Hierarchy of Success - Approach

Continuing on the Hierarchy of Success series, now I want to move on to Approach.  In the big scheme, this is the second level as we build our coaching.  As you follow coaching "experts" on the internet, you'll likely find that far too much of coaching discussions are centered around Execution and then Tactics.  Try finding a dvd or seminar thats about anything other than which exercise to use, or how many reps and sets, or the greatest new circuit.  Of course, thats what sells.  Those topics are all about numbers 4 and 5 on the list.  Unfortunately, thats not really what makes you successful.

1. Attitude
2. Approach
3. Strategy
4. Tactics
5. Execution

In coaching terms your Approach are the broad strokes. What are the fundamental things you believe in for preapring athletes?  Do you believe in training movement?  Max Strength?  Core training?  Corrective exercise?  Heart rate based cardio programs?  Do you believe in developing general athleticism or sport specific skills?

 

From the speed and movement perspective the question is important in how you design your program for results.  If you see athletes who need to be faster will you use "technique drills" to develop speed or do believe strength is the primary focus. This can influence your training goals to be either "we need better sprinting technique" or "we need to be stronger!" The broader questions of approach will dictate how you set goals.

 

I started as a sport coach, then an Olympic weightlifting coach, spent time learning as a track coach, and today I am a sports performance coach.  For myself, after a winding road of influences, time in the trenches, and scientific research, I believe in training movement and developing physical capacity.  Training movement means different things to different coaches, for me it means both "technique" training and guided skill acquistion. 

 

There are many coaches who don't believe in "technical" training for movement.  They generally fall into two camps;

1. Just get strong and explosive because technique training is a waste of time
2. Just do the drills fast and athletes figure it out

I think there is SOME truth in both depending on the athlete, environment, goasl, etc...  Either approach will get you results SOME of the time with SOME of the athletes.  I personally strive to go 10 for 10, not for just SOME.

 

There can also be a problem in some approaches that DO believe in technical training.  If we do large volumes of technical training and enforce a rigid approach to movement, we can end of with poor transfer to on field performance and/or robotic, mechanical movements.  If we expend all of our time and energy and none for improving strength and power, we will also fail.

 

So my approach is one of "Skill Acquisition"  There are some good theoretical concepts we can apply to sports performance from the field of motor control and in particular, dynamic systems theory.  One of the key concepts here is that expert learners thrive not only with variability of movement, but in part BECAUSE of variability.  This is an entire series of posts in itself, but its important to consider for a moment here.

 

Sports are dynamic and the task constraints of reactions, opponents, surfaces, fatigue, and more are always slightly different.  The best performers can actually create the dsired movement outcome, without using the exact same kinetics and kinematics.  Thats what makes them better athletes.  Its the athlete that is stuck in only one streotypical movement pattern that falls apart come game time.  While there are ranges of kinetic and kinematic parameters that create a technical model for speed and agility, maybe they aren't as rigid as some coaches think.

 

Speed and agility are often taught by making every athlete conform to the exact same technical model.  Drill after drill is done to teach the athlete to perform in this way.  That can work fine if it truly fits the constraints.  Environmentally, thats easy when they are sprinting on a track or field without reactions, tactics, or opponents. 

 

One of the constraints however is the athlete themselves.  The capacities of their nervous system.  Their range of motion.  There anatomical segment lengths, muscle insertions, lever arms and tendon lengths.  The list is quite extensive.  Each of these is a unique constraint to that athlete.

 

 

Now don't get me wrong, I don't advocate a "just go and run fast" approach.  I think we should train our athletes through guided discovery.  Just about every speed or agility training session for a non-track athlete should include some mix of 3 components;

1. Technical drills to develop movement patterns and build kinesthetic awareness
2. Training drills designed at inducing a physiological, neurological and/or metabolic training effect
3. Applied drills that allow the athlete to develop movement solutions in a dynamic envornment by applying the movements trained

Instead I see many coaches who jump to part 3 only.  Just take your athletes out and do some drills.  Hopefully the good ones figure it out.  We also have cases where coaches spend so much time on nothing but technical drills, that the athlete develops a specific stereotypical technical model, but once they go to apply it it disappears in the actual game setting.
 
I also see problems when we have an athlete do nothing but movement training, and no development of strength, power and other physical qualities.  Of course they improve with movement training, but they will plateau as well.  There are limits to improvement that relate back to their strength & power to bodyweight ratios.

So by learning from successful coaches, coaching on the track and in the weightroom, doing the research, and most important, spending years actually coaching real athletes of all levels and ages, I came to my APPROACH.

• Train movement skills with a combination of technical, training effect and applied drills to guide the athletes to their optimal movement strategy.
• Develop the athletes capacities for strength & power.

