Coaching Principles
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Lather, Rinse, Repeat:
Performance Testing and Coaching
Written by Dr. SkibaMy wife played hoops in college. She was a guard, and has a killer free throw. After an early retirement, she was interested in staying involved in her sport, and spent a few years coaching in a girls league in Chicago. In terms of talent, Kath had all kinds of girls on her team, and she believed in playing them all. There was a great atmosphere, and the team was quite successful, though they never managed first place. I had a great time going to the games. "That's Dr. Phil," they would whisper, "Coach Kathy's boyfriend."
After a few years, some of the parents decided that their daughters had the potential to be superstars, and decided that they did not like the fact that the coach wanted all of the girls to play. They felt the only way their daughters would get onto a "great" team someday was to play on a team of superstars. It would get them "noticed" as they took the conference by storm. You know how it is. High power recruiters are always combing the 10-12 year old league to find new talent for a fat WNBA contract.
To make a long story short, my wife refused to bench any of her players, and the group of parents pulled their daughters from the program to start a new team. This left my wife and the assistant coach with three girls, a bunch of basketballs, and no team. As for the new team, it went nowhere. Apparently, no one realized that this new team needed a coach, and not a bunch of parents in a large huddle screaming "shoot!". That is not the point of this story.
The point is Annie (not her real name). Annie was a mess. I had cringed every time she got the ball. She was all over the court, firing the ball off the glass, and often over the glass. Bigger girls ripped the ball out of her hands. When she went to the foul line, she could not hit the side of a barn. She had a lot of heart, though, and that much was impressive. A year or two after the team had folded, I picked up the phone. Annie was on the other end. "Dr. Phil." She said in a small voice, "Can I talk to Coach Kathy?"
Annie had gone out for the freshman team, had gotten her butt kicked, and was cut immediately. She had been practicing all summer in her backyard, and it had not helped. She wanted my wife to coach her on a one on one basis. "I can be good." Annie told her. " I know I can."
I raised an eyebrow when Kath agreed to do it. "She deserves to play," said Kath.
Kath was in a situation I had never been in. In college, I'd coached a summer swim team for a similar age group. The difference was that I'd had a team of ringers. My kids already had some experience through private swim lessons, had decided they were good, and that they wanted to keep swimming competitively during the summer. I'd happily obliged. I did quite a bit of technique refinement, and made them faster, but the truth is that the kids were basically solid to begin with. My wife needed to help a kid who I wasn't sure was capable of the basics.
"Where will you start?" I asked.
"Testing." She smiled.
We went to the gym that Tuesday. I hit the pool while Kath waited for Annie. When I got out, I waited courtside and watched as it unfolded. Here was my wife with her clipboard, looking a lot like me standing beside an athlete on an ergometer. Annie was on the foul line, firing away as Kath took notes. Out came the stopwatch as Annie ran 'suicides', and every split was recorded. Then came the lay-ups, and then the jump shots. Kath recorded the data. She sent Annie to get changed and we sat down. I watched as my wife listed Annie's strengths (tear-assing down the court and making a lay-up before anyone saw her go), and her weaknesses (everything else). Then she began formulating the plan.
Twice a week, we went to the gym. Every month, a different skill was emphasized as the previous improved. Every 2 weeks, there was repeat testing. If something was improving, the drilling continued and new skills were added. If not, the strategy was changed. After about 8 months, I happened to get out of the pool early and found myself courtside. "Dr. Phil," Annie said, dribbling confidently in front of me. Something was different. "Wanna play 'horse?'" she asked.
I'm no great basketballer, but I'm 6'4", so I have played my share of hoops. I looked at my wife. "Go ahead." She said.
Annie schooled me. It wasn't even funny. She hit free throws. She even called one off the glass. On the way home, more than a little embarrassed, I asked Kath, "How the hell did you do that?"
"Lather, rinse, repeat." She said.
"Shampoo?" I asked.
She sighed at me. "No, wise-ass. You test something. You work on exactly that. You re-test. You get up tomorrow and you do it again."
"Specificity, you mean." I said. "Practice makes perfect."
"No." she corrected, "Perfect practice makes perfect."
That fall, Annie made the JV team. She hasn't gone varsity, and I doubt she'll play in college, but that isn’t the point. The point is that Kathy knew how to utilize the most important points of exercise physiology, and maybe without even really knowing that was what she was doing. Because of this, a little kid named Annie was able to pull something out of herself that no one else believed was there.
We can generalize this feel-good tale, and apply these principles to become better endurance athletes. An athlete may be a good 1500M runner, and reasonable at the 5K distance, but perhaps he or she lacks the endurance to perform at the half marathon that is coming at the end of the season. The most important determinant of long distance performance is the lactate threshold. Thus, it is the parameter we are most interested in measuring.
We run the athlete on the track, faster and faster, testing blood lactate every few minutes. We make a graph, and learn the speed where the lactate first begins to rise. We know that the most efficient way of improving LT (or rather, the speed at LT) is to prescribe significant training time at that speed. So we do it. The athlete now has a plan.
Later in the season, we re-test. We need to find out if our plan is sound. The athlete is now running faster at the same lactate concentration. More importantly, race times at 5k and 10k are improving. These points make us confident that our approach is working. We have data, just as if we were counting foul shots hit or missed after each practice. We re-calibrate our training intensities to correspond to the new LT. We send the athlete out with a modified program.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Whether beginner, advanced, or elite, the process is the same. We must remember that there is always progress to be made. If we have been stuck in a rut, if our performances have not improved in some time, we must re-evaluate our plan with a critical eye. We must first decide what is key to an improved performance and what is extraneous, then remove the extraneous and focus on exactly what we need to change. We must test the primary determinants of those keys (for example VO2max or lactate threshold), and then design our improved program to effect them specifically. We must follow up with testing later to show that we have made measurable progress. If progress is not made, we must re-evaluate our initial assessment and make a new plan. This reductionist approach can surprise even seasoned veterans.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
