Pillars of Success

Successful Coaching – Pillars of Success
From http://functionalpathtraining.typepad.com/functional_path_training/2009/01/pillars-of-success.html
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This is Seth Godin’s post from January 22, 2009. I read his blog every day. His ideas and thoughts always seem to give a kick start to my day. His focus is marketing, but if you think about it coaching is marketing. We have to have a brand and present a clear message about our brand. The text in italics are my comments, the bold text are Seth Godins words.

The five pillars of success

1. See (really see) what's possible
My experience shows that we often sell ourselves short because we lack the vision to see what is possible. We must have a clear vision of the result we want to achieve, not a foggy picture.

2. Know specifically what you want to achieve
Be able to state it in measureable terms so that you can see progress toward your goals. That allows you to measure how you achieved your goal and be able to repeat it. It also allows you to assess the reasons why if you did not achieve your goal. Eliminate those mistakes and get on the correct path.

3. Make good decisions
The decisions you make should be based on experience and advice from others who have traveled similar paths. Don’t be lone ranger allow others to provide input, but remember the buck stops with you so you ultimately you have to make the decision.

4. Understand the tactics to get things done and to change minds
This is based on the ability to communicate. Remember communication has three dimensions, sending the message, listening to others message and sometime just being there.

5. Earn the trust and respect of the people around you
Actions speak louder than words in this regard. If you don’t walk the walk and just talk the talk it is impossible to gain respect.

It sure seems like we spend all our time on #4.

Identifying, Understanding and Training Young Athletes

Developing Athletes – Identifying, Understanding and Training Young Athletes
By Peter Twiss and Janice Hutton
From http://www.sirc.ca/newsletters/october07/feat4.cfm
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Who will be the next Tiger Woods, Mia Hamm, Michael Jordan or Venus Williams? Many parents believe that, given the right amount of training, coaching and perseverance, it could be their child. There is a certain mystique about talented athletes, whether they are amateur Olympians or professionals, because of their sports mastery and the skills they display. It is not an easy path to success, and few achieve this dream at the highest level.

A lot of parents hope their child will receive an athletic scholarship, not just to help finance expensive postsecondary education, but also as a prestigious feather-in-the-cap for both the proud parents and the youth. While only a tiny percentage of athletes advance to the university varsity level or higher, the other 99% will enjoy and stay in sports for life if they can improve their skills and have a positive experience.

THE LONG VIEW-ABILITY AND POTENTIAL
Predicting success in sports is a challenge at any age, because so many factors impact long-term performance. When children are young, it is very difficult to determine whether they have the right physical, psychological and sociological make-up to be top-level athletes. Combine this with the unknown outcomes of growth and development through puberty, and trying to accurately predict athletes' future performance levels can be like playing the lottery.

With this in mind, we can attempt to create a better experience for all involved-kids, parents, coaches, scouts and recruiters-by doing what we can to analyze and predict long-term sports success. By quantifying the athletic talent required for success, we can help parents harness their enthusiasm, focus their expenditures and spend more time en joying the childhood and youth sports experience. More than 50% of North American children have their first experiences in organized sport by age 8 or 9, and participation rates continue to rise through the childhood years (Malina, Bouchard & Bar-Or 2004). Parents who understand the athletic attributes needed for sports and who know where to source specialized coaching can allow children to enjoy their athletic development as they follow tangible steps to improve their sports abilities in measurable ways.

From a coaching perspective, understanding athletic ability and potential gives greater vision in athlete selection and overall team development. Coaches of young athletes may prioritize training that improves athleticism as opposed to focusing on the immediate desire to win. The goals should be to encourage healthy activity for inactive kids, teach life skills, develop a long-term enjoyment of sports and give naturally gifted athletes the tools that will help them perform at an elite level.

Predicting athletic success is challenging. If a child excels at a young age, there is no guarantee that this will carry into later childhood or the teen years. Young athletes exist in a continuum of ability from below-average to exceptional. While some of them will excel, as many as 70% of children will not pursue sports past their teenage years (Brown 2001).

Gone are the days of free play with neighborhood friends -they have been replaced with organized sports and scheduled activities to support athletic success. Many athletes are specializing in one sport at very early ages in hopes of a professional career, encouraged by parents who may have specific dreams or plans for their child. Kids who are streamlined into a single sport early in life are robbed of more varied experiences critical to developing overall athleticism. A lower athletic base ultimately limits their sport-specific improvement potential and can lead to burnout. The focus should be on helping young athletes develop skills they will draw on at an older age when they are actually ready to capitalize on sport specialization.

DEVELOPING ATHLETIC TALENT

The development of athletic talent is a long-term process. Through the athlete development cycle, an athlete progresses to the highest level of his or her ability based on a well-designed plan that allows for long-term improvements. Scientific research has concluded that it takes a minimum of 10 years and 10,000 hours of training for a talented athlete to reach elite levels (Ericsson & Charness 1994; Salmela et al. 1998). This translates into more than 3 hours of training daily for 10 years (a commitment that few can or will make). In sports circles, this is referred to as the "10-year rule," and in the preparation of Olympic athletes it is supported by both the U.S. Olympic Committee (2202) and Canadian Sport Centres (2006).

Over the past decade, the sports conditioning field has seen considerable growth in science and practical training alike. In the past, programs had focused on the development of sport-specific skills, strategies and tactics, with most training coming from coaches during regularly scheduled team practices. Sports coaches simply mimicked the sport-specific movements in the conditioning setting without paying much attention to injury prevention, overuse syndrome or overall development. Then, head coaches in some sports began enhancing the training by improving physical traits rather than just replicating specific movement patterns; for example, to improve sprinting ability, track coaches focused on leg strength, power and speed through multijoint lifts and plyometrics. Along with this trend came the use of strength and conditioning coaches who devoted their role to improving each athlete's unique physicality.

Later, as the personal fitness trainer (PFT) field grew, specialty education helped trainers working with athletes to differentiate their skill sets. Today, there are certification programs that designate PFTs as sports conditioning specialists so they can address specific sport-related demands and injury epidemiology.

Athletes and coaches are constantly seeking an advantage over the competition and searching for new tools (including the intangible factors that can make the difference between winning and losing) to help them achieve this edge. There is a constant drive to go faster, jump higher and be stronger. The focus of sports conditioning goes beyond training, marking the difference between having a ripped, more fit body and eliciting peak athletic performance from a smarter, more skilled body. This is reflected in the sports conditioning workout curriculum and long-term plan.

To develop a great athlete, a sports conditioning specialist must design an exercise program that considers many unpredictable situations in which the athlete is forced to read and react to events quickly. Reaction speed and efficiency often determine an athlete's success in beating a defender, preventing a move from an offensive player or even avoiding objects (as in skiing and snowboarding). Ultimately, the ability to read a situation, react and skillfully maneuver the body could decide the outcome of a game or sporting event. Success in sports is based on the ability to move in multiple directions in a smooth and coordinated manner. Winning each "small" challenge along the way is what adds up to a final win.

Program Design for the Youth Athlete
Sports conditioning programming has become less about mimicking sport-specific movement patterns and more about enhancing the physical tools for athleticism. This is even more crucial at younger ages. As a general rule, the younger the player is, the more the program should have a general focus. As a sports conditioning coach, you want your program to

-improve fitness;
-increase athleticism;
-build the physical tools that sports participation draws on;
-provide immediate upgrades to the experience of playing sports;
-give athletes the physicality to excel at any new sports they may pick up;
-produce results so that improved sports competence keeps athletes in the game; and
-provide an experience that will secure a positive link between working out and feeling good about sport

THE PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF SPORTS SUCCESS
Physical size seems to play a big part in children's sports, as greater size translates to more strength, longer levers, enhanced speed and other sport-specific skill advantages. When describing the physical attributes that contribute to success, we focus on physical size, strength, power, strength/power endurance, speed, quickness, agility, movement skills, deceleration, balance, reactivity, aerobic power, anaerobic capacity, flexibility, coordination and body awareness.

Each sport requires a different combination of these physical characteristics for success. When designing sports conditioning programs for young athletes, it is important to match the appropriate skills with each sport's requirements, while also evaluating the strengths and weaknesses each athlete has in the above areas.

Coaches (and parents) can complete an anecdotal evaluation of young athletes to develop a general physical-skills checklist. Knowledge of growth and development trends can assist in this process by determining what can be trained and improved at different stages of maturity. Research published in 2005 by Balyi and others discusses optimal windows of trainability based on age and gender. All physical systems are trainable, but during the phases of growth and development there are specific time frames for females and males that should be areas of focus for sports conditioning coaches. Generally, for children ages 5-10, the training focus should be on flexibility, sports skills and speed. During the peak height velocity years of youth (puberty), there is an opportunity to make great improvements in aerobic capacity and speed. Once puberty has progressed, the development of strength should be the focus (ages 13-14 for females and 17-18 for males). The Canadian Sport System integrates all athlete/sport development programs based on the Long-Term Athlete Development model (www.ltad.ca) developed by Istvan Balyi. This model provides an excellent summary of valuable growth, maturation and sport-related research-as well as practical considerations-that all sports and conditioning coaches should understand. Trainers can also refer to IDEA Fitness Journal to access growth- and maturation-moderated youth training guidelines (Anderson & Twist 2005a, 2005b).

Development of the physical characteristics needed for sports success can be accomplished through a variety of methods. For example, an athlete can develop great balance and lateral quickness from soccer and then apply those skills to basketball. For focused, timely development, an athlete can work in a sports conditioning training center under the supervision of a specialist who can correct and perfect movement mechanics, which can also reduce the incidence of injury on the playing field. Research shows that athletic training and competition do not appear to accelerate or decelerate the growth and maturity of young athletes regarding height, body proportions or sexual maturation.

However, athletic training does have a significant impact on body composition (decreased body fat), motor skills, aerobic power, bone mineral content and skeletal muscle development, giving athletes performance advantages and long-term health benefits (Malina, Bouchard & Bar-Or 2004). Also, the earlier the athletes establish neural and motor improvements, the sooner these upgrades can be used to accelerate their progress.

Without proper sports conditioning, physical skills will disintegrate under duress and fatigue-even in athletes with the mental and emotional attributes and stamina to be the best in critical competitions. In other words, athletes don't rise to an occasion-they sink to the level of their training; so the training bar needs to be set high.