 What's your approach and why?

  

Hierarchy of Success

ATTITUDE

I want to continue talking about the Hierarchy of Success.

This is the most important piece of all.  It trumps just about everything else.  Yes, the exercise technique and selection make a huge difference.  Selecting or executing poorly can destroy a program or athlete, but they won't make you successful.  It the solid and broad foundation of your true attitude, your beliefs, that set the base to grow coaching success upon.

It's your attitude as a coach.  As a person that has the greatest effect.  What do you stand for and what do you bring to your athlete's everyday?  If you are a positive person, you want the best for your athletes, you are sincere in your efforts, and you strive to be the best, it shows.  You can't hide this or fake it.  Not over the long haul. 

This is the true foundation of your coaching.  All of the other stuff is built upon this.  If the attitude is wrong, the athletes will see through it.  If the attitude is wrong, their motivation will disappear.  When your coaching is only based on the specifics of exercise technique and rep/weight selection you've got it upside down.

This key point is why I believe their are some coaches who have a methodology that may be faulty in some ways, but if their Attitude and Approach are lined up, they will be successful with many athletes and in many settings.  Attitude and approach can make them successful in spite of their actual training methodology.

So as a coach, the question then becomes two-fold. 

1. What are your core beliefs that construct your attitude?
2. Are you reflecting those in every coaching session and all you are doing?

When you have those, you have the foundation for success.

Hierarchy of Success

Seth Godin's blog today has a lot of carry over into coaching. Here's an excerpt;

The hierarchy of success
I think it looks like this:

1.Attitude
2.Approach
3.Goals
4.Strategy
5.Tactics
6.Execution
We spend all our time on execution. Use this word instead of that one. This web host. That color. This material or that frequency of mailing.

Big news: No one ever succeeded because of execution tactics learned from a Dummies book.

Tactics tell you what to execute. They're important, but dwarfed by strategy. Strategy determines which tactics might work.

But what's the point of a strategy if your goals aren't clear, or contradict?

Which leads the first two, the two we almost never hear about.

He continues the article and discusses how each should drive the other. It's probably important to define two of these that are often used interchangeably; Strategy is WHAT you're going to do, Tactics are HOW you're going to do it.

When you hear a lot of coaches talking about training (or arguing) its often about the last two. The execution of the drill or lift is important to most of us. Countless arguments focus on execution.

The tactics may be doing heavy singles or using lunges over back squats or deadlifts. We can go on and on with the arguments over tactics. There are more presentations and dvds on tactics than we will ever need.

I have to agree with Seth here. In the big picture, no one succeeds because of tactics and execution. You may fail if you don't do those well, but they don't bring success.

I'll say it again. The way you do the plyo drill or lift the weight wont bring success. This sounds like blasphemy coming from a coach who believes in teaching and enforcing proper technique, but I believe it's true.

I can have my athletes execute the best single leg, recovery focused, butt kick bounding out there. They did it because I decided that it was the best tactic to build specific explosiveness for sprinting.

However, if the goal was to play faster on the offensive line, but employed the wrong strategy of building specific explosiveness for sprinting, then I have a problem. I should have been building explosiveness for acceleration or acceleration against resistance.

So you can see how getting the goals and the strategy right are more important than execution and tactics. We do have discussion however about the next one up the hierarchy, approach.

Your approach in coaching terms are the broad strokes. If you see athletes who need to be faster will you use "technique drills" to develop speed or do believe strength is the primary focus. This can influence the goal to be either "we need better sprinting technique" or "we need to be stronger!" Do you believe in developing general athleticism or sport specific skills? The broader questions of approach will dictate how you set goals.

The last one, attitude, I think is more of the overall philosophy you have. Towards performance, towards competition, towards life. It's the driving force behind the rest.

It's also why I think there are some coaches who are relatively successful in spite of their execution, tactics, strategy, goals, and sometimes even approach. Because of an attitude, they can affect their athletes effort and focus. At times, when the window of opportunity is big enough, and the complexity is not too great, the right attitude can trump some mistakes in all the other steps.

I received this email from Rett Larsen of velocity Sports Performance, who got it from Cal Dietz at the Univ. of Minnesota. Had to pas it on since its a great piece. I know Dan Bylsma, Jay's son, who is currently the Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team that won the Stanley Cup last season. Dan had a hockey career in the NHL, and I coached him when he was with the Long Beach ice Dogs and the Los Angeles Kings. He's a great, stand-up guy. This will help you understand why.

