The Master at Work

Leonardo da Vinci was a Master.  He was a master of both Art & Science.  Paintings, sculpture, engineering, anatomy, military tactics.  What an amazing mind.  To become a master coach we need to develop our skills in both the art & science of coaching athletes.

As I walked through an exhibit at the Getty Museum on Leonardo this past weekend, I was amazed by all of the work that preceded a masterpiece.  There pages and pages of studies.  Studies may focus on a single body part, or a certain part of a bigger work of art.  In many cases da Vinci spent weeks, months or even years on the preparation for a work of art.  Pages after pages of notes, ideas, drawings to prepare.  While many see the finished work, the preparation is behind the scenes.

One of the skills in coaching that is often lost is the planning stages.  Once you have some confidence and knowledge, you can easily walk out and "wing it" on many training sessions.  I know I have fallen into this trap at times.

The problems arise in several ways.  For one you can get caught with your pants down when things don't go as well as they could have because you didn't have a plan.  Secondly, you can't move toward your bigger goals if they aren't planned out and you look at how this session fits in and supports the bigger goals.  Lastly, you won't learn from the session as much.

Planning a training session makes a difference.  Its a battle plan that lets you be prepared and lets you review.  The planning itself may be the most important part.  Its the act of thinking about what your overall strategy, detailing the tactics and execution for the day, and using your coaching art to make it fit together to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Sometimes I've seen coaches feel like needing a plan is demeaning or "rookie."  If a master like da Vinci spent this much time planning and preparing, I'd feel pretty good about doing it as well.

US Olympic Committee Training Design Conference

Early Specialization and Deep Practice

As I was sitting in a conference room at the US Olympic Training Center, listening to World Championsip and Gold medal coaches from several sports, a more comprehensive view of the problems with early specialization came into perspective.

The Talent Code

Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code gave the keynote address and discussed some of the concepts in his book.  It's a great read for anyone involved in developing talent, whether it's athletic, music or other.

Daniel travelled around the world observing what was happening at talent hotbeds.  Sports and music academies that were repeatedly producing champions against all statistical odds.  He wanted to find what they have in common.  Many of the things

Early Specialization

Many coaches there agreed that in general we have too much specialization and year round competition at an early age. The lack of physical education in schools was also a key issue facing development of high level athletes in the future. How many champions are being lost because they aren’t being exposed to sports and physical activity in school? How many are burnt out by continual competition in a single sport? How many overuse injuries could be prevented? How many are missing their true sport calling because they only play one?

As I was giving the cry of too much specialization at an early age, many of the coaches were talking about the importance of our US athletes spending more time playing the sport. They were saying that we are already more athletic in many cases, but we need better skills and better ability to read the game. US athletes are athletic, but they aren’t as creative or as tactically savvy as many other countries.

It is hard to argue that if our biggest problems aren’t athleticism and injury we should be playing less. To develop the tactical awareness you clearly need to play the game. To develop precise ball skills seen in volleyball and soccer you need to be playing with the ball. So playing year round would help if you know you are going to be a high level player in some sports.

We also had some discussion revolving around the so called “10,000 hour rule.” Well if I need 10,000 hours to become a master at a skill, isn’t getting started earlier (early specialization) and practicing it year round a good idea? It would seem so.

However, as the discussion continued, some other thoughts emerged from many of our elite US coaches. While they want the athletes to play the game more, in many cases they wish the adult coaches would get out of the way. “Too much time is sport is being driven by coaches, and not the players. It drill centered, instead of centered on playing the game” remarked one of the best coaches in the world with at least one gold medal to his resume.

As this line of discussion progressed over the 3 days, it became clear that the coaches advocating more pay, weren’t advocating the year round, organized competition, coach driven, and drill center activity we see in sport. For younger athletes quality play and skill development can happen in 1/3 the time when lead by a quality coach compared to what they see happening.

Deep Practice
This tied us back to some of the ideas presented in The Talent Code. One of the key ones is that champions practice better than others and great coaches create an environment for “deep practice.” We need to understand it’s not about the 10,000, but the practice that is built in that time. Just spending 10,000 hours won’t get you to the top. It has to be focused and engaged. Note this doesn’t mean just doing an activity – it means continuously pushing the limits of your ability, always operating just out of your comfort zone, making mistakes and learning to fix them, getting comfortable with that dynamic of improving by failing. And it’s making sure that time is spent doing the activities that you need to improve, whether it’s ball handling in soccer, technique in tennis, or tactical awareness in football.

As we discussed this concept of “deliberate” or “deep” practice, it was clear that playing full sided competitive games in organized tournaments doesn’t do this. Numerous examples were given, but one of our US National Team coaches in soccer talked about it well.

He illustrated that if you have a 90 minute game plus 10 minute half you have spent 100 minutes on a game. Add to that 3 games as is often seen in a tournament weekend and we have 300 minutes. Five hours.

In a typical game the time each player has the ball isn’t distributed evenly, but for the sake of discussion let’s assume it is. That’s 90 minutes divided by 22 players on the field, which means the each player has the ball for all of 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Do it for 3 games and now you have maybe 13 minutes of skill development with the ball. Yes, there is tactical development, but even then how much of that time is wasted when the layer may not be that involved in the space of play?

Thirteen minutes. As the coach pointed out he could have a well designed practice with various individual, small sided and situational games that would give each player twice as much time with the ball, in just an hour. One hour versus 5.  Add to that the concept of "deep practice" and you get even more out of that time.

Which is going to help that player develop the basic fundamental skills better? Go crazy and take that time to 2 hours over the weekend and you’ve quadrupled the skills development.

Does this mean don’t play in competition? No. None of them were saying that. What they were saying is we don’t need our future champions to be playing in organized competition, or in low yield practice, year round in just one sport.

Situational Coaching

What's your coaching style?  Do you adjust for different athletes?  If you're not adjusting your coaching to the athletes you may be leaving some behind.

Now that's a choice many performance coaches have made.  Consciously or not, they have a coaching style, and if it doesnt work for some athletes they can go somewhere else.  If you are in a position where you can pick which athletes you want to work with, then this works.  More power to you. 

If you work in a team setting, or want to reach a larger audience, then you better be able to adjust your coaching style to your athletes.  Personally I enjoy the challenge.  It's one of the skills of coaching. 

Adjusting your coaching style doesn't need to mean that you do things that arent you, don't fake it.  Just understand that the methods of instruvting and motivating need to adjust based on the individual charactersitics of the athletes you are working with.

The concept of Situational Leadership as propsed by Blanchard and Hershey gives a coach one perspective in how they can do this.  Their leadership concepts were developed for business but have been applied in many coaching and military settings.  The following matrix of an athlete's skill and motivation relative to a task is adapted from  Pathways to Coaching, TLO 2001 by Bristol.

Athletes in each of these zones will need a different coaching approach to acheive their optimum results.  A fundamental concept here is that there is no one best approach to coaching,  It's situational.  It depends on the athlete's motivation and skill in that task.

• Guiding (low skills/low motivation): If you give this athlete a task and leave them on their own to do it, they probably won't succeed.  This athlete needs guidance, by a coach that stays close at hand giving positive feedback, pointing out success to fuel motivation, and showing them the task solutions. They are probably more introverted and less confident in this situation, so don't try to be a cheerleader or drill instructor with your motivaion. 

The guiding coach has to help the athlete envision a future they can create and take ownership of.  The short-term goals are key to achieving this. Progress is structured through a series of cumulative efforts and short-term tasks with deadlines. The coach needs to stay in close contact alongside this athlete to monitor the progress being made and give constant praise and encouragement for the achievements.  Critical feedback needs be deliver in the classic praise-critical-praise sandwhich and not in a public setting.

• Directing (low skills/high motivation): This athlete is motivated and often may be working really hard, just at the wrong things or using poor technique.  The coaches job here is to harness that motivation and direct it to the right tasks and proper efforts.
The directing coach needs to effect a real commitment from the athlete on the direction of training and striving for an agreed vision of the future.  This helps ensure that activity is consistent with this goal and not have that high motivation fuel useless or detrimental efforts.  If you don't get them to buy in to your vision or your expertise, they will be off doing something else with all that motivation.

If the coach tries to fire this athlete up, but doesn't fix the skill or what the athlete is doing, burn-out or injury may be around the corner.  They don't need motivation, they need direction.   The coach stands alongside them and points them in the right direction.  This coaching may be reflective feedback and support or very authoritative directions depending on the athlete. The astute coach will be looking for the opportunities when they can reduce directions, as the athlete demonstrates increasing confidence.

• Inspiring (high skills/low motivation):  This athlete has the skills, but has lost confidence or passion in what they are doing. 

You will need to work tactfully to explore the reasons that may be underlyingand creating the low motivation levels. Although often related, its important to discover whether the passion is gone or they have lost confidence. 

A range of short-term actions should be planned that will bring repeated small successes to build confidence and generate new enthusiasm. Working alongside in this context requires the leading teacher to be in regular contact throughout the programme of activities, maintaining a focus on the positives.

When the passion is gone, don't go for the over-blown hype.  Instead find the ways to re-engage them in the process and not just the outcome.  To be engaging tasks need to be at a high enough level or else they will be boring.  Helping an athlete find their passion takes a skilled coach, but will bring great rewards.

• Delegating (high skills/high motivation): This athlete is very skilled at the tasks and is very motivated to improve.  If only every athlete was like this you may think, but this athlete has very specific coaching needs as well.  With this athlete you give them increased ownership of decisions and provide them the role of "self coaching" as a partner.

The freedom to experiment needs to be well supported to allow mistakes to happen and to learning from them. Coaching this athlete will be an interactive partnership that involves them in the decision making, program planning, and feedback.  You supervise, but don't micormanage.  You don't have to be next to them or even there for every task.  Get their feedback first to gauge how much feedback they need from you. You counsel, instead of direct them.

Ensure that opportunities are created to share this learning with other athletes.  Often creating new coaching opportunities and responsibilities for the athlete through coaching others, helps them themselves to further develop their own capacity in the team or group setting.

