I saw this quote somewhere recently, it was aimed at young people, but it applies to us all. It is a variation on the “give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, he eats for a lifetime” quote.
I can show someone how to butter their toast, I may even do it 2-3 times, they then have to start buttering it themselves. If they are good, they may then start trying different types of butter, or bread, or even making toasted sandwiches.
Some people turn up every week, cap in hand and an expectant look: “please butter my toast again”, without progressing.
The article this was mentioned in, said that you can’t go through life expecting people to butter your toast for you all the time. You ask people for help in showing you how, but it is then up to you to do something with it.
This is especially prevalent in gyms and many sports squads, where people turn up, are in the room, but aren’t engaging with their own bodies. They are paying money out and hoping that through some power of osmosis they will get better.
Other people can definitely help you- that is why they are experts – either through knowledge or previous experience, but you have to butter your own toast.
The athlete is the person who plays the sport or competes in the arena. They are the one who has to make decisions in the heat of the battle. In order to become self reliant athletes, they need to accept responsibility for their own actions.
Only by looking inside yourself and becoming responsible for your own learning will you actually get better.
I was asked on Tuesday by an athlete who is quite new to weight lifting why I would teach cleans which are quite complex, if high pulls also work the triple extension.
The answer is that I have got a lot of time with this athlete, so can afford to work on his technique without sacrificing his work that will lead to strength and power development. The clean will then enable him to perform the jerks without using a rack.
But, the question is an excellent one, and should be asked by Coaches before they do any exercise or series of techniques, instead of doing something because everyone else is doing it.
Some National Governing Bodies specifically want cleans coached – why? If time is limited, then
dumbbell cleans
jump squats
wave squats
high pulls
are all useful alternatives for developing power.
Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in The Guardian is a good read and is an example of how to examine wild claims and pseudo science. This type of objectivity is uncommon in a lot of Coaching practice.
It is especially interesting to read how the over complication of diet has led to a new brand of celebrity nutritionists who are being discredited due to their lack of scientific underpinning.
I keep telling coaches and athletes that they should look at what they are trying to achieve, and find tools that do that job most efficiently.
However, many people become attached to the “magic exercise” or “magic food” and then reverse engineer its usefulness to match the aims.
Most people start off with Tudor Bompa’s Periodization or, in this country, Frank Dick’ssports training principles when learning about periodisation. They cover the basis premise about modulating volume and intensity over a period of time to allow overload and adaptation to take place.
The problem is that these theories have been taken from predominantly single energy system sports such as shot putt or marathon running, in events that have one or two relatively short seasons a year.
Trying to reverse engineer these concepts into multiple sprint field sports that have very long seasons with very short off seasons doesn’t really work.
There has been a paucity of research that compares different periodisation strategies with each other compared with a control group who do standard training.
As a result, coaches either stick to linear periodisation, or 1 or 2 variations within this theme (myself included). There is a need for decent research that analyses what aspects of periodisation would be most useful at different stages of an athlete’s career and also for different parts of the season.
At present it appears that any periodisation- linear, daily undulating, weekly undulating, accumulation and intensification- works on beginners in strength training. It may be true to say that experienced athletes may benefit more from periodisation of modality and intensity with less manipulation of volume.
A few years ago I put together a 4 year plan for young athletes looking at overall themes of training, rather than detailed session plan. As Gary Winckler points out, there i sno point in planning in detail more than 2 weeks ahead, because things change too much.
As Von Clausewitz said “No plan survives contact with the enemy“.
Periodisation is great as an overarching principle, but is must be flexible and adaptable.
Physical education used to be about function: getting fit to help with a full day’s work and then helping with the harvest. Now its about sport.
“A high-quality physical education curriculum inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically demanding activities“. U.K. national p.e. curriculum guidelines.
Last year at GAIN I was privileged to listen to Greg Thompson talk about his work at Farmington Schools. He also taught an example p.e lesson. Both were outstanding. Enthusiasm and passion linked with a detailed knowledge of the correct physicaldevelopmental stages for children.
Here are some of the key points I took. I am trying to implement these within the courses I run, and also the work I am doing with my children’s schools in Willand.
“Quality of design leads to user delight”
James coaching youngsters
Seth Godin. The better the design of the p.e programme, the better the children will enjoy it.
Greg (a keen sailor) remarked that his boat has got a keel. “Unfortunately, p.e doesn’t. P.e drifts in the direction of the latest prevailing wind. Quality content is being blown off course by marketing.”
Marketing can include “academic studies” that use school pupils as test subjects (Personal note: often the actual intervention is done by poorly trained undergraduates, rather than qualified teachers).
