The following "The Season of David" article is part of a weekly series by the "infamous" David Zylberberg, one of the original members of XC Ottawa. He is the writer of numerous amusing and sometimes controversial articles which have been the subject of much discussion within the Canadian cross-country racing community over the last 8 months. Hopefully, it will be the source of much entertainment while you are putting off work,school, or chores. David's articles will be candid and will not be censored by the editors of XC Ottawa. (At least not usually) Please address your comments and questions directly to David.
This week I thought I should discuss the nature of coaching and share some
personal experiences. There is a lot that coaches can do to help people ski
faster and a lot that they cannot do. The role and influence of a coach
should change somewhat over time and be responsive to the maturation of the
skier.
A coach=s role is basically to help someone ski faster. This takes on many
roles from the planning of training, implementation of workouts, teaching of
technique, correction of technique and help in preparation of equipment. All
of these are very skilled tasks that can be very beneficial to performance.
It seems that around here coaches are expected to be experts in every one of
these fields, so that a weakness in one can impede great skill in another. I
have great respect for coaches as people who put so much effort into helping
others ski fast and with younger skiers to also instill an enjoyment of the
outdoors and physical activity.
Coaches are integral in designing an effective training plan for younger
skiers and working together on a plan for more experienced skiers. Another
important benefit of coaching is having someone who can implement effective
workouts that maximize the desired training benefits. They are the most
effective method of learning proper technique and are generally responsible
for the technical skills that skiers acquire. Good coaches are also great
aids because they can balance conflicting opinions on many topics into a
coherent whole so that skiers only need to worry about following their
balanced program and learning the technique the coach has judged to be best.
Coaches are also a useful person in teaching skiers how to train properly
and passing along expertise on proper preparation.
Despite all of these skills and benefits, coaches cannot make skiers ski
faster on their own. Skiing fast requires great motivation and desire that
must come from the athlete. The coach can work with that desire and put it
on the correct path to skiing fast but cannot supply the desire. Also, the
physiological and technical adaptations that the training plan intends must
be achieved by the athlete. The coach creates the program to meet these
improvements and guides the athlete along the path but cannot actually make
the adaptations. The athlete must still do the training properly and take
care of the other things in life. Overall, coaches are very important
towards skiing fast but cannot supply motivation or actually do the
training.
The relationship between coach and athlete should change over the years.
When dealing with younger skiers, the coach needs to make most of the
training decisions and teach them why they are doing certain things. As
skiers progress and mature, they gain insights into skiing fast and a better
understanding of training. Thus, with senior skiers, the coach can work more
as an advisor who suggests things since the athlete should have good
understanding already. This also allows for two brains to examine things and
should lead to more effective programs. They would still create effective
workouts and should over suggestions for technique, though the skier should
understand technique already and merely need to know their flaws. This
relationship is more effective and can use the skiers knowledge as an
advantage towards improvement. This evolution is gradual so that at every
stage the athlete can assert more independence while still learning and
experimenting with the coach.
I have been fortunate over the years to be coached by a number of skilled
individuals who all instilled in me different elements of skiing fast. They
all created some good and distinctive workouts that I have tried to
implement over the years, but have been more useful in shaping my attitude
towards the sport. I would like to give them credit at this time.
As a junior, I was coached by Dave Battison and was a member of the
Laurentian Nordic Junior Racing Team. Dave was very big on the
competitiveness of sport and instilled in me the mentality that to win I had
to want it more than others and work harder than them. He did a good job of
instilling the attitude that sport is decided based on who is willing to
deal with more pain in order to achieve the goal. This is a very important
thing to have learned and is a lesson that all competitive athletes should
learn.
I then joined the Thunder Bay National Team Development Centre where I was
coached by Jonne Kahkonen. He was very big on creating every workout such
that it led to skiing faster. This is a really important lesson and if
properly implemented leads to more effective training. It was here that I
started thinking of ways to train more effectively without necessarily
working harder. He also taught me a lot of useful things about periodising
training throughout the year and using each workout to build the body up. I
still use a lot of his workouts ideas when doing easy distance training
since he had ways of maximizing speed and strength development while doing
easy distance workouts.
While in Ottawa I have been coached by Pavol Skvaridlo, who has been
assisted by John Langstone. These two men are very big on technique and
basically taught me the fundamentals of technique. They have done a
particularly good job on skate technique and have moulded me into the
technical skater that I currently am. Pavol also makes very good workouts
and does a good job with using the team size to create effective workouts.
He has also emphasized the need to train a lot and the proper amounts of
intensity, thereby greatly increasing the amount of intensity that I train
in relation to my time in Thunder Bay. These lessons coupled with the basic
lesson of maximizing the benefits from every workout have been essential in
leading to the effective training and improvements that I have made.
These skills are what I best learned from these coaches and what they
emphasized. All of them were generally skilled in each aspect of coaching.
This year XC OTTAWA has hired a new coach, John Suuronen. I am still being
coached by Pavol Skvaridlo but have been doing 2-3 workouts a week with
XCOTTAWA and Mr. Suuronen. I have been impressed with his abilities as a
coach and what he is doing with XCOTTAWA. He has created many effective
workouts and a number of skiers have shown major improvements in technique
and likely in fitness. He has also done a good job at creating programs (he
does not create mine yet) that seem to gradually build up the skier through
the year so that they should hopefully be at their best in March. He is a
very good coach for senior skiers since he is more laid back than most and
accepts that we are ready to exert some independence in training. While
allowing this independence, he has made many useful suggestions and
continues to make good workouts that accommodate the needs of a number of
skiers. His attitude seems fairly balanced and there has not been an
excessive amount of either distance or intensity. As long as workouts are
done well and a reasonable amount of everything is done, skiers seem to be
making improvements.
These are some insights I have had into coaching and the benefits I have
received from the numerous coaches I have worked with.
