I love to think of the journey I took to get where I am now in my coaching career. I am not bragging or boasting about where I am but speaking of the journey I took to get here. I still have ALOT left to do so by no means am i content or satisfied. However I would be a fool not to realize that God has blessed me to do something and that it is a blessing in itself to be able to do it.
This particular blog entry is dedicated to coaches that are in the beginning stages of coaching and don't know exactly where to look for information or even know what they should be trying to study and get better at. Below i will simply provide the steps I took to get better as a coach and please understand this isn't the only way to get better, just one way I took.
Step 1: Find a mentor
I call Jim Patchell my main mentor as he gave me my first coaching job and advised me on many things involving training, life and politics. He showed me where to look for information and even advised me to get my masters in exercise science, as it would give me the basic understanding for the different sciences involved in training. Tim Langford(Charleston Southern), Bobbie Schreiner(Winthrop), David Walker(ETSU) are all mentors that have helped me in different ways.
Step 2: Educate yourself on the basics of training.
You can do this many different ways. Most coaches I know like to ask a ton of questions and I enjoy answering them. However the best way to become good at coaching is educate yourself on the basics of exercise science (biomechanics, periodization, strength and conditioning etc...). Also get your coaching education certification thru USATF or USTFCCCA. You can never truly understand why someone does a workout until you understand training theory. I'm not saying get a masters degree (however if presented with the opportunity, you should take advantage of it). However read as much as possible whether it's books, blogs (good blogs) or research. You have to educate yourself, don't just ask for workouts and try to apply them to your kids. Just because it works for Usain Bolt doesn't mean it's going to work for your kids.
Step 3. Put it to test and Coach
You have to coach. In the words of Vince Anderson "The best way to learn is apprentice style", which means to learn by doing. I always tell my friends that are just getting into coaching, the best way to learn to coach is to coach. You will make mistakes as we all do but that's the only way to get better.Now I look back on stuff i did my first 2 years and I realize I did some dumb stuff and I'm pretty sure that 10 years from now I'll have found a better way to do things I'm doing now. The key is to catch the mistakes and find out why they happen, correct them and don't make them again. Sometimes they aren't even mistakes, you just find a better way to do things. However, alot of time you can't do this without an understanding of the different disciplines of exercise science. That's why I suggest getting some sort of mentor and some sort of coaching education while also reading, watching alot of film and asking questions. Take a camera to practice and videotape, time your kids and measure their performances and get stats for your record keeping. Make sure they are stats that you can use. You will find them helpful in coming years.
These are the steps I took in coaching and they have been very helpful. Hopefully this can help someone.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
Patience is Key!!!!
"The secret is there is no secret"
-Tom Tellez
I'm not sure if Tom Tellez created that saying or not but he was the guy I heard say it first. I thought about it yesterday while coaching my hurdlers. I found myself saying the same things over and over again. I thought, "I have been saying this stuff since September, why am I still saying it." They have all improved alot but technically I still see some bad habits. As a results I sometimes find myself becoming impatient and wanting a quick fix, something that will yield huge results fast. However sometimes I must take the advice I give to my mentee and student helper, and that is that results take time and patience. I have to tell myself there is no secret, no quick fix to yield huge results. I've noticed the more I've coached, the more patient I have become not only on the track but in life. If more took this mindset not only would the coaching profession yield better results but the world would be better.
-Tom Tellez
I'm not sure if Tom Tellez created that saying or not but he was the guy I heard say it first. I thought about it yesterday while coaching my hurdlers. I found myself saying the same things over and over again. I thought, "I have been saying this stuff since September, why am I still saying it." They have all improved alot but technically I still see some bad habits. As a results I sometimes find myself becoming impatient and wanting a quick fix, something that will yield huge results fast. However sometimes I must take the advice I give to my mentee and student helper, and that is that results take time and patience. I have to tell myself there is no secret, no quick fix to yield huge results. I've noticed the more I've coached, the more patient I have become not only on the track but in life. If more took this mindset not only would the coaching profession yield better results but the world would be better.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Ask Yourself What's next?
I recently sat down and thought about what I was doing in my training program. I noticed I had alot of different workouts going on for each event group. Some were for kids I was prepping for a last chance indoor meet at Virginia Tech and others I was getting ready for our first outdoor meet. I had 2 different workouts for each event group to put it simple. However this was for a reason and it lead me to think about that reason. My sprints program is intent on giving my athletes exactly what they need, not giving one blanket program to everyone. I have athletes in different places in their career so I couldn't possibly give them all the same training.
