Sunday, July 12, 2009

'Coaching'...what does this word mean????

The question of a ‘coach’ seems to be a good place for any athlete to begin. I cannot say I’ve gone through a traditional approach as an athlete (egs strong HS or club situation). I was able to do some stuff with the Kelowna Track and field Club on a seasonal basis (and learned a ton in many regards), but I never had that sort of ‘mentorship/leadership’ day to day coaching. As a result I ended up with two things 1) lacking much basic running knowledge and 2) being independent.

Many young athletes probably face #1 as they have no local club or have a ‘nice’ HS coach who supports them, but knows very little in regards to training concepts. It’s very different now with the internet and ease of trading or finding resources. # 2 on the other hand I have always found to be an intriguing concept.

I had a great university coach (Mike Lonergan) at SFU who has easily been the most influential single person in my running life and it is from him who I have often found I share my basic coaching philosophies. Mike was not a rah rah kinda guy, but instead was laid back. Sometimes to the extreme (especially as I have come to realize I need a kick in the butt and need someone to ‘shake’ me up), but his attitude that you needed to make the decisions for yourself have always stuck with me.

So what then to look for or expect from a coach....the answer is ‘I don’t specifically know.’ What one gets from a coach and what one wants vary from person to person. There is also the variability of what level of experience and the knowledge the athlete has gained over time. The great peter Snell had a fallout with his legendary coach Arthur Lydiard before the 1964 Olympics, but they were able to rectify their issues before the games. The dissension between the two.... Lydiard’s training beliefs versus Snell’s belief that he had a better understanding of how his body reacted to training.

Some athletes want to be told exactly what to do as the great Villanova coach Jumbo Elliot said to Eammon Coghlan, ’Act like a horse. Be dumb. Just run.’ For some they want to just simply show and not have to think about what they will do today, tomorrow, etc.... I’ve seen athletes who need nothing that involves the creation of an actual workout and instead need a coach to calm their nerves, pump them up, be a friend, order them, scare them, inspire and even make life decisions. In the end a good coach probably has to be able to do all these things, but each athlete needs different things at different times. In the end the athlete really needs one simple thing...to be able to believe in what their coach tells them. Having said that I also feel there are three main tenets to coaching:

1) Do not hurt the athlete (either physically or mentally)
2) Each athlete is unique/different from others (both physically and mentally)
3) Make the training program suit the athlete, not the other way around (both physically and mentally).


The famous coaches like Lydiard felt that if an athlete knew why he/she was doing something then that was motivation enough. Others like Percy Cerutty (to say he was eccentric is an understatement) felt you had to run in a natural manner like an animal and that ‘pain is the purifier’. The Franz Stampfls (Roger Bannister’s coach) and Peter Coe’s of the world were purely scientific, while others like Bill Bowerman were seen as mentors and father figures.

My personal philosophy of coaching is along the lines of Steve Ovett’s coach Harry Wilson. His idea was to make the athlete independent of him. Those who have some knowledge of Ovett know that in the later stages of his career Wilson was a ‘sounding board’. But early on he was instrumental in Ovett’s development.

As a young athlete I was pretty ignorant and it wasn’t until I began coaching some HS aged athletes that my own training took on its own evolution. Being a history major I was more interested in what previous athletes and coaches had done (rather than scientific research) and to say I’ve gone out of my to research these things is an understatement. I read books, asked coaches and athletes who I respected questions, paid attention to how other athletes interacted with their coaches and generally tried to be as open to the varying coaching relationships as possible. In the end I took all those things in combination with my own personal experiences and created my own version...or maybe better defined as versions of what constitutes a good coach. And in the end I realized there was no one answer... instead I came to the conclusion that a coach needs to be a chameleon to different people and different situations.

One of the more influential coaches I’ve had had the pleasure of dealing with wasn’t even a coach of mine, but rather was a coach whose athletes I competed against. His name... Joe Vigil. Many will recognize this name as the former coach of Deena Drossin/Kastor (the oly bronze medalist) and former Wld XC silver medalist Pat Porter, but he was also the coach of Adams State College (now a D 2 NCAA powerhouse who were in the NAIA). Coach V always had great teams, but his success and development rate was unbelievable. I would ask his athletes about him and they would do anything for him. Even when I saw Coach V recently he was able to fill me in on what many were doing as they still keep in touch with him. His ‘Vigilosophy’ of making running a simple, yet ‘satisfaction’ (he felt running wasn’t something you liked, but rather something you felt satisfied doing) oriented process has always struck me as a core running idea. The stories of how his guys would show up (and not know their workout) and ask what they were doing and he would say a 10 mile time trial...see you guys in an hour sort of approach was something that inspired me.

