In the last few weeks I have been reflecting a lot about the
evolution of the coaching profession. When I started my career in Sport, I was
more interested in coaching than sports science, later on I drifted to science,
mainly because I am the kind of person mostly interested in evidence and
numbers, in structures and processes and find difficult to get lost in
philosophies and opinions which unfortunately still permeate part of the
coaching community.
In my view, coaching is teaching. It is about making people
better, and it is about "igniting" passion for something. Coaching is
about facilitating the expression of talents as well as instilling a culture of
hard and honest work and passion for the activity the athlete is doing.
So, when I was coaching, I aspired to be a great teacher, a
great motivator, a man with a plan able to communicate clearly to my athletes
what we were doing and why and I tried to measure and understand most of what I
was doing in order to separate the good from the bad. In my view at the time, a
great coach was also an excellent communicator, and was somebody able to
facilitate creativity within a structure of play (I was a Handball coach after
all).
As a Strength and Conditioning coach I was clear about my
role: I had to make my athletes stronger and faster and robust enough to endure
training and competition. Over the years my career has taken different
directions, from pure science to scientific support to managing holistic
approaches to performance. In such roles I have met many coaches and
practitioners with my daily interactions, but I also came across many
individuals in coaching conferences, workshops and seminars and also on the
Internet. I have to say that over the years I learnt to "box" coaches
according to the way they work and would like to share this on my blog. This is
not a critique to the people working in a coaching role, but is a
tongue-in-cheek blog which I hope it can be used for self reflection to
understand where the coaching career is going and also be used as a guide for
young sports scientists.
1. The multi-medal winner who is always right
This is challenging coach to work with. He/She has won
everything there was to win, has been successful over the years and is grounded
on his/her beliefs of what works and what does not work. In general, the multi
medal winner is obsessed with (old) routines and thinks that his/her way is the
ONLY way to improve performance and win. The only way to win his/her trust is
learn about his work, collect evidence. Build and collect evidence and he/she
will listen to you. With no evidence your philosophy and your beliefs count
nothing. After all, he/she has won everything, not you, so why should the coach
listen to you?
2. The motivator
The motivator gets incredible attention from staff and
athletes. He/She can get anybody to climb mount Everest. He/She is capable of
inspiring the most incredible performances. However most of the times he/she is
completely disorganised. Cannot put together a structured plan with a sense,
improvises and has no idea why certain things work and what does not work. If
you work with a motivator coach you will always be in a great environment but
unstructured and random. So what you will need as a sports scientist is
organization and structure. The motivator suffers from ego-boosts periods when
things go well and excessive rehearsals of Al Pacino's any given
sunday speeches when things go pear shaped, so be ready for loads of
pep talks and inspirational videos.
3. The Lecturer
This coach is going to lecture everybody, his/her athletes
and hi/her staff. However, just like any university lecturer, few times
athletes and staff will fall asleep...The lecturer coach is always prepared (to
give a lecture) but most of the times what he lectures about is not what he/she
coaches. He is too busy to put together cool quotes to self reflect and find
out that what he thinks he/she is doing is not what is happening. Sports
science support to a lecturer coach is challenging as it means many times
falling into the trap of producing power point slides to get to your points. If
you end up working with somebody like that, get ready for death by power point
and numerous hours of meetings in which you will be lectured.
4. The pseudo-science guru
This one is fascinating. This is the guru. The one that also
has sometimes cargo-cult science following. He/she is always right
just like the first type, is a great motivator and a lecturer. Is the
combination of all of the above. What makes this type more dangerous than
others is that this coach reads stuff. Blogs, books, articles in Russian,
philosophy theories, books nobody has read or can buy, and has a side interest
in physics. This type comes up with new terms previously unknown to mankind and
claims facts that were published in some obscure journals (or on the walls of a
cave) which helped him/her develop the new theory of coaching. This one is
lethal, because will challenge any sports scientists using collections of
sciency words in random order and will confuse you so badly that at times you
will think that what you learnt in your degrees was just a pile of nonsense.
He/she has a following after all, and everyone wants to work with him/her. So
if you question or refuse to accept the mumbo jumbo you will be quickly
dismissed as an innominato, a non believer. Best way to work with this type?
Get your facts right, über right! Make sure you translate the mumbo jumbo in
something meaningful and take your time to understand how he/she works.
Sometimes great gifts are given in ugly packages, so you might learn something
new if you listen but this happens rarely. Many times you will shake your head
in disbelief and will have to challenge the non sense using scientific facts.
Be prepared, as the pseudo-science guru does not like to be contradicted, so unless
you are really really good and absolutely correct, you might lose your job
before you know it.
5. The Artist
The artist creates. He/She is never prepared. There is no
structure, no plan, no thinking forward, no idea of what happened last week.
Nothing, nada de nada. The Artist coach will surprise you with curve balls
coming from everywhere. His/Her plans (which reside only in his/her head) will
be always changed at the last minute. Whatever you agreed to do will have to
change. So if you work with this type, better learn how to sail and read the
wind, as the working journey with this type will take you to places you have
never been before...This type should come with a warning if you have OCD and/or
love structured plans.
6. The Bully
The bully is a coaching type you can come across frequently.