Moderately vigorous physical activity (MVPA) is one such wind, where heart rate is the the only measure of work done. The “dance, dance, revolution” is another. “Fun is #1” is often the barometer of success rather than what is being achieved or giving the children physical skills for life (enough meteorological analogies now).
The one size fits all approach is great for MVPA or sports based p.e. But, the physical education specialist is an endangered species, we are on the precipice of them being replaced by $7 hour “fun leaders“.
“The Moderately Vigorous Physical Activity movement has lead to a generation of college professors and young teaching offspring who have lost contact with quality movement. By pushing fun as a first priority, children’s “normal” has changed. They expect physical education to be game playing. Hard work is a rarity. In our high schools, teachers fear making students in their classes perspire will lead to less students signing up for PE electives (= less teaching jobs).” Thompson.
The erosion of quality content leads to greatly reduced contact time and devalues the work of teachers. No one has said “calculus is hard, let’s not bother” so why do we do it with p.e?
Questions you might want to ask of your child’s school or of your own teaching:
What happens to develop physical competence?
What happens to develop skilful movement?
What happens to develop perseverance?
(I am delighted to see Willand school encouraging perseverance).
Create an intoxicating physical education environment
The Unicef definition of quality of teaching/education states that a good physical education teacher should be well grounded in:
Motor Learning
Athletic Development
Social & emotional development
Inter-personal skills
If you add “observational skill” then you have someone who can perform “skilled assessment“. Does your child’s p.e teacher have these skills?
What about following an advanced pattern that is based on observing elite performers? An example being copying throwing patterns of baseball pitchers for primary school kids. This is an “error model” (see Greg’s comment below).
Instead, we should ask “Is there aknown pattern of steps on the way to advanced?” We can then set task constraints to help the child get the right outcomes, remembering that the child has a role in this process.
Physical education requires movement
For example: throwing. A West Indian cricket fielder may run 2 steps from the boundary and sling the ball to the wicket keeper, planting the left leg and shifting weight forward, rotating the trunk first, then the arm following through.
The key point is the lag time between trunk rotation and arm movement, so that is what the p.e. teacher should be looking at first, rather than the foot planting.
There is no point looking at lag in the arm segments if the pupil stands face on to the target and throws the ball underarm. Instead, the teacher might create a task constraint where the pupil has to straddle a line that is parallel to the wall, then throw forcefully from lines that are progressively farther from the wall.
They can then progress to standing side on to the target, then to having a slightly wider foot stance.
“The idea of creating a task that elicits a positive change without having to engage in a lot of verbal instruction comes out of Esther Thelen’s research on dynamic systems.
The goal of the teacher using this approach is to pick a task that let’s the student “self organise” to the next level. So in the throwing example, a child who is not trunk rotating, begins to trunk rotate when we have them straddle the line and throw hard.
We don’t talk about trunk rotation with 5-year-olds, we just show them how to put one foot on each side of the line and let them back up to the next colour line when they can hit the wall from that one. The task squirts trunk rotation out.
This is a “dynamic systems approach to development” (Esther Thelen).
It applies to running, skipping, sliding and jumping as well. Is your child being taught these skills?
Kids learn what they see
So much for the theory, how does this translate into a living, breathing entity?
Greg is a great believer in using a playful approach and getting the kids to self organise. However, before this happens they need to have a “mind’s eye picture” of what it is they are supposed to do.
Create mindfulness: devil is in the details. Give them a why: “This will make you a faster runner”.
Stop the class and show them the good person.“I like to pick someone to be my “Eagle” and spot a skillful/on task performer. This puts the child into the role of observer.
Environment must be right if a kid fails the task: do we give them another chance to succeed? Is it ok to make mistakes?
Try to have contact with every child in each class : constant reminders.
Kids learn what they see: we must walk the talk.
If the children are taught the individual stages according to their ability, then they all progress. This is hard work though, as anyone dealing with 29 five year olds can testify! Greg has got those skills and practices hard at developing them.
Compare this to the games based model where children are asked to remember the rules of the game “only allowed to pass backwards, must run forwards“.
Yet they are still unable to catch the ball without bringing it into chest, or are unable to run without their arms crossing the mid-line of the chest. Carrying a ball whilst running inhibits that development further and they will have a forlorn hope of passing that ball accurately!
Minor rant
Unfortunately we are suffering from cultural amnesia as the latest generation of physical education “specialists” have graduated from a sports science background and have no inkling of what p.e could and should look like.
