Transcript
0:12 all right welcome to another episode of coaching with craft this time on our coaching philosophy so this really simple question is really hard to answer in five minutes or less so actually this past weekend Danny and I we traveled all the way down to New Zealand to a wonderful coaching workshop with athletics New Zealand and they gave us the same question so we've had a little bit of practice but to belabor the point anyways so I think the coaching
0:39 philosophy gets down to two main things is we have a philosophy of coaching that we use as obviously and then we have a training philosophy and a lot of times our training philosophy and the endurance world gets substituted for a coaching fluff so they're two separate things so I'm gonna try and quickly go through both actually so first off I think is the most obvious that we coach people not numbers right so the person sitting in front of me is the most
1:08 important thing because how they are physiologically biomechanically psychologically emotionally strength-wise all these things like give me the answers right so the answer doesn't come from a textbook or anything like that or some brilliant coach comes from the person sitting in front of you so we take what they bring to the table combine that with the event focus we're trying to worry about so 800 mile
1:38 marathon and all those things because the event gives us basic physiological and biomechanical components that we have to train for and we combine those two things and out of those two things we create a coaching training philosophy around that right what we don't do is we don't say hey this is who I am I train I coach in this fashion and I'm gonna jam every single person who comes into us into this mold into this bowl instead we
2:06 create the model out of what we see so that's number one most important part right and then I think the second part of that is very simple that so I hate from a training standpoint is that everything is always there what does that mean from the very beginning to the end like we have all these components these ingredients we can develop and we spend the early part of the year like putting the ingredients in place and then the last part of the year
2:38 is in combining mixing you know growing those ingredients so that means at the beginning of the year like I need to build a foundation so what is that foundation that means the boring stuff to me the boring stuff is I need good aerobic mileage good aerobic development for most athletes I need a good base of pure speed I need some sort of strength power and I need some sort of movement sprint biomechanical building so the thing of the boring stuff is the things
3:08 that we almost take for granted like oh yeah they need to do that well as a coach you need to make sure that those are developed and once we can develop those then we can progress every right so we can say go from running easy mileage slower tempo work took a little more quality along the way which brings me to my next training philosophy point which is never leave anything behind so the second part of that first thing is
3:38 we always have every component in there and the second thing is we don't leave it behind so in the middle in the end of the season we're in a competition phase right we don't forget about the tempo aerobic work or the pure speed development stuff that we did at the beginning we have to do just a bit of a enough of it because that brings me my third training standpoint philosophy you're either building maintaining or connecting
4:03 building means heavy emphasis on it maintaining me and see how we only need to do about 70% of it or a little spice of work just to keep that system and connecting means hey we've done a bunch of you know this component above and below race pace whatever and we need to figure out how to get them to blend together so that we aren't going from running eight hundreds at 65 a quarter to four hundreds at sixty for example
4:31 and I think the other big thing on on my training philosophy is that we need to make sure that we don't go somewhere until we need to go somewhere or another easy simple heuristic take the next logical right so if we're running 40 miles a week don't go down if we're doing a 10-mile tempo run at 5:45 pace don't try and do 15 of it or 10 at 5:20 page let the adaptation guide thing not
5:03 your want right not that I want you to run you know for 10 in the mile so we have to do these workouts know the adaptation of athletes sitting in front of you should guide everybody John the Marcus here director high-performance West give the people what they want so today's question is define your coaching philosophy it can be whittled down for me to one simple phrase people first always what I mean by that is you're
5:35 working with human beings who are fragile frail have their own failings and you have to be tolerant and that empathy and compassion is critical to being an effective coach because to me coaching is much more than just creating schedules and training plans and telling people how fast you run or how many miles a week than you run or what have you it's a long-term sustainable
6:06 relationship built on trust so that's why to me people first always is number one now I rank order my coaching values and I have three I'll give you the first number two is performance so being in the high performance sector being held to account livelihoods around online at championship track meets you know future contracts bonuses reductions in pay loss of contracts etc we can't be tone-deaf to that so the result matters but we
6:39 only get that opportunity to race at the highest level a handful times a handful of times throughout the year so we then have to be about the process on a day to day basis but the performance in the process from day to day is the thing that either separates you or limits you come race day and then finally the third important value is education and what I
