I remember watching a podcast a while back and this person was talking about methods of coaching and he said there were three ways of learning to coach. First, was to learn from another coach and regurgitate those methods. Second was to pick out sessions and use them in a ‘paint by numbers’ scenario. The last was to learn from scratch which is the hardest way, apparently. I have always been a fan of the hard way, because of that you will find no surprise in learning that I chose the third option. Like with training, I believe that there are no shortcuts in learning when it comes to coaching and because of that I spend a lot of time researching to understand the best methods of approach.
It’s very often I see the first two methods of coaching and I have found that there are certain ways of thinking that have been passed down from coach to coach without challenge. Things like ‘the last long run before a marathon should be 3 hours’. Why? What if the person training is going to take 6 hours to complete it, shouldn’t they be ready for how those next 3 hours are going to affect their bodies so that they can be mentally prepared for it? Obviously, the reality is probably that 3 hours is the most anyone could fit into their life schedule or its an ideal training time for someone who is expecting to run a sub 3 hours marathon. Ultimately, somewhere down the line it has become the unspoken standard when in reality, it’s down to the individual.
It’s not just the 3 hour thing though, there are literally 100’s of these unspoken standards that have permeated coaching and this is down, I believe, to those first two methods of coaching. The understanding behind it has been lost and these ways of coaching become indoctrinated, gone unchallenged and parroted out. I think that, as a coach, It’s important to understand the thought process behind these unspoken standards and be able to critically assess them to understand if they would work or not.
I have spent a large portion of my time learning and combined with my personal experience, I have began to build my own principles and standards into ways of coaching. I sometimes worry that the coaches I mentor will adopt my standards and begin to parrot them, so I tend to make sure that they are applying them for the right reasons to remove this fear.
Recently, there has been a lot more research into training methods and there is a change happening. Strength work was previously shunned, with coaches believing that training the sport builds the strength so there is no need to do strength training. Studies have shown that strength training can make you more resilient to injury, improve economy and enable you to get faster!
It is similar with recovery, with athletes feeling that they should keep pushing to get better and a belief that taking a recovery week will negatively affect their performance. When really the inverse is true and overtaining can lead to all sorts of physiological problems. Recovery is where your body gets stronger and super compensation takes place. Again, there is lots of literature around to support this.
Unfortunately, there is still a lot of that old mentality remaining, it doesn’t help that there is a general dislike in runners for strength work & recovery, I see this all the time when I set a recovery run for an athlete and then see them going over threshold!
My ways of working are learnt, not from other coaches in the local area, but from science-backed (and cited) course materials. Some of my methods are disliked by athletes and strength & recovery are some of the most neglected areas for endurance athletes, even though there is lots of research to support it. So, I often get upset athletes when I ask them to take a week off or getting them to do strength sessions but it wouldn’t make me a good coach not to ask them to do these things!
Over time I have learned how to employ new standards into my own way of coaching and I have incorporated these standards into the club ethos at TeamBR. Because of that the club offers structured sessions, strength sessions, 121 coaching and athlete coach support. This way, I can be sure that my prinicples are communicated out to athletes and, hopefully, adopted by them.
