At the high school level, yes believing in your coach will make you successful, because talent always trumps coaching.
At the collegiate level and higher, I think while you still must believe in your coach, you can't overcome bad coaching.
At the high school level, yes believing in your coach will make you successful, because talent always trumps coaching.
At the collegiate level and higher, I think while you still must believe in your coach, you can't overcome bad coaching.
I thought the title question was a joke at first... of course it is! An athlete at 95% of their potential fitness but a ton of confidence will beat the athlete at 100% of their potential fitness but no faith in what they're doing almost every time.
Joseph McVeigh wrote:
Clearly Tyler Mueller is extremely well educated. ** That aside, I "sort of" agree with him, albeit in a contrapositive way.....Doubting one's coaching is extremely detrimental, but all the belief in the world won't overcome bad coaching.
** Disclosure: Like Mueller, I am a former Lehigh runner.
I took it as pretty much a given that the quote didn't mean to extend to bad coaching. Beyond that, many people have done well doing different things and as long as those things are sound athletes can succeed doing them. Lee Troop told me once that he'd been to three Olympics and all sorts of other major competitions and found that the guys doing well did different things with their training. He concluded that there are really no secrets or single ways to succeed. Tom Donnelly told me, "There are no secrets."
What there can be is "fit" and believing that what you're doing will make you faster is part of the business of fitting. Not everyone will be comfortable or confident doing mostly fartleks and unimpressive tempo runs. I was but I can't imagine I'd have progressed if I'd Igloi as a coach. But many others progressed very well.
Wouldn't an athlete's awareness of this psychological effect negate the psychological effect?
This philosophy may be viable. However, similar to taking a placebo pill, once the athlete KNOWS that the coach is only trying to convince him the workout is the best, not that it ACTUALLY is the best, the benefits would, or could, suffer from the athletes knowledge.
Great article, well... until the writer went with this cringe-worthy paragraph.
"Tin is not a particularly hard chemical element. Compared to other metals like iron, it offers little in the way of guarding against impact, of deterring external forces. Instead, it moves in accordance with those forces. It is yielding and malleable, it doesn’t rust or corrode. Tin doesn’t protect so much as it preserves—its ordered, crystalline atomic structure proving perfect for holding things for remarkable amounts of time."
Huh? The Tinnitus-Pappas effect?
I've always wanted to be a tin, but tin is not people. Tin is tin.
rojo wrote:
That's what former Lehigh runner Tyler Mueller say Tinman believes. What say you?
I say: Do the experiment. Randomize runners across training programs and see what happens. Until then, it's all snake oil.
Good words there as always,HRE :)
It`s not a coachs most important mission to convince the athlete that the training is the very best possible existing training. In fact that is a mission impossible because there is many "best" ways leading to Rome. It`s more important that the actual training gives the athlete completely visible positive results in training and races and that way boost the athletes confidence in the training system and the coach. But of course it`s not unimportant for the coach to explain to the athlete why to do the different parts of the training ( if the athlete wants to know).
Nothing new here people. It's called "Buying in". If the athlete respects the coach and the coach respects the athlete success is GUARANTEED!!!!! There are millions of workouts anyone can do but if you don't understand why, when, and how you'll be wasting your time.
Can you elaborate or have you not looked much into these yet?
I agree 100%.
in my first year of high school XC i was on this upward improvement trajectory as a junior. I was mostly a soccer player and 400m-800m runner who had no idea what i was doing and only running 25-30 mpw in XC. I ran 17:47 my first race of the year and before the year was over my best was 16:09. i was blindly following and believing in the few workouts we did.
After the state meet, in which I placed 13th, my coach was interviewed in the local paper and his quote was, " I actually had him believing that he was a top 10 in the state caliber runner in his first year of XC."
That's when i stopped questioning everything I was doing and just did whatever workout was posted as well as I could. Believing in the training as the best thing for my success, took so much doubt and thinking out of the equation. run, recover. sleep. race.
distance runners are classic over-thinkers, and if you can convince them to think this way they will have so much more success as runners.
rojo wrote:
That's what former Lehigh runner Tyler Mueller say Tinman believes. What say you?
http://citiusmag.com/tyler-mueller-tinman-elite/
I agree to an extent, but the coach has to have a minimum of competence. One major problem in distance running is that there are a lot of really bad coaches who do not understand how to develop a runner at all. This problem is compounded because these types of coaches are 100% convinced themselves that their training method is the best one ever developed and they will likely be telling this to everyone they meet in the running community or broadcasting this belief on websites or forums etc. When these coaches almost inevitably mess up a runner's season they will never accept that their approach to training is just not a good one and instead they will attribute poor results to things like the runner themselves (not believing in their training) , the runner being messed up by their previous training before they met them and thus they were unable to undo the damage, the athlete running their prior PRs on short tracks or courses ... the list goes on but their approach to training never changes....
longjack wrote:
typo above
, bed time.
i'd raise the quality and lower the quantity.
i'd spend all my coaching time figuring out my athletes recovery time and how to enhance it.
