By French Coach Seb Locteau I remember when I started coaching, I asked in an international sport conference, if coaches should train women differently than men? Coaches laughed at me but now I am laughing at them, I do believe in a difference of coaching them, and do think it is highly neglected and you can see it as an example in gear made for women or sports equipment.
I left the coaching of Track after the 2004 Games, simply because I felt that my skills were not good enough at the level I was coaching at. Along the way it seems that I succeed better in sports I felt I was not predisposed to coach than the one I really wanted to excel. My interest in track, running was first an enjoyment and a way to help other athletes and became a recurring job taking over my nursing career.
Track training is very similar to swimming training in a pool. Of course the biomechanics and techniques are different but the core and hips motions is a very important base common to many sports if not all of them. Lots of repeats, calculating rest depending on intensity or VO2 or threshold you want to work on etc….
In the last few years, I developed coaching skills for Ultra sports, again not because I was excelling in them but simply because I was interested in them and as someone with a sports and medicine background I found the physiology extremely interesting, and of course the psychology of the athletes very interesting, especially on ultra such as 100km runners, 100miles runners, Ironman Athletes and open water marathon swimmers. They are simply nuts and are addicts with obsessive disorder, according to recent research. Does this also mean that researchers are nuts, addicted to research and are obsessive too?
Many coaches do think I should focus and one sports and only one. As a person I want to be able to enjoy and see skills from a sports and play around to fit my own and use them with a wee twist of adaptability to the sport I apply it. It is like playing chess with a friend with the board and no pieces, but use your head and recall different positions to make it accurate enough….just try and let me know how you get on. Coaching has basic rules to respect, the warm up, session with sets cool-down etc… But what about playing with all those little cells, muscles and see how much the body can take in a different environment or situation. When I studied with the University of Derby as part of a psychology degree, I had great fun and even if I did not do sports psychology but applied psychology you learn that there is no real truth and only assumptions until proven wrong scientifically. I can assume that my coaching is right until proven guilty then! I am definitely innocent !
A simple example that I tried was to challenge Paul Hession over 100m……no problem you would say! We have a perfect international athletes in great physical condition. Can’t really get better can I? Then I asked him to take his togs and goggles and do 100m Freestyle, or 100m rock climbing….it might be a different story! I don’t know how good Paul could possibly be but the change of environment and physical abilities changes everything. I am sure you get my point.
So as a coach I need to progress, I can do a level 1, 2,3,4 course but my capacity as a coach is to develop my coaching skills and knowledge as a Coach, but also as an individual not just in my sports and become narrow minded but learn strategies that I could apply in different situations with different athletes with different cultural or physical backgrounds. This is what I called the capability ladder, as a coach or athletes to be able to enhance your skills. Many of us can’t get over new development in sports. We think we know better in our way, and that nothing changes in sports or that we won’t share our secrets. Yes, sometimes it does go back to the old way of doing things, and sometimes it supposedly improves and then 10 years later another study says we were doing wrong etc…. it is like the stretching or not stretching, when or how much, active or passive. I read those every single day, and my own opinion in this is that there are some athletes who are used to do it and think it is beneficial, well good luck to convince them. It is ok with young ones, they thing you are the god of making them the best. Go and ask Kenenisa Bekele to change what he does, because you believe he should do the way you think…..or worst try Mick Rice on a 100km running race and then you are in serious trouble !
What does this mean? It means that we don’t really know, “we are supposing to know”, but if we knew the right way to build Olympian we would certainly know by now. We would have all International athletes tomorrow….what a mess! We would only work with milliseconds for results.
My own way is very simple, I used different techniques with different athletes until we both happy on the pathway to follow. I don’t try to persuade them that I am right, or oblige them to do my way. Instead I adapt my training to them and the technique to them, I have basic techniques and ground rules for young ones, when they reach a certain level, you tweak them to who they are, like they use to build old cars in machines and finishing them with a little hammer to make the body work fit the chassis in the 60’s and 70’s. Each car parts were built in the same mould but finish by hand to make them unique, like an athlete.
Many international athletes do many technical mistakes but sometimes trying to make them perfect make them weaker and slower. Imperfection makes human perfect, different, what could we talk about with someone who looks the same, like the same thing and run as fast than you? But that’s a personal opinion.
Too many 12 to 16 years old have burned out, simply because we think we have talents and if they don’t train hard they won’t make it. This is not true, if a young athlete is talented and you guide them properly, by having fun and not over training them they have a better chance to perform at senior level, or they will get sick of it and very upset when losing. When you will lose your “coach power” because you will have lost their trust, they will simply come back to you and say that they have to stop because the leaving cert is too imposing. In my opinion if you do a wee bit of research look at what most of the Irish Olympian succeed in their education: Doctors, teachers, business etc….I let you check for yourself?
We try to apply specific techniques, where the elbow should be at what angle, we even computerise human body now for biomechanical purpose. They are great tools for guidance but cannot be followed to the letter. Human can build everything today from micro processor to space ship. But there is one thing that we will never be able to build with our hands from scratch; it is a complex living creature such as a human. We can replicate it by cloning but we can’t build it from scratch and if we could we would not be unique. Yes you can apply a coaching plan and improve it every time until it is perfect for this particular Body. How applicable this is on millions of athletes with a different body and psychology?
