TRIATHLON EDUCATION IV, ‘VACATIONING’

I have seen high performance institutes that have all what is needed to support athletes, except education.  The infrastructure is there including the human resources to support athletes at the highest level and sometimes they achieved “Gold.” This happens when the personnel is well trained and devoted to athletes.  Unfortunately, it is like taking a vacation trip for many athletes; a vacation trip that could last for years.  I discuss this with my patients also.  Some of my patients look “beautiful” when living with family, boyfriend, wife, husband, etc., but when they leave the relationship what we see is “horrible.”  We see just what the patient has; just think about Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florica (Floarea) Leonida http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florica_Leonida   

Retirement brings a lot of what we are after leaving the environment that helps us to develop “our talent.”  Tiger Woods is another example, even though he is not retired from golf but from his former family.  I know what my wife gives and what belongs to her and I would not be the same in her absence.  LIFE IS SO SIMPLE.  The champion depends on his/her environment.  I owe most of what I achieved to my family.  Education should help us to recognize what belongs to us or to somebody else.  When retired (in the sense of Tiger Woods), we come back to what we are and we can look horrible.  One of my patients used to tell me, the zip code comes back to me.  I have seen athletes in Cuba who gain tons of weight after retirement because they were just supported by the system but nothing belongs to them.  Educationally, nothing was gained by the athlete.

How to own what we practice and live is the key in this education and it comes from home at the beginning.  The problem in Mexico and many other countries is that after adolescence there is nothing that can support adolescents socially, and the infrastructure is very deficient to support something.  That is why Nicholas Romanov (Pose Tech) told me once: “In America, anybody can be a hero.”  He could not see that the infrastructure, considering coaches, environment around athletes and the system in general, makes the difference.

TRIATHLON EDUCATION III

I have read over and over articles like:  Who Makes It Into the Middle Class

By ANNIE LOWREY | New York Times – Fri, Sep 21, 2012 6:00 AM EDT

The study breaks life down into stages (for instance, adolescence) and gives benchmarks for each of those stages (in that case, graduation from high school with a grade-point average above 2.5, no criminal convictions and no involvement in a teenage pregnancy)… Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that success seems to beget success - meeting each benchmark makes one more likely to meet the next. Moreover, the effect accumulates. A child who meets all the criteria from birth to adulthood has an 81 percent chance of being middle class. A child who meets none has only a 24 percent chance…Family wealth, for instance, matters a lot. The researchers show that children born to rich families have a 75 percent chance of being middle income or better by the time they reach their 40s. For children born to poor families, the chance is just 40 percent.

The same thing for triathlon benchmarks which exist according to our empirical research.  Our success achieving those benchmarks will depend on the family and environment, as it was said on the previous post regarding triathlon education (I and II).  NOTHING DIFFERENT from what it is said in the article outline above; the benchmarks have little to do with athletics.  They are educational benchmarks and very difficult to measure.  It is as difficult as to calculate “how crazy is somebody.”  Let´s look at those benchmarks:

1)   How much “heart” the athlete has?

2)   How much the athlete enjoys training?

3)   How much the athlete enjoys learning?

4)   How much the athlete enjoys the environment?

Paul Bergen mentioned something important when comparing training a horse versus training a human being.  6 avr. 2012 TRIATHLON PHYSIOLOGY FOR DUMMIES AND THE TENDENCY TOWARD THE MEAN.  Horses do not have parents. Evaluating athletes regarding the four points mentioned above requires a “well-made human being.” Not everybody could evaluate those four points.

Improving for the Worlds

Look at the athletic population around you and start practicing your “clinical eye” regarding those four points.  Even further, make your own empirical research “without lying to yourself” and you will start improving your life regarding “performance.” It is not just athletics.  We know that “global warming” is “real,” but we still do not believe it.  We are deteriorating as a whole.

SAT Reading Scores Are the Lowest They've Been in 40 Years

By Alexander Abad-Santos | The Atlantic Wire – Mon, Sep 24, 2012

Coming in with an average SAT reading score of 496, 2012's graduating seniors have the dubious distinction of having attained the worst reading score since 1972. (For those test-takers of a certain age and test-taking history, "reading" is actually that part we knew as "verbal.") Regardless of what you call(ed) it, "The average reading score for the Class of 2012 was 496, down one point from the previous year and 34 points since 1972," reports the Washington Post's Emma Brown, gleaning numbers from the College Board, the organization that administers the test. 