What Separates the Good From the Great?
In addition to good genetics, there are other physical and mental attributes that "great" athletes have in common. These include the following:
-leadership skills
-coachability
-a vast understanding of their sport (both innate and learned)an intense work ethic
-a killer instinct
-exceptional read-and-react skills for anticipating their opponent(s)
-standing strength that seems to exceed their weight room strength
-phenomenal speed
-coordinated agility
-a fluid body capable of advanced skill execution
-passion
-emotional stability
-mental toughness
-a positive attitude
-realistic goals
-focus
-effort
-persistence
-a competitive nature

THREE PILLARS FOR YOUTH TRAINING
The training style for youth that we advocate at Twist Conditioning has been packaged into three primary pillars of training:
-sport movement: agility, quickness, multidirectional speed, external reaction skills, coordination, acceleration and deceleration
-sport strength: muscular, whole-body, multi-joint strength; muscular endurance; explosive power; power capacity; acidosis tolerance; and recovery efficiency
-sport balance: stability, kinesthetic awareness, proprioception, neuromuscular pathways, transitional balance and internal reactivity

The primary fitness characteristics of aerobic endurance, flexibility and body composition compose the general fitness base from which all athletes build their sports conditioning. The anaerobic energy systems, which drive all three pillars, are more intimately tied to sports conditioning.

The Twist Sports Conditioning Paradigm (see Figure 1, above) shows the discrete and interconnected variables of the three pillars of conditioning. Trainers manipulate stimulus to stress specific systems in order to challenge and grow each distinct ingredient within each pillar. The entire training plan is athletecentered and should be based on the following considerations: age, gender, growth stage, psychological development, physiological strengths and weaknesses, specific sport requirements and experience. The magnitude of this list shows the complexity of developing a safe and effective training plan for children and youth.

Later-maturing youth are at a higher risk of being cut from their sports as they navigate the advancement hierarchies, which quickly narrow from community mass participation to a smaller pool of elite players. As this narrowing occurs at younger and younger ages, those kids who could-with time to mature and train-become elite athletes, are more likely to be cut entirely (Hutton & Narayanan 2006). These late bloomers need to receive training resources to get the most out of their physiques so they can stay competitive.

Sports conditioning is also important for early maturers so they can take advantage of their physical maturation. Children who succeed mainly because they have matured quickly are at risk if they ride that edge and train less than their smaller peers, as these are the same peers who will later catch up with and perhaps even pass them in physical size. Early maturers must be challenged in terms of athleticism, especially when they are not challenged sports wise by smaller competitors.

There are profound differences between training an athlete and providing a good fitness workout. Traditional fitness training considers the development of the primary components of fitness-endurance, strength, flexibility and attempts to build better-looking bodies from the outside. Though aerobic fitness, muscular strength and joint mobility are important to sports success, there are a few additional tools that athletes need. Sports conditioning for athletes includes the secondary components of fitness-multijoint strength, power, speed, quickness, agility, movement skills, deceleration, balance, reactivity and anaerobic capacity. This training approach helps all athletes enhance their innate abilities. A program that is grounded in scientific research and the development of athleticism is the key to success.

PERIODIZATION

The schedule and design of a year-round youth sports conditioning plan is called periodization, or conditioning in cycles, where different physical components are developed at different densities, intensities, frequencies, durations and loads. Based on scientific principles and methodologies, periodization presents the best time and the best method for conditioning each physical component.

Every sports coach uses the concept of periodization, but the direct application varies by sport and performance level. There is a distinct difference between periodization for a house-league baseball player and periodization for an Olympic track athlete. Coaches begin with a macrocycle (usually 1 year) and then break the season into four phases-off-season, preseason, in-season and postseason or championship. Within these phases there are mesocycles, in which both the development and conditioning of the athlete are structured to build up different attributes-all with a focus on optimum performance at peak times of the year. Each mesocycle is broken into microcycles, which have specific training emphases and variables that contribute to the goals of that particular mesocycle. The more elite the athlete or sports program is, the more complex the plan needs to be. When designing an athletic plan, the sports coach dictates the periodization plan, and the conditioning coach develops workouts to complement that plan.

Periodized conditioning optimizes results, prevents overtraining and structures the routine so that the athlete peaks at key times. The conditioning should be complementary to the demands of practices and the game itself, with an eye to eliciting peak performance in games while simultaneously planning for the long term. Periodization requires understanding what variables affect overtraining and injuries; how to enhance recovery and regeneration; and how to recharge for the next game while handling the volume of training that comes with sports participation. Developing the right periodization formula for each individual athlete (even in a team environment) is one of the greatest coaching challenges.

Because of such challenges, trainer competence is essential for anyone wanting to work on conditioning with young clients who are progressing through critical growth years-any injury can be a serious setback in terms of timely growth and maturation, as well as lost games, practices and training time. Remember, youth athletes are not "little" adults. They have very unique needs, and sports conditioning coaches will make better decisions when they have a well-rounded understanding of these needs.



The Basics of a Sports Conditioning Plan for Children and Youth
-Developing a sports conditioning program for young athletes involves much more than exposing kids to fast-paced drills and innovative equipment. To train this population safely, you must carefully consider several issues. Start with the following steps:
-Understand the growth and development children and youth and the variations between female and male athletes.
-Learn more about the specific requirements, skills, strategies and tactics of the sport in question.
-Investigate appropriate assessment tools for evaluating athletes' individual abilities and deficiencies in movement skills, wholebody strength, balance and coordination; then use the results to determine the proper initial training focus and subsequent training progression.
-Study appropriate training methodologies for developing efficient sport movement skills (agility, quickness, speed, reactivity, coordination, acceleration, deceleration); then search for drills appropriate for the athletes (age, gender, growth), making sure you know how to modify each drill as necessary.
-Study appropriate training methodologies for developing whole-body sport strength and power, including elements of sport specificity and manipulation of emphasis on prime movers, stabilizers and force reducers; then search for suitable exercises.
-Study appropriate training methodologies for developing sport balance (stability, proprioception, neuromuscular pathways); then search for suitable exercises, understanding how to quantify, prescribe and coach balance difficulty.
-Work with a sports coach to develop a periodized plan (macrocycle + mesocycles + microcycles) that supports sport development.
-Create a weekly plan for each athlete (microcycle), addressing how you will train sport movement + sport strength + sport balance using a cyclical approach.
-Develop each sports conditioning workout based on the big picture: macrocycle, mesocycle, microcycle and sports coach requirements.
-Implement your plan, adjusting it within and between workouts.

THE VALUE OF SPORTS CONDITIONING

We now know that long-term participation in a sport at the highest level of an athlete's potential requires coordinated movement, full-body strength, balance and overall enhanced mechanics to reduce the chance of injury and to improve performance. Sports conditioning grooms young athletes to be better able to apply their sport-specific skills.

Sports conditioning is considered one of the 10 top trends in fitness as amateur and pro athletes, sports coaches, parents, weekend warriors and adult recreationalists all demand this new training style (American Council on Exercise 2006). Traditional fitness training is great for helping people look good and achieve basic fitness goals (weight loss, basic improvements in strength and cardiovascular endurance, more mobility), but athletes of all levels and abilities need a more sports-oriented training focus. Kids handling multiple sports or facing early selection criteria must get on the right track sooner rather than later.

For health clubs and related businesses aiming to add sports conditioning to their revenue streams, hiring qualified coaches that stand apart in their specialization is paramount. Just participating in a gym environment is not sport-specific training.

Young athletes need unique exercises that feed into the skill requirements of their sports. Further, coaching these athletes takes more than memorizing and reproducing cool drills. Sports conditioning specialists have a full understanding of the science, training philosophy, exercise methodology, active coaching process, error detection and athletic mechanics required to build more talented athletes. Personal trainers are encouraged to read relevant publications and attend conferences that can help them work successfully within this culture. With this specialized knowledge, conditioning coaches are in a powerful position to impact young athletes in a positive and rewarding fashion.

Resources
If you'd like more information about the 10-year rule, here are a few places you can look:www.multisport.qc.ca/app/DocRepository/1/Evenements/2_CAN_Istvan_Balyi.pdf
http://coaching.usolympicteam.com/coaching/kpub.nsf/v/0304
www.Itad.ca/Content/10%20Key%2OFactors/10Year%20Rule.asp

Peter Twist, MSc, founder of Twist Conditioning Inc., is an 11-year veteran conditioning coach for the National Hockey League and currently consults for several pro players and agents from a wide variety of sports. An IDEA contributing editor, Twist has published more than 400 papers, authored 10 books and created 18 DVDs on athletic development. Visit him at www.sportconditioning.com.

Janice Hutton, MA, is the director of specialty markets in the education division of Twist Conditioning Inc. She has co-authored eight new internationally recognized home study programs and is working with the Twist team to deliver live sports conditioning workshops in the USA, Australia and the United Kingdom.

ReferencesAmerican Council on Exercise. 2005. ACE makes fitness trends predictions for 2006. www.acefitness.org.
Anderson, G., & Twist, P. 2005a. Trainability of children, Part 1. IDEA Fitness journal, 2 (3), 56-65.
Anderson, G., & Twist, P. 2005b. Trainability of children, Part 2. IDEA Fitness journal, 2 (9), 52-60.
Balyi, L, et al. 2005. Canadian Sport far Life. Vancouver: Canadian Sport Centre. Brown, J. 2001. Sports Talent: How to Identify and Develop Outstanding Athletes. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Canadian Sport Centres. 2006. Long-term athlete development: The 10-year rule. www.ltad.ca; retrieved October 23, 2006.
Ericsson, K.A., & Charnes, N. 1994. Expert performance: Its structure and acquisition. American Psychologist, 49 (8), 725-47.
Hutton, D., & Narayanan, A. 2006. Size matters at hockey camps. Toronto Star (October 24).
Malina, R., Bouchard, C., & Bar-Or, O. 2004. Growth Maturation and Physical Activity (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Salmela, J.H.,Young, B.W., & Kallio, J. 1998. Within-career transition of the athletecoach triad. In P. Wylleman & D. Lavallee (Eds.), Career Transition in Sport: International Perspectives. Morgantown, VA: Fit Publications.Twist, P. 2005. Keys to Training Youth, Audio Series 1. www.ptonthenet.com.
Twist, P. 2006. Keys to Training Youth, Audio Series 2. www.ptonthenet.com.
Twist, P. 2007. Complete Conditioning far Hockey (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.U.S. Olympic Committee. 2002. The path to excellence. www.usoc.org; retrieved on June 1, 2006.U.S. Olympic Committee. 2003. Reflections on success. www.usoc.org; retrieved on June 1, 2006.