I love to see an athlete get what they need from a particular area of training and once this is achieved we as coaches have to make changes to our program to accomodate these improvements. Find the new problem and fix it. I have seen sprinters squatting 490lbs but can't run faster then 11.2 in the 100m. It's obvious their general strength levels are high enough so why are they trying to get to 500lbs on squat instead of learning how to better apply that strength in the form of power on the track.
Maybe their coach doesn't know what to do or maybe they don't care but that isn't the point, the point of this blog is to understand the process of moving on and addressing new problems?
We as coaches have to know when it's time to move one. Solve the problem and move on to the next one. That doesn't mean abandon the training that fixed the first problem altogether. You want to make sure you keep some of that stuff in to train that particular biomotor skill, whatever it may be. However those things may not need to be the main emphasis of your program anymore.
So now that we have the sprinter's strength levels jacked lets focus on heavy lifting once a week and power based specific strength and conditioning twice a week. This will help bridge the gap between their strength and power levels. Basically teaching them how to apply a larger percentage of their strength on the track.
This is usually a problem that is broad and general in nature and easy to fix. However when you take an athlete from 11.00 to 10.40 the problems are alot harder to find and fix. With that being the reality of training, the method of finding a solution still doesn't change. You still have to ask yourself, what's next and how do I fix it?
I love to see an athlete get what they need from a particular area of training and once this is achieved we as coaches have to make changes to our program to accomodate these improvements. Find the new problem and fix it. I have seen sprinters squatting 490lbs but can't run faster then 11.2 in the 100m. It's obvious their general strength levels are high enough so why are they trying to get to 500lbs on squat instead of learning how to better apply that strength in the form of power on the track.
Maybe their coach doesn't know what to do or maybe they don't care but that isn't the point, the point of this blog is to understand the process of moving on and addressing new problems?
We as coaches have to know when it's time to move one. Solve the problem and move on to the next one. That doesn't mean abandon the training that fixed the first problem altogether. You want to make sure you keep some of that stuff in to train that particular biomotor skill, whatever it may be. However those things may not need to be the main emphasis of your program anymore.
So now that we have the sprinter's strength levels jacked lets focus on heavy lifting once a week and power based specific strength and conditioning twice a week. This will help bridge the gap between their strength and power levels. Basically teaching them how to apply a larger percentage of their strength on the track.
This is usually a problem that is broad and general in nature and easy to fix. However when you take an athlete from 11.00 to 10.40 the problems are alot harder to find and fix. With that being the reality of training, the method of finding a solution still doesn't change. You still have to ask yourself, what's next and how do I fix it?
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Same goal, better path.
With 2012 here I was thinking about what I wanted my team to accomplish and what I wanted to accomplish as a coach. Then I realized that I had already set goals back in August of 2011 and there was no need to try and change those goals but continue on the path started back in September 2011 when we started training.
Now the goals stay the same but what we do to attain those goals can change depending on our observation of our athletes in training, injury, success to fail ratio, attainment of new knowledge and other external variables. I can say the path to our goals have changed slightly for me. After speaking with a coaching great (Coach Ted Whitaker of Savannah State University), I began to reevaluate strength training for my hurdlers. It's a very common sense approach to hurdle training and one that can only work if done correctly. WE WILL HURDLE FOR HURDLE STRENGTH. Can't be said anymore plainly then how he put it. Now don't take this as starting hurdle training in September. We may do hurdle drills and ALOT of them but we aren't hurdling until I see proper sprint technique. When I do see proper sprint technique, I'm not going to have them do intensive tempo during the specific prep phase on my strength days (like I would in the past). We are going to do something like 5x4hurdles down 4hurdles back 4hurdles down and take a full recovery. Thats an example, if technique starts to break down or splits drop off really bad, then I will stop it and repeat the workout the next week until they can finish without a drop off in splits or breakdown in technique. This is a hard workout, but I've noticed they can handle more in our speed technique session which in return will give them better technique during the strength days which will make them more efficient on strength days which will help them conserve their energy better on those days.
In the past i would have lined them up and ran them with the 400m or 100m group. However Things have changed for them too during these phases. I won't go into it but their strength days are alot more specific and technique oriented (remember this is specific prep phase). Our head coach always says there is more than one way to skin a cat. I like to think the same, although I'm not just trying to find another path, but a better path.