Yeah..... everybody already tried that. See: THE 90's..... Dark Ages of Western Distance running.
Now thanks to the internet and letsrun, everyone is back to the basics from the 60's70's80's and running faster than ever. High Mileage, fast continuous running, long runs... etc..
One of the greatest disadvantages of being an American track and field guy, is the lack of progress after college. Those who are good enough at the specific window ni time to earn a college opportunity.
US athletes are getting on with their work careers just as foreigners are physically maturing. US athletes leave a lot on the table. Even when they post to Letsrun
I do agree that believing in your training is more important.
I think that's why Webb was great in highs school, struggled at Michigan and was great again after reuniting with Scotty R.
The Michigan training was not bad, but Webb didn't totally buy into it.
And he wasn't convinced with Salazar either, and I think Salazar has proven to be an effective coach.
(Tyler) Mueller is coming
Jerry Maguire wrote:
longjack wrote:
typo above
, bed time.
i'd raise the quality and lower the quantity.
i'd spend all my coaching time figuring out my athletes recovery time and how to enhance it.
Yeah..... everybody already tried that. See: THE 90's..... Dark Ages of Western Distance running.
Now thanks to the internet and letsrun, everyone is back to the basics from the 60's70's80's and running faster than ever. High Mileage, fast continuous running, long runs... etc..
When so many referring to the 90s as "dark ages" and "lost years" for the western running I use to say that many coaches then was at a good track , but they messed up with too much emphasize on the quality part of the training. As in many aspects of things in life there is often " a golden middle way " . I think that the coach/coaches who can balance the old and the new school in inventive new programs will be the most successful . Even the great A. Lydiard predicted such a development in future back in his days. I think it`s time to coin a new expression instead of low mileage and high mileage , simply "Smart Mileage".
Star wrote:
I do agree that believing in your training is more important.
I think that's why Webb was great in highs school, struggled at Michigan and was great again after reuniting with Scotty R.
The Michigan training was not bad, but Webb didn't totally buy into it.
And he wasn't convinced with Salazar either, and I think Salazar has proven to be an effective coach.
(Tyler) Mueller is coming
You say that the Michigan training was not bad. Just curious , do you know how Michigan coached and how Scotty R coached? Or maybe someone else know? Maybe the quality of the Michigan coaching back then actually was bad compared to what Scotty gave Webb?
Nick Willis did pretty well with Michigan coaching at that time. So did Nate Brannen.
And Webb did not.
Scott Raczko's style of training was based on John Cook's coaching. A lot of quality and drills.
Michigan did more distance work.
I do believe that if Webb bought into Warhurst's style all-in, he would have flourished.
But can't complain about the 1:43, 3:30, 3:46 results he eventually got out of Raczko.
For Webb, the training was more mental than physical, which is the topic of this thread.
I personally had a situation where I switched from one great coach to another great coach and it didn't click for me.
Star wrote:
Nick Willis did pretty well with Michigan coaching at that time. So did Nate Brannen.
And Webb did not.
Scott Raczko's style of training was based on John Cook's coaching. A lot of quality and drills.
Michigan did more distance work.
I do believe that if Webb bought into Warhurst's style all-in, he would have flourished.
But can't complain about the 1:43, 3:30, 3:46 results he eventually got out of Raczko.
For Webb, the training was more mental than physical, which is the topic of this thread.
I personally had a situation where I switched from one great coach to another great coach and it didn't click for me.
Thanks! Interesting…..looks at a fast glance that "the high mileage" then didn`t suit his mental and maybe even physical needs?
Who was the coach for Webb when he ran 10000m at 27.34 ? Must have been Salazar?
I too immediately thought of Brannen and Willis when Webb's struggles at Michigan came up. Thinking further along those lines, if people today saw what Timmons had Jim Ryun doing but did not know that the training was from Timmons to Ryun what the reaction would be. I think a lot of people would consider it bad training.