Prepare Yourself to Be the Winner

To Win, You Must Prepare Yourself to Be the Winner – Not Simply To “Do My Best"
By Bruce Tulloh
From Peak Performance http://www.pponline.co.uk/
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Winning an event depends as much on the opposition as it does on you, but you cannot do anything about them - the only one you can do anything about is yourself. As a coach I continually see people under-performing due to lack of proper preparation. They have plenty of talent but they are often at peak fitness at a time when it is not necessary and injured or burnt out when the big day comes along. Even when they have got it right physically they fail to get the result they could because they have not prepared themselves to be the winners but merely to 'do my best'. Sometimes this attitude works, but usually only once. The bigger the event, the more likely it is to go to someone who has been expecting to win and who has trained him or herself to cope with all the demands that winning entails. This clearly involves mental as well as physical preparation. Here are the 10 key points that have to be covered.

1. Planning - Working back from the date of the big event, you must pencil in the other vital dates, such as qualifying competitions, selection dates and championships. There will be some dates on which you simply cannot train because of travelling or because they fall too close to the important competitions. This long-term plan should extend over at least six months but preferably over a full year.

2. Periodisation - I hate this word but I can't do without it. Once the important events have been put on to the master plan, you have to decide how many peak competitive periods you wish to have in the year. Each of these will require a build-up phase, a pre-competition phase and a tapering phase. Nobody can remain at peak competitive level indefinitely, and if it is necessary to maintain this for more than six weeks at a stretch, there must be further planning to allow for recuperation.

3. Progress - Within each training phase there must be a built-in structure of progress. In the build-up phase, this will be both in the overall quality of the training and in the proportion of high-quality training, ie, from one hard day a week to three or four. In the pre-competition phase, the progression will be in the intensity of the training; if one was doing a session of 15 x 400 metres, with a 60 second recovery, the average speed will go faster every two weeks. In the tapering phase, the emphasis will be on the specificity and the timing of the training sessions in relation to the competition.

4. Range - In some sports, training consists entirely of practising the event, but in the performance-related sports such as athletics and rowing it has been proved that better results can be obtained by building up the different components of the sport - endurance capacity, muscle strength, lactic acid tolerance and oxygen intake - by specific activities, and then combining them in the actual event practice. For each sport one must break down the particular demands on the system and then look for ways in which these can be trained for. Very few sports do not rely at least partly on pure muscular strength and so weight training for the specific muscle groups must be used.Similarly, aerobic capacity comes into all but the most explosive events and is capable of great improvement. It must be borne in mind that the modem sportsman or woman has to cope not merely with the once-a-week event but often mid-week events or events which last several days, with qualifying rounds. This means that extra endurance training must be done.

5. Avoiding injury - This becomes more and more important as the athlete reaches a higher level because he or she is working closer to their maximum. It is done by balancing very carefully the proportion of hard and easy work in the programme. This is where close monitoring is necessary, both by the coach and by the athlete. The art of coaching lies in knowing how hard you can push an athlete without going over the red line into the excessive fatigue which leads to illness and injury. The older I get, the more careful I become in advising rest and in seeing a physiotherapist at the first sign of an injury. One day missed through over-caution is easily made up, but a week or two missed from trying to 'train through' an injury can be serious.

6. Specificity - It makes sense to mimic as closely as possible the stresses of the competition in the training process, once the athlete is strong enough to handle it. When Richard Nerurkar was training for the 1991 World Championships we knew almost a year in advance that there were only 48 hours between the heats and the final of the 10,000 metres. As part of the pre-competition training we therefore worked to a programme of two hard days out of three and even included two 1O,OOOm time trials, with a 48 hour gap, about three months beforehand. Although in the early stages, training may last for several hours a day, as the competition gets nearer one must get used to concentrating the effort into the same space of time as the competition.

7. Acclimatisation - More and more international competitions are being held in hot conditions, and if two athletes are equal in ability the one who is properly acclimatised will beat the one who is not. In my view, something between seven and 14 days is necessary to adjust to a different climate, and this will also be long enough to adjust to any time change. Monitoring the athlete's body weight and resting pulse on a daily basis will tell the coach when equilibrium has been reached (though, of course, the coach will need to know the normal fluctuations at home, which should be recorded in the athlete's training log).

8. Mental training - The athlete must get used to winning. I have read that winning an event actually raises the testosterone level - certainly there is a synergistic effect, particularly in team events. It makes sense, therefore, to plan the domestic season so that the athlete starts by winning minor events and then goes on to bigger ones. However, he must also be able to lose without it destroying his confidence. The athlete who cannot handle a defeat is not a complete athlete. Someone who expects to win, who feels that he or she ought to win, is less likely to give way under pressure than someone who merely hopes to win. The most useful tool in building this attitude is rehearsal of all the possible scenarios. In a long- distance race, this will include running from the front, closing a gap when somebody has gone out too fast, and putting in a strong finishing burst. It is obviously closely linked to my last two points.

9. Analysing the event - The more you know about the nature of the event, the better you will be able to handle it. For a long-distance race, we would like to know exactly where the hills are, what the going is like, what the weather will be, and whether there are any peculiar features such as very sharp bends, Wherever possible, we look at the course well in advance so that we can go through mental rehearsals of running a winning race. If there are likely to be any problems over travelling, feeding or getting accommodation, these must be thought through well in advance so that the athlete is not worried about them.

10. Race tactics - Just as you need a plan for your training, you must also have a winning plan for the event. This means that you must know the opposition and what they are likely to do. You must have a response to deal with each situation. You must know your own strengths and weaknesses and when you have made your plan you must be able to carry it out under pressure. This is the hardest part. If, for example, you have decided that the best place to strike in a 10,000m race is with seven laps to go because that is a point where people are feeling bad, you must not be put off by the fact that you too are feeling bad. It always comes down to a battle of wills, and you will be the winner if you have built yourself to a point where you will not accept defeat.

Mindset

From www.gambetta.com

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Gaining and Maintaining Credibility

Successful Coaching – Gaining and Maintaining Credibility
By Gregory A. Dale, Ph.D. Duke University
From Olympic Coach Winter 2005
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"If you want to build an atmosphere in which everybody pulls together to win, then you, as a leader have to recognize that it all starts with you. It starts with your attitude, your commitment, your caring, your passion for excellence, your dedication to winning. It starts with the example you set. It starts with the way you treat and relate to your athletes."

Pat Williams, Senior Executive Vice President, Orlando Magic

Have you ever wondered why some coaches achieve so much success with their athletes and teams — winning and gaining everyone’s respect along the way - while others continually fall short or struggle to get their teams or athletes to perform at a consistently high level? If you are like most coaches, you have probably asked yourself questions such as the following:

Ø How do some coaches consistently get the most out of their athletes while others have athletes who chronically underachieve?
Ø How do some coaches gain their athletes’ confidence, trust, and respect while others have athletes who never buy into them and what they are trying to accomplish?
Ø How do some coaches inspire their athletes to compete with confidence, aggressiveness, and mental toughness while others have athletes who routinely crumble and choke under pressure?
Ø How do some coaches get athletes to willingly “run through walls” for them while others have athletes with little commitment, no work ethic, and bad attitudes?
Ø How do some coaches inspire a sense of loyalty and pride in their athletes while others have athletes who want to quit, or worse yet, instigate a revolt and try to get their coaches fired?

In my work as a sport psychology consultant, I have come to the realization that the most successful coaches are those that not only win most of the time but also are able to develop meaningful relationships with the athletes they coach. In other words their athletes respect them and willingly “put it on the line” for them when asked.

Following are seven characteristics that successful coaches and their athletes have identified as being essential for a coach to have credibility with their athletes and ultimate success. As you read these characteristics, I hope you will honestly examine the way you coach. Ask yourself if there are any areas that need attention.

Remember, you continually ask your athletes to work on aspects of their games that are lacking. It seems to only make sense that you would do the same for yourself if you want to improve.

CHARACTER
THESE COACHES:
Ø Do what they say they are going to do. They don’t tell athletes one thing and then do another.
Ø Are honest with athletes regarding their roles on a team. They don’t promise things that they can’t deliver.
Ø Follow the rules as they are written and don’t look for ways around those rules to have a better chance to win.

CONSISTENT
THESE COACHES:
Ø Are consistent in the way they administer punishment. They don’t show favoritism toward better athletes.
Ø They don’t have a “doghouse”. Disagreements are dealt with and everyone moves on in a productive manner.
Ø Are consistent in their mood and the way they approach their athletes on a daily basis. They don’t take things out on their athletes.
Ø Create an environment where their athletes know what to expect from them. There are no petty mind games.

COMMUNICATOR
THESE COACHES:
Ø Make sure their positive/instructive comments outweigh the negative comments.
Ø Are proactive. They seek out athletes and check in with them vs.waiting for problems to arise.
Ø Truly have an active, open door.
Ø Clearly communicate with athletes and staff about roles, expectations and standards. They make no assumptions.
Ø Focus on really listening to players.
Ø Seek input from team leaders on key decisions. Athletes feel like they can come and talk to them.

CARING
THESE COACHES:
Ø Act as servants. Athletes feel like the coach would do anything for them regardless of their talent.
Ø Take a genuine interest in the athletes’ lives away from the sport.
Ø Treat athletes as more than just a group of individuals who can help the coach move up the career ladder.
Ø Forge long-term relationships with their athletes. There is a sense of loyalty for life.

COMPETENT
THESE COACHES:
Ø Know their sport inside and out, but are also human enough to admit when they are wrong.
Ø Keep up to date with the latest advances.
Ø Always learning and willing to look for new ideas.
Ø Their athletes improve from the time they entered their program to when they finished, no matter how good they were when they started.

COMMITTED
THESE COACHES:
Ø Have a clear vision for the program and are able to communicate that vision to athletes.
Ø Are passionate/invested. They are committed to putting in the time. They come early and stay late.
Ø They aren’t afraid to list their secrets of success because they know no one will outwork them.
Ø Have a competitive fire. They are highly competitive individuals.

CONFIDENCE BUILDER
THESE COACHES:
Ø Are inspiring. They sell athletes on themselves. They create and maintain hope and optimism. They also plant seeds of greatness
Ø Know that athletes want to feel appreciated, valued, competent, and important. Great coaches make athletes feel good about themselves.
Ø Realize that confidence is fragile and they are willing to praise athletes in public and criticize in private (never publicly embarrassing them). They catch people doing things right.
Ø Are appreciative. They share credit with staff, especially acknowledging the “little” people.
Ø They have the mindset that the athletes are the ones who really win games, not the coach.

