TRIATHLON PHYSIOLOGY FOR DUMMIES AND THE TENDENCY TOWARD THE MEAN

Paul Bergen And The Sport Science

Neurophylosophy--"Il y a toujours un Dieu pour celui qui cherche.''

Part Nine

When I met Paul, he had been invited to Guadalajara to create a swimming school directed by the Guadalajara Club.   Guadalajara Club had just soccer as the only sport and Jorge Vergara--owner of the Club Guadalajara where “Chicharito” played- wanted to develop different sports.  Vergara thought that soccer was a sport.  Not realizing that it is a show more than anything, and sometimes it is a very bad one.  When Vergara found out that it was not a great business to start creating champions in REAL sports and not soccer, he decided to let the coaches go, including the great Paul Bergen.  Paul stayed a year developing the project.  He had the project and presented it in Acapulco where I went to listen to the Swimming Gold Medalist Coaches from Athens.  Paul was one of them because he trained Inge de Brujn who won a gold medal in Athens. Wikipedia says:

Coach Paul Bergen

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]

I invited him to come to Oaxaca to take a look at our triathletes.  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 breath.  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.

What is said above is the cornerstone of the coach training athletes.  If we want to create a champion, the four things mentioned above should be in place to have good chances of success.  I asked Gennadi Touretski about Paul.  He said: “We were rivals in the Cold War but we kept a good relationship and talked about training then.”  He went on talking about what happened to them.  He said, “When one gets up every day at 4:00 am and sees the faces of the swimmers it is deceiving, and one has to fight to continue.  I think that Paul had the same fight; he fought and got tired to the point of getting sick.  He was an extremely nice looking man.”

Think about the above and make sure you solve the problems regarding the four points mentioned by Paul. This article was written to take a break from hard science BUT EVERYTHNG WE SAY HAS A NEUROPHILOSOPHY behind.  Michel Jouvet, Gold Medal from France in Science says: "Il y a toujours un Dieu pour celui qui cherche.'' Please read parts 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8, so we are on the same page.

GOOD LUCK COACH!