They may well have been a “sports leader” or “T&G ambassador” at school; they would have got a nice t-shirt or hoodie and attended lots of talks. Ask them to climb a rope, or teach kids how to run, jump, skip or throw, let alone do a forward roll and they will look at you blankly.
One 14 year old girl at a “p.e school” in Plymouth does only 1 hour of p.e, a week. In that 1 hour she goes to primary schools and tells those kids that they need to do more exercise! Yet, she is unable to do a single press up or run 400 metres without stopping: what kind of madness is that?
The good news is that there are many willing teachers who are keen to be shown skills that help them in their class.
Yesterday I did a multi skills club with Willand school where we looked at throwing and hopping. We based this on the rubrics developed by Greg and his team. The two teachers were excellent at spotting the stages of development and coaching the children.
It is possible to improve the quality of your physical education programme, it requires good teachers, who have access to the correct information. More importantly, it requires vision and perseverance.
“A Jedi gains power through understanding and a Sith gains understanding through power” says Senator Palpatine in Attack of the Clones.
If you want to coach like a Jedi, study hard and for long, learn from your experiences.
I see quite a few young coaches who have graduated from their University courses calling themselves “experts” at 21 years old.
They do an academic based accreditation such as the UKSCA with no Coaching requirement or background and pronounce things like “You must be able to squat twice your body weight.”.
“Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.” Obi-Wan Kenobi
If you go out into the Coaching world with a closed mind set, looking for short cuts then you will be taken down a false path that could lead to the Dark Side. Part of the problem is coming from an environment where you are judged on saying the right answer all the time.
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.” Darth Vader
If your mentor is a Sith Lord, then you will become their apprentice, not a fully fledged Coach. Ask questions (without being impertinent) and you will learn more.
“You must open your mind to other opinions.” Mace Windu
Coaches need to expose themselves to different envronments and to different types of athletes in order to fully develop. Get out of the gym and onto the Track\ Court\ Field.
Try different sports, try different physical activities. Read about what previous athletes and coaches have done. Not just what a “pseudo science” journal has to say.
“The more we learn, the more we discover how much we do not know.” Yoda
Yoda had it right. In his 800 years of training Jedi knights, he learnt a thing or two (although not correct syntax).
Have some patience and control, show humility and your athletes will respond better.
Trying to gain knowledge through power is pretty short sighted.
The purpose of the screenings is to gauge an athlete’s readiness to train
Having conducted over 80 musculo skeletal screenings with athletes from a huge variety of sports in the last year with a physiotherapist it is time to offer some reflections.
Establishing a rapport is key for the screening to go well, and I would say that in all but 2 of them, we have managed between us to do that.
We have adapted our feedback over time so that we give the athletes something simple to do at home without specialist equipment. It usually involves working on sitting and standing posture and practising some form of controlled movement such as squats, press ups or warm up.
The thing about doing a comprehensive screening is that you realise not only how different every person is, but also how similar they all are.Although every athlete is an individual and every sport is different, there are many similar traits. A few that come up regularly are:
Poor posture from sitting at a computer or in the classroom lazily.
Lop sided shoulders from the dominant arm sports.
Inability of female athletes to sit down on a chair- compared to falling down.
Low back pain in athletes who have gone through a recent growth spurt and are overspecialising in one sport.
The early risers and multi- taskers have brilliant organisational skills and get things done.
The University students with 3 hours of lectures a week “don’t have enough time” to eat breakfast, bring a water bottle, do 10 mins of body management exercises a day.
What is refreshing is that with over 40 years of combined experience, myself and the physiotherapists always manage to learn something new from each athlete. It is hard work, but very rewarding.
Sharing information with physiotherapist
13 lessons learnt so far:
Establishing rapport is essential.
Certain phrases set off alarm bells in our minds “core stability” and “power cleans” are worrying from athletes who can not stand up straight or who have back injuries.
Never assume that because a 15 year old boy is a national champion at sport x that he can do an unloaded squat, let alone weight training.
Doing the plank 3 times a week has yet to show that the athlete can move fast and with balance in their sport.
Simple messages are effective- then repeat them again and again.
Flexibility of all young athletes is horrific.
Most young athletes are keen and willing to learn, but self discipline to apply the lessons comes with maturity- some have it, some don’t.
There is a reason why athletes who keep getting injured- either overtraining, or lack of planning from Coach\Athlete\parent.
Most athletes are unable to plan their training for the next week- let alone month or year.
Every athlete is different, but there are a lot of similarities also.
What they do in daily activities such as school and home has a big impact on their body.
