What is Old School Coaching?

Is being “Old School” better than “New Skool”?

I got called and “Old school coach” last week mainly because I avoid overcomplicating things.

I choose what information I give to an athlete. My knowledge obviously has boundaries but my object is to make the athlete better at their sport.

They never ask me to give them a lecture on kinetic chains or antagonistic reflex patterns or dynamic correspondence! If they ask why they are doing something, I need the information behind what I am doing, but it has to be transferable to sport. Some sports science theory that works well in a lab but fails to help you run faster is redundant in my book.

Jack Dempsey wrote a book in 1950 called Championship Fighting, here is his recommendation on a few things:

“Here’s a good daily training schedule for an amateur who has a job:
6 A.M Rise. Drink a cup of hot tea, or a cup of beef broth or chicken broth.
6:30 A.M Hit the road. 
7 A.M Arrive home. Take brief sweat-out and shower. Have breakfast of fruit juice, cereal, eggs, and milk or tea. 
12:30 P.M Lunch of lettuce and tomato on toast (perhaps with two or three slices of bacon). Glass of milk or cup of tea. If you do not have bacon with the lettuce-tomato sandwich, you can drink a malted milk. 
6 P.M Gymnasium. Have cup of hot tea with lemon before the workout.
7:15 P.M Workout completed.
7:45 P.M Home and dinner: half grapefruit or glass of fruit juice or cup of broth. A salad with olive oil and perhaps lemon juice. No vinegar! Meat -anything broiled or boiled; nothing fried. Steaks, chops or chicken.

Stews are good if you need to gain weight. Also, a baked potato, if you need weight. But no pork, veal, lobster, shrimp, crabmeat, or starchy foods like spaghetti. For dessert: stewed fruit, prunes, apricots, pears, or rhubarb, etc. Also hot tea. No pastries. 
8:15 P.M Relax half an hour.
8:45 P.M Take a fifteen-minute walk.
9 P.M Bed.

The amateur’s diet is about the same as that of a professional; but the pro’s schedule is much easier from the angle of time. The pro is on the road at 5:30 A.M. Returning to camp, he can rest until 10 A.M., when he has breakfast.

Then he loafs until noon, when he can have lunch or a nap, depending upon his weight. He begins his gym work at 2:30 P.M. Then he relaxes until dinner at 5 P.M. or 5:30 P.M. After that more loafing or a movie until 10 P.M., when he goes to bed.

An amateur who is training and working on a job, at the same time, must make sure that he gets eight or nine hours’ sleep every night. Otherwise he may go stale. He may become listless-dopey-on his job, and off-form in his sparring. He burns up much energy every day, on the job and on the road and in the gym.

He must get more than eight hours of sleep in twenty-four to restore his energy. And he should sleep with his windows open. He can’t get oxygen-he can’t recharge his batteries-by sleeping in a closed room. ”

Looks pretty good to me.

Jack Lalanne, another 1950s icon has this 10 point plan for healthy living and well being:

again, not much wrong with this, and even more relevant with an obesity and diabetes epidemic around the corner.

Has this type of information changed and moved on in the last 50 years? To me, it is all to easy to be a “New Skool” coach with a very short attention span that is limited to “research” that has been published in the last 2 years. Or to things within their own narrow sport background.

As Naseem Taleb says in “Antifragile“, it all too easy to get caught up with “new things”, but if it has been around for 50 years, it is likley to have real longevity.