Gaining and maintaining respect and credibility with your athletes is vital to ultimate success. Great coaches are great because they see the importance of credibility and respect. They know how fragile they are and work hard to maintain them. Where are you in your journey to becoming one of the great coaches?

In conclusion, I would like you to consider how you want to be remembered by the athletes you coach. Every athlete that competes for you will remember his or her experience with you and your coaching for something. When you think about it, your coaching career is relatively short in the whole scheme of life. Whether you involved for a few years or dedicate much of your life coaching, the time you have available to impact people is relatively short. Essentially, your career is the “dash” between your first and last day of coaching (e.g., 1995-2035).“It’s an inch.” It is very short.

Therefore, it is imperative that you invest your time wisely and determine what you will do with the “dash” you have been given. How are you going to coach during those years? What legacy would you like to leave behind after you are gone? What would you want the important people in your life to say about you when celebrating your career at your retirement banquet? The following is a poem that seems very appropriate when thinking about your legacy.

Poem: How You Live Your Dash
I heard of a man who stood to speak at the retirement banquet of a coaching friend.
He referred to the dates of the coach’s career from the beginning....to the end.
He noted the first and last day of the coach’s time and spoke the dates with tears.
But he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time that he spent coaching on earth.
And now only those who loved and played for him know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not how much we win; the trophies...the records...the cash, what matters most is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard...are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left that can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough to consider what’s true and real and always try to understand the way our athletes feel.
And be less quick to anger and show appreciation more and love the people in our lives like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat our athletes with respect and more often wear a smile, remembering that this special dash might only last awhile.
So, when your coaching career comes to an end with your life’s actions to rehash...would you be proud of the things your athletes say about how you spent your dash?

Adapted for coaches by Jeff Janssen and Greg Dale from “The Dash”, a poem by Linda Ellis of Linda’s Lyrics www.lindaslyrics.com

REFERENCES
This article is based on the book:
Ø Janssen, J. & Dale,G. (2002). The seven secrets of successful coaches: How to unlock and unleash your team’s full potential.
Ø Tucson, AZ: Winning the Mental Game.

About the author
Dr.Greg Dale is a Professor and Sport Psychology Consultant at Duke University.As a professor Greg teaches and conducts research in the areas of Sport Psychology and Sport Ethics.As a sport psychology consultant, Greg helps coaches and athletes develop systematic approaches to the mental aspects of performance. In addition to his work with athletes and coaches at Duke, Greg is a member of the sport psychology staff for USA Track and field and consults with athletes and coaches in professional football, soccer, baseball, golf and tennis. To find out more about Greg and his work, visit www.excellenceinperformance.com.

Why Do We Need a Coach/Teacher

Why Do We Need a Coach/Teacher
By Dr. Romanov, January 23, 2007.
From http://www.posetech.com/training/archives/000424.html
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How do we learn everything? Obviously, in everyday life there are lots of things we can learn by - books, manuals, instructions, and sometimes just by common sense. It refers to learning to work on a computer, cooking food, assembling some simple gadgets at home, using some machinery, etc. Even exercises could be learnt by video/book instructions.

Last several decades saw the development of ideas in health and wellness by using exercise and fitness which are now accepted as a part of everyday life. Sport education materials are produced on a high business level. It almost eliminated the necessity of having a teacher or a coach in our learning of exercises. Is it indeed so?

Could these wonderful books and videos produced by these teaches/coaches completely substitute hands-on work? What value does the teacher bring which is impossible to substitute? After working in the educational field for more than 40 years and studying the science of teaching and learning, I can attest that the question of the necessity of a teacher/coach for learning something important in your life is not really a question, but a well-accepted reality.

Indeed, why genius Plato was a student of Socrates, and then genius Aristotle became a student of Plato? I guess there was something important that could be taught only by a teacher. Something imperceptible which comes only from the teacher's knowledge, something coming from the heart and soul, which we sometimes couldn't even express in words, something that gives everything a personal touch.

Certainly, we can progress far with our skill of writing and will be able to build visual and logical meaning of what we would like to teach, but something will always be missing there and require your teacher's presence. This "something" is a translation of multi-dimensional possibility of movement into a clear visible, perceptible and performable personal reality of movement.

The teacher is a translator and guide of your movement, who knows the road map to your goal, who is with you in "the car" during your driving, correcting your smallest deviations from the right direction before you get deep into unknown field. The teacher is someone who is with you, when you got into a dark area and lost your understanding of right and wrong, and who gives you a personal emotional and mental support through all your hard times.

Your teacher is someone who shares the moment of excitement when you reach your goal and someone who takes your psycho-emotional pain when you fail, and help you to get your hope back and keep moving forward.

The teacher is your friend and healer, your support and knowledge provider, your inspiration and consolation, your adviser and corrector to whom you can complain not only about your errors in movement and pain in your body, but also about why life is not fair. I do understand that it may take time to find the teacher who will fit your expectations, but he/she is out there waiting for you to help you make your dream come true.

The Coach as a Leader - Part 1

The Coach as a Leader - Part 1: How to take your crew to the top of the mountain
By Mike Spracklen.
From American Rowing May/June 1996
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We meet three kinds of people in life: those who make things happen; those who watch things happen, and those who don’t know anything is happening. Likewise throughout our lives we encounter three types of manufacturers: those who make good; those who make trouble, and those who make excuses.

Behaviour patterns can usually be categorised in a triangle of three extremes, as illustrated above, and throughout this article. Recognising this can help leaders identify people’s motivations and understand their points of view. People don’t always mean what they say or say what they mean. Assessing people’s true motivations will help you draw accurate conclusions, make good decisions and be an effective leader.

The Key to Success
‘Psychology is a very important part of preparing athletes for competition’

As sports become more and more competitive, better technique, more training and improved equipment contributes to higher levels of performance. Losing may result from not having the right boat, the right technique, or the right training program. We can control those things and reduce the possibility of error. We have less control of the athlete’s psyche, which plays a decisive role in determining success or failure. Psychology is a very important part of preparing athletes for competition.

The improved performance of the men’s eight the past two years (USA 94/95) was not due to better technique or equipment, an improved training program or superior athletes. It was because of the athlete’s confidence in themselves, developed through their training program. Having faith in a program is vital for success, but ultimately athletes must enter their race with confidence that will withstand the highest pressures. It takes years to develop this type of confidence, and there is fine line between over confidence and insufficient confidence.

Confidence is the foundation of keeping athletes focused. It’s the ability to perform well when it matters most. It’s the ability to overcome self-imposed physical or technical limitations. How does the coach teach high performance athletes to become more confident?

Instilling Confidence
‘Confidence grows from the belief coaches and athletes have in each other’

Confidence grows over a long association between coach and athlete. The best coaches have years of experience and a wealth of knowledge to pass on to their athletes. They have made mistakes and witnessed the mistakes of others. From their experiences they have learned the best way to the mountaintop. Athletes are not explorers. They do not want to waste time looking for alternate routes. They know what their goals are and want the best help to achieve them. They need the security of a knowledgeable coach, someone they can follow with confidence.

Confidence grows from the belief athletes and coaches have in each other. It’s not an instantly acquired relationship, nor is it one sided. It’s the product of mutual respect and a bond between coach and athletes, developed from the beginning of a training program, to the last stroke in a race. Coaches need motivation just as much as the athletes, and although the coach takes the lead, success comes from interaction between the coach and his athletes. Just as the coach will monitor his athletes and assess them daily, so they will assess him.

Athletes will respect a coach who has been successful, but a reputation will survive only the short time it takes them to form their own opinions. They will constantly observe him and score his behaviour. When he shows compassion and understanding he will gain points. The athletes will test his knowledge of the sport and his ability to lead them. The will watch closely how he selects crews. He must always be fair and treat everyone alike. They will judge his integrity. Point by point, each good deed will enhance trust. If the coach disregards the athlete’s questions or shows no interest in their problems, they will feel insecure. When the coach is unkind, unfair, untruthful, uncompassionate or unsympathetic to their needs, he loses points. One bad deed can destroy confidence created by many good deeds.

Motivating Athletes
‘The best form of motivation is encouragement’

To be confident, athletes must be motivated. Bribery, incitement and encouragement are the most common motivational methods. Financial inducement for winning or withdrawal of support for failing, are forms of bribery. Some coaches incite their athletes to hate the opposition. The worst leaders incite athletes against their own team members.

The best form of motivation is encouragement-exploiting the athletes desire to be successful. Athletes want to be good as they can be and are inspired by doing well. Motivated athletes strive for perfection. Good leaders do not expect perfection, but they do require excellence. Excellence is the ability to focus on the things that matter most. It’s the foundation of good coaching. Coaches who have good focus and remain on track are more effective leaders and less vulnerable in times of stress. Remaining in control under pressure is seeing things clearly and making the right decisions. Decisions made with confidence inspire confidence and provide the basis for persevering in the face of adversity.

Good focus is developed through practising skills over and over again. A wise coach prepares himself and the team for the unexpected-and just about anything! He never procrastinates. He has a sense of urgency about getting things done. There are many competent people who have intentions of doing things ‘as soon as possible’ but seldom get around to it. Their accomplishments seldom match those of less talented people who get things done at the right time.

Accepting Responsibility
‘Athletes respect coaches who have the integrity to admit their mistakes’

Accountability is another quality of successful coaches. It’s directing energy toward clear goals and assessing progress towards achieving them. It’s accepting a share of the responsibility when goals are not achieved. Good coaches do not look for excuses or scapegoats when they fail. They look to themselves, learn from their mistakes and take steps to make things better for the future.

Athletes respect coaches who have the integrity to admit their mistakes. Of course, the athletes will lose faith if the coach makes to many mistakes or repeats them, but if he denies them, he destroys the athletes trust. Coaches are not infallible. Making an occasional mistake reinforces the fact that they are only human. When the coach accepts his share of the blame when things go wrong, he strengthens the athlete/coach bond.