This type is very popular in team sports and combat sports (stereotyping...I
know...). This type is loved by CEOs of team sports clubs and tends to get
hired to replace another coach when the season is going badly. It is in fact
popular belief with general managers and CEOs of sports club (should write
something about them as well...) that when a team is not performing you need to
hire a bully as many times the perception from the boardroom is that the
athletes and staff are not "working hard enough". The bully comes in,
shouts at everyone constantly and controls everything. The bully does not like
freedom of expression nor alternative ideas. With the bully you execute and you
have to be prepared to have a shouting match. With the bully heated discussions
do not happen behind closed doors, they happen on the field, in front of
anybody (that's why he/she is a bully!). The bully has a plan most of the times
(in his head), and when shared with staff and players it is fixed. The bully
does not grasp the concept of progressive overload (in fact, the word
progressive does not belong to his/her vocabulary). The periodisation plan of
the bully is affected by good and bad results. Bad results = massive increase
in training volume and intensity, good results = constant high volume and
intensity.
8. The friend coach
The friend coach is the nice guy. The one that sometimes
even when results are bad can't be fired because "he is such a nice
guy". The nice guy reads a lot of psychology and sociology. The nice guy
does not shout and will refer any sign of DOMS to the medical team for an MRI
(just in case). The friend coach cares about the health of the athletes, their
families, the staff and the fans. He/She wants to make sure everyone is happy.
The friend coach likes questionnaires, psychological profiling and likes to talk.
His/her training approach has solid pedagogical foundations. It's the
Montessori approach to training in fact! The friend coach has a plan, but this
is discussed with the athletes and staff. Everyone has a say and in the end
nobody has a plan as most of the times the friend coach facilitates an anarchic
system where everybody does whatever he/she likes to do when they like to do
it. As a sports scientist supporting the friend coach you will need to be firm
and organised (but this is a trait you need anyway for every other coach) as
otherwise you will not get much done. New iterations of the friend coach these
days contain "new age" elements. Sometimes in fact training sessions
can be performed barefoot and with soft music in the background (have you ever
tried to lift weights with Mozart's music blasted in the gym?). He/she can take
you to a camping trip so you can all bond and/or perform a training session in
weird/remote places. When a friend coach is sacked there are lots of tears and
teams might need weeks of therapy to recover from the loss. This is very
different from the sacking of a bully coach where teams celebrate the release
with fireworks displays.
9. The Statistician
The Statistician loves his/her numbers. Very common coaching
type in CGS (centimetres,grams or seconds) sports. The statistician knows how
fast Usain Bolt run when he was 11 and has learnt mnemonically the World
ranking in his and other events for the last 30 years. The statistician make s
use of numbers and loves numbers. His/her training sessions are detailed. You
will know how much, how many times, how fast/slow, with what cadence and
sometimes you might have add-ons like breathing rate! The statistician will get
your brain going, so make sure you learn all key times and bring a calculator
as sometimes you may fall into the trap of believing the numbers to find out
later that they were utterly wrong (sometimes!). The statistician also loves
predicting performances. He/she is able to tell you fast somebody will
run/swim/cycle just by knowing how many push ups/medicine ball throws the
athlete performs together with his body mass, speed in specific distances and
age. How does he/she do that? Easy! The statistician uses secret formulas which
were developed in East Germany in the 50s and were obtained from another coach
after winning a drinking competition in a Bar in Budapest or exchanged for a
box of cigars before the Berlin wall came down. The formula has also been
"improved" by the statistician coach over the years adding a k he/she
developed which improves the precision of the predictions. If you think you can
go on PubMed and look for the formula you are a fool. There is no trace. Your
best bet is to head to Budapest and try to find the Bar. Support to the
statistician is relatively easy if you know your numbers and you provide
evidence based reports. However, if you don't know or understand statistics,
you are better off considering a career in another industry as this one takes
no prisoners.
10. The SAS coach
One of my favourites and loved by everyone with OCD. The SAS coach applies
military techniques to coaching and managing staff. Your morning meetings will
be at 07 hundred hours (0700 am) and will start with a briefing. Anybody
arriving late to anything will have to do 20 push ups. The SAS coach has a plan,
everything is planned to detail with exact times and list of activities.
Meetings are sharp and run on strict agendas and end with a series of actions.
Athletes and staff know their roles and responsibilities. There is no place for
complacency, no compromise means no compromise. When SAS coach asks you to do
something, he/she is not asking. It's an order. Training sessions are built on
solid routines. Everything is built on solid routines. The SAS coach is not a
bully, but he/she can be at times. Definitively more organised than any other
type, however sometimes lacks empathy. So some staff or athletes may get the
"hairdryer" treatment at times, but the SAS coach means
well. He/she demands excellence (and most of the times obtains it!). Not
everybody can work with the SAS coach. The main aspect is to be incredibly well
organised, have good routines and deliver consistent excellence.
So, my list is
finished. Joking aside, in order to work with various coaches in a sports
science role you need to:
- Understand how the coaches work, what is their experience/background and what
their philosophy
- Learn about their approach/take notes/ask questions/observe/measure where
possible
- Reinforce all the positive, anything that works
- Discuss what does not work when you have evidence and not when their philosophy
does not match yours
- Be organised, have good plans, gather (relevant) data to improve the quality of
service you can provide to the coach/athlete unit
- Remember you are part of the support team, not the main actor, your place is
behind the scenes
- No one is indispensable
- If you get a chance, get some coaching qualifications and try to coach somebody
in any sport, you will find out that putting the human performance puzzle
together is not as easy as running an incremental test in a lab
- If you think you know everything it is time for you to move on, working with
athletes of any level/age allows you to
discover something new every day if you ask the right questions (or assess
routinely certain aspects) and critically appraise what you do.
- Be prepared to have the
difficult conversations (and many times you will be at the receiving end!)
- Never forget that
when working with a team or an individual athlete everyone is trying to do the
same thing (improving performance) but each member of the team might do it in a
different way.
Never lose sight of the big picture