So You're Going to Coach My Grandchild?
A message to coaches from Jay M. Bylsma:

I'm so grateful that you've volunteered to be the coach of my grandchild's ice hockey team. I'm getting a bit too old to be out on the ice with these young kids and without you volunteering, it's possible my Bryan wouldn't have an opportunity to play this wonderful game that's meant so much to his father and uncles and myself. My Bryan made it through tryouts. You might have thought that the tryouts were to see whether or not Bryan was good enough to make your team. That wasn't it at all. It was to see if you were good enough to be entrusted with my grandchild. You see, I don't really care if you know much about hockey, or whether you have a winning record. I don't know or care if you've ever coached a kid that made it in the NHL, or Division I college hockey, or even high school. But I know that every one of the kids you coach will have a life to lead after hockey. You will coach far more doctors and lawyers than professional hockey players. So I'm more interested in what kind of a role model you are and your ability to teach Bryan life lessons than whether you can teach him the left wing lock or backwards crossovers.

Let me explain why I don't care if you have a winning record. Think back over all the games you played in organized sports as a kid - any and all the sports. Can you remember any of the scores of any of those games or even if you won or lost? If you're like me you can't remember many - if even one. But I can remember every coach I ever had. Mr. Sterkenberg, Mr. Naerebout, Mr. VanderMey, and others. I can even picture them in my mind. Images of good men who taught me (whether they knew it or not) sportsmanship, integrity, to play by the rules, and to have fun. They made a lasting impression on me, just as you will have a lasting impression on my little Bryan. But apparently winning wasn't important enough for me to remember. Bryan hasn't been enrolled in the youth hockey program to win. He's been enrolled to have fun, to increase his athleticism, and to learn life lessons. What kind of a lasting impression will you have? You are his coach, a position just bit lower than the angels. He will hang on your every word. He will skate into the boards for you. He will never forget you as you've never forgotten your coaches. And he will learn from you, perhaps as much by what you do as what you say. You are the potter and Bryan is the clay.


For example, if you pick your team based on talent and ability you will show
Bryan that talent and ability are the criteria that a person needs to be
successful. If you pick your team based on the associations you have - that is,
your GM's kid gets to play, your brother-in-law's kid is on the power play -
each regardless of ability - you will show Bryan that you get ahead in life by
who you know, accomplishment and achievement don't count for as much as
connections. If you tell the kids, "Every one pays equally, everyone plays
equally" and then only some kids get on the power play and play in the third
period, you influence kids about the meaning of honesty and deception. If you
say disparaging remarks about the other team, the other coach, or the officials,
you demean the game and incidentally yourself and you teach Bryan that it's okay, perhaps even manly - to be disrespectful and pejorative. If you need to put ringers on your team to be competitive in an out-of-town tournament, you are
influencing your players about your standard of honesty and the importance of
winning at the cost of your integrity. If you say a disparaging remark about
education, you may depreciate the value of education - this in a sport where if
you aspire to play at a higher level, good grades may be as - or more important
than - your hockey skill.

Your demeanor, your language, your deportment, your values, your aspirations, your character becomes the role model. You are the potter, Bryan is the clay. You see, I don't even think this is about hockey at all. It's about teaching Bryan life lessons. It's about re-enforcing the lessons he learns at home. Hockey is just the blossom we use to attract the bees. And we attract the bees to teach them to respect the game, to respect their opponents as worthy competitors, to respect the officials and their decisions, to teach them fairness, and how to maintain self-control.

If he's a good player, I hope you won't aggrandize him or over-use him but help him be a team player. If he's a poor player, I hope you won't demean him but give him his fair share of ice time and help him become a better player. I hope you will remember he's just a child and your career as a coach isn't riding on his back. I hope you will remember that a word of encouragement after a mistake is worth more than a pile of praise after a success.

My son Dan and I started the IT PAYS initiative because for all its inherent good, changes in youth sports are very disturbing to us. There are the well publicized instances of cheating, abuse, assaults, and even murder. But these are only the tip of the iceberg. The sport is having ever increasing difficulty attracting and keeping officials because of verbal abuse and assaults by coaches and parents. Skilled players are leaving the game because of violent play by bigger less skilled players who are instructed "take them out" instead of improving their own level of play to compete successfully. A win-at-a-cost mentality demeans less skilled players who may rarely see ice time in the third periods of close games - which ironically impacts their ability to improve. Sadly, some coaches have taken the fun out of the game for the children by exerting too much pressure, being too critical, being demeaning, and being too vocal in an inappropriate way. The consequences of losing sight of the purpose of youth sports - that is as a game of childhood, a wonderful pastime - is that the life lessons that are being taught are less than wholesome and sometimes destructive. Dan and I hope that you will wholeheartedly continue to support goals of IT PAYS - for the good of this great game, for its reputation, and for the positive influence we hope you'll have on the child we entrusted to you.

If you work with young athletes, or athletes of any age for that matter, remember this.<