ADD THIS TO YOUR COACHING PHILOSOPHY

Just yesterday I read an article that appeared on the Track Football Consortium website from track coach Tony Holler where he wrote about his liaisons with another track/running coach John O'Malley.

After numerous sit downs with him he put a bunch of specific questions to him on his coaching philosophy and here are what I chose as the best bits.

If you're a serious coach then you should be able to take PLENTY out of this and at the very least it will get you thinking.

- Athletes trust coaches and coaches trust athletes meaning that instead of people trusting the process 76ers style, people really trust people

- How to Cook v What's the Recipe...you can make a cheap piece of meat taste like a thousand dollars but you can also make an expensive piece of meat taste like garbage if you cook it wrong so learn how to "slow cook" your athletes so they'll be in the correct state at the right time to absorb the stimulus you want to give them and actually gain benefit from it. Running players into the ground the day after the game for "punishment" will do a hellava lot more worse then good in the short and long term.

- Never be afraid to do the things that you're afraid to do

- He gets bored if there isn't a threat of failure...learn to embrace potential failure

If you are a fan of the NBA then you'll be aware of Brad Stevens, the Boston Celtics coach, who he sent time with in his college days and he made these points about that experience:

- Your team will reflect your emotional discipline or lack of it

- Set standards/pillars before the season starts and when things get messy, go back to them

- Pillars are more important than goals as they lead to goals

- Get the right people on the bus and drop the wrong one's off

- Focus on relationships

- Pressure filled moments/weeks need to met with normalcy, again referring to your pillars, and make sure to have fun and enjoy the moment

 - Control the controllables better than anyone else and don't worry about the uncontrollables

- If you remember the racehorse movie Seabiscuit with Toby Maguire, then he thought that he had the perfect team with an owner who was idealistic/optimistic, picked his team and believed in them greatly + a trainer who had a ridiculous eye for detail and then a horse that had been beaten down but through nurturing he was able to fall in love with running again and loved to compete

- Look at sessions in time, not distance, as the time it takes  to perform a task will determine your athletes perceived effort better then anything

- Never be too far away from competition readiness

- Neurons fire or they don't and if they haven't had the recovery to fire again then you're wasting your time which is why max speed training needs full rest

- College coaches need dialogue with high school coaches of in-coming athletes (hint to coaches starting at new teams next year)

- Don't ever let getting strong or getting fit get in the way of getting fast

-  Max speed sprinting ability improves performance at every distance

- Speed reserve can be translated to any event

- If you stay between the lines then there's a traffic jam in front of you and it's far too crowded so even though it may be safer, you won't really get anywhere