We learn something new at every screening.
Mum or Dad usually knows best with young athletes- but the teenager often ignores the parent!
“…admonitions sound equally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience. The same goes for propositions about the world, about morality and about human nature. And, very likely, when the child grows up and has children of her own, she will naturally pass the whole lot on to her own children- nonsense as well as sense– using the same infectious gravitas of manner.”
(Dawkins, The God Delusion).
Now, replace child with student \ athlete and respected source with sensei\ coach and apply to your martial art \ sporting context.
Dawkins is talking about a genetic disposition to believe everything someone senior says, to allow children to survive attacks from tigers etc. Run, when I say run.
This unfortunately means that the respected source can slip useless information in to the equation and the student still obeys:
“use your left hand like this to create chi energy”
or “run through these ladders 100 times”and you will be much faster on the soccer pitch.
Then, when the student or athlete starts to teach, they repeat the same nonsense without question. Opens your eyes to what is really happening in a lot of environments.
It also means that we as coaches have a duty to carefully choose our words and tasks with young children, as they are hanging on every one of them.
A guest post from Frans Bosch on football speed and how it can be trained and improved.
We (the Dutch) lost the World Cup Final against Germany in 1974, our biggest trauma after the war.
One of the players in the famous ‘74 team, Willem van Hanegem, was interviewed some two decades later by a soccer magazine. One question was, what his reply would be to a wide spread opinion that we lost, because he was very, very slow.
Willem answered; “speed is not existing”. This quote made the cover of the magazine and became famous.
Back then it immediately made sense to me without really knowing why and now I want to add; “and strength is not existing either”. Thinking in the basic motor properties, like we usually do, does not make sense to me anymore.
There is no stand-alone entity named “speed”.
The fastest sprinters do not have faster limb movements, than slower runners. There is no strong relationship between fast concentric contractions and running speed. The link between the % of FT fibers and sprint performance is by far not as well proven by science as always is stated.
If anything, new scientific insight drifts away from this stand-alone idea of speed. Running speed may well be limited by loss of robustness and increasing fragility of movement patterns.
The way Dynamic System Theory has shed a different light on how we control our running patterns is fascinating and calls for an integrated approach of training.
Speed is just one door
Speed, strength, coordination and even endurance are not separated entities, but merely doors, that give access to the same building.
So do not train them separate, but treat them as variations of the same overall theme.
The value of what we do, is not in the sum of the trained elements, but in the interaction between them.
Rumor has, that Willem was not just very slow. He also was very nearsighted, half blind. Still he was from a tactical point of view one of the best players we ever had.
Frans Bosch – author of “Running- Biomechanics and Exercise Physiology Applied in Practice”.
There is a current debate going on amongst academics (with apparently too much time on their hands!) about a misplaced decimal point in the original research that cited spinach as a great source of iron.
Dr Mike Sutton has written an analysis about the history behind Popeye’s adoption of Spinach.
He then looks at the claims that Popeye was responsible for a33% increase in USA Spinach consumption in the 1930s
This is a great piece that should be read by all undergraduates about why Statistics do matter but theirinterpretation must be relevant and taken in context.
“Socially embedded codswallop”
Sutton’s examination of the evidence is quite thorough and it shows how quoting “facts” or journal articles without reference, can quite easily then become “socially embedded codswallop”.
Spinach is one of several “superfoods” that are quoted as having special values, mainly because of its iron content”. In fact E.Segar (Popeye’s creator) chose Spinach because of its Vitamin A content, rather than its iron content.
Iron content
Spinach is a source of non-heme iron, which is usually found in vegetable sources. Unlike heme iron found in animal products, non-heme iron is not as easily absorbed by the body.
That is because Spinach also contains oxalic acid (sometimes referred to as oxalate). Oxalic acid binds with iron, hence inhibiting its absorption.
The iron content changes with cooking too. According to the USDA National Nutrient Database, one cup of cooked spinach provides ~3.5mg of iron whereas a cup of raw spinach only contains 1 mg of iron.
So, Spinach does contain Vitamin A, and some degree of iron, but isn’t a substitute for other meat and fish sources of iron.
The take home message here is NOT “Spinach is bad for you”.
Instead, it is check the evidence, and put stats into context.
Thanks to Anton Parker for the tip (one of the aforementioned Academics with too much time on their hands!)
(Updated April, includes some excellent coaching and leadership books).
Very useful guide
Hellicona Spring: Brian Aldiss. Classic British SF novel.
Leading: Alex Ferguson with Michael Moritz. Patchy book from the Manchester United Manager. Some great insights, but poorly written. Epilogue is excellent.
