January 6, 2009

5 coaching related points that just don’t make sense to me…

1. Imagine the following scenario: You finished a really hard running session. You are sore. The next day, your legs are still sore and you tell your coach that your legs are full of lactic acid. Now, if your coach happens to be me – I would tell you not to be silly… Why? Because lactic acid is not present in your body… what you are really referring to is actually called lactate and it is not responsible for your sore muscles, especially not the next day. Unfortunately, this is very likely going to be lost on most coaches…

2. Athletes buying expensive HR monitors so they can train at a certain zone. The only problem is that have no idea what zone trains what and where their zones are anyways. Hmmmm… Same goes for power meters… Which is worse because those are significantly more expensive!

3. Coaches making up new definitions for well established, basic exercise physiology terms, causing confusion. Sport scientist spend a lot of times making sure that there is consistency among certain definitions in the literature, and then some coaches just make stuff up! Well, how about coaches and sport scientist start working together? Wow, what a concept ;)

4. An athlete walks into a bike store and spends $9000 on a high-end bike. However, a professional bike fit is simply too expensive, because it will cost $120-180, and it doesn’t matter anyways because the bike will make him/her so much faster! Yeah, sure…

5. Drills, drills and more drills to become a better swimmer. Are they actually helping you improve your technique? It takes a lot of strength and fitness to hold good technique, and that’s mainly going to come from SWIMMING, not from doing a million lengths worth of drills (which is boring anyways!). Actually, the same goes for cycling and running…

No comments: