The Domain…….a place between exhaustion and oblivion.
In triathlon, we often look to for innovative technology or the latest training methods in the quest to go faster. However, there’s a philosophical concept that’s over 2500 years old which is innate and if recognised will frame the way we train and race. It’s a Buddhist concept called Nirvana, the end of suffering. To get there requires an intellectually disciplined journey in which we lose our ego. Nirvana is a place of balance where there is no perception, just reality in which we don’t worry about the past or future. It’s about the here and now!
Just imagine racing in such a state of no suffering. Psychologists have termed such a state of the optimal zone of functioning. Everything simply feels balanced. It’s a state that most athletes rarely experience, a place where PB’s are achieved and dreams realised. But achieving this state consistently requires the discipline of Buddha himself.
Fatigue, the inability to maintain the required pace can be the enemy but only if you let it be. There are metabolic, neuromuscular and environmental factors that can contribute to this fatigue. Regardless of race distance, fatigue generally hits us at 2/3rds of the way through with efferent signals hitting our brain which tell us to slow down. However, if we’ve got pacing and nutrition right, only a lack of mental discipline or misfortune will slow us down before the end of the race.
The purpose of training is to meet the specific demands of the race. In all but draft legal races, doing so is relatively simple. It’s all about training to maintain a relatively constant pace until the finishing line. We also need to prepare ourselves to enter the Domain willingly. If we think about the Domain positively, like entering the Nirvana zone rather than the hurt locker, then optimal performance is more likely.
Many triathletes are attracted to the sport because it is tough and it suits their alpha personality. They perceive themselves to be mentally tough and this translates into how they train. This quasi-one-paced mediocrity neither enhances fat metabolism, FTP or VO2max. The fact is that most athletes train too hard and race too slow. I like Stephen Seiler’s 80% easy: 20% hard concept in this regard. Have a watch of the YouTube presentation below if you want to hear more.
I’m a great believer that perceived strength and ego can be the biggest weakness in many triathletes, especially for those who take the path of least resistance. They focus on training the body in that zone between VT1 and VT2, whilst neglecting the training of the mind to meet the demands of their targeted event. Particularly when racing long, many unhelpful emotions and perceptions will catch the mentally undisciplined out, they will push too hard and sub-optimal performance will result.
I once read a book by a polar expedition leader (who’s name escapes me) who said that alpha-trait males were a complete liability when travelling in hazardous environments. Those with less perceived strength would think themselves out of dangerous situations rather than letting their ego drive them to their death. Of course, triathlon is far less extreme and death is rare, but the same principles apply.
Discipline in Training and Domain Training
There’s plenty information regarding training out there; however, information should not be confused with knowledge. We’ve got to be able to apply what we know to the real world and it most cases that means keeping it simple. All most athletes need to consider is consistency and specificity in their approach, doing the simple things well and ‘picking the low hanging fruit’ first.
The specificity comes from training in and around specific training zones:
Easy endurance: to promote efficient movement and energy (fat) metabolism. Developing good technique and formidable best achieved in this zone as it cannot be done effectively when fatigued. Training at this pace takes discipline and mental toughness, especially when training partners are pushing harder.
Medium endurance: for 70.3 and Iron-distance athletes this is race-pace training. It should feel controlled rather than hard. Technique and form should be maintained rather than developed here.
Threshold: isn’t the sweet-spot unless you’re focusing on sprint or Olympic distance events. I would argue that it’s ok to train here in the off-season if you’re going long it won’t do much to enhance your race performance if you go here too often in the race-phase.
Speed and power: is for interval training of up to a few minutes. It can be used liberally in the preparation phase of training and more conservatively later in the season. For certain types of athletes, I’d use such efforts in easy sessions too to break up the monotony or to satisfy a fragile ego.
Domain training: To the best of my knowledge, I invented this zone. It is not bound by any type of threshold other than in one’s soul. Plato may recognise it but Karlman Wassermann certainly would not. To enter it regularly in training is impossible but to achieve optimal performance in racing, it is essential.
Karlman Wasserman
If you go into The Domain, it will be embedded in your memory. I’ll never forget the 1st time I experienced it a few months before The Longest Day. I rode at pace from Edinburgh to a training camp in Aberfeldy with some mates, met with some others and rode a bit more and then cycled home as I had work the next morning, This 260km ride over 14 hours became horrible after a coke. My gut refused to take food after I drank it and with 50km to go, my brain glycogen was so low that I could barely signal my hands to pull the brakes. A neighbour had to rescue me from the front door of my tenement block, get me and my bike in the house and then buy me pizza which I could barely eat. I had passed through exhaustion to oblivion.
Domain training can equally be done in short sessions, say racing a mile until you taste blood in your lungs or digging so deep on a hilly ride that you can barely stand afterwards. Used sparingly in combination with easy and medium endurance rides builds resilient and mentally strong athletes. Going into the domain regularly or in combination with loads of sessions between the thresholds can lead to temporarily fast athletes but more often than not it will lead to broken or not quite as fast as they could be ones. I’d love to test this hypothesis on a couple of brothers in the Leeds area………………..
It’s getting to the time of year that most of us are giving up on indoor training and getting the miles in. However, is this the right thing to be doing for your performance?
In this Blog I’ll focus on the benefits of turbo sessions. It’s been written specifically for members of my club, Manchester Triathlon and based on the sessions I be delivering to them. However, there’s plenty that others can take away from reading it too!
The Benefits of Indoor Training
It doesn’t have to be the middle of winter to get the most of doing some of you bike training indoors. In fact you may find that including at least one indoor session per week on the turbo with make your training more effective.
There’s many reasons for this being the case, including:
It’s easier to control intensity which will add specificity to training
There’s no periods of freewheeling so your training is more efficient (more work done in a shorter time)
You can do very high intensity efforts without having to worry about the risks of the road
Your benchmark tests produce better data (in terms of validity and reliability) allowing you to track changes in performance effectively
If like me you are surrounded by big hills, you can do steady state type efforts more easily
Long turbo sessions help develop mental resilience…..if you can do a 3 hour turbo session, then you can smash the bike leg in an Iron distance race
They’re great for doing TT position specific sessions.
Ok….there are downsides such as sweating buckets, feeling sick and getting bored but it’s quite simple to re-frame these downsides into positives!
You can’t keep the power on the pedals when the road goes down steep!
The Benefits of Attending a Kirkland Indoor Coached Session
One of the most important sides of being a member of a club is the social aspect….meeting friends, training together and motivating each other. Group training can be a challenge too, especially if the coach prescribes a session that doesn’t align with your goals.
However, I believe the most important role of a coach is to engage with as many athletes as possible within the group. That means taking the time to find out about the goals, aspirations and motivations of each and every athlete….. This can’t be done in just one week so a notepad is an important tool of the coach. Of course, it’s impossible to account for everyone’s needs but such information helps with the ‘art’ of coaching.
I am always asking questions…. what athletes learnt, how did they feel during an effort and will they be coming back next week. Coaches are given too easy a time by most athletes…… If a session is crap I expect athletes to say so. If athletes don’t understand what they should be doing and why, then they should ask and a coach should always be ready and willing to answer.
Plan and Deliver: Your Cervelo or Your Life!
Especially as I don’t coach as groups as much as I’d like to, planning is essential. I like to know what I want athletes to achieve in a session before I begin. Obviously, for indoor sessions the physiological element underpins everything else. In an hour’s session athletes will feel short-changed if everything is at 80% FTP (circa IM pace). Therefore, most sessions will be made up of high-intensity efforts and recoveries of various duration.
I will always use the same warm-up and cool-down protocols, shown below, which are the ones that I recommend athletes use before shorter time-trial races. I want to help athletes form habits in training so they become second nature in racing. I’m happy to chat you through the rationale of each if you drop me an email.
