Coaching - the good, the bad and the ugly

Happy New Year to you all. Bonne Année tout le monde!

Many of you will have set new goals recently or reviewed and renewed your enthusiasm over Christmas and New Year to achieve goals you set previously. Having goals are great motivators as I discussed before http://christinehemphill.blogspot.com/2010/11/setting-and-achieving-remarkable-goals.html. Now is a great time to consider if you have the right team around you to find a better path than you would find alone (although there are some wrong ways, I personally don't believe there is ever one right way) to achieve them.

Although I have good internal motivation for self learning and training, I love learning from others and need a trusted advisor to really get the best out of myself. Most of us do. So that brings me to some thoughts on coaching, one of the critical elements of my team that help change my 2011 goals from scary hairy big to possible.

So what is coaching? I have a really broad definition of coaching. It is not necessarily the traditional person with a whistle and stop watch monitoring your session. In my mind it is any assistance from anyone where they are trying to increase your chance of achieving your goal/s by assisting across all of or some of the cycle of planning, training and monitoring/re-evaluation. Whether you are a novice or professional, training 4 hours or 25 hours a week, good coaching will extend you closer &/or faster towards your real capability.

What are the benefits? I know I would never have got to the level I have without the positive involvement of coaches. My goals were not high initially. I was hoping to finish in the top half of the field at the World Champs in 2009 when I decided to go, before I was persuaded by my coach at the time that I could top ten and possibly podium. I believed it, and therefore it became possible. What I have done since, including topping the podium at last year’s World Champs and turning pro would also not have been possible without the experience and advice of others that have guided me.

I have personally benefitted from some great coaching, some good coaching and unfortunately some really bad coaching. I say benefitted, as good, bad or ugly, all of it was a learning experience. I have also had a broad range of levels of coaching from a simple online, very slightly tailored standard programs through to daily coaching where even my choice of toothpaste was up for questioning.

So here are ten thoughts I have had on how you might maximise your chance of getting a good or great coaching experience and save yourself the painful learning of the bad, sad, nasty or plain useless.

1. Know what you most need in a coach, what you would like and what you are prepared to pay for 
2. Establish clear roles and responsibilities in the relationship from the beginning on both sides. Agree them in writing. Then ensure you both keep to them.
3. Do what you say you will do and expect the same of the coach, but understand that some stuff is unforeseeable and try and work through early when it is not possible. If you or the coach is not able to live up to either side of the bargain or it could be improved, change it. Go back and review the agreement. 
4. Ensure the personal dynamic works. Invest the time in getting to know your coach and allow your coach to know you so you can help them best find out how to engage, inspire and improve your capability. Obviously this is more important the more interaction you have chosen. Also understand that people are not robots and some relationships work easily and fluidly and others are may remain awkward despite best efforts. 
5. Build trust and mutual respect so that it is easy for you both to share what needs to be said / done clearly and openly but in a way that is respectful and recognises what you each bring to the team. The more you can be honest about things that may create a barrier to performance like fears or health issues, the better you can work through these with guidance.
6. Listen, learn, question for understanding and try stuff you may not yet be convinced of. Monitor the results over time see how it works.
7. Expect knowledge and competence commensurate with the level of coach and breadth of involvement you have chosen. Don’t expect any coach to know everything, but they should at minimum be prepared to answer questions and if they don’t know, say so and point you somewhere to go looking for an answer or offer to come back later with one.
8. Recognise coaches are fallible as it is a complex job (as my coach says, a great blend of both art and science) so everyone responds slightly differently and you may not always get the results you hope to from doing what they recommend. However you can assist the process by providing timely, good feedback as you go so they can adjust and adapt as needed.
9. Never, ever expect or accept verbal, physical or mental abuse. Obviously never give any either. It can be very damaging both within and outside of your sporting goals. If you have been around sport for a while, you will probably have experienced or at least seen the sort of coach who thinks that swearing, shouting or otherwise abusing athletes is a really good way to get the best out of someone. It isn’t. Simple as that. You are paying for someone’s assistance to reach your goal. If they are abusive they will threaten it, not help you achieve it. Being told off for not doing what you had said you would is one thing, being abused on the side of the pool or track is quite different. Know also that it goes against the Code of Practice any qualified coach will have signed and committed to. Don’t accept it.
10. Remember your goal is your responsibility and despite the best and most active coaching in the world, no-one can achieve it for you. A coach is a key part of your team that helps you and therefore should share in the outcome both for better or worse. They can assist you organise and prioritise your time efficiently, technically adapt in each discipline, encourage/ motivate you, guide you as best they can, but you still have to do the work and drive towards the outcome that you want. So get the best coaching you can find, suited to your needs, but do not think you can obviate yourself of the responsibility of achieving your dreams. 

Obviously before you look to get any coaching, you need to understanding where your greatest knowledge or skill gap is, determine what level of involvement you want from others and in what areas and inversely, what you wish to do yourself. Just as you know you will pay more for a higher quality, lighter weight, stiffer bike, understand that services have a value too and you should expect to pay more for higher tailoring to your specific needs, broader or more regular involvement.

Look to the people you know around locally as well as options further afield or online and think through how well their offering/s may work for you. Physical location is not such a huge barrier anymore. My current coach, Dave, is based on the other side of France, yet between regular Skype catch ups, occasional video footage, detailed daily programs and feedback captured daily within it, it can work pretty easily across geographies if you want it to.

A combination of approaches may be better than looking for a one stop shop too. For example a simple tailored program set to optimise your time availability may work for you in conjunction with a masters swim squad, camp and/or well organised cycling club.  I combine ongoing high quality but remote coaching with short intense face-to-face opportunities such as the camp I am heading to this weekend in the UK led by Jack Maitland, one of Dave’s colleagues. Jack is distinguished as being the coach of both Alistair and Jonathan Brownlee the current stand out stars in his high quality stable. During the camp I can get detailed technical analysis and advice to focus my next period of training that Dave and I can work on.

Time for an unashamed plug here. If you are Europe based (or feel like a good excuse to be in French Alps next summer and the Tour de France is not enough to get you here), then you could benefit from Dave’s coaching too. You could augment your program and current coaching with a week of focussed training and detailed coaching including technique analysis and assessment in each discipline and lots of opportunity to learn about all the other performance elements such as effective tapering, transition, nutrition and hydration, injury prevention and management etc. 

He and I are running a number of triathlon camps in the Aravis Valley for Adventures in the Alps. Each is targeted to specific groups so you can train with people of similar level from beginner to strong, sprint or ironman athletes, women's specific or mixed. More info is available here http://www.adventuresinthealps.com/fitness-retreats-summer-2011.html. There are a number of great discipline specific camps too such as a cycling camp with Welsh pro cyclist Yanto Barker or a swim camp with UK Olympic medallist Sharron Davies.

So, whatever your goals, and wherever you are based, make a difference to your chances of success this year. Find a coach or coaching combination that you trust and respect and that offers the level of engagement that you would like and then together go out and make the possible, probable.

All the best!

Until next time / A bientot
Christine