Teaching Technique
‘A knowledgeable coach can help the athletes gain confidence in themselves while gaining points for himself’

The ability to teach good rowing technique is also an asset. Nothing is more thrilling than rowing in a fast boat, but rowing skills are not easily mastered, and reproduction of that magical feeling is elusive. A knowledgeable coach can help the athletes gain confidence in themselves while gaining points for himself. Rowers generally pass through three psychological stages:

They know nothing
They think they know everything
They know they don’t know it all

It is pleasant coaching people in stage 1. They are eager to learn, and it’s easier to teach good technical movements. A wise coach knows what 'grooves in' in the first few weeks, may take years to change afterwards and he recognises the importance of teaching good technique. After a few years in the sport and a few races won, athletes reach stage 2, when they think they know it all. Coaches also pass through this stage. When they are in this state of non-acceptance, it’s difficult for them to learn. A clenched fist cannot accept a gift, and a clenched psyche cannot receive a lesson.

Leaders have to be forever testing new opinions and strengthen their resolve. The coach who says, ‘I've heard it all before’ or the athlete who says, ‘I've gained nothing from this experience’ is setting his own limitations. There is always something to learn, no matter how many times you have had the same experience. Coaches who know only one path are vulnerable when they find themselves in strange territory. The worst situation is the athlete who challenges the coach. He is a real threat to the team’s confidence. When criticism becomes negative, it should not be allowed to manifest.

In stage 3, athletes are mature. They are receptive to instruction, but experience has warned them not every path leads to the mountain top. In a world of petulance and differing opinions, athletes seeking guidance find much to confuse them. Races are won in a variety of ways, and athletes are entitled to ask questions without fear of retribution.

Communicating Effectively
‘Younger coaches are inclined to give to much information at once’

Ninety percent of athletic success can be credited to the athlete, and only 10% to the coach. In order for the coach to maximise his influence, he must possess three qualities:

Experience
Knowledge
Communication skills

Experience and knowledge are acquired with time, while communication is as an art. Communication includes motivational as well as technical input. People respond to instruction differently, and the coach must forever search for the right words. His methods vary from friendly persuasion to verbal force. Harsh words will work with some athletes, but use them on the wrong person, and they will turn on you. Use them too often and they will lose their affect. Coaches have different ways of communicating:

Some say only what is necessary
Some never stop talking
Some have little to say

Younger coaches are inclined to give to much information at once. Eager to impress, they switch from one technical emphasis to another. The athletes get to familiar with the sound of the coach’s voice, and after a while, what is said goes over the tops of their heads. Athletes can respond better if fewer technical points are given.

At the other end of the scale is the crew that rows for hours with barely a word from the coaching launch. When the voice finally breaks the silence, it can have a positive affect on the crew, but the coach relies on his rower’s physical condition to win rather than their technique. If the athletes receive sparse technical instruction, they may believe technique is of little value or think they are rowing technically well enough.

The experienced coach is always trying to improve his communication skills by searching for the right words. He expects to see a change in the athlete, but if there is no difference, he will blame himself and look for a different approach.

Beginners need explicit instruction, but experienced rowers respond better to being coached as a crew. Avoid criticising the same rower continually. He will lose confidence, and other team members will see him as a weak link. Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you’ll understand what chance you have of changing others. Once habits are grooved in, they’re hard to break and sometimes better left alone. You may not like a habit, but time spent trying to change one person may be at the expense of something that would produce a better result for the crew. This is not to say you shouldn’t coach athletes individually but that you should decide the important factors and put them ahead of less important ones.

Gaining by Explaining
‘People who understand what they’re doing are less likely to get it wrong’

Your instructions are more likely to succeed if you take the trouble to explain ‘why’. Giving a good reason prevents athletes from thinking you’re ‘bossy’ and from feeling they’re being ordered around. Explanation also reduces the chance of error. People who understand what they’re doing are less likely to get it wrong. Likewise it ensures that you understand exactly what you want the athletes to do. Explaining the reason for your request also enables the athletes to make suggestions that can be helpful. People are not robots. The more you treat them like human beings, the better they will respond to you.

Explain precisely what you want, show good and bad movements to everyone equally, encourage athletes to watch video alone and work things out for themselves- it’s the most effective way of learning. Learn about your athletes as individuals and vary your approach until you find what works for them.

Managing the Stress of Physical Training
‘Physical duress will cause changes in temperament and personality’

While the coach can easily gain points with good technical instruction, he can readily lose points through the pressure of physical training. Physical duress will cause changes in temperament and personality. Some athletes will gain strength from the challenge, some will retreat, and others will become aggressive. The coach must remain calm in these challenging situations and handle every incident rationally despite what he is feeling. The coach is there to support the athletes, propping them up when they need it most. Outbursts caused by physical stress normally last only a short period. Retaliation won’t help the crew win.

When an athlete criticises, analyse the reason for the complaint rather that accepting it at face value. Complaints usually come from those who are not doing well. They tend to complain about things that affect themselves personally rather than things that affect others. Complaints arise when athletes are:

Tired from training
Not performing up to standard
Jealous of, or feel threatened by another athlete

When an athlete looks for somewhere to lay blame for not performing up to the standard, the coach is first in the line of fire. The athlete may complain that he is ‘overtrained’, or he may accuse the coach of not helping him as much as he is of helping those who are performing better than he is. The coach must appreciate what is happening and show understanding. It will not help if you tell an athlete he has a poor attitude. He will merely reply, ‘You are a rotten coach’ and that s as far as it gets. You will both end up harbouring hostility and animosity.

The most difficult case is an athlete who has good physique, trains hard and is technically good but performs below the standard of others. The coach must not avoid the issue by classifying him as one who will not make it, but look for solutions that will help him.

Emotions have to be controlled but not stifled. Athletes should be free to let off steam once in a while. It will help athletes if they are advised of the character changes that occur during intense training. This will help them understand each other and control their emotions. It has quite a sobering effect on a ‘hot-head’ when a team-mate says ‘Coach says that when we train some of us would lose our tempers’ or ‘Coach said that the slowest athletes would be the first to complain’. It also helps to remind them sometimes of the old adage, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough gets going’

Maintaining Motivation
‘Goal setting is fundamental to motivation’

The coach must help athletes through times of intense training by good program structure and by setting goals. Athletes want to know how they’re doing, and setting regular tests helps keep motivational levels high. Goal setting is fundamental to motivation. Most of us aspire to achieve certain
things in life but do not make goals realistic and achievable; they become little more than dreams.

Regular goal setting helps maintain day-to-day momentum and motivation toward long term goals. Effective goal setting encourages persistence. Regular tests are an important part of the preparation process. Not only are athletes motivated by their progress, but they also learn how to prepare themselves physically and mentally for competition.

Take the trouble to explain the overall program, the purpose of each type of workout and the physical effects of training. Every session has a purpose, a clearly defined focus. There is always something to gain, even though sometimes the training is not as good as we would like it. Not every outing will be brilliant, but when a crew is having a bad row, encourage them to focus on physical training. When they are unable to work because of sickness or injury, encourage them to focus on technique.

When the program intensity increases, break each session into small segments and set different goals for each segment. This will help the athlete’s concentrate when they get tired or when motivation gets low. Set daily targets, weekly tests and monthly performance reviews. This ensures that your athletes can take a step back and see the progress they’re making towards their goals. These improvements, no matter how small they may seem, are contributing significantly towards the overall performance. The goals can be technical or physical, as small as 20 strokes, or as large as an important regatta. Every session will contribute towards achieving the athlete’s biggest goal.

If you don’t reach your goals, you haven’t failed. Success comes from learning from your experience and striving to do better next time.

Understanding Athletes
‘The most successful coaches can adapt their motivational methods to meet their needs’

Top athletes with a very clear view of their capabilities have confidence. Extremes of the triangle are:

Confident
Unassuming
Insatiably opinionated

Some athletes are modestly unaware of their own capabilities. They may not have the best coach, or be part of a good program. They have limited opportunity to develop. Confidence will grow in other athletes from rehearsal of every possible eventuality, having faith in what they’re doing and practising it over and over again. The opinionated athlete is the toughest to handle. Nothing quite hurts like the truth, and this type is the first to lay blame elsewhere when things don’t go his way.

Athletes are also different in the way they approach their training:

Some you have to push
Some push themselves
Some you have to restrain

The first is the athlete who does as little as necessary. The second type works conscientiously and will complete the program as written. The third type does more than the program. He will row 21 strokes instead of 20, or nine sets when the program requires eight.

Less motivated athletes will avoid the kind of work they do not like. An illness or an injury is a common excuse for missing a workout. A slow runner will have a bad knee when running is on the program, or a rower will have back problems when he wants a few days rest. Some athletes won’t disclose an injury for fear of losing a place in the squad while others will press on regardless of injury or illness, to keep up their training level. Athletes sometimes exaggerate the seriousness of an injury to excuse bad performance. The injury list usually increases just before an ergometer test. Hard training will reveal the weaker characters.

As the coach becomes familiar with his athletes by fitting them into the behavioural triangle, it will help him understand how to influence them and keep them on the straight and narrow path. The most successful coaches can adapt their motivational methods to meet their needs. The best ways to influence athletes is to give them confidence in all they do and look at their weaknesses with compassion, not accusation. Encouragement only works if the athletes have confidence and respect for the leaders direction. Coaches, who lack confidence, control by intimidation and domination.

What Kind of Coach Are You?
‘Confident coaches are experienced, knowledgeable and charismatic’

Athletes quickly recognise insecure coaches and lose confidence in their leadership. Insecure coaches don’t like the challenge of athletes who defy them, and they are quick to lose their tempers. They’re influenced by personalities, and they have their favourites in the team. They are emotionally unstable and will tell lies when in trouble, which leads to more lies and more trouble. Three types of coaches are:

Confident
Megalomaniac
Unaffected

Confident coaches are experienced, knowledgeable and charismatic. Egotistical coaches usually suffer from lack of confidence and become obsessed with the fear of losing
power to the point of bordering on insanity. The fear of losing control influences the way they lead. Some coaches think to be successful you have to enforce strict rules with threats. A wise coach doesn’t use threats unless he is prepared to carry them out. Backing down could lead to anarchy and more rules, ending with the possibility of having to exclude a top athlete from the team.

Athletes should be allowed to decide for themselves which path they will take up the mountain. They may wish to compete in a boat against the coaches advise, but the coach who tries to dissuade an athlete from his aspirations will break the trust between them. Even if the athlete performs as the coach predicts. He does not want to hear ‘I told you so’ from his coach. He will remain insecure with the coach who has only looked out for himself. Sport is about participants, and the coach’s job is to help them, not stand in their way. Even if a coach disagrees with the athlete’s ambition, he must remain firmly by his side and help in every which way he can in whatever direction the athlete pursues. In fact, he helps himself best by helping the athlete, not by trying to dissuade him from his ambition.