ARMSTRONG PERSECUTED

fOR STRANGE REASON THIS PAGE DOES NOT APPEAR WITH THE TITLE:
Triathlon, Socrates and Armstong.
This is as old as Socrates and perhaps even before, but this is how democracy works and started with the Greeks.
In the spring of 399 B.C., Socratescon­fronted 500 Athe­ni­ans, cit­i­zens, judges and jurors, in his trial ini­ti­ated by the charges lev­eled at him by Mele­tus, Any­tos and Lycon. The trial began with a read­ing of the for­mal charges:“Socrates is a doer of evil, and cor­rupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the state, and he believes in other new divini­ties of his own.”
Last Fri­day the Onas­sis Cul­tural Cen­tre in Athens gave Socrates a new trial, assem­bling a panel of dis­tin­guished jurists from Europe and Amer­ica to reopen the case. This time the ver­dict was dif­fer­ent. The vote by the jury was a 5–5 tie, which meant Socrates was acquit­ted. The audience’s vote was more deci­sive: 5 to con­vict, 584 to acquit. Of course, it was a lit­tle late for Socrates.

http://www.theremainsoftheweb.com/2012/05/31/socrates-tried-again-in-athens-and-acquitted/

Four hundred years after Socrates, Jesus suffered the same end. We are repetitive animals that it is why my supervisor Robert Seidenberg, MD said that to me, 10 avr. 2012 TRIATHLON PHYSIOLOGY FOR DUMMIES AND THE TENDENCY TOWARD THE MEAN Robert did many things for me. I thanked him when leaving supervision after a year; and on the way of exiting his office in the corridor, he yelled at me from his desk before I reached the door: “Be careful, every boy born in a Catholic country wants to be like Jesus and ends crucified.” We want to be as our heroes, that is what limits us. At the end, it is so simple,“YOU SHOULD CHOOSE YOUR HEROES AND FOLLOW THEM IF YOU WANT TO BE CHAMPION.”

What is happening today?

You are right champ! We have not learned many things over millenniums and still do murderous rituals as in the past. That is why you are the champ.

Happy Birthday Gloria!

To our dear friend GLORIA: ''Joyeux anniversaire!''

We celebrated your birthday and our friendship by climbing twice ‘’El Estudiante,’’

 

running our mile race pace 

 and swimming at the lake.

 

--Happy Birthday Gloria--

Thank you for sharing each week your valuable knowledge and making us stronger mentally and physically.

 

Love from TEAM OAXACA.

Triathlon Education II.

C’est pas catholique

I heard this expression when working in Switzerland.  It has to do with the fact of being sensitive to the Other or what we perform that influenced our soul and others; in other words, it has to do with HAVING A HEART.  I do not know the entire history of the expression, but it was present in the ''cantons catholiques'' for a reason.

Sensitivity is present when we practice triathlon at a high level.  The fear of falling is so prevalence when we run that we can have a history of the person running when we look at him running.  We can profile somebody by the way he/she runs. As a doctor, learning to read signs is a matter of survival for the doctor and the patient.  Sensitivity should be part of the triathlon education if we want to perform at a high level.  It is learned at home.

How we go about it?  Practice drills that help to enhance sensitivity.  I heard an adolescent athlete who mentioned that practicing yoga or Pilates helps to make them aware of his impulsivity, and the practice of these disciplines helps to work on it. Three seconds to think about an action makes the different between the genius and the stupid. Adolescent athletes say that practicing Pilates helps them to improve concentration.  The better we get on concentration the better competitors we become.  Here the instructor and coach play a major role; depending on the standards of the coach or instructor we get the level of concentration.  How far we are pushed to improve concentration depends on how the leader concentrates.  That is why is so important to work with the best.  The best coach not in paper but in results from scratch.

The feel for the water is a problem all the time when athletes start swimming after the age of seven.  They have problems “feeling the water.”  The water becomes and obstacle instead of a medium to move.  David Salo has worked for years the “feeling of the water.”

TRIATHLON EDUCATION

Following the previous post on this blog, we continue with education. You can make many mistakes in training and still get good results when you have this "sophisticated athlete."  The real problem is to create this entity from scratch.

Once I knew a coach who said to one of his athletes: “You do not have a heart.”  An interesting way of looking at education.  Not having a heart is teachable and the opposite the same.  You need to have a heart to become excellent athlete, friend, sibling, son and companion.  When we speak about education, this is what we refer to.  LEARN TO HAVE A HEART.  Everything becomes easy, technique, tactics, etc.  Shakespeare said something regarding this education: (Hamlet)… “Blessed are those who mix emotion with reason in just the right proportion, making them strong enough to resist the whims of Lady Luck. Show me the person who’s master of his emotions, and I’ll put him close to my heart—in my heart of hearts—as I do you (when speaking to Horatio).”