About 10 years or so ago I heard that coach V had written a training book. I was lucky enough to see him at the Mt Sac relays with a HS guy I was coaching at the time. I saw Coach V in the stands and he recognized me from my SFU days. I was fortunate enough to chat with him for a bit. Even luckier yet was when I asked him how I could get a copy of his book and he had a few in his backpack. It’s one of the prized possessions in my running library. Although one would assume Coach V’s book would be scientific (he has a PHD in exer physiology) it spends a significant amount of time on creating the proper training environment and the requirements of the athlete. This sort of attitude has always stuck with me as what really good coaches do....they create the training environment.

In my own short coaching resume, when I have been more hands on as opposed to an advisor, I learned early on that different people need to be treated in different ways. I was lucky enough to work with Bruno Mazzotta when he was in HS. Now he was a talented athlete (he won Can Jr 5000m as a HS aged athlete), but at the time he was easy to prepare for races. He simply was ‘ice cold’ (he didn’t need me around for his races) and we could do a proper theoretical taper. I also worked with his brother in his later HS years, but he was the opposite. I had to keep his mind off his racing and he required doing workouts till the last possible moment to make him relaxed (we didn’t do anything big in the days leading up to his races but we had to be on the track doing things like 100s and 200s and he needed a more hands on approach). What this meant is that the ‘art’ of coaching became relevant as both guys required different things both physically and more important mentally to race well.

I always felt that good training partners are as relevant or even more relevant as a good coach, but without the coach creating that environment for successful training partners, things can be difficult. And that is where my attitude that a coach cannot treat any athlete like the other. I was recently deemed ‘uncoachable’ in a conversation over some beers. I understood what was being said, but I couldn’t disagree more.... it’s just that my needs aren’t the same as other athletes. I have always been very concerned with the process of training ( I recently heard an online interview from US Wld championship marathoner Nate Jenkins and I realized I had found a soul mate in this regards) and finding things out on my own, therefore having someone devise a training plan/workouts for me is not what I need... in fact I find that almost demotivates me.

Unlike Jumbo Elliott’s ‘horse’ approach I’ve always enjoyed finding things out on my own. I realized a long time ago that I run my best when I have more control over my own running, and therefore am low maintenance in that regards. For anyone who wants more control I would bet I drive them nuts, but my needs have become more mental than anything over time, or may be a better way to describe it is that I need more ‘art’ to push my buttons. As I’ve grown older I’ve mellowed out and have found that I really don’t need someone creating a training program for me, but rather I need an adviser (ala Wilson/Ovett) who can 'tweak' my training and get me mentally prepared to run. My biggest running Achilles (besides the real Achilles) has been my inability to get ‘pumped up’ for less meaningful races. I’ve almost always performed well in championship races, but have run sub-par in non championship races. When I was younger I would create ‘enemies’ to get me focussed, but as I’ve grown older I have had more and more problems creating that tension that I need to race. In that regards it’s more about ‘pushing’ my buttons. But that is much more mental and takes time for a coach to find out.

As always my moral... if you’re a coach then find that way to ‘manipulate’ (I mean that in a positive way) the training environment to suit the needs of the athletes (in every way possible) and if you are an athlete you need to find a coach who understands what you need (or is willing to accommodate your needs in every way possible).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was recently going through Renato Canova's posts on Letsrun to try to figure out what he's saying and I found this:

"And, finally, you cannot not consider the mental attitude of everybody. Somebody prefers long and tranquil periods of training, for not using too many nervous energies, being able to remain concentrated in training for long time also without competing. Other need the stimula of competition in order not to lose motivation in training becoming lazy.

Every person is a combination of different qualities and different feelings, and lives in different habitats and ambience. Never a good coach has to forget this.

Is the coach that has to adapt his knowledge to the athletes, not the athletes that have to adapt themselves to the coach."

Andrew Armiger said...

Another good post! My background was similar, though my path has varied some from yours, yet the conclusion is also similar to yours.