Shane's (gsmacleod) Coaching Mentor Group - Open (Page 5)

I try to stay abreast of the newest research and then take what a study may suggest and see how it compares to my experience and possibly try to incorporate those lessons into my coaching to see how things work out. I do not make radical changes based on anything I read but rather let newer studies inform my practice based on what my experience tells me about coaching. I believe that I take an evidence based approach to coaching but the evidence I use is both from research and also from my practice (and the practice of others).

While I still will sit down and read through newer articles of interest, with the amount of research that is published, there is no way that I can stay on top of every article that is published and I have found a great way to find articles of interest is to follow some people on twitter who tend to post endurance based research of interest. While not complete, some of those I find useful to follow:

Jorge Martinez (@CoachJorgeM)
Elite Coach (Joel Filliol) (@EliteCoachMe)
Andrew Jones (@AndyBeetroot)
Ross Tucker (@Scienceofsport)
Dr. Phil Skiba (@DrPhilipSkiba)
Joel Filliol (@joelfilliol)
Darren Smith (@coachdaz)
Paulo Sousa (@pstriathlon)



I have workout templates (for example, Easy run - E pace run easy for the duration, if you are feeling good, you may include 4-6x30s strides with 2:00 easy running between) as there is little value in writing every single workout. However, I will customize the workouts based upon what I feel the athlete needs from a given session and either provide pace/power/HR targets within the workout or have provided them to the athlete following recent testing/racing.

Shane

Training and Race with Power (Allen and Coggan)

This is somewhat dated but free - http://www.freewebs.com/velodynamics2/rcgtp1.pdf

There's another I read that I really enjoyed but can't think of the name off the top of my head; will see if I can track that down.

Shane

I am quite skeptical of the metabolic efficiency stuff that so many seem to buy into, mainly because I have yet to see evidence that suggests that it leads to performance improvement. I really enjoyed this interview:

http://www.inigomujika.com/en/2013/08/interviews-with-the-elite-lou...

Also, while quite a bit older:

http://thetriathlonbook.blogspot.ca/2008/06/chewing-fat.html

Shane

So, one of the next things that becomes critical is to determine where to start training with your athlete. Depending on their background, their previous data (if available) their time available, etc, then you may have lots of information about how to get started or you may have very little. IME, it is always better to start on the conservative side as athlete's will often provide data for their peak training with the thought that it is reflective of what they can sustain long term.

When I start with an athlete, as you saw from the questionaire, I always try to get recent field or lab testing information (I prefer field testing or race results - more on this later if anyone is interested) so that we can guide training from there. Once I have this information, I'll use it to determine paces (I use Daniels' VDot for runninng and the approximation below for swimming), power (using Coggan's power training levels) and/or HR (using Friel's zones). Depending on what the athlete wants to use, has available and is comfortable with, I will mix and match as required to find a system that is going to work for the athlete.

If I have access to detailed logs, I will look at their last month or so of training along with a typical month of training in the previous year, and then use that to guide our starting point and where we are going to go. Generally I will bump things up a little from what they did in the last week and I will do so as:

Swim - possibly add volume and almost always add intensity
Bike - usually will just add intensity
Run - usually will just add volume

Then, once we see how the first week goes, I will make adjustments through that week if required and also use that information to plan the following week.

Another thing that usually takes a couple of weeks to get down is how the athlete's schedule works and what things work well where. For this, I have several athletes that have pretty static schedules so things are pretty straightfoward in terms of week to week structure but then others who have schedules that vary a great deal from week to week. With these athletes, they will usually send me their weekly schedule and I will use that to structure their week.

Shane

I am curious as to anyone's thoughts on this:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp...

Looking at the thread as well as going through their website, there are several issues that I see that I would like to discuss with coaches and those interested in coaching as one thing that everyone will be faced with is how to best grow your coaching practice.

I have avoided posting in the thread (at least so far) but I think there are many lessons to be learned from this situation.

