the ones who are most willing to adopt a lifelong learning approach and to admit that they don't know," says Denison, who advocates "problem-setting" -- determining whether there is indeed a problem, before "problem-solving."

I'd add that a level of humility also goes a long way in coaches - the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

Dr. Barry Fudge Talks on Altitude Training for Endurance

Another uCoach Video, this one on current British Athletics Head of Endurance Dr Barry Fudge, physiologist and advisor to Mo Farah. Barry has a very practical and down to earth perspective on sport science and understand the implementation challenges with many performance interventions, which can appear to be very beneficial on paper, but putting them into a programme is not always straight forward.

Dr. Fudge also talks about his role as a physiologist and talks in detail about the British athletics program, he explains how, why and when athletes can best use altitude and shows how an endurance program set up leading into the London Olympic games has grown and flourished.

http://ucoach.com/video/dr-barry-fudge-talks-on-altitiute-training-for-endruance/

Follow Barry Fudge on twitter.

Note: non-UK users will have to use a work-around to use uCoach resources.

Steve Fudge: Building a Philosophy Part 2 & 3

Steve Fudge is a switched-on young Sprints Coach with British Athletics, based in Loughborough. There is a lot of wisdom in these short videos applicable to any coaching field.

Links to part 2 and 3 of Steve Fudge's building a coaching philosophy talks:

http://ucoach.com/video/steve-fudge-building-a-philosophy-part-2/

http://ucoach.com/video/steve-fudge-building-a-philosophy-part-3/

Note: non-UK users will have to use a work-around to use uCoach resources.

Follow Steve Fudge on twitter. 

An Interview with Ben Bright

Another interview from Intelligent Triathlon, this time with current British Triathlon Head Coach Ben Bright. Ben was is Olympian himself from Sydney 2000, and had a successful career as an athlete before moving to coaching in Hong Kong then British Triathlon. This interview focuses on his view on coaching:

"The art is getting to know the person and their personality and what approach you need to take to suit them. The science you use must match the art you need for that person or, in that situation, squad.

The science is in many ways the easy bit because if you follow sound basic training principles you will get improvement.

Many people want to take the short cuts and what you find with the best coaches is that they do the basics right and then when they have those basics right they then add the 1-2% bits on the top that can make the difference at the top level.

A lot of coaches try to do it the other way around and it doesn’t work."

An Interview with Joel Filliol

Another interview with yours truly, this time from former British Triathlon colleague Mark Pearce's triathlon website Intelligent Triathlon. The interview touches on a number of areas including my transition from Federation to private coaching, Simon Whitfield's training pre-2008, training in cold weather, the evolution of the sport, and more.

"Working independently means I am not assigned athletes from a federation, and must attract and retain athletes whom I think I can help, and that choose to work with me and join the squad, which is a very positive change, as the attitude is fundamentally different, as we invest in each other, and are accountable to each other."

Follow BTF coach Mark Pearce on twitter. 

Coach Talks Triathlon: Joel Filliol

Another in the Triathlete Europe coach talks series, this time with yours truly. 

In this interview I discuss overall training philosophy, the peaking concept for races, individual workload, injury prevention, and balancing all three sports: 

"What we’re trying to do is have the right workloads for each athlete-the right workload at the right time for the athletes. Ithink that’s sort of a broad principle, but there are some different stories for how I can illustrate that. “Philosophy” is kind of a big word-what does that mean? What does that apply? My lessons working with Simon post-Beijing-we were lucky to have success, so you look back and ask, “What contributed to that?” And Isaid there were three things that were really important for Beijing, and they were conditioning, conditioning and conditioning."

Coach Talks Triathlon: Siri Lindley

Another in the coach talks series from Triathlete Europe, this time from former ITU World Champion and coach Siri Lindley. Siri has coached an Olympic medallist (2004), and now multiple Ironman World Champions, with Leanda Cave and Mirinda Carefrae, among many others in her elite squad Sirious Athletes. In this interview Siri shares her insight on mental preparation, training camps, and injury prevention:

"I think the biggest thing that everybody can do is if you’re logging your training and you know you’ve been training consistently. doing a great job. working hard every day, and if you’re logging that, it’s important to go back-whether it’s weekly or monthly or before a race-and look at all that work that you’ve done and look at the progress that you’ve made and really get a true confidence boost from that."

Follow Siri on twitter. 

Coach Talks Triathlon: Darren Smith

Triathlon Europe ran a series of coach interviews from their Inside Triathlon magazine in the summer of 2013. This interview with highly accomplished Australian coach Darren Smith has some insight into his approach, with practical examples of how he implements his ideas across competing, improving swim performance, rest days and swim-bike-run balance.

Training Philosophy
I don’t know what too many others do because I don’t spend my days trying to work out what everyone else does. But I think I’m somewhere in between everything. I’m certainly less volume than, say, Sutton, I’m quite high on the technical refinement, and quite high on teaching people specifics about racing.

Darren is known for his technical approach to triathlon coaching, and his success with his private 'D-Squad'.

Follow Darren on twitter.

Grasp your Opportunity by Lachlan Penfold

Head of Performance for the Sydney Roosters in the Australian Rugby League, Lachlan Penfold, has an article on the Propel Perform site, where he talks about the opportunity he had to work with a professional club, and how he turned the relatively non-paying job ($750/year) into a very important development opportunity as a young coach. 

Some quotes:

You only learn that by doing it.

It taught me to be creative, and independent. 

Making sure you can see everyone, and they’re not all going at once, so that you can make sure technique is performed correctly.  Being able to motivate, encourage, admonish, all at once.  That’s the art of running a training session, everything functioning smoothly, players working hard and doing things correctly, no injuries, no standing around getting bored.  You can’t learn that in a lecture theatre or a tutorial. You need to do it, mess it up, then come up with a better way.  And keep doing that.

