Good Coaching Starts With Why?
So I recently looked back at my old logs to see what I did in my first couple of years of coaching. I must confess, I cringed. Not that it was terrible. But there were so many things I was doing simply because that’s how I was coached, without any rationale for why I did them beyond some really vague ideas. I know this because I kept notes along with the the training logs. This lead me to look at some of my lesson plans for my first couple of years of teaching. These were actually a lot closer to good (though very far from what I would currently call optimally useful) than the coaching plans. I asked myself why?
I think I have a good answer. We knew a lot more about the content of mathematics in the early 90s, when I learned to be a teacher, than we did about how physiology related to training. The first thing I noticed is that my distance training plans were definitely better than my sprint training plans. Not good, just better. Probably because Dick Michaels and Tom Mulligan spent so much time answering my questions when I was a college athlete. I think studying anatomy and physiology while I was an athlete helped as well. It got me thinking about why we did different workouts. That made me recognize that different workouts were designed to produce different results.
One lesson I did learn, and absorb, was Dick Michaels strongly worded advice that too fast in a workout was just as bad, or worse, than too slow. (There was some sort of admonition about my stupidity for trying to keep up with Christian Kendrick during Oberlin Mountain Miles.) Even when I was first starting to coach I remembered this. So even if I might have made better choices for how to structure workouts I knew to pay attention to this. Even if I should have done a better job of planning the season and off season, I knew that keeping track of the speed of workouts was important. But there was so much I did not know.
And then we get to sprint training. Here the best defense I can come up with is that almost everyone else was doing the same stuff. The state of the art used to be that you do lots of longer intervals for conditioning early, gradually transitioning to shorter, faster work. And then maybe at the end of the season you do short, fast intervals at high intensity. Which really means that we were doing things backward. Speed takes the longest time to develop. So it needs to be developed early. You need to run at full speed in order to improve your full speed. Which means short intervals with long rest. In the early 90s I would have scoffed at the notion of doing 4x10, 4x20, 4x30 at full speed with 1, 2 and 3 minutes of rest between intervals. I would have thought that was “weak” and not doing anything. Now I know that it is important. And important to do it early. Because I know why we do it.
Now we come to pacing. For as much as we coaches *know* that running the right pace is important, it is really easy to get seduced by the idea that a faster pace in workout means more effort was given and it will yield better results. But if we think about why we do any particular workout, we remember that we wants kids running a specific distance at a specific pace for a specific reason. So when I see notes on my old workout sheets like “Tanea ran 3 seconds fast each 200” with a smiley face, I cringe. I usually tell kids if we are doing a longer workout, I would rather the first couple of intervals be a little slow than a little fast. If you are supposed to be running 100-150-200-250-300-250-200-150-100 at 75%, if you run the first two intervals at 90% you are unlikely to keep the bulk of the workout in the correct range. If you run the first two a little slow, you can pick up the effort a little and get in the right range. The important thing as a coach is to remember why you are doing that particular workout, and get your athletes to do that workout. It is not a race. I remember hearing from a friend about a school (college) he had previously attended where records were kept for workouts. Kids got fired up for beating other peoples’ records in a workout. That is just sheer foolishness. If you are trying to do a max VO2 workout, you want a particular level of effort. If you are doing an intensive tempo workout, you want a particular level of effort. That level of effort translates into a particular pace. Going significantly faster means you are doing a different kind of workout. Not what was planned. Remember why you are doing the workout you have selected for the day.
Another thing I noticed was that I didn’t do much modifying of workouts when I was younger. It was more a soldier through mentality. Now, if I see a kid that is starting to struggle, I may give them some extra rest or cut down their total volume. Sometimes it is as simple as saying “Sit this one out.” If sitting out one interval enables an athlete to complete the rest of the workout on pace, it should be a no brainer. It is more important to do most of the workout at the right effort level than all of it not at the right level. It is also important that athletes know this. Don’t make a kid feel like they wimped out if they have to sit out an interval. Let them know that you realize they must be a little tired that day, because you know what they are capable of. And you want them to get the most benefit from the workout.
Too many coaches, even today, take it as a point of pride when kids finish a workout and are completely wiped out. This is straight up stupid. If your athletes are constantly reaching this state in practice, they will not run as fast as they should at the end of the season. A hard workout should leave kids feeling tired but not wiped out. A very wise coach I work with, in describing a good tempo (anaerobic threshold) workout, says that you should finish the last interval feeling like you could do one more if you had to, but you are glad you don’t have to. This is a good rule of thumb for a lot of workouts.
