What are things in terms of athletes, surroundings, knowledge and etc. a coach would require from the start to lead onto becoming a world class sprint coach.
what does it take to be a world class sprint coach?
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Participant
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Keymaster*A general understanding of training theory for sprinting
*A general understanding of biomechanics
*Access to talent
*Ability to instill confidence
*Warm climate (%)
*Doping (%)
*Access to therapy (%)
*Access to a decent facility (%)The ones with % are wildcards. You can do without any one of them but you need to compensate with expertise in the top 3 points and an increased sliding scale effect on any of the % items.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
can you get into detail on the warm climate part. I mean speaking as a athlete who’s in Canada, it’s warm in the summers and cold in the winters, from mid april till mid october, I can be outside, and from may-september it is perfect sprint weather. The rest of the time, indoor facilities are around and can be used. So no difference really is there? Between me and the guy down wherever who can train outside all year long or whatever.
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Keymaster
Warm climate just makes it easier to train full speed workouts. Other than perhaps some nice stuff you can do coming off the bank of an indoor track I don’t think the best indoor track in the world equals the training environment that a modest outdoor track in warm weather provides. This isn’t just the track either. The warmer weather leads to higher neural conduction speeds, lowers muscle viscosity, etc. All of which allows you to push the training stimulus envelope a little deeper and wider.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Member
How do you know you have a Bolt tell he or she becomes a Bolt?
How about another point…. Ability to help support new post collegiate athletes.
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Participant
access to talent…***ding ding ding***
find someone like usain bolt then hold on. then every time you communicate with other coaches, just talk about (*insert star athlete’s name here*) all the time…for all eternity
You mean like Ross or whatever his name is, Felix’s old coach. lol. The “deadlift specialist”
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ParticipantI think missed off is;
1 – Passion for teaching
2 – ability to comminicate what you know effectively
3 – ability to adapt
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Keymaster
I think missed off is;
1 – Passion for teaching
2 – ability to comminicate what you know effectively
3 – ability to adapt
These are great points but I actually intentionally left them off the list because I might have misinterpreted the question to mean ‘what does it take to be a coach who can produce world class performers?’ If that’s what the OP meant by world class sprint coach then I’ll stand by my original points and add these in under the optional (%) group. If by world class sprint coach we mean a truly world class coach of sprinting (regardless of whether that coach has produced world class performers) I think these are near the top of the list and the second tier points I made (%) are irrelevant. If this is our definition then I think training theory, training management, a sound biomechanics understanding, and the points Nick made are where it’s at.
I think many of us are probably aware of world class coaches who have never coached anyone beyond the high school or D3 level but they have gotten their athletes to truly maximize their potential.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participant
This is related to Mike’s video thread a bit, but I think if you placed Dan Pfaff and Tom Tellez into any high school in America and if the kids never found out they were coaches of Olympians you would still see a very high degree of success. Pfaff’s in a world all his own in terminology, but I still think it would get through to the kids. Tom’s a master of simplifying a topic and both have a solid background in all areas encompassing study areas of track and field. On the world-class level there are only handful of coaches who can coach the beginner, developmental, collegiate, and elite athletes. How would you feel to line-up a team against one coached by either of these men? Both would probably have solid distance event area even though it’s not something they are known for and both have coached successfully all the speed and power events in college and elite levels.
Maybe it’s me, but why are sports management people still hiring coaches who have zero background in athletics besides they competed at a certain level in that sport? You see this in football all the time too, but to a far lesser extent in basketball. If the sport is track and field you can almost forget about it. If you didn’t compete in college in track your chances are slim to none unless you can somehow form a networking relationship that you can take advantage of in 4 or 5 years. How many of the coaches who have coached the best sprinters were truly great sprinters in their own right? Almost none of them were or are. After watching Jeremy Wariner under Michael Ford this season and paying attention to everything made public after races and looking at splits, race plans, etc… gives credence to this line of thought as Michael Ford is not Clyde Hart and his 30+ years of experience in matching race day execution to training or championship round running from the prior heat to the coming heat. Overall, feedback and understanding the role of feedback is understated in coaching athletes of any level.
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Keymaster
Going along with that. The best resume builder as a sprint coach with no bigtime coaching experience may just be to roid out and run 10.20 yourself. Aka join the sea of very stellar former athletes that are very average current coaches.
Amen. It’s actually sickening to see some of the mediocrity being put on a pedestal as elite sprint coaches when you hear guys like Pfaff and Tellez talk the others are no where even in the same ballpark (at least for sprinting, technique, training management, etc). I will say that these guy often come with an immediate confidence boost and can relay experiences of competing at the highest level.
Motor learning research actually supports the notion that being able to do something has almost zero bearing on how well you can teach that activity.
ELITETRACK Founder
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Participantcan you get specific with that comment mike with actual research?
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Participant
Motor learning research actually supports the notion that being able to do something has almost zero bearing on how well you can teach that activity.
It goes with the notion that the more autonamous something is, the more removed the athlete is from all the skills components how they are actaully supposed to be performed..
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Keymaster
can you get specific with that comment mike with actual research?
Lagarde, J., Li, L., Thon, B., Magill, R., & Erbani, E. (2002). Interactions between human explicit and implicit perceptual motor learning shown by kinematic variables. Neuroscience Letters, 327:1, 66-70.
Magill, R.A. (1998). Knowledge is more than we can talk about: Implicit learning in motor skill acquisition. In: Research Quarterly
in Exercise and Sport 69, 104-110Also see Schmidt & Magill’s books for implicit and explicit learning. Wulf and Prinze have some research on the subjects as well.
ELITETRACK Founder
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