Top Ten Habits of Highly Effective Coaches

From Sports Coaching Brain

Great coaches realise that success is a moving target and to stay relevant they must be committed to life-long learning, honest personal and professional evaluation and continuous improvement.

Example: A swimming coach realised that two of the athletes in his team had the potential to be world record holders but that he had not coached world record holders previously. He raised some money and invited two world class coaches from other nations to come and honestly review his coaching and his program regularly to ensure his knowledge and skills were also world class. Result: One world record.

Max Heart Rate: Fitter = Lower

From Joe Friel

So as you become more fit in the lead-up to your race you might expect to see lower heart rates at the high end. The reverse of this is also true. As fitness declines MHR increases. The review reported 3% to 7% shifts with training and detraining. So, for example, someone with a MHR of 200 at the start of the Base period may expect to see their MHR decline to 186 to 194 by the time of their first race.

Drop the Garmin

From Running Times

"After I had got over the withdrawal symptoms of being without my monitor I noticed that I was tuning in to my body a lot more. I thought I was already very aware of what was going on, but it became apparent that I had 'delegated' oversight to the monitor. Without an external time/distance read-out I was forced to tune in to my pace, breathing, energy level, how my legs felt -- all of that -- and adjust things minute by minute to stay comfortable. Some days I found I was running very slowly, but it turned out that useful work was still getting done. Previously I would have been looking at the monitor and have been desperately trying to stay out of the so-called 'junk miles' zone."

Train Movement Not Muscles

From IronMaven

"I don't think there is one best way. I guess you could say I follow a 'functional training' mantra and do what I think is best for that athlete, at that time, given her/his needs. My philosophy is based on training movement, not muscles. There are some basic movements: squat, lunge, push, pull, rotate, walk, run, jump, crawl, throw, catch, hit, kick. The goal is to create basic musculoskeletal durability, physical competency and movement literacy in the context of sport and/or life."

Why Sprints are Key to Masters

From Running Times

And fast-twitch fiber isn’t just about sprint speed. It’s a primary component (along with hip and knee range of motion) of stride length. Studies over the past 20 years have all come to the same conclusion: As we age, our stride frequency remains the same, but our stride length decreases – an average of 40% by the time we reach our 70s and 80s. Slowing the decrease in stride length through speed training simultaneously slows the decline in our distance race performance. Otherwise, we’d need almost twice the stride frequency to maintain our mile pace from age 40 to age 80.

Maybe You're Already a Triathlete

From Ottawa Outdoors Magazine

Editors Note: I write for magazines from time to time so I thought I'd start posting the articles up here as a way of filing them publicly.

Hammering up the legendary Mill Street climb, the break away of cyclists are hoping they still have enough in the tank to make it to the finish. Off their bikes and onto the run, heavy legs slowly find the goal pace till at last they dive into the cool water and swim towards the raft in the middle of the river. There, the endurance test is complete and these 8 year olds can now enjoy laying around in the sun counting the remaining days of summer vacation.

Many of us share memories such as this. We didn't call ourselves 'Triathletes', we called ourselves 'Kids'. In 1974, some adults in California decided to do the same thing over set distances and click a stop watch at the start. That's when the term 'Tri-athlete' was born.

If you have 3 hours a week for exercise, you can become a triathlete again and relive your childhood. I use the words 'become a triathlete' because, apparently, it holds some kind of cachet in our community or culture. At pre-race talks, tongue firmly in cheek, I always recommend that when the athlete marks their body with their race number in magic marker (part of the strange culture that is triathlon) they put it on dark and thick so that it's still visible at work the next week. When they then tell inquisitive co-workers that they were in a triathlon, their office cred skyrockets because the only association their colleagues have with triathlon is the Hawaii Ironman; they don't know about the shorter stuff. There are triathlons that feature distances as short as a 100m swim, 10km bike and 2.5km walk/run. For some, this is their Ironman, and that is the beauty of the sport. Triathlon offers a suitable challenge for a very wide range of individuals.

Finding the right race distance for you is a simple process. How much time each week do you have available for exercise while maintaining a balanced lifestyle with family, friends, work and other priorities? If you can fit in 360 minutes of exercise a week, a Super Sprint or even sprint triathlon is within your reach, depending on your starting fitness. If you have 10 hours plus available each week, an Ironman is not out of the question. Personally, I have 5 to 6 hours a week for exercise. I have done many Olympic distance triathlons but now find that the shorter Sprint distance is perfect for my balanced lifestyle with a young family, work and community involvement. Life was very different for me back in 1997 though, and my lifestyle at that time supported my Ironman year.

Everyone can enjoy triathlon as part of their balanced lifestyle. To paraphrase a friend: Get in the best shape of your life, but keep your life in good shape at the same time. We did it when we were kids so let's get out and play again this summer.

Finding the Sweet Spot

From Competitor

So, rather than arbitrarily adhering to some fixed number, Lydiard tweaked the prescriptions for his runners based on their recovery abilities. All good coaches do this with their athletes. Rather than adhering to an arbitrary number of miles (from a book or a fellow coach or an excessively detailed training forecast), the intelligent coach takes into account the recovery profile of the athlete when determining how many miles to run.