Warm-up
Cool-down
· 5 minutes easy spinning (Freely chosen Cadence)
· 5 minutes build to FTP
· 1 minute easy
Then:
· 1 min @ FTP 30 sec easy x 4
· Complete warm-up with 3 minutes easy
· 3 mins of easy spinning
· 5 mins at FTP -10%
· 2 mins easy
· 5 x 1 min at ‘moderate’ intensity in an easy gear as 54s easy and 6 sec max rev-out.
An active cool-down can aid recovery
Most sessions I design will have a psychological and learning element within them too. Triathletes tend to be physical Trojans but mentally weak! Getting faster is more about engaging the brain than ‘smashing it’. Switching off your brain when I’m coaching isn’t an option.
Often when I’m prescribing training, even low level ‘fat burning’ or technique sessions, I’ll end with a very hard effort. Whilst this may not be physiologically optimal, the final memory of the session will be the lasting one “that was bloody hard”. Such efforts satisfy alpha-males and they (the efforts, not the alpha-males) release feel-good hormones too!
The following things give me physical, technical and psychological information when I’m observing riders and they’re just as applicable to you if you would prefer to train alone in the basement (preferably with a mirror):
Posture
Is the rider athletically relaxed? Holding tension in the body is inefficient especially when riding very hard. The shoulders hide no secrets….they should be steady and free from tension. I’m also looking for a ‘strong’ core and stable hips.
Where are the head and eyes looking?
I don’t want to see a rider looking at their feet……looking ahead shows me that they are engaged with the task at hand.
Breathing
Is it deep and controlled or fast and furious? I’ve performed hundreds of VO2max tests in a lab whilst recording all sorts of physiological measures. This means I can tell if someone is sticking to the prescribed intensity or not…… I know what 10% above FTP looks like in terms of breathing! The only time breathing should be shallow is at the point of exhaustion. Shallow breathing is lazy.
Cadence/pedalling
Unless the session is focussing on strength development or high-cadence efforts, I don’t mind what cadence a rider pedals at. I once coached a guy who did a sub 19-min TT and his average cadence was 58rpm. There’s other people that can maintain a cadence above 100rpm. This tells me there’s no such thing as an optimal cadence so I’ll let people find their own mark! That said, I’m still looking for rhythm and will pounce on anyone showing signs of ‘soft-pedalling’.
A Few Links
When I’m doing my own sessions in the basement or coaching, I use a great little app called Seconds Pro which is available on IoS or Android to keep track of what I’m doing. It’s worth paying for the Pro version. What is awesome is that you can link it to music stored on your device. I typically use Resident Advisor or Electronic Groove podcasts to keep me motivated.
A screenshot of Seconds Pro
If you’re a member of Man Tri, please email me and I’m happy to send you the Seconds file so you can do the sessions in your own time. Click on the SESSION PLANS HERE if you wish to see what you’ve missed or may wish to come to in the next few weeks.
There’s an old chap who lives in my village. He’s bearded, tall (he would be taller but he’s stooped), has less fat on him than a butchers dog and he wears a hearing aid. The first time we spoke was on the day of the Charlesworth Fell Race. The race is a traditional village festival one in the Peak. It involves running up a steep hill, along a ridge and down again! It’s 5km and it hurts so much that you get OMS rather than DOMS.
A view from Coombes Edge
Anyway, I saw the gent in his running kit just before the race start but not at the finish line. Rather, we bumped into each other on the train both having been to Glossop for our shopping. I moaned about having a mild asthma attack on the climb and he gently teased me about how easy this particular race was and that he’d kicked over mole hills bigger than Coombes Edge. I instantly liked him. I love bumping into Neil now! He’s typically on his way back from watching an athletics training session or race. We’ll have a nice chat about what we’ve just done, he’ll natter a bit about the past and who’s running well in the present….. Running is his vital force, part of his soul, his being and his life. I want to be like him when I’m in my dotage . One day he said he’d just been to see his mate Ron another runner that he’d written a book with. It transpired that Ron is none other than the famous Ron Hill! When I got home, I googled Neil and found that he’d been a pretty handy sub 2hr 30min marathon runner back in the day of plimsoles.
Several weeks later I was reading Richard Askwith’s book Feet in the Clouds and Neil got a mention. He had been a buddy runner for one of the all-time running greats Joss Naylor, during a Bob Graham record attempt.
Joss Naylor
For the uninitiated, the Bob Graham Round is one of the toughest running challenges in the world, which anyone can attempt but few succeed. This is a truly gruelling run involves running up and down 42 Lakeland fells in a 24 hour period! The thing was, I was reading about the BG on my way to watch IM UK Bolton. Maybe a strage coincidence but it changed my whole view on big events. My initial fear of watching IM was that I’d be inspired to get enter next year. The opposite happened. It was a strange experience.
Imagine…. air thick with the whiff of silverback pheromones…….emanating from male gorillas of a similar vintage to myself, adorned with similar tattoos and ridiculous one-piece Lycra suits. As I stood watching at the entry point to T1, a man as previously described came zooming towards the dismount line on a Cervelo P3. He tried and failed to do a running dismount, falling arse-over-tit and took another athlete out. I felt sad. Don’t get me wrong……participating in sport is every bit as important as sporting excellence. It should be inclusive rather than exclusive. However, rampant commercialism of by organisers has overtaken the pioneering spirit. The first triathlon many people now do is IM distance and it shows!
Transitions are full of £5k bikes and with an entry fee of close on £500, it encourages a very narrow demographic to compete. Completing the distance is still an achievement but few manage to do so to their potential. That’s because many don’t understand or respect the race and its history.
Many of the perceived ‘successful’ events are those which market themselves as Savage Beastly Brutal Bollockbusting Nutcrackers! They may be really long, have challenging climbs or a few rocky trails. However, I’ve got adventure racing friends whose daily commutes are more challenging. Does this matter? After all, many people have a nice day out and get an ego boost as a result. What saddens me is that the aspects of sport that I hold so dear are being lost because races are becoming more about brand, marketing and bragging rights. Again, that may not be a problem to some and I’m certainly not one to impose my views on others. However, in a recent race, I was nearly wiped out by a chap who undertook on me at 40km.h and then I saw why…… it was the only way he could get round a small peloton to my right.
Now I know how Christophe Bassons felt! I was surrounded by a bunch of dangerous cheats. It doesn’t make something right if “everyone else is doing it” just like doping. However, in my case I think my fellow competitors had just not taken the time to learn about the sport. Back when I started cycling, in the late 80’s I was in a traditional cycling club. It was a strange environment for a young lad and I’m certainly not looking back with rose-tinted glasses. In many ways, they were the bad old days, where antiquated views were expressed. It certainly wasn’t inclusive and many first-timers never came back. To fit in, you had to prove yourself! I was a relatively slow rider, but managed to prove myself through sheer pig-headedness! I’d be dropped week-after-week but I’d always come back for more. The good side was that there was always one wise old chap on hand, giving encouragement, ensuring you knew group etiquette and always ready to show displeasure if you stepped out of line or rode dangerously. It’s where I learnt about the importance of respecting the history and rules of the sport. They weren’t there simply for tradition. Rather, if you’re belting down a hill at 50km.h in a group or chain-ganging along a busy road, you’ve got to respect and trust your fellow riders.
These early lessons have stuck with me. I’ve come from the sport of cycling where many, no all of my past heroes have been done for doping. It hurts but it heightens the importance for personal integrity and upholding the rules of the sport. That means not draughting, respecting fellow competitors and trying to be safe! It’s people like Neil Shuttleworth who are now my heroes. They’re not mere interlopers looking for personal gratification. They do their best, with performances often being as good as any world-class athletes. However, they rarely get rewarded or recognition. Rather, they do it because of a love of the environment and of the sport. If you think IM is tough, I challenge you to do a fell race. You’ll see a beautiful side to sport where courses may leave you frozen, soaking, bleeding and broken. You’ll be competing against people that look slightly unwashed and feeble but you’ll be so far behind them as not to worry about the smell. With a tenner, you’ll pay your entry fee, get a pint, a chip barm and an experience to compare with many of the ‘toughest races in the world’. In fact, such races are tougher because they’ll push you way beyond your comfort zone. You may even find yourself struggling to keep pace with a middle-aged granny in a pair of old Walsh’s! It takes a real man to cope with that!
If that’s too much of a challenge, what about a local sprint triathlon? You’ll taste your lungs in a way that’s not possible when going long! In fact the longer you go, the less it hurts…….the pain just lasts longer! The important lesson for me is that sport is more than just completing a distance. It’s about self-discovery, always pushing the boundaries and operating beyond the comfort zone!
99% of people enter races that they know they’re likely to be able to complete with their ego intact! Only 1% enter races where failure is a risk or they may lose face. However attempting such things makes you feel more alive and it’ll ingrain sport deep within your being!
“I think it is human nature to feel doubt at different times, but it is how you use those feelings, or learn from them, that’s important”. Craig Alexander
I recently saw a question on the 220 Triathlon twitter feed from The Swim Guru on whether anaerobic work should be included within training sessions.
In this Blog, I’ll do my best to answer the question from a personal perspective.
Working anaerobically?
Science and exercise intensity
As I’m a chartered scientist, it wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to guess that I love science. That’s because I love observing, quantifying and analysing to better understand phenomena.
In endurance sport exercise intensity is demarcated into different training zones using threshold intensities such as lactate threshold, Fatmax, Critical Power, VO2max and so on. All these threshold values are based on factors relating to aerobic or anaerobic metabolism. However, to think about exercise intensity in terms of only these metabolic factors may be missing the point. Rather, doing so may be limiting training effectiveness and I tell you why.
Like many things in my life, I have ‘light-bulb’ moments when things that were completely confusing become immediately obvious. One such moment occurred during the write-up of my Ph.D. when I read a very brief paper by Mark Hargreaves:
which totally changed my view on endurance performance.
Hargreaves stated the obvious, that the body is a complex system not simply a metabolic one. Rather, the human psyche, neuromuscular activation and skeletal muscle are all implicated in fatigue processes, and thus endurance performance.
My conclusion was that fatigue (or training zones) should not be considered in metabolic terms alone. This is despite virtually every textbook and training manual making such an elementary error. I was guilty too, focusing my complete thesis on a few tiny areas of science. Hargreaves highlighted how naive I was being. He changed my (scientific) life.
Working aerobically?
What is a threshold?
Aerobic and anaerobic metabolism occur on the same continuum with rest being at the lower end and surpra-maximal intensity being at the higher. Human beings like clear differentiation between things and threshold points are used for such demarcation.
Over many previous months in the laboratory and staring at excel spreadsheets, I’d been trying to identify the first and second ventilatory thresholds (VT1 and VT2), using the plotting method below. For all intents and purposes, this is the same as identifying aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. Occasionally, I’d see clearly distinguished thresholds in the data but more-often-than-not it was messy. The diagram below took many hours of ‘trawling’ my data to find the set that best represented what Wasserman et al.’s Principles of Exercise Testing and Interpretation was describing.
Typically scientific data is presented in such a very clean way. After all messy data or stuff that is difficult to interpret rarely progresses beyond a journal editors desk. However, the more academic literature I reviewed around thresholds, the more I became confused. Researchers argued about the mechanisms and mediating factors of thresholds, using different terminology to describe similar phenomena and the same terminology to describe quite different phenomena!
My conclusion was that this lack of consensus was because the term “threshold” does not perfectly fit physiological processes. Rather, changes in physiological these processes occur on a sliding continuum, without a clear threshold but as a transitional or inflection point (supported by Meyer et al., 2004).
Furthermore, factors such as the the human psyche and neuromuscular activation processes would have to be wholly aligned for threshold intensities to adequately describe fatigue. I reached the conclusion that exercise intensity should not be described only in terms of aerobic or anaerobic metabolism.
More physiology
An area that I also studied was oxygen uptake kinetics, which took me a few years to get to grips. This is despite the subject being relatively simple. The diagram below illustrates virtually everything a coach needs to know about the subject. It shows the oxygen uptake response for a bike rider who’s initially pedaling at an easy 100W. He instantaneously increases power to Functional Threshold Power.
As the rider is relatively well trained, it takes around 2 minutes for him to reach the point where a steady aerobic energy turnover is achieved. The aerobic steady-rate requirement for this rider is 3500ml of oxygen per minute. However, for the initial two minutes the rider is in energy deficit, having to make up for this shortfall through anaerobic pathways. Of course, this is beautifully clean data, it was measured in a lab using £40k worth of equipment and I still had to spent an hour or so to ‘reduce the noise’ in the data by eyeballing then applying a statistical filter! In reality, data in the ‘real world’ would not look like this.
In reality we rarely maintain a constant power/speed (because of choppy water, other people, hills, wind and poor pacing) so our oxygen requirement is never truly constant. This means that our aerobic and anaerobic systems are both ‘switched on’ all of the time. This is particularly true for interval sets (including most swim sessions), fartleks and when running on hilly terrain. Any increase in power/speed, even below the ‘anaerobic threshold’, requires a contribution from anaerobic pathways. Therefore, there is no such thing as either aerobic or anaerobic exercise. They are not mutually exclusive!!!
Understanding this in a triathlon context
Imagine a swimmer is doing 10 x 100m in the pool at their fastest maintainable pace with minimal recovery (circa 20 sec per 100m faster than CSS pace with 15secs recovery). A swim coach may call this a ‘lactate tolerance’ set (although they would be talking nonsense…lactic acid is a fuel and tolerance infers suffering….we should love the burn!!!).
For the first 100’s in the set, this would require about a 60% aerobic contribution and a 40% anaerobic contribution to total energy turnover. Theoretically, the ratio would change as the set continued because the swimmer would be depleting anaerobic stores and not be able to resynthesise this energy quickly enough in recovery. A further likely outcome is that technique falls to bits, pace drops rapidly, as does the anaerobic contribution. Sub-optimal training will result!
Many would describe such a session as an anaerobic workout even though aerobic metabolism dominates! However, I think having such a debate is immaterial to performance because of the demands of the sport.
The demands of endurance sport
There are three reasons why we train:
To get faster (achieved by increasing the applied force and/or rate of force whilst minimising the forces acting to slow us down)
To minimise/prevent injury
To have fun (earning money doesn’t really count…….because the WTC etc have crap prize funds).
Now to use a Kirkland anecdote to explain more!
A few years ago I was at a testing session in a leading lab with one of the world’s best age-groupers….who I hope will read this. He’d just done an anaerobic test and we had an amusing conversation:
“Wow……..your numbers are equivalent to Chris Boardman’s on that test”
“Really” the athlete said with a grin on his face!
“Yep…….his were similar to a 12 year old girl’s too”
The bottom line is that this athlete who is good enough to finish on the age-group podium in Hawaii is unlikely to have his performance limited by the lack of ability to work anaerobically. The same can be said for any non-drafting triathlete in the world. It’s simply not a demand of the sport!
It terms of (1) to go faster no triathlete needs to undertake training to specifically improve anaerobic capacity. Never! However, this is semantics as ‘smashing it’ has its place. Here are my reasons:
Training hard and training fast hurts and if done right, it helps reduce the rating of perceived exertion at sub-maximal intensities…… i.e. training hard makes racing seem easier….thus it takes into account psyche!
Training above FTP/CSS taxes the aerobic systems more than training below it. Therefore, with adequate recovery, it promotes aerobic adaptations such as improved VO2max.
Maximal type training can up-regulate aerobic enzymes such as phosphofructokinase which enhances oxygen delivery and hence performance
It can be used to develop strength and speed
It makes us feel good, satisfies the ego and it can hit #3……to have fun!
I’m gonna stick to the 80% train low, 20% train high ratio as a rough rule of thumb. That’s because:
Training close to and above FTP/CSS relies heavily on carbohydrate metabolism (aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis) which reduces exercise efficiency when compared to fat oxidation. Doing too much high-intensity work compromises endurance
High-intensity training often compromises subsequent training sessions
Training should primarily be specific to the demands of the event that you’re racing in
Most triathletes are unable to maintain good technique when going fast!
Conclusion
So there we go! I believe there is a time and a place for triathletes to work above an FTP/CSS intensity but there’s very few circumstances where training should target improving anaerobic capacity. If however you’re racing ITU, gimme a shout and I’ll revise what I say to you!
Over the years I’ve come across numerous methods and theories of how to optimise training in swim, bike and run. I’m often asked what’s the best type of training whether it’s Coggan’s, Friel’s or even my own methods.
“There’s not an optimal way” I say. Rather, consistent training with broad specificity does the job for 99.99% of mere mortals. Getting the simple things right, sorting out the wheat from a whole lot of chaff, is the most important thing for most people.
Any coach or expert that says “my way is the best way” is missing a multitude of tricks. However, if someone asked me for swimming advice I would point them straight to Swim Smooth, their brilliant book, online platform and videos.
Paul Newsome and Adam Young of Swim Smooth are simply the world leaders in open water and triathlon swimming coaching methods. They’ve designed one of the best coaching systems I’ve seen, both from an athlete and coach education perspective.
In my latest blog, I’ll explain why!
Aberfeldy Swim
Triathlon Swimming
Around 10 years ago, I stood on a pool deck with legendary triathlon coach Darren Smith watching Cat Morrison swim up and down in the Stirling Uni’ pool. Daz, who’s always testing people, asked me to evaluate her technique and then tell him what I’d say to her if I was her coach.
I gave a swimming textbook answer but made a fatal error. I noted imperfect hand-entry and suggested where it should be going in the water. I had identified ‘effect’ without considering causality. Darren was quick to point out that my intervention wouldn’t work. He said that Cat’s brain knew where to put her hand but limited back and shoulder flexibility was preventing her from doing so.
Cat Morrison
It’s taken me many years to learn the significance of what lessons I learnt that week. A major one was not to accept anything at face value.
“The swimming textbook is wrong” Darren said in one conversation, telling me why. He taught me was that a higher stroke count without a pronounced glide was best in open-water. Also it’s not possible to develop an older triathlete in the same way as a youth swimmer, so you shouldn’t try!
The aim is to allow an athlete to get out onto the bike with the leading pack not unduly fatigued, rather than doing a 1500m in under 15 minutes. A complex catch-phase isn’t required to be a world class triathlete, let alone to be an average age-group one. The hand should enter fingers rather than thumb first, high elbow and into the catch-phase without a fancy s-sweep motion. Such technique deals with the demands of turbulent water better and is easier to learn, yet sufficient to allow most athletes to stick with the pack.
In 5 short minutes Darren changed my view of freestyle open-swimming. Speaking with a friend from Boulder, CO a few weeks ago…. he said “most coaches in the USA are still coaching traditional freestyle technique….long glide stuff, wanting everyone to be like Ian Thorpe”. Much of the world has been left behind. I’ll never forget watching David Davies in the 10km Olympic Marathon in Beijing thinking….”20 mins coached by Daz on tactics and you’d have won the Gold!”
Thumb First!!!
However, Paul and Adam are revolutionising the coaching of triathlon and open water swimming. Their technique development seems to following a similar philosophy to Darren, raising the bar further by making it accessible to coaches and age-group athletes too. What’s really special is their innovative use of video technology to transfer exceptional understanding of the demands of the sport to others.
Yeah they evaluate the techniques of elites, my favourite being the Jodie Swallow video. However, unlike many others they understand those who do 2:00 mins per 100m equally as well as those swimming twice as fast, adapting their methods accordingly.
Why Swim Smooth?
I fell into triathlon after being encouraged by Scottish Ironman Legend Scott Balfour. He noted that I came to a weekly run session in a park in Edinburgh on a fancy road bike and invited me to a swim session. “I cannae really swim” I said. “I’m rubbish too” he replied (his daughter did go on to win a silver at the world champs mind).
Scott “Bonkers” Balfour
On week 2, it was the 400m benchmark time-trial! Somehow I got roped into doing the humongous 16 lengths non-stop. It was horrible! I could hear clapping and cheering as I reached the final 50m. I was angry! Having progressed from a fat-ginger to a 73kg lean-mean racing machine (relatively speaking), it was painful to get ‘sympathy’ cheers! The clock stopped at 12 minutes 03 seconds, a fraction under 3 mins per 100m. I was exhausted.
Within a few weeks I was doing 6am swim sessions with Heart of Midlothian SC. There’s no mega-happy ending where I progressed to doing repeat 100’s off 1:10 min. It did however expose me to the discipline of swim club training where I learnt loads, as did the coach. Ally, a great swim coach, learnt that triathletes are not simply swimmers and should be coached accordingly.
We’re all individuals! The Swim Smooth types!
Understanding the race and training demands of triathlon is fundamental to good coaching. Sessions, sets, and drills must be tailored to the needs of athletes but many miss this point. However, in my huble opinion this seems to be inherent within Swim Smooth’s philosophy and they understand that:
Triathletes are not just swimmers
Pool swimming is not the same as open-water swimming
Drills should be specific in developing good technique for triathletes not Olympic swimmers
Great feedback helps develop good technique
Age-group triathletes typically train in the pool 2-4 times a week. Therefore, multiple-stroke sessions (breast-stroke, fly, back and kick) are usually surplus to requirements
Consistent swimming requires a combination between physical and technical components without undue bias to one or another.
To get this understanding across, the Swim Smooth system includes:
HD videos with wonderful physical, technical and tactical information
Awesome content designed for the needs of both age-group and elite athletes
Easy to follow training sessions
A really good book.
If your training on your own, it’s a great place to access stuff that will help you be more effective. If you’re a coach, it offers excellent coach education, gives you ready made videos and actual session plans: it’ll help cut back on your session planning but allow you to invest more time in actual coaching (rather than writing a set up on the white board). In the next section, I’ll talk about Critical Swim Speed a concept Swim Smooth use and that every triathlete would benefit from understanding.
Pacing, Critical Swim Speed and More!
In a recent talk, I kept on bleating like a sheep! This was to demonstrate that 90% of triathletes are weak because they ‘follow the crowd’. This is particularly pertinent when it comes to training/race intensity. If you’ve been through the swim club system you’ll probably be able to hit your target times ± 2 seconds. This pacing video is good to get the point across of how crap most of us are at pacing though. The performance gains of getting your pacing right in the swim are probably more than spending £10000 on the best aero equipment. The new Swim Smooth platform has an even better pacing video which is available if you sign up.
To understand pacing, it’s good to also understand exercise intensity. Swimming 1500m or 3800m should never involve ‘going into the red’ anaerobic zone as doing so will result in sub-optimal performance. Swim Smooth use a concept called Critical Swim Speed (CSS) to prescribe training intensity. Although with my scientific hat on, the method (based on Wakayoshi et al., 1992) has short-comings, I think it’s a great tool for all triathletes and coaches to use. Simply, CSS represents a threshold intensity above which metabolites associated with the fatigue process are produced (for the physiologists amongst you, this is a simplification). Above CSS is the ‘red zone’.
Using 200m and 400m TT’s will allow you to identify CSS, a pace which is not too far off a steady 1500m pace. Training at this intensity is useful because:
It is possible to maintain good technique throughout
It is very specific to the aerobic demands of triathlon swimming (only sprint and triathletes who do draft legal events should ever race faster than CSS -10 seconds per hundred).