Happy New Years
Now the goals stay the same but what we do to attain those goals can change depending on our observation of our athletes in training, injury, success to fail ratio, attainment of new knowledge and other external variables. I can say the path to our goals have changed slightly for me. After speaking with a coaching great (Coach Ted Whitaker of Savannah State University), I began to reevaluate strength training for my hurdlers. It's a very common sense approach to hurdle training and one that can only work if done correctly. WE WILL HURDLE FOR HURDLE STRENGTH. Can't be said anymore plainly then how he put it. Now don't take this as starting hurdle training in September. We may do hurdle drills and ALOT of them but we aren't hurdling until I see proper sprint technique. When I do see proper sprint technique, I'm not going to have them do intensive tempo during the specific prep phase on my strength days (like I would in the past). We are going to do something like 5x4hurdles down 4hurdles back 4hurdles down and take a full recovery. Thats an example, if technique starts to break down or splits drop off really bad, then I will stop it and repeat the workout the next week until they can finish without a drop off in splits or breakdown in technique. This is a hard workout, but I've noticed they can handle more in our speed technique session which in return will give them better technique during the strength days which will make them more efficient on strength days which will help them conserve their energy better on those days.
In the past i would have lined them up and ran them with the 400m or 100m group. However Things have changed for them too during these phases. I won't go into it but their strength days are alot more specific and technique oriented (remember this is specific prep phase). Our head coach always says there is more than one way to skin a cat. I like to think the same, although I'm not just trying to find another path, but a better path.
Happy New Years
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Patience+Rehearsal+Comfortable Environment=PERFECTION
As time goes on, I find that as a coach I have become more patient with the process of my kids getting better. I now understand that everything isn't going to happen in a day, week, month or year in some cases. In my first year of coaching I was guilty of hurdling my kids over hurdles that were too high.
My other hurdlers were practicing over those high hurdles and could never get their technique or confidence because of fear of trying to get over the hurdle. As a result they practiced terrible technique and that equalled terrible technique in races and slow times(I've already apologized to my hurdlers in private and let them know I've become better). I did this out of ignorance and not being patient. I figured simple motor learning says the more you do an activity the better you will be at it. However if you are doing something wrong then that's exactly how you will learn how to do it. After asking questions, reading and watching film my hurdle training philosophy changed very quickly lol.
As a result so far this year we have practiced over 36" hurdles and the improvements have been great. We will gradually progress to 39" with time. However I want perfection of 36" first. They have come a long way in 2 weeks of hurdling and its all because of repitition and rehearsal of what I wanted from them technically. We are sprinting at 90% and hurdling at 100% speed, this way when they approach the hurdle they have time to do hurdle correctly. The speed of going thru the full range of motion of hurdling is faster than the actual running speed so that they can feel themselves hurdle. This is called controlled speed, as suppose to getting to the hurdle to fast and the brain can't send the message, of what to do (hurdle coordination), to the body fast enough. This leads to disaster. We practice hurdling in a comfortable environment (slower speeds, lower heights) so that they can actually focus on hurdling and not being scared of the height or going fast with terrible technique (uncomfortable environment).
As they improve we will add something to make the environment more difficult such as speeding up the sprint speed and then moving up the height after they can go full speed at the height we are progressing from. It will takes alot of repitition and rehearsal to get to this point but the main thing it will take is patience from me as a coach.
My other hurdlers were practicing over those high hurdles and could never get their technique or confidence because of fear of trying to get over the hurdle. As a result they practiced terrible technique and that equalled terrible technique in races and slow times(I've already apologized to my hurdlers in private and let them know I've become better). I did this out of ignorance and not being patient. I figured simple motor learning says the more you do an activity the better you will be at it. However if you are doing something wrong then that's exactly how you will learn how to do it. After asking questions, reading and watching film my hurdle training philosophy changed very quickly lol.
As a result so far this year we have practiced over 36" hurdles and the improvements have been great. We will gradually progress to 39" with time. However I want perfection of 36" first. They have come a long way in 2 weeks of hurdling and its all because of repitition and rehearsal of what I wanted from them technically. We are sprinting at 90% and hurdling at 100% speed, this way when they approach the hurdle they have time to do hurdle correctly. The speed of going thru the full range of motion of hurdling is faster than the actual running speed so that they can feel themselves hurdle. This is called controlled speed, as suppose to getting to the hurdle to fast and the brain can't send the message, of what to do (hurdle coordination), to the body fast enough. This leads to disaster. We practice hurdling in a comfortable environment (slower speeds, lower heights) so that they can actually focus on hurdling and not being scared of the height or going fast with terrible technique (uncomfortable environment).
