BACK to SCHOOL with the Late BERNIE
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BACK TO SCHOOL with the Late BERNIE WAKEFIELD CREATIVE COACHING – Part 1 Coaches should prepare to step outside, if only briefly, the conventional values and subsequent restrictions of present day training regimens and keep their minds receptive to change. RESTRICTIVE THINKING The issue of “correct training procedure” is one I would like to pursue. You see, the human races are essentially copyists. For 50 years or so that is all we have been doing; copying the innovative ideas of Carlile, Cotton and Counsilman. Then by various methods, refining by test and trial those very ideas until we have arrived at this propitious moment. It now seems ominous, if we don’t do something quite radically different, we are going to crunch to a halt. Well, perhaps nothing so permanent, there is always a superior athlete who is a little stronger, has a better technique or possesses the ability to train more intensively without breaking down. I would suggest that moment has already arrived! Scientists are remarkable for one feature in their collective make-up. They appear to have inherited, perhaps by the very nature of their disciplined education, a restrictive tunnel vision. So they are ever in pursuit of perfecting an idea, refining a methodology or building a better mousetrap. The creation of an entirely original notion is a rarity. What we badly need is some creative thinking or LATERAL thinking, so succinctly labelled by Edward De Bono. The walls of that tunnel are perfectly smooth from all that testing. There is little improvement remaining in that direction. We must look for another way. Perhaps we should go right back to grass roots and start afresh! RESTRICTIVE PRACTICES The biggest problem we face in modern training is, without a doubt, the inability of the athlete to respond to hard intensity work of any length of time without breaking down. If we could remove that barrier, INSTANT SUCCESS would follow. Of course, it has all been done before – with the use of pharmaceutical aids, BUT there has to be a natural and legitimate means of travelling down that same road for the same result. AEROBIC versus ANAEROBIC At this point, the question of Aerobic conditioning must arise. There has been much speculation in recent years over this contentious issue. There should not be; it is not only necessary, it is essential. The only question is, how much? And again that relates to the individual swimmer, the stroke or the distance competed. Every coach knows that the fitter the swimmers are, the more intense the workload they can bear. Of course, the interpretation of INTENSITY can cause some confusion as it could relate to any or all of the energy systems. Generally the understanding is that it means work in the maximal aerobic to peak lactate range – which covers a rather large area and again, differs with each individual, etc. The reality of training is so very simple – the nearer a swimmer can train to his maximum velocity, the better his results will be. However, without a background of aerobic conditioning it is not possible to train at that intensity – at least not for long periods. Nevertheless, at some stage of the macro cycle he has to make that commitment to work at near race pace for as long as possible. The training model suggested and approved by most sports scientists puts the intensity portion of the cycle at 20%. This percentage refers to the total anaerobic content. The actual race pace factor would be nearer 5%. Extraordinary! Does that not seem a pitiful amount of real work? Yes, it certainly is minuscule in real terms but if an athlete followed this very training plan that would be close to the correct amount he could tolerate without suffering a bum-out or breakdown. The Chinese and East Germans found that their athletes could tolerate increased workloads of this nature with illegal drug abuse. Our short-term plan should be to devise legal and safe methods in achieving similar results. So where do we start? The first answer that seems sensible is to increase the aerobic content in terms of more miles. That will almost certainly improve the swimmers speed over a distance but only in terms of maintenance of speed – not an improvement in maximum speed. If we stick to the conventional program there is a real chance the swimmer will reach World standard but unlikely to improve on it unless he is a most superior athlete. The third option is to increase the intensity levels of race-pace training – MORE AND FASTER! To do that would be a dangerous practice and not recommended … unless? At this crisis point in World swimming a visionary is desperately required – someone with the revolutionary ideas of an Einstein, a Newton or a Marconi – to completely change our now outdated training rationale. A TALL TALE OR TWO The history of the World contains some incredible feats of survival by adaptation. Not the least of these was the mythical adventures of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. Abandoned as babies, these twin sons of Mars, the God of War, were left to drown in the river Tiber. They were rescued and suckled by a she-wolf, so the story goes, until they were eventually discovered, safe and well by a shepherd Myths being ancient tales beyond time or reality, I guess we can take this fable with a large grain of salt. However, there are more recent events of this nature that stagger incredulity. The belief is now that the imaginative tale of Tarzan and his upbringing by a tribe of apes was an actual event that occurred in the same area around that particular time. Burroughs simply drew on the story and enhanced it considerably. Even more recent was a documented happening in India of the capture of a young boy age about 10- 12 found roaming with a pack of wild dogs. Unbelievable as it may seem, the dogs adopted (accepted?) him as a young child and to all intents and purposes he WAS a dog! The only sounds he made were growls and snarls and, like a dog, HE RAN ON ALL FOURS! Not only that, but he was as swift and agile as any in the pack. Unfortunately I cannot find any information on his subsequent life. So what have these tall tales to do with modern training methods? Surely I’m not suggesting we turn our young swimmers out into the ocean to swim with wild dolphins in an effort to turn them into super swimmers! The point I was attempting to make was that the human organism is resilient and tough enough to adapt to the most impossible conditions. We don’t have to go to such extreme lengths … that was merely an illustration of what IS possible. JUNIOR SWIMMERS My experience with young swimmers over a 30-year era has led me down many paths. Many were blind alleys and others wandered off into obscurity. There were a few encouraging leads though, which for some reason or other I did not pursue very vigorously. Perhaps conservatism and a lack of courage held me back. One of those leads occurred because I had no alternative. At that time I coached at an ancient 100-foot pool often crowded beyond comfort and I had to create programs that would at least improve their ability and make them competitive. This program, of necessity, contained many short sprints, relays, catch-ups, miss and outs and other games of this variety … speed being the top priority. It was easy to stroke-correct in these sessions as they really only had to concentrate for a few seconds – about the average attention span of 6-10 year olds! The results obtained were most satisfactory as they competed only over 25-50m distances. Those kids could really shift water! Of course, they did find difficulty in holding fast splits over 400s but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. Later, when they were old enough to join the senior squads they did more endurance work and had no problems adapting their Natural and Acquired speed to the longer events. After all that lead-up I hope the message is coming through clear, why are we doing so much aerobic miles with our juniors when it appears to be not an essential issue? Well, not at this time anyhow. At that age they are most adaptable to change and fast work will not only activate and develop their fast twitch fibres but also assist in maturing their muscle groups. Gives them heaps of fun too. I certainly don’t mean program only this type of work. Obviously there has to be some aerobic features in the nature of drills and skills but in my humble opinion the emphasis should be on SPEED and subsequent POWER. FAST FIRST … ENDURANCE LATER One further point that may be of interest. In this particular time when I was also experimenting with short sprint with my senior group I was programming up to eight full-blooded effort swims per week. These were up to 200m in distance and swum on a daily basis. The instructions were to put out a 100% effort for each swim. I did these for two or more seasons and recorded rapid improvement in all those taking part. Since then, sports scientists have urged me to drop this type of loading as being too stressful. I have to report that I did not experience any sort of burnout or breakdown in that period from doing that work. Later, the same people recommended that I reduce the number of 100s we were doing in Heart- Rate sets.