The Dispossessed: Ursula Le Guin. More classic British SF. Thought provoking novel about benefits of true communist, meritocratic society.
This Is Your Brain on Sports: R.E.M. Grand & A.D. Goldberg. Largely anecdotal look at sports trauma stress disorder (slumps, yips, etc.). Some practical exercises at the end.
Anatomy Trains: T.Meyers. In depth look at fascial anatomy. Has many good points, although soft tissue work is outside of my remit.
Canticle For Leibowitz: Walter Miller. SF novel set in post apocalyptic Earth with heavy Catholic bent. Very interesting and thought provoking.
The Hungry Spirit: Charles Handy. Thought provoking book from 20 years ago about quest for meaning beyond capitalism. Much of which has come to pass.
A Void: Georges Perec. Novel without the letter ‘e’. Tortuous in parts, an interesting concept, but hard to read.
My Story: Louis Smith. Lightweight book with some nice pictures, reveals little about gymnastics or training.
Excellent read
Culture And Society 1780-1950 : Raymond Williams. An insightful series of essays about different authors and how they have influenced our (British) culture. Extremely well written and informative.
The Big Gold Dream: Chester Himes. Crime thriller set in Harlem. Punchy, colourful, atmospheric.
The Uses Of Literacy: Richard Hoggart. In depth look at the Northern Working Class in 1957. What constitutes their culture, background and forms of reading. Thoughts on aspirations and constraints of every day folk.
You Win In The Locker Room First: Jon Gordon and Mike Smith. Excellent short read about creating the right culture to help you win. Well broken down with good examples from the Atlanta Falcons.
Hellicona Summer: Brian Aldiss. Sequel SF Novel, more royal drama than SF. Less enjoyable than first.
Simple Rules: Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt. Excellent book on decision making, goal setting and doing what matters most. Very well written, clear examples, useful tips, humorous.
Secrets of Soviet Sports Fitness & Training. Michael Yellis and Richard Trubo. 1988 book which starts every paragraph with variation of “Soviet methods are better..” Poor.
Pretty Girls in Little Boxes: Joan Ryan. Whistle blowing account of 1990s ice skating and gymnastics in the USA and its affects on the girls involved. Hopefully things have changed since.
Soul On Ice: Eldridge Cleaver. Powerful, intelligent and very well written series of essays written from within Folsom prison in the 1950s-60s. Cleaver was one of the leading lights behind the Black Panthers.
Must read
The Female Brain:Louann Brizendine. Excellent book about the developing female brain and how it changes with age. Well researched, good examples, funny.
Hellicona Winter: Brian Aldiss. Concluding part of this SF trilogy. Poignant story about man and relationship with environment and others.
The Modern Writer and His World: G.S. Fraser. Review of prose, poetry, praise and literary criticism from 1890-1960.
Judas Unchained: Peter Hamilton. Overlong SF novel, high on action and scope, but low on dialogue or maintaining interest. Bloated in attempt to become “epic”.
Sea Harrier Over the Falklands: Sharkey Ward. Insightful book about the Commanding Officer of 801 Squadron and his combat experiences. Details the bureaucracy and inter-service rivalries even when lives are at stake.
Excellent leadership book
Turn This Ship Around: David Marquet. Excellent book about leadership from this USN submarine Captain. Tells the story of how the USS Santa Fe went from worst performing boat to best. Well laid out and written, with clear action points at the end of each chapter.
CEO Strength Coach: Ron McKeefery. Surprisingly useful read about how to become a strength coach at a US college/ pro team. Quite short, but easy to follow. Useful for undergraduates and those aspiring to become S&C coaches.
A varied start to the year: heavy SF bent based on recommendations from Brian Aldiss’s “Billion Year Spree”.
Also, big thanks to my own book search engine : Mandi from Castle Books in Beaumaris and to Devon libraries for providing more.
Any recommendations you may have: please leave as a comment.
Greg Thompson, GAIN 2013.
So much for the theory, how does this translate into a living, breathing entity?
Unfortunately we are suffering from cultural amnesia as the latest generation of physical education “specialists” have graduated from a sports science background and have no inkling of what p.e could and should look like.
“A Jedi gains power through understanding and a Sith gains understanding through power” says Senator Palpatine in Attack of the Clones.
“The more we learn, the more we discover how much we do not know.” Yoda
Having conducted over 80 musculo skeletal screenings with athletes from a huge variety of sports in the last year with a 
trauma after the war.
See our Run Faster programme 
Or so Popeye thought.