As they improve we will add something to make the environment more difficult such as speeding up the sprint speed and then moving up the height after they can go full speed at the height we are progressing from. It will takes alot of repitition and rehearsal to get to this point but the main thing it will take is patience from me as a coach.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Max speed vs speed endurance
I've been so busy with getting my team ready for the season that I haven't had a chance to write very much. After finishing our general preparation phase I decided to begin working on max speed in addition to working on acceleration.
Max speed is the biggest indicator of how much success you will have in the sprints, hurdles and relays. If your kids top speed is slow then it doesn't matter how strong they are. However the only way to work on top speed is to rehearse top speed. Working on the Alactic system used from 0-60m (ATP-PC system) is where you improve your top speed. Let's not get speed endurance mixed up with max speed work. Max speed is the top speed you are moving at during a race, while speed endurance is how long you can hold this speed. So when you work max speed work you don't want to be tired because if your tired you can't hit top speed. Speed endurance involves you trying hold on to max speed while trying to fight the body's inevitable fate of slowing down as a result of fatigue.
During max speed work you want to be fully rested before you step back on the line to do a rep. Whenever time starts to drop off and get slower, it wouldn't be a bad idea to shut down the workout.
Speed endurance doesn't involve alot of recovery because you want your sprinter a little fatigued but you want them to be able to get to or very close to top speed. The goal isn't so much as to stay at the exact top speed(most don't have a way to measure the exact top speed of their sprinter anyway) but to get to about 90-95% and hold your technique.
Just remember if you are doing 0m-40m you are working acceleration not max speed. You usually want to be 50m-80m for top speed work. Train fast to sprint fast.
Max speed is the biggest indicator of how much success you will have in the sprints, hurdles and relays. If your kids top speed is slow then it doesn't matter how strong they are. However the only way to work on top speed is to rehearse top speed. Working on the Alactic system used from 0-60m (ATP-PC system) is where you improve your top speed. Let's not get speed endurance mixed up with max speed work. Max speed is the top speed you are moving at during a race, while speed endurance is how long you can hold this speed. So when you work max speed work you don't want to be tired because if your tired you can't hit top speed. Speed endurance involves you trying hold on to max speed while trying to fight the body's inevitable fate of slowing down as a result of fatigue.
During max speed work you want to be fully rested before you step back on the line to do a rep. Whenever time starts to drop off and get slower, it wouldn't be a bad idea to shut down the workout.
Speed endurance doesn't involve alot of recovery because you want your sprinter a little fatigued but you want them to be able to get to or very close to top speed. The goal isn't so much as to stay at the exact top speed(most don't have a way to measure the exact top speed of their sprinter anyway) but to get to about 90-95% and hold your technique.
Just remember if you are doing 0m-40m you are working acceleration not max speed. You usually want to be 50m-80m for top speed work. Train fast to sprint fast.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
400m training by Mica Mccoy
I have had a discussions with many track coaches about how to train a 400m runner. Let me say that I am an advocate for aerobic work for 400m runners. There are coaches that think that you don't have to run your 400m runners over 300m to make them good 400m runners. I think this is true in some cases, if you are training runners like Allyson Felix & Sanya Richards-Ross! Even Sanya does over distance training but these runners are capable of running the 400 in 49sec. That means that they do not have to spend as much time on the track and their aerobic systems don’t have to be tapped into as much. When you are like me and only have 58- 62sec 400m runners, you have to do more aerobic work and run them over 300m because they are on the track much longer than a 49sec. sprinter. Think of it like this, if we are both in a 15ft swimming pool and we both jumped in to swim to the top and you get there faster than me; that means you didn’t have to hold your breath as long as I did. Therefore, I would need to work on holding my breath longer than you would. This is the same with being on the track. The runner that is on the track needs to work in the aerobic area a little more than the 49sec. runner. I think there is a place for running a 58 sec. runner in 300s and 350s but I think you as a coach have to do some runs longer than that to make a better 400m runner because they will be strong from running fast 300s but they are going to break down because you have not tapped into their aerobic system as much. Remember they are going to be on the track for 58-62sec in their 400m race but you are only giving them 40-45sec. training by running 300m. Let me also say before going through all of this, you as a coach would have to get them faster but that is another topic.
Mica Mccoy has been coaching for 10 years and been the Head Track and Field Coach of Rock High located in Rock Hill, SC for 5 years. He has produced 34 all region, 16 all state, and 7 state champions during his coaching career. He is also Level 2 certified in the sprints, hurdles and jumps.
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