Whilst there are great arguments for swimming faster than CSS pace regularly, many will do so all the time even for repeat 800’s and technique will fall to pieces as a result. The great news is that Swim Smooth offer a range of progressive sessions based around both CSS and technique development.
Pacing Set for Coaches
Sometimes we forget that training should be fun…..and this set is great fun to coach but horrible for the swimmers. That’s because you’re deceiving them.
The Unknown Distance Session
After a thorough warm-up , simply instruct the swimmers to do 1 x 200m at 1500m race pace.
Simply instruct swimmers to go again as soon as they stop and repeat until 5 x 200m has been completed.
It’s guaranteed that by the end of the session, everyone will be completely smashed and those who can comfortably hit 1:30 per 100m with be struggling with 2:10’s!
Summary
I’ve not been paid by Swim Smooth to write this. Rather, I’ve had a few email conversations with Adam and a great chat with him too! I simply buy into their products, wishing many more coaches and athletes understand what Swim Smooth is about. That’s because I think their knowledge and the way of getting it across is world leading and I think they deserve every success that they have worked hard to achieve. Have a look and you may be converted!
I’ve not done a blog for ages. Life has simply been rather busy with work, coaching training and other such things.
However, I attended the 220 Triathlon Show at the weekend to do a seminar and a few people asked me to put my presentation online, wanted to know what had happened to my blog and I also was recommending Matt Dixon’s book. Thus, I was compelled to put a few words up this evening.
Seminar Presentation
My seminar was an exploration of the use of science to inform on training and racing. Click on the following link to get the slides: 220 Triathlon Seminar Slides
One of my ambitions is to write a book on triathlon training. Although I’ve got around 50000 words done, I think it’ll be a few years before I start chasing a publishing deal.
In the meantime, I thoroughly recommend Matt Dixon’s The Well Built Triathlete. I first came across Matt when he was presenting on the TriSpecific Triathlon World Summit and bought his book as a result. Training theory and prescription is an area that I’ve studied for many years and I’ve rarely come across anyone that has made so much sense.
Nearly all books written on training have taken a ‘top down’ approach, exploring optimal ways to train. However, the vast majority are reliant on science that has not been tested in the real world and use periodization models that simply are impossible to apply.
Highlights on the book:
Using the Four Pillars approach:
Stress and endurance training
Recovery
Nutrition
Functional strength
The Four Magical Principle of
Consistency
Specificity
Progression
Patience
How Dixon considers training and life stresses as one metric
Dixon’s understanding that most triathletes have a mortgage to pay and a family to keep happy.
Simplified training zones that are primarily based on Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE).
I’d like to see:
A bit more on psychology
The swim, bike and run sections are a wee bit superficial (but still good).
The book gets a 10 out of 10 for planting some great training seeds in my mind and 7 out of 10 for overall content. It’s certainly a must read for all endurance coaches and budding triathletes.
For those of you who are involved in training prescription, it’s an essential read. It’s encouraged me to take a few minutes to reiterate my views on Periodization, whilst exploring why it’s important to be a critical thinker and to take real care when accepting information at face value.
Plato
Let’s be Challenging
Periodization is simply a systematic way to organise training, most specifically physical training. At university it was the bedrock of all training theory we were taught. When I applied for a job at the Scottish Institute of Sport, there was that word again in the job spec:
“Essential….sound knowledge of Periodization “.
Periodization is like the root of a wart, deeply imbedded, an accepted truth in sports science and coach education throughout the world.
I have my own wart. The boss suggests that I use the word “but” too often and some people find it irritating. He’s right of course, but….I’ve convinced myself that it’s just about justifiable and it comes down to my academic training. During my undergraduate study, Prof. Bill Baltzopoulos delivered many of our biomechanics lectures and tutorials. Most of his teachings laminarily flowed around my slipstreamed head. However, one lesson stuck!
“What’s the mechanism?” he continually asked.
“Where’s your evidence?”
These infernal questions, whilst annoying, are vital for every self-respecting sports scientist and coach. Bill was simply asking how and why things work the way they do. His lesson was never to accept something as a truth unless his questions have been asked and/or can be explained by fundamental principles.
So why does Periodization work? Where is the evidence that it does? Ehhhh…….An inference from Kiely’s paper, which I wholly prescribe to is that there is no convincing evidence to suggest that Periodization is an effective training system.
Bill Baltzopoulos
Why does it not work?
Periodization involves the training of one of the most complex systems known to humanity….the human body. We may have a basic understand the fundamental principles that explain how singular systems of the body work i.e. the cardiovascular system. However, how do all systems interact together? Kiely analogises Periodization with chaos theory, the (mathematical) study of dynamic systems in relation to their environment. Chaos theory is a deterministic one which can predict the future state of a system. However, I’m sure any of us who have coached a performance athlete will know that:
“The chaotic, highly sensitive, nature of the biological system will ensure that the progress of physical fitness will not be an orderly, uniformly incremental, and predictable process. The adaptive responses to any given training ‘inputs’ will not result in readily predictable fitness ‘outputs’”.
Periodization is a deterministic conceptual framework which fails to account for the important scientific principle of ‘Shit Happens’. Take for example Jodie Stimpson’s wee accident in the ITU triathlon in Yokohama. She tripped in T2, sliced her foot with her chain-ring, which in turn affected her race result and subsequent training. This accident was avoidable but certainly not predictable. If Coach Daz had spent 2 days carefully designing a pretty periodised annual plan for Jodie, he’d be pretty pissed at having to start again!
Jodie Stimpson
Because I’m a bit of a thinker, I like to look beyond contemporary science to the humanities when exploring complex questions. That’s because I feel they enrich our understanding of humanity in a way not possible with science alone. Take Plato for example, the man who 2500 years ago laid the foundations for modern philosophy and science. He understood that the body, mind and soul are distinct but not separate entities.
This understanding is fundamental to contemporary training theory in which the aim is to promote adaptation so the athlete functions optimally. Let’s move beyond concept and apply Plato’s work to endurance sport.
Something that is relatively predictable is that with around a 1/3rd of a race to go, regardless of its distance, the mind will tell the body to slow down. Scott Jurek, the ultra-marathon runner, talks about the domain “between exhaustion and breaking” that I’m sure most of us understand. I will call this the Domain! Operating in this Domain requires an athlete to consciously control the urge to quit. The very best athletes can operate in the Domain consistently. Great endurance coaches such as Shane Sutton, Brett Sutton and Darren Smith understand that, with the right raw talent, athletes can be conditioned to operate within the Domain and subsequently excel at world level. This requires a training environment that is challenging by design.
Of course, every athlete has their breaking point and sometimes it’s important to go beyond this point to identify it in the first place. However, psychological factors and how to periodize them only gets a few pages in Tudor O. Bompa’s Periodization: Theory and Methodology of Training, a book that is required reading for most sports science and coaching students.
My conclusions are that:
I accept that Plato’s writings on exercising the mind, body and soul together as a fundemental truth, specifically within the context of endurance training.
Jodie Stimpson’s wee accident, proves that training cannot be planned effectively using a determinist model.
Periodization is simply a conceptual theory that simply confuses coaches and practitioners because it bears little resemblance to what works in real life.
If Periodization worked, then so would accurately predicting performance. Bookies would go bust!
Plato would have rightly dismissed periodisation as nonsense.
What’s the Alternative?
Sometimes, athletes will perform optimally without too much structure but they rarely do so consistently. Rather, success in endurance sport usually happens by design, rather than by accident. But what is that design?
I believe that designing training programmes is an iterative (trial and error) process which can be informed on by a broad knowledge and experiential learning. Sports science certainly has a place, in which it provides knowledge to minimise coaching errors. Other factors to consider include:
Having a dream of what can be achieved. Goal’s and goal-setting are also accepted truths in training theory. However, goals have limits! Dreams do not; they enable athletes to achieve what may not be considered by others to be achievable!