Capability ladder is all about expanding not what we know but what we don’t know. Not what we like but don’t like, what we like or what are good or talented at will always come naturally and easily, so work on what you don’t like the most!
I left the coaching of Track after the 2004 Games, simply because I felt that my skills were not good enough at the level I was coaching at. Along the way it seems that I succeed better in sports I felt I was not predisposed to coach than the one I really wanted to excel. My interest in track, running was first an enjoyment and a way to help other athletes and became a recurring job taking over my nursing career.
Track training is very similar to swimming training in a pool. Of course the biomechanics and techniques are different but the core and hips motions is a very important base common to many sports if not all of them. Lots of repeats, calculating rest depending on intensity or VO2 or threshold you want to work on etc….
In the last few years, I developed coaching skills for Ultra sports, again not because I was excelling in them but simply because I was interested in them and as someone with a sports and medicine background I found the physiology extremely interesting, and of course the psychology of the athletes very interesting, especially on ultra such as 100km runners, 100miles runners, Ironman Athletes and open water marathon swimmers. They are simply nuts and are addicts with obsessive disorder, according to recent research. Does this also mean that researchers are nuts, addicted to research and are obsessive too?
Many coaches do think I should focus and one sports and only one. As a person I want to be able to enjoy and see skills from a sports and play around to fit my own and use them with a wee twist of adaptability to the sport I apply it. It is like playing chess with a friend with the board and no pieces, but use your head and recall different positions to make it accurate enough….just try and let me know how you get on. Coaching has basic rules to respect, the warm up, session with sets cool-down etc… But what about playing with all those little cells, muscles and see how much the body can take in a different environment or situation. When I studied with the University of Derby as part of a psychology degree, I had great fun and even if I did not do sports psychology but applied psychology you learn that there is no real truth and only assumptions until proven wrong scientifically. I can assume that my coaching is right until proven guilty then! I am definitely innocent !
A simple example that I tried was to challenge Paul Hession over 100m……no problem you would say! We have a perfect international athletes in great physical condition. Can’t really get better can I? Then I asked him to take his togs and goggles and do 100m Freestyle, or 100m rock climbing….it might be a different story! I don’t know how good Paul could possibly be but the change of environment and physical abilities changes everything. I am sure you get my point.
So as a coach I need to progress, I can do a level 1, 2,3,4 course but my capacity as a coach is to develop my coaching skills and knowledge as a Coach, but also as an individual not just in my sports and become narrow minded but learn strategies that I could apply in different situations with different athletes with different cultural or physical backgrounds. This is what I called the capability ladder, as a coach or athletes to be able to enhance your skills. Many of us can’t get over new development in sports. We think we know better in our way, and that nothing changes in sports or that we won’t share our secrets. Yes, sometimes it does go back to the old way of doing things, and sometimes it supposedly improves and then 10 years later another study says we were doing wrong etc…. it is like the stretching or not stretching, when or how much, active or passive. I read those every single day, and my own opinion in this is that there are some athletes who are used to do it and think it is beneficial, well good luck to convince them. It is ok with young ones, they thing you are the god of making them the best. Go and ask Kenenisa Bekele to change what he does, because you believe he should do the way you think…..or worst try Mick Rice on a 100km running race and then you are in serious trouble !
What does this mean? It means that we don’t really know, “we are supposing to know”, but if we knew the right way to build Olympian we would certainly know by now. We would have all International athletes tomorrow….what a mess! We would only work with milliseconds for results.
My own way is very simple, I used different techniques with different athletes until we both happy on the pathway to follow. I don’t try to persuade them that I am right, or oblige them to do my way. Instead I adapt my training to them and the technique to them, I have basic techniques and ground rules for young ones, when they reach a certain level, you tweak them to who they are, like they use to build old cars in machines and finishing them with a little hammer to make the body work fit the chassis in the 60’s and 70’s. Each car parts were built in the same mould but finish by hand to make them unique, like an athlete.
Many international athletes do many technical mistakes but sometimes trying to make them perfect make them weaker and slower. Imperfection makes human perfect, different, what could we talk about with someone who looks the same, like the same thing and run as fast than you? But that’s a personal opinion.
Too many 12 to 16 years old have burned out, simply because we think we have talents and if they don’t train hard they won’t make it. This is not true, if a young athlete is talented and you guide them properly, by having fun and not over training them they have a better chance to perform at senior level, or they will get sick of it and very upset when losing. When you will lose your “coach power” because you will have lost their trust, they will simply come back to you and say that they have to stop because the leaving cert is too imposing. In my opinion if you do a wee bit of research look at what most of the Irish Olympian succeed in their education: Doctors, teachers, business etc….I let you check for yourself?
We try to apply specific techniques, where the elbow should be at what angle, we even computerise human body now for biomechanical purpose. They are great tools for guidance but cannot be followed to the letter. Human can build everything today from micro processor to space ship. But there is one thing that we will never be able to build with our hands from scratch; it is a complex living creature such as a human. We can replicate it by cloning but we can’t build it from scratch and if we could we would not be unique. Yes you can apply a coaching plan and improve it every time until it is perfect for this particular Body. How applicable this is on millions of athletes with a different body and psychology?
Capability ladder is all about expanding not what we know but what we don’t know. Not what we like but don’t like, what we like or what are good or talented at will always come naturally and easily, so work on what you don’t like the most!