Shane

I followed this thread from the start and have to say that I can understand the OP's skepticism. Anything on the internet that promises goods or services for "free", all you have to do is pay up front and your money will be refunded at a later time should be a red flag for anyone. I know later in the thread some came in to defend tridot and say that they are legit and I'll take that at face value but it still seems like poor marketing on their part. Unless you are familiar with them already, this "pay us $261 and we'll give it back to you later" does come across as a potential scam to me.

Now I am not currently a coach so I have no experience on how to grow a coaching business, or even start one for that matter. I am working a full time job and trying to get a personal training business off the ground, while hopefully looking to add endurance and multi-sport coaching at some point down the road.

I too followed that thread along here and there, and was intrigued enough to spend a few minutes on the website as well. Obviously I cannot comment on it as a coach, but as a coached athlete I would not have spent two minutes considering their service for my needs. I do not know if this is true in actuality, but in marketing perception is reality. To me the service comes across as a plan-generator, not a coaching service. However rather than using research and knowledge built up through coaching experience, it seems to use a "money ball" statistical analysis approach to plan development. I could be way wrong, but I think training cycles are a little more personalized than that.

The jargon and hyperbole is very off-pipit ting of course, but even reading through all that it seems a little too "black box" to me. While some folks may just want a plan to follow, my needs of a coach include a rather high level of explaining and continued education for me as an athlete. I need to know what is going on, input on contemporary research and best practices, and to generally feel like I am learning to do this on my own should I ever get the time and interest to take on that particular aspect of my training again.

I agree and this is something that might work for a business that is already well established and respected, however, for one that it still pretty new to the game, I really don't see an upside as it is going to rub many potential athletes the wrong way. Even if the company is completely honourable in their intenstions, and I have no reason to believe there is anything untoward about the offer, it isn't hard to see how any company, especially a newer one, could make an offer like this and then find themselves in a situation where they are unable to provide the refunds.



This is something that every coach will need to struggle with and figure out what will work for them. There are those who are all about marketing and gimmicks in order to make as much money as possible and those who end up so focused on the coaching that they end up not making any money. This is something that I've struggled with and I've grown ScotiaMultisport quite slowly - I take a very limited number of athletes (8 - at one point I would take up to 10 but decided that with other committments, that was stretching myself a little too thin) and have only ever had a full slate of athletes twice; in 2010 and now in 2014. My focus instead has been on providing the best coaching that I am able and growing my business that way. If I was doing this full time then that would be another story as I would have more time to put into coaching each week and I would also need to make enough money to support my family.

Shane

I have many of the same thoughts on the site and, when I first learned of them, you can see my response here:

http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view.asp...

From what I can tell, there is nothing untoward about them in terms of what they provide, but it would not fit with what I would be looking for from a coach. It may work well for some but when coaching is reduced to an algorithm, I have concerns about what an athlete is actually recieving from their coach.

Shane

Been off this thread for a bit, but I came across a great page of information that is great for an aspiring coach. It's a short read with plenty to take away. Enjoy!

http://worldathleticscenter.com/news/andreas-behm-5-tips-for-aspiri...

Edited by bcagle25 2014-03-10 1:40 PM

Ben,

That's a great link - thanks for sharing!

One really stands out to me as part of coach education; in many of the coaching clinics I have attended, one of the things that will be asked of the coaches on the course is what they would correct by coaches with far more experience. This can be very daunting as the prospective coach wants to get it right but often do not yet have the experience to know what they should be looking for. It is only with more experience that they will develop the eye for technical issues of athletes.

The most useful session we had with this in one of my courses was a video session where we were shown a clip and told to focus on one athete and write down our thoughts. Then we watched it again at a slower speed and added anything else that we observed before having a sharing session with the group. Finally, the coaches running the clinic then shared what they saw and helped us to see the more technical aspects of the sport (it was swimming) that many of us had glossed over.

To this end, here is an older swim video - have a look and tell me what you see:

http://youtu.be/RLNzFKbjMCE

Shane

Awesome! Great when word of mouth starts to spread; no doubt you'll soon have to turn away athletes - which is another interesting problem itself

Shane

That seems to be pretty much it - worry about training and fueling for training would be better for most with an occasional fasted workout is probably the best idea rather than constantly limiting carbs and/or exercising in a fasted state. Or worse, trying for a ketogenic diet.

Shane