Darren A Coaching

As a coach I try and spend my time purely and solely on the improvement the athletes under my instructions.   Although occasionally you need to get involved in the other side of the sport, including officialdom and politics, if you believe it is for the benefit of the athletes in your care. The sport has had a bit of an issue with a timing mechanism.   This issue has spread a bit by wild fire when the official results appeared to be slower than the training times, hand times and video analysis suggested of athletes.   These comments moved on to social media, mainly Facebook, and where fuelled by the sprint fraternity, of which I am one, with athletes performing three tenths of second slower in similar conditions   than they did in previous weeks. I personally was involved in these conversations, trying to ask questions and be positive as the last thing I want to happen is for the volunteer officials to leave the sport (some of them are also friends).   Below ...

Firstly, I apologise for only getting one blog done in Jannuary - life got a bit busy. The season is getting towards the pointy end, with the following events happening the next six weeks 25 February 2011           State Meet 24 March 2011               State Championships As I write this, we have another two weeks of SPP to go, prior to a 4 weeks competition peak.   The State Meet on the 25 th is a competition. According to Charlie Francis, depending on your training the number of races to achieve peak performance is as follows; 100m                    5-6 200m                    4-5 400m                 ...

In a recent interview with Glenn McGrath, he was asked what goes through his head at the top of his run before he bowls.   His answered was as follows.   Walking to the top of my mark, I think about and analyse the previous ball.   I then work out what ball I will bowl next.   As I turn at the top of my head I forget about it all, sing a song in my head and then commence my run to the crease. For people who don’t know who Glenn McGrath is, he was one of Australian best fast bowlers in cricket, this link, http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/6565.html , show his statistics. What he does, should be performed in some way by any athlete who does multiple events or has multi performances in one event. Psychologists, or people, who know the terminology better than I, will tell you the name and what you are trying to achieve. The way I see it, when you are performing don’t think whilst in the act, trust your training and if, slight, adjustments need to be ma...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  I had a great weekend, ate too much food and was spoilt with presents. My last blog was about a peaking strategy that I was using with one of my athletes.  Overall his performance was solid.  He run a 0.40 seconds seasons best in the 400m and an average 100m.  The athletes comments showed that the athlete is improving in what we are trying to achieve. In the 100m he gave most of his competitors a metre or so in the first 10m, but he run a brilliant 10 to 40m.  His lack of top end speed and endurance showed the last 30 metres. In the 400m he run the first 200 metres, around 0.50 seconds slower than we had planned. Most athletes have gone back into a short 2 weeks GPP (general preparation phase) over the Christmas and New Year period.  The running squad have to get 100 points every week, with points ranging from 5 to 25 points.  Below is the schedule, they have 16 options and how many times a week they ...

The Saturday just finished was one of the biggest events the Athletics community in Hobart has prior to Christmas, the meet is important as it is the meet to allow the athletic fraternity to celebrate and remember our past greats.  As a person I believe it is important that we remember them. After an athlete had followed a 10 day peaking cycle he came out and run 0.40 seconds faster in the 400m.  His comment was he didn't run fast enough in the first 200m, so he could have run faster.  Unfortuately I missed the meet, as I had another function to attend. The question I need to ask as a coach, did the peaking cycle work? What do we need to improve on? As a coach, it is a learning experience with every athlete as they are all slightly individual. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

This weekend is the first weekend where my athletes are going in with a peaking phase.  The last 2 weeks the volume of running has decreased by over 50% with a small drop in intensity. The plan is a consistent structure and is based on the my blog post http://darrenacoaching.blogspot.com/2011/08/peaking.html .  This phase there have been some changes in the reps and distance, but only minor. This  is the last meet prior to Christmas and 3 months to the State Championships.  Do they need to peak?  Probably not, I look at doing a peak at this time for a number of reasons, as follows; 1. Chance to see if the the peaking works for the athlete(s).  By doing this, it gives us an opportunity to get the peaking structure right when we need it. 2. Go into Christmas, happy and ready to for the new year, with a good performance - hopefully a Seasons Best of Personal Best.  I found as an athlete, if I had a good performance pre Christmas I enjoyed my Chris...

This weekend, is the first major competition for school aged athletes.  Fortunately I only have two resistance athletes competing. Fortunately I hear you ask. I am a nervous watcher of track and field when athletes I coach are competing.  As an athlete I rarely got nervous, as I knew what work I had done and what I expected from this training.  As a coach, I watch my athlete get ready for an event and the time between wishing them luck to the completion of their race I have no control, I have to hope we have done the work and reduced the work load correctly and satisfactorily to perform at a desired level. That being said, I have never been disappointed at the effort of the athlete, but sometimes the result has been lacking. So to all athletes and coaches, good luck at your competition and hope you achieve the result from the training you have done