7:15 mean by that is it's teaching and education is you teach and then you are also taught so it's back and forth every day I go to practice I learn I learn a lot I'm out there coaching people working with them you know getting inside their minds helping them prepare for the next big race come back from an injury what have you but also to they're teaching me it wouldn't be fun if I just went there and just said here's all the
7:43 things to do they do them so those three things to me are essential to what my philosophy is I could sit here and tell you oh yeah I'm a high mod guy I'm a low-mileage guy I like you know Lydiard or igloo or Daniels or CO and you know Saturday data I think that misses the mark I think you have to have your coaching identity first and then that infuses your philosophy the specificity about what you want to use from a
8:12 training menu standpoint with each athlete that's kind of up to each coach to discover and tweak throughout and their own personal growth but until you have those values ranked in order you will have some type of confusion because there will always be conflict right and we rank order our values then that takes a certain degree of conflict out of the equation so if it becomes do I need to be a hard-ass because this
8:43 person didn't make the final two Olympic Trials or do I need to put my hand on their back and tell them hey thank you you did awesome as best you could today you can't ask for anything more it's been a pleasure it's a bit of a wonderful journey because my values are people first and then performance then I go with the hand on the back rather than the hand in the face so that's helped me a lot so I encourage you to sit down
9:07 take some time and write out your values or coaching values in rank order one two three maybe five max because you have to be able to remember top of mind like I do and then have that taxonomy drive your interactions drive your practice drive how you show up every day ready to make a contribution so I appreciate it thanks for being here thank you for coming on checking the new high performance Wes website where we now have the workout of the day which
9:38 has been super popular and very humbling all the feedback we've had so thank you so much and then also of course the daily blog which again is a catch-all of a lot of exciting things books thoughts ideas and stories lessons learned etc so thanks for being here I'm glad you're here hello coaching in craft episode number five and this is a easy one but there's a little bit challenged with it so the question is what's my coaching
10:10 philosophy so I actually got asked this question last week when I was with Steve over in New Zealand working with New Zealand athletic Federation so it's should be top of mind but it's not an easy easy question answer and our challenge was we had to keep the ants under five minutes but I I think it's not easy to answer concisely simply because there's so many variables that go into coaching high performance that like when I look
10:40 when I give it I want to hit on all of them but that's impossible so I look at it from like what's like from a philosophical standpoint like if I hadn't put a stake in the ground where would I sit and I think that's that's something I talked about this weekend but I think that that point is very important where sometimes you say yeah we have to live in a grey but there needs to be a point of reference so for
11:03 me my philosophy definitely is athletes entered first and the reason why I look at it from I try to look at it from there I should be empathetic look at their standpoint is because they're the one that ultimately has to perform and so I think it gets the further infer that I get away from the sport in terms of competing as an athlete it gets easy to not be able to relate to what they're doing and that can bias decisions
11:32 negatively for what is needed for performance so I look at it from their point of view it hasn't benefit them in some way even if it means a conversation or some things that are gonna cause some struggle the ultimate goal if it's athlete centered is that they're the ones that are gonna benefit from it not me not Brooks but indirectly if the athlete does well and myself and the company benefits so it does flow it all votes the next part
12:00 of it would be is there's a heavy emphasis of my philosophy I grew up with just like a biology pre-med and went to grad school for such business science so I think that that foundation sets up a lot of the decisions I make and you might have heard some coaches talk about this system Macmillan said if one of his post a while back where you can make information improvisations in like music if you understand uses Theory very well
12:30 and so I look at it the same way from a coaching standpoint there is a lot of art and there's a subjectivity to it but the freedom to have those choices only can be made if you understand the science and so I'm not saying I do but I'd say I really appreciate it and I do try to have like some objective reasons from a stimulus standpoint from an adaptation standpoint for what the athletes are doing and that leads into
12:53 what I was just alluding to is this surge there's a lot of art and innovation and I I'd like to evolve and grow in that way so there is like in my philosophy there is like an element of creativity and I try to have the athletes be comfortable at that as well so they come in with ideas and some of the stuff that we do is directly related from a conversation I had with some athletes you know that what do they
13:19 bring to the table because these guys and girls are pros and have tons of experience and their wealth of knowledge themselves and I say the last two parts of it would be very big on a community team aspect and so that is like from like a very like inner circle standpoint to outside of the community you know Seattle u.s. hopefully the beast get big enough of athletes that coach could get high-level enough for its global but I