Leadership is an art based on philosophy, with clearly defined principles that provide positive direction. It is an on going process of keeping vision and values aligned with a direction accordant with the things that are most important. The coach’s destination is the top of the mountainous medal podium. If the path we choose doesn’t lead us to the peak, every step gets us to the wrong place faster. The integrity, personality and knowledge displayed by the coach will foster the athlete’s trust until they follow the mountain path blindly, confident their coach has chosen the right route.

You don’t have to be superhuman to be a good leader, but you do have to understand other people, how they feel and what influences them.

Be the Coach You Want To Be

Be the Coach You Want To Be.
By Peter Davis.
From Olympic Coach Spring 2005.
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There are no rules or clear pathways to become a great coach. There are no laws that say you should do this or you should do that. There is no set or established plan that you must follow to become a good coach or a great coach. John Wooden did it his way, Bill Walsh did it his way, and Pat Summit does it her way. So how do you figure out how to become a good coach, a better coach, or a great coach? How do you become the coach you want to be? Is there a special course to take, or a special book to read? We often read biographies about the great “guru” coaches of some sports and they all seem to be different. Some have tried to learn everything they can about their sport, or are great “historians “ of their sport, some have studied great leaders in business and military history and employ those same tactics in their career and sport. Some are not the greatest tacticians, but are great people managers. Some might have even just been in the right place at the right time— but if they became great coaches they were more than just lucky.

From my experience working with and observing some leading coaches there are certain predictable abilities and characteristics that the great coaches have in common. They can be summarized into several different categories, including (but not limited to) knowledge and education, attitude, planning and character. We all know some coaches who know a lot about the game but have questionable character and integrity. We all know some coaches who have planned and managed their career to perfection, but are not the leaders in knowledge (beyond x’s and o’s) of their sport. Some are great recruiters or talent scouts— but lousy teachers.There are no “rules.” Nothing is mandatory in this business, but if you want to be the best you can be, here are some guidelines.

KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION
You don’t have to have a “PhD” in your sport; but if you want to be the best, you should seek to know as much about the sport as you can. Respect the sport and the fact that there is a body of knowledge to understand about any sport. If you treat your sport and coaching as inconsequential, then you won’t be taken seriously. Take as many formal courses as you can. If your sport offers coach education course seek them out and take them. If your sport doesn’t have formal courses, explore the International Federation for your sport — sometimes they offer coach education courses. If you can’t find courses in your own sport, look for coach education courses in other sports. In fact, once you have taken all the coach education courses in your sport it is a great learning experience to take coach education courses in other sports
Cross fertilization works wonders for innovation and creativity and setting yourself apart from your peers. Look everywhere for coach education material — books, DVDs, videos and so on.The more you know the better you will be. And think beyond your sport. Look for courses on leadership, communication, time management in other areas beyond coaching; skills in other industries transfer well into coaching and vice versa.

EXPERIENCE
Nothing beats “having been there done that”, but you can’t always start out with the head job and get all the experience you need at once. Volunteer as much as you can for as many different situations as you can. Find the coaches you want to be around or the situations where you need more experience and volunteer. Take stats, shoot video, put up the nets and shag balls. Do whatever it takes to get some experience. Any time you can be around top coaches (and athletes) is time well spent—as long as you have a plan and make good use of the time.

PLAN IT AND MAKE IT WORTHWHILE
Volunteering is good in itself, but plan it and make it worthwhile. Don’t just volunteer to “spend time. ”Volunteer to learn —it’s an investment in your career if you plan it and work it. Make a list of the strengths you want to cultivate, or the weaknesses you want to strengthen. Volunteer in situations that will help you get better in that area. This might include things like: improving time out communication strategies, managing star athletes, understanding the application of medicine and science better, dealing with volunteers/parents or any number of other areas. Figure out what you need to do and know, and where you can get it. When you are volunteering take notes, observe what happens around you and ask questions. But remember, the objective (or at least the learning objective) when you are volunteering is not to change the coach you are working with or take over the program—it is to learn what to do or not do when it is your turn and to develop your own personal coaching character and style.

PUT YOURSELF IN THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT
Volunteering is one way to put yourself in the right environment, however, not everyone can always find the time to do that. If you can’t find a way to volunteer, find a way to be around the best people. Who is the best coach in your league, your city, or your State? Make plans to be around these people, whether it is in the same competitions, or whether you just go to their competitions and observe how they operate. Invite them to come and talk to your team or school or club. Don’t just limit yourself to the best coaches. Find a way to be around good people and experts in other fields. Observe how they operate. How they deal with people? How they meet challenges and handle setbacks?

Establish a personal pattern of learning and improving Most of the things I mentioned above revolve around establishing a pattern of learning. You should take every opportunity to observe and learn from the best (and the worst) coaches. As a coach you will be at literally hundreds of competitions over time. Focus on your game and your own teams while you are in competition; but after that is over, spend some time observing other coaches at work. You can even get a lot out of watching college and professional coaches on television. Observe how they react to success and failure, how they react to adversity (bad calls by officials, bad decisions by athletes etc) on the field, how they interact with officials. Reflect on their behavior and reactions and visualize what you would do and how you would react if (when) you were in that situation. As well as observing other coaches, how about observing your self?

I have said in previous articles in the Olympic Coach magazine that coaches are spending more and more time filming and analyzing their athletes (and their competition). This is great; but how about turning the camera on yourself for a while. Ask a friend or another coach film you at work —either in a practice or competition situation (preferable both) and observe how you operate. How do you communicate with athletes? What is the balance between positive and negative feedback? How do you function in time outs? What is the ratio between activity and verbal instruction in your practices? How do you spread your interaction between all the athletes on the team in competition and training? There are a thousand things to observe and that is not the focus of this article. The point is, how are you learning? How and what are you learning from the great coaches and what are you learning from yourself?

LISTEN TO YOUR ATHLETES AND PARENTS.
Don’t be afraid to seek input and feedback from athletes and parents—.at the right time. Don’t ask them how you rate as a coach 10 minutes after you have lost the league championship—structure it. At the beginning of the season, when you lay out the season plan, your philosophy and expectations for the athletes, team and parents, explain that one of your goals is to improve your own skills as a coach. Let everyone know what you hope to achieve as a coach and let everyone know that at certain times in the season you will be seeking their honest feedback about how you are doing and what areas you need to improve...just like you would do with your athletes

Some coaches will argue against this strategy because they think that athletes and/or parents will give negative reviews because you have lost games, didn’t get enough playing time, or because they have hidden agendas. This might be the case sometimes; but ask yourself how could you possibly evaluate yourself and improve your skills if you avoid honest feedback from two of the most critical stakeholders in your profession. If you structure feedback sessions or “report cards” so that they seek honest feedback with examples of strengths and weaknesses you will filter out the “disgruntled” athlete or parent and get to your true evaluation.

WHAT DOES YOUR NETWORK LOOK LIKE?
Not many coaches make it “to the top” by themselves. Most of the best ones have at least one mentor. Most of them spent a lot of time around coaches when they were growing up as either a child of a coach or as a young athlete. Most of them have a strong support team behind them. Make sure you identify people whom you admire and can learn from and seek them out as mentors. Most good/great coaches, who are leaders, value what they do and are proud of their profession and love their sport. They often love the chance to mentor others who have the same love of coaching and commitment to learning as they do. Take advantage of it. If you ask someone to be a mentor and they say no—don’t give up, keep looking until you find someone who will help you. It works both ways, don’t be afraid to be a mentor to someone else. Being objective and reflecting on someone else’s performance can sometimes open your eyes to yourself. And don’t forget that your mentor(s) can come from outside sport and coaching.

THE BOTTOM LINE....
The bottom line is that most great coaches don’t go from novice volunteer coach to a “great” coach instantaneously. They work hard, they sacrifice and sometimes they take chances. In all cases, they love the game and they respect the sport and the profession. They make a commitment to learning and excellence. Every opportunity is a learning opportunity. They have standards and a coaching philosophy and they don’t compromise. Being a great coach doesn’t mean winning the World Series or the Super Bowl—you can all be great coaches at your respective level....but you have to plan it and work it. It won’t happen by itself. It starts right now...at your next practice, your next competition, the next book you read, the next video you watch. What are you waiting for?

So You Want To Be Great “Big Event” Coach

Better Coaching - So You Want To Be Great “Big Event” Coach: Three Things That Can Make or Break You
By Sean McCann, Ph.D., USOC Sport Psychology Department.
From www.usolympicteam.com/coaching
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Like athletes, some coaches thrive in high pressure situations and others fare poorly. The Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City were my fifth Olympic Games, and by closely observing coaches at the Games, I have noticed certain behavior patterns that exist in the coaches who excel under pressure. For simplicity’s sake, I organized these behaviors into three key skill areas:

§ self-knowledge,
§ having a coaching-stress-thermostat, and
§ building strong relationships with athletes.

I am regularly surprised by generally, successful coaches who have large “blind spots” or are unaware of issues that others recognize. Often, coaches are in the dark about the blind spots until something goes wrong at a big event. In preparing for big events, I suggest gaining self-knowledge in two areas, being able to define coaching excellence at big events and getting feedback on your strengths and weaknesses shown under stress.
SELF KNOWLEDGE
Define Coaching Excellence
In an Olympic Coach article (Spring 1997, “How Do You Know You Have Done a Good Coaching Job),” I wrote about how difficult it was for Olympic coaches to evaluate their own coaching performance separately from the medal performance of their athletes. Forcing yourself to write a checklist of “behaviors of excellent big-event coaches” before the event can help increase self-knowledge. By rating your skills in each of these behaviors (e.g., daily organization, flexibility under pressure, optimism, ability to delegate, etc.), you have clues about your potential blind spots at big events. Of course, success at big events is related to excellence, but it isn’t the same thing. As Joe Paterno said, “Success is perishable and often outside our control. In contrast, excellence is something that’s lasting, dependable, and largely within a person’s control. ” If you strive for big event coaching excellence, success is likely to come.

Learn Your Stress Personality through Feedback
One of the most useful, and difficult, things a coach can do is receive honest feedback from the people around him/her. For big event coaching, it is useful to know how those around you see your strengths and weaknesses when you’re feeling criticized, angry, nervous or depressed. These four conditions are regular visitors to coaches at big events. Knowing how athletes and other staff perceive you during those moments can help you develop a strong plan using your strengths and compensating for your weaknesses. Unfortunately, research has shown that the higher your position in an organization, the less likely you are to receive honest feedback. You need to have at least one person in your coaching environment who isn’t afraid to tell you the truth. Do you have such a person?