To teach to have a heart requires integrity in parents.  As Albert Einstein said: “The only rational way to educate is with the example.”  When Paul Bergen visited us, he put it bluntly:

Paul Bergen is an Olympic swimming coach from the United States. He has coached in the USA and Canada, winning coach of the year honors in both countries in different years.[1] He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame as an Honor Coach in 1988.[2] He has coached swimmers to 21 World, 24 USA and 13 Canadian records.[1]

Among the athletes he has coached are: Deena Deardurff,.[3] Tracy Caulkins and Inge de Bruijn. He has coached with the Cincinnati Marlins in Ohio, Nashville Aquatic Club in Tennessee, the University of Texas, Tualatin Hills in Oregon, and Etobicoke in Ontario, Canada.[1 He served on USA coaching staffs to World Championships in 1975, 1978 and 1982, and with Canada in 1986.[2] He was an Olympic coach in 1980, 1984, 1988 and 2000.[1]

…  He left many experiences when he visited us.  Swimmers worked on speed while breathing among many interesting things.  Breathing is so simple and very important if somebody wants to swim fast; don’t lose the rhythm when you breathe.  In addition to being a swimming coach, Paul trained horses.  Bob Bowman (Michael Phelps' coach) looked for Paul while he was training horses “to know his secrets” and took his first lessons in a barn.  We learned many things from Paul, and in the questions session his answer given to one of them said everything about his neurophylosophy.  What is the difference in training horses and humans?  He said: “I will mention few of them.”

1)   Horses are natural athletes.  They do not need much training.

2)   Horses eat just what they need.

3)   Horses do not fool themselves; they run until they die.

4)   Horses do not have parents.

6 avr. 2012 TRIATHLON PHYSIOLOGY FOR DUMMIES AND THE TENDENCY TOWARD THE MEAN

 

Teaching somebody who does not have the tools at home to learn “having a heart” is almost impossible.  You need a team able to do it, where everybody speaks the same “grammar.”  A team that over the years has worked on how to have a heart.  That is why so many coaches failed; they do not have the team to do the job.  Teaching somebody to have a heart is a 24 hour job.

Obama has teaching rules for his daughters to give you an idea what we meant by education.

They must do their chores. Though the White House has a large staff, Malia and Sasha have chores of their own. "They have to make their beds, they have to clean up their rooms," she said last year. "They have chores to do, and they don't get their allowance until they can prove that they've done their chores for the week."

They can't watch much TV. "We have clear rules about screen time and TV time. None during the week if it doesn't involve schoolwork," she said. They're allowed some TV time on the weekends, but even then "I try to fill up their weekends with a lot of stuff so they wind up missing that, too," Mrs. Obama confided. "It's like, sports and games, and then, oh, it's bedtime, so sorry you didn't get your TV time in."

No R-rated movies for pre-teens. While Malia, 14, has gone to a few R-rated movies (after they've been vetted by her parents), Sasha, 11, is not allowed to watch R-rated movies at all, and even kid-centric TV shows get monitored. "Nowadays, sometimes what's on the kid programming, some of that teenage programming is pretty high-level stuff, too," the first lady said. "So you find that you have to constantly just be engaged with them and hear what they're learning and talk to them about the shows that they're watching."

They can only have healthy snacks. "We have fruit. We have some cereals, some crackers, nuts, dried foods that are out," Mrs. Obama said. "We try to put out healthy snacks in clear containers, because seeing dried fruit gives the kids the idea, 'Oh, yes, if I'm hungry I could really have this or the nuts or the soybean things.' And my whole thing is if you're really hungry, you can have that. If you don't really want it, then you're not really hungry."

They must play a team sport. "Sports is an expectation, and we say it's an expectation because it's about good health," the first lady said. "It's about learning how to play on a team, learning how to lose, learning how to win gracefully, learning how to trash talk and not get your feelings hurt." Individual sports are great, but "I think team sports are important particularly for girls, where they learn the camaraderie of being dependent on other people for the victory," she told Yahoo! Shine in April. "And I think my girls need to learn how to compete. Whether they choose to do it long term, I just think it's an important opportunity for girls to have."

Quitting is not allowed. "Kids tend to quit when it starts getting hard, which means that's when they're starting to learn something," Mrs. Obama told Yahoo! Shine. "And that's the tough time to continue to make them go to that tennis lesson. Even though Malia was complaining about it, she now loves tennis. And now she's saying, 'Well, I'm glad you made me keep taking tennis.' "

In the end, the Obamas want for their kids the same things that we want for ours: A chance for them to grow into safe, responsible, and happy people.

"They're terrific girls. They're poised and they're kind and they're curious. Like any mother, I am just hoping that I don't mess them up," the first lady told Yahoo! Shine. "Even when times are tough, in the end you are as happy as your least happy child."