13:47 do do think that the philosophy I have in general from like a transformational coach is hopefully like these athletes have a positive impact on a community it might be a health and wellness might be just cleaning up the sport whatever it might be and then the last part is it's fun and if you see the enemy to see that it's a side of us being really serious and competitive like I do if I do really like the job and I like to I love
14:15 working with this subset of people because they most of them really enjoy it and yeah we just we just like look forward to going into work and that helps us be more successful but that is part of also part of my philosophy so those are the points I got it under five minutes thanks for watching hi welcome back to coaching with craft and this week we're looking at some of our coaching philosophies and for me I'd
14:40 actually have to say this has been a bit of a challenging one because I wouldn't say that my coaching philosophy currently fits on the back of a business card or anything like that and it's it's probably due to the fact that as a coach I still feel I'm learning growing and and evolving and that's some of the key parts to what I think probably makes up my coaching philosophy to a certain extent so you know I'd like to think
15:02 there's a coach I'm someone who is open to learning more whether that be through experience through trying new things through specific professional development and and honestly from learning from the athletes I work with that seems to be a bit more of the key aspect up for me now as I'm starting to get more specific with some of the things I do with them as a coach I also like to think that I'm quite balanced in in my views of the sport and and how it
15:28 can sort of help get the benefits for the athletes I'm someone who believes that athletes have a life outside of sport and I really want to encourage that for many athletes that we work with they're not always professional and so making a living out of it is probably not realistic and giving them the opportunity to go to university have a job and and hopefully by the time they're 30 years of age they're not starting life for the first time in a
15:53 professional world so I very much like to keep that in context I also recognize the balance that supports athletes you know that with friends and family and it may mean that they have to miss a training session where where I'm out there with them to be able to do it on their own to do that but ultimately at the end of the day if we keep you know taking the direction towards what they want to achieve then I'm pretty comfortable with
16:18 that and I suggest that the necessary stress involved in being too structured and too strict probably doesn't allow them to really enjoy what they're doing and make the most of what they want to do as well you know athletes are not robots and we can't just necessarily find one recipe and apply and so the balance for each and every athlete helps them to have a program that's more specific to the style of coaching that's more specific
16:42 to them as well so with that you know I'd also say you know part of my coaching philosophy is to be specific to the individual and that's not just in the way we treat them but it's also in what works for them identifying the gaps that they have between where they currently are and where they want to get to in the future and so therefore over a fairly heavy sort of expectation on things like goal-setting so one as a
17:06 coach I'm aware of that and then I like to plan towards what's going to work best for them so you know semi-things might be comfortable with traveling for significant amount of time sort of the year some may want to stay home in their daily training environment because that's where they thrive the most and for me as a coach they're helping to identify what works and why don't my my former coaches Sean Crichton said to me you know first thing here to work out
17:29 when he when he started coaching me was what kind of beast resolves they're gonna you know get better training stimulus from one style of training as opposed to another so for me that's a crucial part of what I need to work out as a coach and that problem-solving and planning as a coach to sort of work out what kind of beasts I'm working with and and ultimately you know I have to work out what's important for these athletes
17:53 in and out of the sport you know some of them ain't my only want a very short time and sport and want to focus on something professionally you know something that they've worked on through their career and and we have to sort of respect that as coaches so I never like to apply what I want them to do but rather support them to do what they want to do and ultimately I think one of the key aspects to my coaching philosophy is
18:13 to show the ethics of care because I think if they don't feel that you actually care about them and and give them much of a second thought outside of training and who they are as an individual I think you're going to get very limited by and so for me that's a priority to show these athletes that I care I take an interest in them both they're then personally and what they want to do and what they're currently needing to do in
18:35 training and and and that gives us a context of trust and honesty to make sure we're providing all that to them as coaches and helping them to identify what they need to do what they're currently doing well and areas that can improve so yep my coaching philosophy is is pretty pretty broad at the moment and and maybe as I as I go further on oh I'll narrow that focus but right now I still consider myself a coach with a
19:00 great deal learning to do so putting it on the back of the business card is probably not where I'm at so hopefully that helps you to be comfortable where you're at and and help you to keep tracking towards something that works for you x5 you