This video on situational leadership overviews the concept well although the computer generated voice may make you throw your computer. 


All in all, the final question is about how you are going to coach.  If you want to reach as many athletes as you can, and help them to their best possible outcome, then you need to condsider their situation.  Some basics of coach always cut across all these quadrants, but for continued and wide success you will have to adapt your style.

Multi-Directional Movements: Transit

In the last post I outlined Base Positions as a category of multi-directional movement going through my Hierarchy of Coaching Success related to speed and agility.  The next catergory is transit movements.  These are movements with the goal of propelling the athlete through-out their playing space (field, court, lane, etc...).

Many people training athletes like to break down movements into linear and lateral.  It seems natural and has a nice separation.  I used do this entirely, but now only do it in early phases.  The reality of sports is usually that these are always intertwined out on the field.  Training should work that way as well.

Big 4

For all of the transit movements, I still emphasize the Big 4 as I was introduced to from Loren Seagrave.  It is a breakdown that covers the different aspects of the movement as well as ties the rest of training to improving movement. This should be an entire post of it's own, but here is a quick rundown.

• 
  
  Big Force
• Small Time
• Proper Direction
• Optimal Range of Motion

Big Force

To propel the athlete significant forces have to be applied to the ground.  Drive harder may be the key for some athletes.  This means that we need to consider the strength qualities of; starting strength, rate of force development, max strength, relative strength and reactive strength.  The importance of each will differ with the transit modde, sport and conditions to some degree.  We will need to consider how we improve these qualities through drills, resistance training, and plyometrics.

Small Time

In sports, speed counts so applying that force in a small time, while in contact with the ground, is critical.  This requires the right strength qualities as mentioned above. Some athletes need to train to apply the forces faster.  Again this comes back to specific strength qualities and how we cue and emphasize certain movements.

Proper Direction

Force is a vector which means it has a direction as well as quantity.  Efficient and effective movement requires not just the right magnitude of force, but the right direction.  As we examine movement mechanics, especially multi-directional, the proper direction of application becaomes important.

Optimal Range of Motion

To move well an athlete requires the proper range of motion through their joints and soft tissue structures.  In many movements it's important to note that it's not the largest rom but the optimal.  In many sporting situations, having their feet close to the ground to react quickly and apply force is better than having them far away.

Linear

Sprinting is a pretty straight forward mode of transit, and breaking it down into acceleration mechanics and maximum velocity mechanics is understandable.  The mechanics of each phase is different and the need for each depends the sport and position. 

Acceleration

Overall the frequency of acceleration mechanics is much greater across many sports and positions.  If you have to move farther than one step you need to use some degree of acceleration mechanics. 

We will train this with basic mechanics drills that build specific strength, kinesthetic awareness and range of motion.  Wall drills, skips and harness work make up the bulk of this.

Then we have drills to elicit a specific training effect.  Sleds, hills, bounds, and plyometrics all can accomplish this by adding resistance or disrupting the current motor attractor landscape.  We also need to create applied situation where the athlete can apply these parameters and develop the best movement solution for themselves.

Max Velocity
There are clearly cases where an athlete need to maintain higher sprinting speeds.  These max velocity mechanics apply when the athlete has linear momentum and they differ from acceleration.

Much like acceleration we will utilise diferent max v mechanics drills.  Not so much to create an exacting stereotype of movement, but to develop specific strength, local energy systems, kinesthetic awareness and range of motion.  We may use fast leg drills, step over runs, in/outs, and butt kick  to help the athlete develop new motor parameters.

For a neuromuscular training effect we will look to bounding, sleds, weight vests, slight inclines, and slight declines to acheive the desired effect.  many of these are used in contrast with unloaded efforts to not just have a training effect, but to enhance motor control as well.

In some cases moving fast for the field sport athlete is more tactically effective with a higher stride frequency.  A long stride length requires the feet are further from the ground for longer.  When in a sporting situation where an athlete may have to react to stimuli of opponents, objects, or changing environment, having their feet off the ground is bad.  If they can move close to the same speed but at a higher frequency and maybe lower amplitude, it may be advantageous.  This is one of the biggest differences between track speed and field speed.

In this case we will work on developing that from multiple standpoints.  First we will try to use various plyometrics drills that focus on developing reactive strength.  This will be required to be effective with a high turnover.  Then we will use high frequency based drills to emphasize turn-over.  Drills like stepover runs in the ladder, running into a ladder or spacing and maintaining speed, and 2-inch runs are a few examples.  Then we applying it.  Using live drills in which the athlete needs to react while moving fast wil help them find the best movement solution.

Backpedal
Somehow people always forget backwards when talking about linear speed.  We need to consider how athletes move backward.  There are usually two basic approaches; backward running and sliding.  Backpedal is a true "linear" movement relative to the hips and center of gravity.  Most backward sliding movements are actually more of a "lateral" movement because the hips have been turned even if the head and shoulders haven't.





The purpose again is to have a way of looking at the demands on the athlete so we can determine their training needs.  Next article we will cover the lateral categories of transit movements,