If he had been holding out for a better paying job, he might not have had this opportunity to develop and learn the coaching craft.

I was fortunate to have a similar opportunity early in my coaching career, moving from Ontario to Victoria BC to take a development coach role with the newly created National Triathlon Centre. The role paid an honorarium, and although it was a significant move across Canada for relatively little pay, it was a career changing opportunity, and opened all sorts of doors in the future. 

The Simple Phrase that Increases Effort 40%

Daniel Coyle's book The Talent Code is full of coaching insights, and he posts frequently on these topics. This post is on feedback to athletes, and the post title is referencing this phrase which establishes a framework from which to give feedback:

"I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them."

This sets the stage for athletes working towards elite performance, that underpins that you are giving feedback to reinforce the high standards required, and that you believe the athlete can achieve those standards.

25 Mistakes - 25 Years

An article from StrengthCoachBlog.com with a number of coaching reflections applicable to any coach: 

Mistake #1: Knowing it all.

Mistake #3: Not visiting other coaches

Mistake #11: Copying any programs

Mistake #18: Not taking enough vacation time

Mistake #25: Reading an article like this and thinking it doesn’t apply to you

Look past the strength specific comments, it's worth a read. Many strength & conditioning coaches seem to be prolific writers, perhaps in efforts to differentiate themselves from other coaches, however there is a lot of good coaching material from this field. 

Intuition, Nutters and the Will of Female Athletes

Jason Bailey has an interview with triathlon coach Brett Sutton, which explores Sutton's philosophy of coaching:

“Most definitely” says Sutton when asked if he feels that he has evolved as a coach over the years. “For some people I'm better and for others I'm worse – it depends on the athlete. Every individual is different though, and it takes great courage on the part of the athlete to give their complete trust to the person coaching them. For example, if somebody is under performing during training, I'll put my arm around one person and say that it is OK and be sympathetic whilst I'll stamp my feet at another ranting that this sort of behavior is totally unacceptable. While you can explain those differing responses to them while it is being delivered, it is very hard for them to process. It is a very fine line between being totally authoritarian or empathetic.”

This quote highlights that the 'soft skills', or people skills essentially, are the differences between the great coaches (or leaders in general) vs the more highly lauded 'technical' coaching skills. 

A few other points in the interview may be debatable including Sutton's assessment of current ITU performers, however there are a number of reflections on his coaching process that make this worth reading. 

Invest in People not Things – Please

From VideoAnalyst site: 

Why is the investment always in facilities or equipment but not in the people? Look through the local or national newspapers in almost any country and you will find countless stories of clubs, NGB’s & Governments announcing the dawning of a new era with X or Y facility now being built. ...

Has anybody actually looked at the correlation between facilities and performance? 

Having top-quality facilities is vastly over-rated when in comes to the necessities for an elite development environment. In many cases, basic facility access, not facility quality, is the main issue coaches face: optimal training times, and durations, such as pool access at ideal times. Not whether the pool is a state of the art 50m pool or a small old 6 lane 25m pool. Or whether the track is a top quality mondo track or a cinder or dirt track as track in Iten Kenya as seen above. 

Often Federations and Governing bodies will be quick to justify sparkling new facilities, but slow to invest in people, training and education, which along with talented athletes are the main limiters to elite performance development. 

Olympic Preparation of a World-Class Female Triathlete

Basque coach and sports scientist Iñigo Mujika has a post on a paper he's publishing on the preparation on Spanish/Basque triathlete Ainhoa Murua, the 7th place finisher at the London Olympic Games:

http://www.inigomujika.com/en/2013/10/much-more-than-an-excellent-athlete/3097#.Up8zg2RdUfc

The paper goes into Murua's training volume and intensity distribution - rarely has there been a detailed long term publication of the preparation of an elite triathlete such as this.

Link to the paper abstract on Pubmed 

Malcolm Brown: Coach the Brownlee Brothers

Brown is the former Director of Sport at Leeds Metropolitan University and was the Olympic Performance Manager for British Triathlon at London 2012.  He also looks after the running component of the Brownlee brother's training regime.

 An excellent series of videos on Malcolm's reflections through the successful 2012 campaign of Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee, Gold and Bronze medallists at London 2012.

I worked with Malcolm in my role with British Triathlon from 2009-2011. He is a very experienced, patient and wise coach, and has been a key part of guiding the Brownlee brothers:

http://ucoach.com/video/malcolm-brown-coaching-the-brownlee-brothers-part-1

Other parts in the series:

Malcolm Brown: Coaching the Brownlee Brothers (Part 2)

Malcolm Brown: Coaching the Brownlee Brothers (Part 3)

Malcolm Brown: Coaching the Brownlee Brothers (Part 4)

Malcolm Brown: Coaching the Brownlee Brothers (Part 5)

Note: non-UK users will need to find a work around to watch these videos.

Do Coaches Learn too?

A post on coaches learning on a site about elite coach education, from Henk Kraaijenhof's site Helping the Best Get Better

Asking the main question:

do coaches really learn from what we teach them. In other words: do they adapt their training programs, do they change or shift their point of view?

And more to challenge coaches to grow and evolve:

• but do you also bring out the best of yourself or could you do better?

• are your athletes better than you despite of  you?

• are your athletes of international level but are you thinking and operating at regional or national level?

• when did you stop learning or improving yourself, because you already know it all and reached the end  of the line?

• how often do you spend time reading a book about your job, instead of skimming the surface of a subject on the Internet?

• how about those 10.000 hours, did you make them already?

Coaching Matters: Around the web November 2013

Simon Nainby's excellent link of coaching links for November: 

http://undergroundathletics.co.uk/coaching-matters-around-web-november-2013/