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."