A THERMOSTAT FOR COACHING SUCCESS
Like a thermostat that releases coolant to an engine in danger of overheating, it is important for coaches to have mechanisms to handle the increased stress of big events. Coaches who lack these mechanisms tend to get in “survival mode” during big competitions, and those just “trying to make it through” a major event do not excel at coaching. There are four key strategies to building your own stress-thermostat:

1. Controlling anxiety
People vary greatly in how nervous they get during competition. Nervousness is not a problem unless it interferes with your ability to coach your best. Unfortunately, I have witnessed numerous examples of a nervous coach coaching poorly at important events. This can happen by
§ making other staff nervous,
§ worrying endlessly, about spreading nervousness to athletes,
§ by over-coaching (saying too much),
§ under-coaching (saying too little),
§ focusing on not making mistakes instead of taking advantage of possible opportunities,
§ becoming rigid, tense and/or irritable, and
§ draining the fun from everyone around you.

If one or more of these symptoms happened to you at smaller events, they are more likely to occur at bigger events.

To battle coaching anxiety, you must be good at controlling thoughts, feelings, and your physical state. Identify the thoughts and feelings that calm you down, then develop the ability to call-up those thoughts and feelings when nervous. For example, one successful coach thinks of his family for 30 seconds before he gives a speech to his team. This allows him to believe his message of having fun, staying relaxed and being aggressive. In addition to thoughts and feelings, develop breathing and relaxation techniques to quickly lower your heart rate and slow breathing helps prevent your coaching body from undermining your coaching mind.

2. Stress-management strategy.
Successful coaches have some way to reduce overall stress. For most coaches, the most successful way is exercise, although some read, listen to music, write letters and play video games. Whatever strategy you use, the key is to continue the strategy during big events! Too many coaches give up a stress management strategy during the Olympic Games because they “just don’t have time.” If managing stress makes you a better coach, you can’t afford to stop managing stress in the big events where the most stress occurs.

3. Compartmentalizing.
A number of issues can interfere with your ability to focus on the present. They may include; unfinished business, questions about schedule changes, unexpected technical challenges, anger over stupid decisions, challenges in your personal life, and a variety of other issues. To have an effective meeting with an athlete during a big event, you must learn to compartmentalize (set aside those thoughts and focus on the here and now). Compartmentalizing is a key skill to master. Without it you may lose the ability to solve problems quickly and the ability to connect emotionally to the people around you. Simple techniques can help you develop the ability to compartmentalize. A strategy used by some coaches is to identify a physical place which becomes the last point where extraneous thoughts are allowed to enter your head. For example, a coach who always drives a car to competitions literally opens a glove compartment, takes a breath, drops in all extra unhelpful thoughts, closes the glove compartment and leaves those issues for after the competition. Another coach uses a two sentence verbal checklist before talking to individual athletes on competition day. Before approaching the athlete, he says, “Where am I? I’m right here, right now.” With this exercise, he assures all other thoughts are cleared from his mind so that he can attentively listen to the athlete.

4. Impulse control.
The powerful emotions that hit you at big competitions are one of the things that make coaching at big events so much fun. On the other hand, strong emotions sometimes overwhelm coaches. While anger and frustration may be real and appropriate responses to a bad call that could cost your athlete(s) a medal, effective big event coaches learn to control the impulse to vent anger during the competition. Impulsive shouting, swearing or physical display of your feelings sends a negative message to other coaches and your athletes. At a recent Olympic Games, an athlete told me that an angry outburst by her coach made her feel that the coach didn’t believe she could win in her next event. In fact, the coach was angry, but not at the athlete’s performance. The outburst sent her a message that caused her to assume he was angry about her performance. For a coach at a big event, finding a safe place to express feelings is one thing, but losing control is not acceptable. With everyone under stress, losing control is risky.

BUILDING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS WITH ATHLETES
The best coaches understand their athletes. Period. When coaching at big events, your athlete may surprise you by showing something you haven’t seen from them before. A coach told me after a devastating and surprising failure at the Olympic Games, “I didn’t think I had to talk to him about managing pressure. He is a World Champion! Of course, in hindsight, he had lots more pressure and expectations here. I worried about some of the others, but not him. I should have talked to him.” Understanding your athletes and developing effective communication is the heart of effective coaching. Big event coaching is no different except the consequences of not knowing your athletes are bigger! Key items to remember about knowing and understanding your athletes include:

Don’t overlook emotions . Feelings are often more important than thoughts at big events. People react differently to stress, and athletes may be on a completely different page than you. Know the early warning signals for confidence problems, nervousness, and over-arousal. One coach told me after the fact, “I saw her nodding and smiling, but I could tell she was so fired up that she wasn’t listening at all.” Taking five extra minutes with this athlete to calm and remind her of how simple the job was made all the difference for this Olympic medal winner. Develop good questions. Getting in the habit of asking, rather than telling, pays dividends at big events. Rather than guessing how athletes are doing, asking the right questions can help develop self -knowledge, self-control and selfconfidence. Among the best questions you can ask are those that remind athletes how they got where they are. For example, asking what they did to make training go so well the day before is a great way to talk to athletes before a big event. Remember, it is always a good idea at big events to focus on what to do, not what if. One of my favorite exercises to use with a nervous athlete at a big event is made up of four questions:

§ What is your job? Sample answer, “wrestle well tomorrow.”
§ How do you do that? Sample answer, “Attack the first minute, then go harder.”
§ Can you do that? Sample answer, “Yes! I’m in amazing shape.”
§ Will you do that? Sample answer, “Yes!”

Asking questions can become a routine that allows you to quickly understand what your athletes are thinking. Additionally, it lets athletes find their own solutions rather than simply agreeing with your solution. If athletes can’t say it, they aren’t likely to believe it!

Develop trust so athletes can express weaknesses. Guess how many athletes like to tell their coaches that they are afraid? Exactly, none do. Guess how many coaches want terrified athletes to keep it to themselves at a big event? Okay, maybe some would! But you cannot solve a problem if you don’t know it exists. Athletes need to be able to tell you when they need your help, and when their own skills are over -matched by the situation. A dangerous myth athletes hold is that mental toughness means ignoring dangerous and distracting thoughts, anxiety, and self -doubt. Many athletes believe that talking about fear makes it real, while trying to push unwanted thoughts and feelings away equals mental toughness. Unless they have a strategy for controlling their thoughts and fears, however, this approach is doomed to fail at big events, where the demons are so much bigger! This problem increases significantly if athletes are afraid to admit weaknesses to their coach. Treating nervousness and self-doubt as being normal at big events allows you to discuss and solve these challenges with the athletes. On the other hand, if mentioning these things is taboo, you won’t know until you see them arrive in the form of defensive and tentative behaviors during competition.

Know the difference between “good quiet” and “bad quiet.” You must know how your athletes look when they are ready to perform versus when they are trying to look as if they are ready to perform. Knowing the difference is the key to big event coaching, because knowing means that you know when to brake, steer and get out of the way. Of course, it isn’t just quiet athletes you need to be able to read. You also need to know what it means when an athlete laughs with others, does jumping jacks, talks on the cell phone or prays. You must know their normal competition routines and ones you are seeing for the first time. Big events often bring new behavior, and you must determine if it is good or bad. The best way to determine good from bad is to compare with past behavior, which is always the best predictor of future behavior. Behavior seen for the first time at an Olympic Games isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it isn’t always good either. If you and the athlete communicate well, it is rarely a problem to ask an athlete how they are doing, especially if that is your normal routine. Like athletes, you should always question why you are doing something for the first time at a big event.

The extra adrenaline that comes with big events like the Olympic Games and World Championships are like an ocean wave coming at you. If you have the three key areas figured out (self-awareness, coaching stress-thermostat and strong athlete relationships), you can catch that wave like a surfer and have a great and successful ride. If you don’t, well, it’s like a wave coming at you.

The X Factor

The X Factor – Is there any one factor or trait that determines a successful swimming coach?
by Dr James Cousilman
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Is there any one factor or trait that determines a successful swimming coach? If there is, could we educate a coach to have this particular trait? The business world has long wondered what makes a good executive, a good administrator, or a good salesman. Research into this ingredient of success has led to the use of multimillion dollar testing bureaus. For example, the executives of U.S. Steel are given personality tests, intelligence tests, leadership ability tests and others in every possible measurable area. So far they have had very little success in identifying any single trait that their subjects have in common. For instance, they sometimes find the lowest paid filing clerk to have more basic intelligence than the highest paid executive. They have determined that once a person reaches a level of intelligence somewhere above average, that higher intelligence by itself is not necessarily a determinant. So, we cannot give all coaches intelligence tests and determine that the most intelligent will be the best coach. If this were true, then all we would have to do to select a good coach is hire the man with the highest I.Q. It might be just the opposite. A man with a high I.Q. might be too smart to get involved in coaching.
Let’s get back to the business world. I personally feel that intelligence has a lot to do with success in coaching, in business, in almost any field of endeavor. However, the type of intelligence I am speaking of is not the type that can be measured by academic testing, it could better be called a type of “perception.” The business school at Indiana University has found their search for a common denominator from which to predict success to be rather fruitless. They have, however, isolated an unidentifiable factor which they have named the “X” factor. They can’t sharply define this factor, but they talk about it, and they feel they are closing in on a definition.

I would like to apply this “X” factor to swimming coaches. They know a little about this factor in business, and I would like to mention a few of the dangers encountered by business in attempting to build a perfect administrator. Business has sent its top administrators to training courses very much as you have come to this clinic. They send them to universities and sometimes to the Menninger Foundation in Kansas. The most outstanding business training course is given in Kansas at the Menninger Psychiatric Clinic. Here, three times a year, a course is offered to top executives at a fee of $1,200. Entrance is limited to 20 per group in three groups, and is called “Understanding Man.” Business sends its top executives to this clinic, the theory being that with this type of training they will return and do a better job. Just as many of you have come here and hope to return to your swimmers and do a better job with them.

Unfortunately, business has found that many of its executives get back from such a clinic and do worse. Likewise, many of our coaches go home from these clinics and do a worse job of coaching than before. I can see some of your kids now saying, “Oh my God, Coach has been to one of those screwy clinics again. Now we get all of those screwy workouts and those crazy ideas on stroke mechanics.” I believe that we must continue to experiment, to continually change our programs and our methods. Therefore I do not recommend that we stop attending clinics such as this, but I would caution you about one thing.