Systematically developing an understanding of all the demands of the sport. Then prioritise training towards developing strengths and minimising weaknesses relative to these demands. Most athletes find it mentally challenging to continually work on weaknesses so priority should be given to strengths.
Considering these factors does not discount medium- and long-term planning or dismiss having specific training focuses within defined periods. Such planning is most certainly essential for elite athletes supported by extended programmes which require a degree of predictability to allocate resources.
Closing Words
As a coach, sports scientist or an athlete who wishes to excel, having a hunger to find out how and why things work is vital. Doing so enables us attempt to solve complex problems, to challenge accepted truths and to avoid dogma. One Olympic coach confided in me that he found a particular athlete very challenging. She always wanted to know why! She challenged his ego but also encouraged him to consider his own coaching knowledge and practice at every level. This is coming from a coach that has helped win more medals than many countries have won!
If more of us challenged dogma, it would be less likely that things like periodisation were accepted as truth when in fact the null hypothesis is far more appropriate.
British Triathlon held the Performance Coaching Conference at the East Midlands Conference Centre on the 15th of March 2014. In this blog, I’ll review the conference, providing my perspective and picking out key learning points that may be useful to other coaches.
Introduction
It was great to be given the opportunity to attend the British Triathlon Performance Coaching Conference from both a professional and personal perspective. The day was a complete success with the programme far exceeding my expectations.
The conference was opened by the CEO of British Triathlon, Zara Hyde Peters OBE in which she introduced the theme “Science and Innovation”. I was a little sceptical of this theme. Many coaches are drawn to the sexy side of the sport and want to learn about the cutting edge. However, the basics such as communication and planning are often forgotten. My scepticism was ill-founded as every presenter made the innovative bits relevant to most of the coaches in attendance. 10 out-of-10 to Coaching Development Manager Paul Moss and the BTF team for putting together such a wonderful conference.
In this Blog, I review the presentations picking out some top tips and provide a bit of personal commentary in the hope that it will help your training or coaching, even just a wee bit.
Paul Moss, BTF Coaching Development Manager
Jim Pennycook: MOD Centre for Defence Enterprise
Jim provided an overview of his work at the MOD, relating to innovative and new technologies. Strategic planning for war has much in common with preparing athletes for high-performance competition. His first point was to always ask “Why?” This simple question is often forgotten, resulting with people doing “stuff” without a clear purpose. Environment is key insofar as it must be set up to allow people to succeed.Earlier in the week, my boss introduced me to the Knowledge Transfer Partnership, a programme that supports “UK businesses wanting to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance by accessing the knowledge and expertise”. The success of sport in the UK, especially in cycling, has been due to a willingness to engage with outside industries, to embrace chance and thereby create excellence.
What really interested me were the physical demands of soldiering. For example, infantrymen will typically only be effective fighting machines for 20 minutes. Previously, military training focused on endurance but now it’s more about strength development and intervals to replicate the demands of fighting. Soldiers used to drop their kit, which can weigh up to 70kg before fighting, but in Afghanistan when they did so, it was instantaneously nicked! Therefore, they carry on fighting carrying one bodyweight’s worth of the stuff! It makes doing an Ironman sound easy! Military training has therefore adapted to meet these changing demands.
Similar to many sports there is an obsession with the weight of equipment. For example, batteries required to power technology are relatively heavy and are a limiting factor in fighting effectiveness. Therefore, reducing battery weight is a key focus of research and innovation programmes.
Appropriately trained personnel are vital to military effectiveness. Jim has studied Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) most specifically to examine “how to facilitate change”. Planned people are the most content…..simply having a plan reduces stress and improves efficacy. However, people still want to avoid planning or change.
Top Tips for Coaches
Always start with high level planning
Understand ‘why’ not just what
Planning should be based on outputs
Good feedback is required
Testing regimes should not disrupt training
The success of a coach is based on success of athletes; choose clients carefully.
Prof. Mike Tipton: Heat and the Effects on Human Performance
Mike is a professor of human and applied physiology. His area of expertise is thermoregulation of human performance in extreme environments, applied within elite sport, the military and business.
Even though physiology is my area of expertise, environmental physiology is something I don’t know a great deal about. For example, I didn’t know that only 15% of the world is sufficiently temperate to sustain human life without clothing and shelter. The optimal temperature for human survival is 26°C and the body functions best for endurance performance at around 11°C.
It’s sometimes harder for coaches to deal with the cold
Prof. Tipton argues that thermal regulation of an athlete is likely to affect performance more than either nutrition or training and merits similar attention within training programmes. There is also considerable genetic variability in how people can tolerate different environments, deal with dehydration and changes in core temperature. Ginger people tend not to cope well with heat so maybe the Marathon des Sables is not for me!
There’s one ‘extreme’ environment that most of us involved in triathlon within the UK are exposed to, cold open water! Over the last few years, I’ve developed a love for open-water swimming and discard my wetsuit at every possible opportunity! I’ve often wondered how I perform much better in it relative to my peers in the cold. Mike gave me my answer. No, there’s not a direct correlation between level of gingerness and thermoregulation, I believe it’s due to me being acclimatised and having no fear of the stuff.
Swimming in Cold Water
When entering cold water, the skin and superficial nerves are cooled very rapidly. The trigeminal nerve, which is responsible for a number of neuromuscular responses, is stimulated which can cause gasping, swallowing water and the heart to slow. Blood is drawn from the extremities to the vital organs, meaning that there is less oxygen reaching the working muscles. Increased anaerobic energy turnover is required resulting in greater perception of effort and a more rapid onset of fatigue. In really cold water, I’ve found it feels as though I’m swimming in mud!Open-water racing has a disproportionate mortality rate when compared to training in open water. It is thought that this is the result of a “strange arrhythmia” in the heart; putting your face in the water slows the heart….. the adrenaline in competition quickens it. The result can be irregular electrical activity in the heart and in the extreme, it can stop.
Reduction in core temperature is rarely a problem and neuromuscular responses cannot be controlled. However, regularly immersing yourself in cold water is likely to reduce the shock effect by ½.
Top tips from Prof. Tipton include:
Practice acclimatisation in training: this is vital for inexperienced athletes who are more likely to panic.
Be prepared for the mêlée of a mass start and keep calm; extended breath holding and anger should be avoided.
Practice transition when cold.
There’s no need to ‘warm-up’ in cold water (AK- simply get over the shock side by immersing your face before the start).
Kirkland’s Application of the Theory in Developing a Pre-Race Routine
I’ve developed my own pre-race routine which I’d like to share, particularly because after hearing Prof. Tipton’s presentation I have discovered it have theoretical underpinnings.
Find a quiet area away from other competitors. Many have a habit of sharing their anxieties and fears just before the start. This isn’t helpful.
Practice meditation techniques such as mindfulness of breathing and/or a body scan. These techniques lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, resulting in a calming effect.
Have a warm-up routine, arm-swings, skipping and alike.
Choose your race starting position, making your decision from the shore rather than when in the soup.
Enter the water slowly, waist deep at least, then do a little breaststroke.
Put your face in the water slowly, prepare for the shock reflect and focus on keeping breathing relaxed.
Progress swimming into freestyle, building intensity very slowly.
Get to the start position.
Start the race no faster than you’ll be able to maintain for its duration. Focus on staying relaxed. An anxious, adrenaline filled swimmer’s stroke will shorten, it will be less efficient and will waste energy in the mêlée. A fast start is only important for those where tactical considerations are important i.e. elite drafting events.
There are many British athletes who compete in hotter climates e.g. Nice, Hawaii etc….. The degree of acclimatisation, hydration status, clothes worn, state of health, skin disorders and use of medication may all affect how well they perform in the heat. Better acclimatised athletes will have an improved electrolyte balance and be able to metabolise carbohydrate more efficiently. In the heat, heart rate may initially be elevated but as the athlete acclimatises it will come down and steady to a ‘normal’ level. Therefore, monitoring heart rate is a good way to assess how athletes are acclimatising.