So as I look back on the last 26 years, I am fairly happy. I am a much better coach than when I started, because I keep asking why. I keep evaluating what I am doing. I change based on the athletes and the circumstances. I try really hard to coach the athletes I have, not the ones I want to have.
I think I have a good answer. We knew a lot more about the content of mathematics in the early 90s, when I learned to be a teacher, than we did about how physiology related to training. The first thing I noticed is that my distance training plans were definitely better than my sprint training plans. Not good, just better. Probably because Dick Michaels and Tom Mulligan spent so much time answering my questions when I was a college athlete. I think studying anatomy and physiology while I was an athlete helped as well. It got me thinking about why we did different workouts. That made me recognize that different workouts were designed to produce different results.
One lesson I did learn, and absorb, was Dick Michaels strongly worded advice that too fast in a workout was just as bad, or worse, than too slow. (There was some sort of admonition about my stupidity for trying to keep up with Christian Kendrick during Oberlin Mountain Miles.) Even when I was first starting to coach I remembered this. So even if I might have made better choices for how to structure workouts I knew to pay attention to this. Even if I should have done a better job of planning the season and off season, I knew that keeping track of the speed of workouts was important. But there was so much I did not know.
And then we get to sprint training. Here the best defense I can come up with is that almost everyone else was doing the same stuff. The state of the art used to be that you do lots of longer intervals for conditioning early, gradually transitioning to shorter, faster work. And then maybe at the end of the season you do short, fast intervals at high intensity. Which really means that we were doing things backward. Speed takes the longest time to develop. So it needs to be developed early. You need to run at full speed in order to improve your full speed. Which means short intervals with long rest. In the early 90s I would have scoffed at the notion of doing 4x10, 4x20, 4x30 at full speed with 1, 2 and 3 minutes of rest between intervals. I would have thought that was “weak” and not doing anything. Now I know that it is important. And important to do it early. Because I know why we do it.
Now we come to pacing. For as much as we coaches *know* that running the right pace is important, it is really easy to get seduced by the idea that a faster pace in workout means more effort was given and it will yield better results. But if we think about why we do any particular workout, we remember that we wants kids running a specific distance at a specific pace for a specific reason. So when I see notes on my old workout sheets like “Tanea ran 3 seconds fast each 200” with a smiley face, I cringe. I usually tell kids if we are doing a longer workout, I would rather the first couple of intervals be a little slow than a little fast. If you are supposed to be running 100-150-200-250-300-250-200-150-100 at 75%, if you run the first two intervals at 90% you are unlikely to keep the bulk of the workout in the correct range. If you run the first two a little slow, you can pick up the effort a little and get in the right range. The important thing as a coach is to remember why you are doing that particular workout, and get your athletes to do that workout. It is not a race. I remember hearing from a friend about a school (college) he had previously attended where records were kept for workouts. Kids got fired up for beating other peoples’ records in a workout. That is just sheer foolishness. If you are trying to do a max VO2 workout, you want a particular level of effort. If you are doing an intensive tempo workout, you want a particular level of effort. That level of effort translates into a particular pace. Going significantly faster means you are doing a different kind of workout. Not what was planned. Remember why you are doing the workout you have selected for the day.
Another thing I noticed was that I didn’t do much modifying of workouts when I was younger. It was more a soldier through mentality. Now, if I see a kid that is starting to struggle, I may give them some extra rest or cut down their total volume. Sometimes it is as simple as saying “Sit this one out.” If sitting out one interval enables an athlete to complete the rest of the workout on pace, it should be a no brainer. It is more important to do most of the workout at the right effort level than all of it not at the right level. It is also important that athletes know this. Don’t make a kid feel like they wimped out if they have to sit out an interval. Let them know that you realize they must be a little tired that day, because you know what they are capable of. And you want them to get the most benefit from the workout.
Too many coaches, even today, take it as a point of pride when kids finish a workout and are completely wiped out. This is straight up stupid. If your athletes are constantly reaching this state in practice, they will not run as fast as they should at the end of the season. A hard workout should leave kids feeling tired but not wiped out. A very wise coach I work with, in describing a good tempo (anaerobic threshold) workout, says that you should finish the last interval feeling like you could do one more if you had to, but you are glad you don’t have to. This is a good rule of thumb for a lot of workouts.
So as I look back on the last 26 years, I am fairly happy. I am a much better coach than when I started, because I keep asking why. I keep evaluating what I am doing. I change based on the athletes and the circumstances. I try really hard to coach the athletes I have, not the ones I want to have.
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