There are examples of men who have trained themselves to be coaches, devoted their entire lives to that end, and failed miserably. Some of these men have been warned before they start that they will fail, just as I now warn some of my graduate students that they too will fail. Why do they fail? Let Us take a partially true case and synthesize an individual. Give him a false name, call him Frank Zilch.

Frank Zilch came to me some years ago and said, “I want to study under you, learn all that you know, take all the scientific courses available, so that I can become the greatest swimming coach in the world.” Of course, his approach was wrong; this was not the thing he should have said.

As his graduate advisor, I set out to plan his education. Theoretically, he had everything going for him: he was good looking, he had desire, he had lots of energy, he was intelligent, and with good planning we should be able to make a great coach out of him. But, as it turned out, it was an impossible task, because he lacked the “X” factor, which we will discuss later.

Frank Zilch read all the research on swimming he could find; he read the “Research Quarterly,” “Swimming Technique,” “The Journal of Applied Physiology” and many, many others. He attended all the coaching clinics he could find, he did research, he lived, he ate, his every thought and every waking minute was applied to swimming. We designed his courses to cover every area of knowledge possible that could contribute toward making him a great swimming coach. He knew more facts about swimming than any person in the world; his brain was crammed with swimming knowledge. In setting up his course of study we tried to give him a full education in the areas necessary to make him a great swimming coach.

He had to be a great physiologist to understand the process of conditioning: what happens to the swimmer’s body when he trains. The perfect coach should know that the swimmer’s body changes as be trains; he should understand these physiological changes that occur. In preparing the perfect coach for this area of knowledge, he should certainly read Dr. Selye’s book on Stress and Adaptation. Frank Zilch studied all of this.

The thought must occur to you, “does all of this really seem necessary?” We all wonder if we should not concentrate on just training the swimmers and let Dr. Selye and others do this type of research. Maybe we should learn by trial and error by either overworking or underworking our swimmers. Most of the U.S. progress in training technique has occurred through trial and error. The Europeans, in particular those from the Iron Curtain countries, are usually surprised and disappointed when they visit training sites in the United States and fail to see the American coaches taking pulse rates and electrocardiograms. They expect American coaches to be more scientific, they expect us to take pulse rates, they expect us to take electrocardiograms, and to measure all physiological changes in our swimmers. During a recent trip to Russia, I gave an hour lecture at the Russian Institute for Physical Education in Minsk. During the question and answer period the questions were entirely on minute details such as; “Did the swimmers take vitamins?” “How many milligrams of Vitamin C did they take?” “Do you measure their electrocardiograms?” They asked no questions on training of swimmers, on repeats, etc.

Later we had a special conference with officials of the Russian sports field. There were about six or eight sitting about the table; they had a nutritionist, an expert on fluid mechanics, a physiologist; the only thing missing was a swimming coach. Again, the questions were on, in my opinion, irrelevant subjects. Their favorite question was on the “IT” wave. Then they asked the sixty-four ruble question. They wanted to know why they were not getting better swimmers in spite of spending millions of rubles. They asked if they were behind the times, they asked what we in the U.S. were doing that they were not. I told them that they were actually far ahead of our country in scientific methods, but they did not understand. I think the Russians are missing the “X” factor.

We have had similar experiences with the East Germans. They too are going about their swimming on a very scientific basis. They select their future athletes on a scientific basis, as they are also doing for their future scientists, mathematicians, physicists. When an East German child shows promise in any area, math, science, sport, etc., he and his family are often moved so the child can be enrolled in a special school or institute that is designed to nurture this skill. The East Germans, like the Russians, wonder why they are not having greater success in these areas. The answer is, again, I believe the “X” factor.

In the United States we throw our 500,000 age group swimmers into the pool and let the best survive. The ones that come out on top have the physical ability and have fought their way to the top through hard, merciless work. We do not coddle our swimmers. Our swimmers, also the Canadian and Australian swimmers, are not pampered. We throw them all in the pool and let the best survive. I favor this system over the scientific approach of the Russians and East Germans. They approach things too scientifically and forget that it is a dog-eat-dog competition. The Americans, the Australians, the Canadians and a few others, produce the toughest swimmers because of the system that forces them to fight their way to the top. This is why these swimmers are the toughest in the Olympics and other international meets.

In business they have a saying, “You never see a good-looking salesman.” I don’t know bow really true this is, but possibly he doesn’t sell much because he is too busy with the farmer’s daughter. The point is, I believe, you want to stay away from people who have everything going for them. I’ve yet to have a good swimmer who was talented physically and also well-adjusted. A person can have all the physical and mental attributes and not do well, because the person with everything going for him does not have a strong ego drive. Perhaps this ego drive is part of the “X” factor we have been talking about.

Now back to Frank Zilch. He had everything going for him. We trained him to be a good physiologist, now we will train him in stroke mechanics. He studied physics, fluid mechanics, he studied underwater movies, he learned all about Bernouili’s principle, he studied every aspect of stroke mechanics. Another area in which the Europeans seem surprised to find that American coaches are not spending more time on the deck is with stroke mechanics. I do not believe any coach could teach Mark Spitz to swim the way he does; much of this he has done on his own. The better a swimmer is, the less he really has to be coached. If you have a Mark Spitz, just sit back and enjoy him and try to learn from him.
How does a swimmer learn? He learns through trial and error. Why doesn’t everybody learn the same? Because we all have varying abilities. We have photographed dogs swimming, and have learned that not all dogs swim naturally, in fact some nearly drowned. We found that at first most dogs tried to swim with all four feet, then gradually learned to pick up the hind feet and swim only with the front feet. However, in the case of the Labrador Retriever, they learned to swim this way usually on the second time in the water, much sooner than other types of dogs. We studied the Dachshund and on the twentieth time in the water he was still trying to work all four feet and nearly drowned.

I believe the Gary Halls, the John Kinsellas, the Mark Spitzes, are the Labrador Retrievers. Unfortunately, most of you will get a lot of Dachshunds in your programs. Say, many of our great swimmers swim well in spite of us lousy coaches. Those of us who work only with the Labrador Retrievers have a real advantage. So, you club coaches keep on sending us the Labrador Retrievers and keep the Dachshunds.

Those of us with the top twenty college teams just go out and recruit the Labrador Retrievers from the local coaches so we don’t have to know very much about stroke mechanics. The better the swimmer, the less you have to work on stroke mechanics. I believe stroke mechanics are extremely important, but at the lower levels. The best stroke mechanics men in the U.S. are the lesser known coaches in the local programs.

We now have Frank Zilch well qualified in physiology, and in stroke mechanics. Next we go to what I feel is the most important area of all: psychology. This is one area in which the Russians and East Germans were very complimentary to the Americans They marveled at the rapport the American coaches have with the American swimmers. They have remarked at what great psychologists the American coaches are, how they can motivate the swimmers in spite of the fact that we don’t do scientific testing and don’t work with stroke mechanics. I believe that if you gave three different coaches - one a psychologist, one a stroke mechanics expert, and one a physiologist identical teams - that the psychologist would win every time. A good psychologist can motivate his swimmers to work hard and to dedicate themselves to the sport. They can keep the swimmers happy so they will enjoy the sport and stay with it; they can recruit the best swimmers, they can handle the city council and the parents. The good psychologist in time will become a good organizer and administrator and will have a large team and attract the Mark Spitzes and the Gary Halls to his team. So, this is the way to become a good coach.

Finally, let me tell you what I think the “X” factor is in successful coaching. The “X” factor is, to quote an old saying, “The ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.” Another way of expressing it is to say, “you must be able to recognize the important things and work on them; and to minimize the unimportant.” Let me give you an example: we have seen mothers and fathers, and a few coaches, walking up and down the pool deck as the swimmer is swimming with dropped elbows, over-kicking like mad, and he is being yelled at, “kick, kick, kick.” In other words, they ignore the important item, the dropped elbows, and emphasize the unimportant by yelling “kick, kick.”

I feel that the present trend of doing everything for the athlete is not good. For example, I could put a timer on every swimmer in my practice, keep all their splits for them with managers, but I do not because I want them to be aware of what they are doing. Too often we do so much for them that they stop using their brains, they stop thinking about their own activities. It is important for the swimmer to know his own times so that he understands the significance of what he is doing.

Another place in which the coach fails the swimmer is when be allows parents and others to come on the pool deck and engage him in conversations during practices. The coach’s responsibility is to the swimmer not to the parent or others. The swimmer is important, the parents are not important. This is another example of where the coach must recognize the important thing, the swimmer, and ignore the unimportant - the parent.

The “X” factor is then, in other words, the ability to see what has to be done and doing it. The great coach recognizes what is needed to do the job and then does it. This applies not only in coaching, but in business, in administration, in every aspect of life. Another way of saying it is; cut through all the detail and get to the heart of the matter. The perfectionist usually does not make a very good coach; he is too busy taking care of the little details and seldom gets to the heart of the matter.

At the present stage of development in swimming, the great coach must have two basic abilities: be must be a good organizer and a good psychologist. The good organizer will have the large team; he will attract the good swimmers from other teams, he will develop the Mark Spitzes and the Gary Halls of the future. The good psychologist will be able to handle the parent problems. He will get along with the city council, he will be able to communicate and get along with the swimmers, he will have the “super” team.

The good coach today need have only an elementary knowledge of the areas of conditioning, physiology and stroke mechanics. He does not need these to get the job done today. However, nothing remains static, and in the future these last two areas will become more and more important. As more superior athletes come out for swimming, as more talented people go into coaching, as more and better facilities become available, all of the aspects of knowledge that we have discussed will become important.

I frankly feel that we are on the verge of a tremendous knowledge explosion in the area of competitive swimming which will make the more technical areas of knowledge more important to good coaching. These meetings we are attending here should help us to separate the important from the unimportant and make us better coaches. I would like to attend this clinic a hundred years from now to see what is being discussed. By that time they should have simple electronic devices that can be put in the swimmer’s ear to monitor pulse rates, blood lactate, and other such physiological data. We are not ready for this sort of thing today, but even a hundred years from today, the inherent behavioral patterns of the swimmers will be the same as today; good coaching psychology today will be good coaching psychology then.

In closing, I wish all of the speakers the best of luck in communicating some of their “X” factor so that many of us can gain from this conference.

Finally, if Frank Zilch is here, I apologize to him