Top Tips for the Heat
Integrate acclimatisation strategies into training.
Be very prescriptive and monitor adaptations.
Skin is the best material in the heat: it must be well protected though!
Only use pre-cooling strategies when too hot. Hands in cold water (10°C) is effective.
Ian Pyper: Performance Science in Elite Triathlon
Dave doing a Fatmax test at GSSI
Ian is a Performance Scientist to British Triathlon and the Great Britain Triathlon Team. He gave an overview of sports science support and performance analysis received by elite level athletes. The approach they use is very similar to the “leave no stone unturned” approach of the Great Britain Cycling Team.
Having worked in a performance environment as a sports scientist, I probably found Ian’s presentation the most challenging. That’s no disrespect to the quality of his work or the presentation. It’s just that coaches like Darren Smith of D-Squad and Brett Sutton don’t get much sports science support but still manage to consistently ‘produce’ world beating athletes. I believe that this is because:
a) they understand people.
b) they understand the sport better than any scientists.
c) they have eyes and use them effectively.
d) they are amazing communicators and motivators.
e) they understand that humans can only perform at their best when exposed to tough. performance orientated environments.
I strongly believe that a sports scientist will only re-enforce what a great coach already knows. If I had my way, I would divert resources into training and mentoring performance coaches who are able to understand and apply the science for themselves. Of course, sports science does have many important roles which Ian highlighted:
Performance analyses to better understand technique, tactics and identifying risk factors for injury.
Monitoring training, recovery and race performance.
Benchmarking and screening athletes: strength, speed, endurance and biomechanical tests.
These roles provide coaches with information which can result in performance gains and minimise incidences of injury. If a team of 10 support professionals contribute even 1% to the performance of an athlete who goes on to win Olympic Gold, then in monetary terms the investment will have paid off. I’ve also accessed top level support for athletes in the knowledge that it will make them feel valued and supported; thus, a placebo effect is likely.
I thoroughly enjoyed Ian’s presentation and he’s obviously doing a great job. I’d just like to see greater investment in developing coaches from grass-roots to elite level who better understand how they can use sports science to develop people.
Simon Jones: Technical Performance Planning for Coaches
Simon was former Head Coach at British Cycling Performance Team Director at the Western Australia Institute of Sport and is now Head of Endurance Sports at the English Institute of Sport.
Simon ran a workshop on technical planning and the planning process for a performance environment. Everything was linked to having an understanding of “what it takes to win”. I feel I’m selling Simon short by not writing more, but it was a practical workshop using the EIS Technical Planning Tool. It started off with higher level planning, moving towards the small details. I’ll certainly be developing some of my own tools based on what I learnt on the workshop.
Rob Bridges at the Snowman
Sarah Broadhead: The Chimp Model- Understanding Yourself and Others
Sarah is a chartered Psychologist and Director of Sport at the Chimp Management Company and is the Sport Psychologist to the Great Britain Triathlon Team.
I love what Sarah does and have been to one of her workshops before. I chose to miss this one as it was running parallel to Simon’s workshop. Sarah works with Dr Steve Peters, using a ‘novel’ model in sport terms, which takes more from psychiatry and neurology than is typical. If you’ve not already done so, I’d urge you to read Steve’s Book The Chimp Paradox . This book has the capacity to change your life and certainly the way you coach. Some psychologists criticise this model because they feel it is not wholly valid. However, I would defend it up to the hilt as it contextualises many complex evidence-based principles in a way that can be understood and applied by us all.
Chatting with other coaches, they felt that Sarah’s workshop was great!
Peter Keen CBE: Keynote
Dr Sarah Springman, ITU Vice President and Peter Keen CBE
Peter is Director of Sport at Loughborough University, he was previously a special advisor at UK Sport and Performance Director at British Cycling.
Rarely does one get the chance to thank someone for sparking an interest in a subject that becomes a passion in your life. I got that chance at the conference. Back when I started riding the bike in the early 1990’s, Peter was coaching Chris Boardman (one of my hero’s) and I read Cycling Weekly religiously, loving to hear about his battles with Graeme Obree. They used fancy bling heart rate monitors, carbon fibre bikes and suchlike. I loved it all and began reading as much on sports science as I could. Whilst I’ve met Peter a few times, it was wonderful to hear him talk so modestly, eloquently and intelligently on being a coach.
Peter stopped being a sports scientist in 1997 as he felt that what he was doing came far too close to coaching. He has seen many changes in that time, most noticeably a more holistic approach in which it’s not just about physical conditioning. Technical, tactical and psychological aspects receive equal attention. He gave some great coaching advice that many coaches would do very well to consider:
A coach is there to serve athletes and not their own ego. Good things are unlikely to happen when a coach is ego orientated. It will go wrong when coaches want or need a win more than the athletes they coach. They must not fear or think of horror when things go wrong……..covering one’s back is a road to nowhere. The paradigm a coach should follow is not clear: is it a medic, a councillor or teacher? What a coach should not be is someone who simply tells others what to do!
The coaching relationship can be a very intimate one, a relentless dialogue of an athlete’s life, knowing what they are thinking before they think it and anticipating how they’ll respond in certain situations. What do they eat when they are at home……each aspect is important in optimising performance. Finding the line can be challenging though and the relationship must not become a dependency. Being able to be effective in a high performance coaching environment means being sufficiently comfortable in who you are and what you do.
I had a chat with Paul Manning an ex-Olympic champion and now endurance coach at British Cycling last year and he said the best riders he worked with were the ones that were always asking questions. Peter confirmed this by saying that Boardman was a great questioner, always asking why. In turn, he gave wonderful feedback, always so much information to work on.
One delegate asked Peter what he thought of remote coaching. He suggested that whilst it has its place, simply seeing how an athlete moves, acts or behaves in any given situation is priceless in terms of coaching.
Key to success is having a vision of what it is……working backwards to plan how to achieve that success. Keen’s early career was based on numbers and what they mean…sometimes understanding them is intuitive but it’s not always clear cut. He recommends not to “go on rhetoric or emotion”, even though they do sometimes have their place.
I understand well what Peter meant when he said that a key thread in his career was that “he was doing something he is fascinated about, a motion of flow where the clock goes too fast and there’s never enough time in the day.
Prof. Vicky Tolfrey: The Science Behind Three Wheels, Not Two
Lucy Wainrwright: Nutrition and Recovery in Triathlon
Apologies chaps but I didn’t see these sessions.
Close
What a great day. Peter Keen’s talk was definitely the highlight for me. The sign of being engaged for me is that I had a massive list of questions for all presenters that I wished there was time to explore. I met some wonderfully inspiring and knowledgeable coaches too, swapped emails with a few and even had a follow-up online meeting with one coach on the Monday to discuss how we could potentially work together professionally.
I’ve been to one or two conferences in my time but thought this was up there. I’ve been to ACSM in America before, costing several thousand pounds to attend but learnt far more from this one. Great job Paul Moss!
In my last blog of the year, I’m going to talk about standing out from the crowd. I’ll reflect on some of my own experiences of ‘standing out’ and relate that to the pursuit of excellence, whether as an athlete or coach.
Introduction
Rob the running coach had just outlined the session for the evening “800m x 8 at 5km pace with 1 min 15sec recovery”. Simple enough! I set off with a large group but was soon on my own. “Wow……some people have improved vastly” I thought. They’re running fast.
My 1st lap done in 1:42, ventilation under control. It was absolutely tipping it down, water was dripping in my eyes and a squelching noise accompanied every foot strike. Lap 2 @ 1:42. Spot on. “What? Where is everyone going? The fools! They’ve skipped 30 seconds worth of the recovery”.
