We start
with the same introduction of the previous posts (I), (2):
I heard a friend saying: “I do not know a coach who
has crafted champions from scratch more than once.” We went over several
coaches, but we had difficulties finding coaches not just in triathlon but in
any sport. They do exist! There are not as many as we would like to
believe. I thought about Javier Gómez’ coach and believed that he is a
good advisor which Gómez needs at this time of his career. Gómez was born
in Switzerland and his family learned something there that helped at this point
of his life. I thought about the Brownlees. His father is a doctor and
ran competitively when in College; his mother is a former competitive
swimmer. The Brownlees have several coaches depending on the different
triathlon segments. Bob Bowman grew old with Michael Phelps; he even had
a house next to Michael’s. Crafting a champion needs a coach, a family
and a culture since they are born in order to be successful. It is
necessary to be at the right place at the right time when all those three
ingredients are ready. Bowman worked pretty hard raising Michael from scratch,
as he puts it: “Coaching Debbie (Michael’s mother) was even more difficult than
coaching Michael.” He has had a few others swimmers but none of them was
really crafted by him. The three ingredients mentioned above need the
same level of education; meaning the same guidelines to follow in our thought
process.
What is what we need to teach? What makes this
environment unique? There is a good book that has a provocative name:
“The Art of Thinking Clearly,” written by a Swiss, Rolf Dobelli. The book gives
guidelines to learn in order to think clearly, guidelines needed if we want to
be successful. Several similar books have been written dealing with the
issue of what to teach.
I found interviews
with the author in the internet and it is obvious; the coach should know that a
family and a competitive culture are needed to create champions. We
started by creating an environment, which has been always evolving, to then
“think” about creating champions.
We started
with our fourth generation of kids aspiring to be champions. They are created as triathletes but
interestingly they all run faster than just runners with the triathlon program;
they all are fast riding the bike. The
11 year old runs the mile in 5:40; the just turned 13 years of age runs a mile
in 5:15; and the 13 years old going into 14 runs the 3k in 9:17. The younger boys started swimming at six and
seven years of age respectively, and comfortably can do 9 hours of swimming/week
in addition of biking and running. The
older boy started swimming at the age of 13 and his skills are behind compared
to the other two. They all went to
National Series Championship at Veracruz and ended in first, third and second
of their categories. It means that we
have reached the podium on the first three categories for males; the next
category is junior and we have a year before entering.
At this
point we have the competitive culture needed but we are working on how to
improve the perception of the family over what quality means. How to improve the standards of quality of
the family? This process is extremely important;
it is where we have failed in the past. We believed that we were on the same page but
they were sabotaging their growing up because they did not have the standards
to succeed, i.e., the RAM if you wish.
3 août 2014
Knowing what
we know, should we stop trying? Nope, looking and living our own evolution is “living
life.” We will just try different
strategies.
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