It was a lonely night of running despite it being a club session. I had done every repeat, bar one on my own. Despite this I was happy. Every 400m had been ± 2sec from target and the final one hadn’t been too stressful. Session aim achieved. I recalled an article I had read on the Runners World website on people running too fast or too slow and felt smug!
A few weeks previous, I presented at a careers day at my old university. Prior to my talk, there had been an MBE, a top sports-woman, a league football manager and a CEO all giving inspirational presentations. The key theme was how important it was to stand out from the crowd to have a successful career in sport.
It was my turn. 150 students and esteemed guests waited for Dr Kirkland’s inspirational vignettes. Striding onto the stage in a Billy Connollyesque fashion, ready to perform. I was introduced by a small group of students as “an elite sports consultant” or something similar. Not quite as bad as the story in the Glasgow Herald in which I was Chris Hoy’s sports scientist but sloppy all the same.
The lecture theatre was silent ! Blank faces staring down at the bald wonder. “I want a volunteer…..any volunteers?” I asked. Silence! Heads dipped to avoid eye contact.
“That’s good……I didn’t really want a volunteer” I said in riposte.
Turning to the fellow presenters I called out “good job people”, albeit in jest. After an hour of pontification from inspirational speakers specifically on standing out from the crowd, not one person was willing to stand out! I was saddened but not surprised. I then recalled how I often take inspiration from the Royal Institution’s Christmas lecture for children. It’s always presented wonderfully by an eminent scientist who engages with the young audience. When a volunteer is asked for, a sea of eager little hands appears. Every snotty nosed geek wants to be picked. But what was the difference between my audience and the Royal Institution one?
Sir Ken Robinson talks about kids losing their natural creativity through rote type education. Could it be similar that as people mature, they simply learn not to stand out from the crowd. Speaking with a friend on the subject, she suggested a relationship between levels of engagement and UCAS points i.e. students on better courses and who have achieved better exam results are more willing to engage. I’d like to think this isn’t the case, but I’m yet to convince myself to the contrary.
But this is a sport and coaching blog, so what’s my point? Well…I believe to be a good athlete or coach means putting your head above the parapet and being brave enough not to worry about having it shot off. That doesn’t necessarily mean being gregarious or extrovert. Being quiet and introvert is fine too. Rather, it’s a prerequisite to be disciplined, to stand out and aspire to excellence.
Excellence for Athletes
Excellence is simply about doing the best job possible and never resting on laurels. In sport, I personally don’t prescribe to ‘it’s the taking part that’s important’ even though I’m not particularly well endowed in athletic terms. Rather, I want to say to myself that I couldn’t have done any better. For example, I cried after the Sandman Triathlon and disengaged with the world until I had no choice to do otherwise. I had worked hard to the point of collapse and had lost around 8mins on the run! Why? I hadn’t thought of the implication of the bike being 60km rather than 40km on my feeding strategy and had hit the wall. Totally avoidable, inexcusable and far from excellence.
Kenta G certainly stands out!
Having an excellence mindset means mastering the basics first and then focussing on the small details to fine tune performance. If a dead end is reached, it may mean ‘letting go’ and starting all over again. It also involves developing the skill and discipline to perform in the right place at the right time.
The next time you’re at a race, take a moment and observe what everyone else is doing. Most people will be mulling around chatting or looking terrified. But how many are going through their pre-competition routine? Who is physically warming up or going through mental preparation? Who is doing their own thing? Who stands out?
Following the crowd may be easier, but this path of least resistance is hardly ever the most satisfactory or effective one. To perform optimally requires hard work, discipline and above all the bravery to try new things. Don’t be a sheep but rather follow your own path when it’s the right thing to do. That means sticking to a session goal, even when the ‘red mist’ has descended for the rest of the training group. If the aim is to go slow, go slow, if it’s to go fast, go fast and if recovery is 30 seconds why on earth take 20 seconds….apart from because you’re a proverbial sheep or undisciplined?
Of course, it’s human nature to attempt to fit in, to become attached to people or things, even when they are negative or wrong. Even when things are going well, to make them go even better often requires a substantial change. A brave athlete will know when to let go, to leave the past behind and to embrace the future, whatever that may bring. I particularly like this video of an interview with Lisa Norden and her coach Craig Alexander in this regard. It says more than I ever can!
Excellence for Coaches
My current favourite coach is currently Jo Calado. She’s different; one who stands out from the crowd and is willing to try new things. Her sessions are innovative, fun and very well thought out. At Halloween, Jo delivered a ‘zombies’, killer swim set that involved kicking and deep core work. It hurt like hell, was technically challenging and I learnt something new. I swallowed half the pool every time I didn’t kick hard enough. But there was Jo, waiting at the end of the lane with a huge smile and a technically correct coaching point for every single swimmer. At 21 years old, understanding and being able to communicate ’cause and effect’ in swimming is an exceptional talent and Jo has it. Not only that, sessions are great fun too!
Coach Jo!
I’ve observed very many coaches, some of them in world class performance environments but the most impressive seem to be swimming ones, or so I thought. “How the hell can they use 3 complex stopwatches simultaneously and get the timing right to within a few 10th’s?” I think. Skilled man! Oh wait…..it is almost impossible to evaluate complex techniques when performing such a complex motor task yourself! Maybe they’re missing a trick.
The easy option for coaches is to deliver 10 x 100m set at race pace or whatever. It’s what most people expect. I’m one of these people. I love a savage physical workout even if it means crawling once I’m finished. For many endurance athletes, hard physical sessions are in their comfort zone though. It’s what they enjoy and a primary reason why they do sport. These sessions are easy to coach, and as we already know, most people follow the path of least resistance…… Athletes and coaches are satisfied but training is usually sub-optimal because technique is rarely the focus. The fact is that this is an area where many performance gains can be achieved.
It’s worth remembering that many coaches have to work with large groups, accommodating broad rather than the individual needs of athletes. Compromise is required as sessions can’t be all things for all people. However, even in high-performance environments, some coaches get lazy, falling into the trap of doing what they always do. Short cuts have no place on the path to excellence though, regardless of whether at grass-roots or Olympic level.
Are Some Coaches Missing the Point?
Training and racing is not meant to be easy. As fatigue begins to bite, all the body’s systems are pre-programmed to tell us to stop. To overcome this unwanted voice requires absolute focus and discipline. Athletes need to love what they do to drown out this voice…..ok, being driven by ego, inner-pain or fear of failure may work too…..everyone is different. But I believe people work at their best when they’re happy and enjoy what they do. Forgetting about fun or taking life too seriously may limit performance.
Smiling relaxes the body and a relaxed body goes fast! Being in a happy training group is pleasant and people seek out pleasant feelings. Happy people tend to perform better than sad ones. So why do many coaches take themselves and their sessions so seriously? Maybe it’s because they think is expected of them and or they are resistive to change. But fun, games, mock races and creativity works just as well for adults as for children.
Ok, there are times for seriousness too but not all the time. A coach who can laugh, can admit when they are wrong and who continues to seek new and innovative solutions will stand out from the crowd. My guess is that the athletes that they coach will respect them more for it and prosper as a result. Being happy is an important goal!
Summary
Standing out isn’t something we should do for the sake of it, but it’s sometimes essential on the path to excellence. Sitting back and letting things happen or not embracing change will never lead to excellence though. Doing ‘stuff’ differently from the crowd can lead to a bumpy ride and will not always go to plan. However, being a sheep will inevitably lead to you being herded up and put in a pen without truly exploring what is possible. Ok…if everyone thought like this, the world would be carnage……but do you want to be the norm or the positive outlier?
I was lucky enough to present this webinar with GB Cycling Team Rider Helen Scott and Melissa Schwartz from TrainingPeaks. Although the content is cycling based, there’s something for all coaches regardless of sport and for female athletes too!
If you’ve got any specific questions relating to it, fire me an email.
Kirkland Coaching 