In the technology press this week was the news that Facebook has suffered a drop in use in the UK, for the second month in succession. I use Facebook, mainly as a tool to stay in touch with friends and to distribute links to this blog, and I have to say that I too have experienced a little fatigue in using it. Not enough to stop though. I also use Twitter (@nwconditioning) and Linkedin, both of these I use more as a strength and conditioning coach/business owner and definitely find I get more from these two tools.
The strength and conditioning roundtable on Linkedin has been useful for coaches to share ideas and debate certain topics. Linkedin has a fairly large strength and conditioning community to connect with but I don’t find it’s format especially intuitive and so the major use I get from it is to post my blogs to it. I’m also not a huge fan the feature allowing you to see who’s viewed your page, it definitely restricts the amount I browse on there.
By far and away the tool I use most though is Twitter. If you pick your followers wisely, the content you can be directed to takes a lot of time out of browsing for it yourself. That’s what I use it for. There’s a of posts on there that I’m not fussed about reading but after using for a little while you can identify those who post things you find useful and use the list feature. I use it as a bit of a filter. In terms of tweets, I’m quite targeted about what I put on there, if I find something I think is useful for people to see then I’ll post it or retweet it. I also use it to get some advice such as info certain products or text books and to occasionally mention something I’m doing to maintain activity on the site.
To be honest though, I think you get more out of a 5 minute chat with another coach rather than from 140 characters at a time, which is one reason I’m looking forward to the UKSCA conference this weekend. I try to make sure that social networking via the internet doesn’t detract from actual face to face networking and try to meet up with a couple of other coaches each month to share ideas and grow my network. I also think Skype is a great tool that I’m hoping to use more for networking so if any coaches reading this fancy a Skype chat anytime just give me a shout (Skype name is neilwelch).
For this blog I/you have to thank Ian McKeown (@IanMackers – has a good blog here that is definitely worth following) for pointing me in the direction of a blog on early specialisation on twitter . It got me thinking. What is driving this behaviour? The blog mentions the commercialisation of sport and the media glamourising rich athletes creating extrinsic motivation for the young athlete, parents wanting to provide opportunities to excel and a limited number of coaching jobs causing coaches to push athletes into earlier specialisation as reasons. I’d like to delve a little deeper if I may.
I’m not so sure on the first point. Are young athletes driven by the wages and commercial opportunities that are associated with success at the highest levels of sport and the entrapments that so often seem to accompany it? They don’t tend to get mentioned in separate articles within the media. If young athletes read the tabloid press, I’m not sure the hounding that Tiger Woods, Ryan Giggs and Lance Armstrong have received recently would seem too appealing.
I’d say that young athletes are the most likely of anyone to dissociate the celebrity and monetary rewards from the adulation received from having 80,000 screaming their name after making a match winning play. If anyone is to be drawn in by extrinsic rewards, I’d have said parents would be the most likely candidates (see this documentary for details). I’m sure the majority of parents are driven by a will to give their children the best opportunity for success and that was why the dad I saw at 630am the other day was with his two under 10 year old children dribbling a football around cones in the park.
I think that commercialisation of sport has had an effect but in a different way. Many professional clubs have academy sides that start at a very young age. These sides are seen as a gateway to success and so children (and parents) are trying to get into them. For clubs that rely on developing talent as a source of income by acting as a feeder club, these sides represent an important part of their business model and they perhaps see that the more kids they can hoover up into these sides, they have perhaps more chance of discovering talent and seeing an investment return. Essentially professional clubs are panning for gold. Instead, professional clubs should be playing the role of alchemists.
The approach of sports teams relating to community should be a joined up one across a number of sports. The development of athletic ability should be the primary aim and increasing long term participation in sport. The athlete can then decide what sports they enjoy competing in and have a pathway into whichever sport they choose because they are all involved in the development process. The talented, driven and more committed athletes will still succeed but social interaction between groups of young athletes can be enhanced. This can allow sporting success to be defined and measured differently.
At the top end, success will always be measured in time, distance and points. It has to be. But the success of community sporting projects should be measured in ongoing participation, sports club members, long term health and anti social behaviour and crime. Sport is about so much more than just winning medals and making money. We can’t lose sight of that.
Last week was a great learning experience. I spent time during the races observing the logistics of competition and the athletes I coach as well as the races themselves. It was also enjoyable, nothing quite beats a blue sky day in the mountains, couple that exciting sport and catching up with friends and colleagues and it doesn’t get much better (having my skis with me would have topped it off).
I thought I’d give a bit of an insight here into a ski racer’s competition day. It actually starts the day before with a captain’s meeting where details of the next day’s race are distributed amongst the coaches, this will include race times, start details, weather reports and officials. Due to weather the downhill race while I was there was cancelled and the slalom part of the super combined event (slalom and super g combined) brought forward a day. This presents a number of challenges. Those arranging their travel to arrive the day before the scheduled super combined missed it, different skis need to be prepped (the majority of the athletes will prepare their own skis, 2 pairs to be used on race day) and altered recovery time from training.
On race day it was up at 6am ish (8′oclock race start) for breakfast, last minute prep and packing and down to the hill for around 7am. Skis and kit were unloaded from the van and taken over to the finish area. Then it was ski boots on and take kit and race skis to the top of the hill. Prior to race there was time for a couple of warm up runs, these don’t take place on the race course as it was been meticulously prepared the night before. The weather was warm and the snow soft so it was salted the previous night to try and firm it up. Also before the start the athletes were given a window of time to inspect the course, this involved sideslipping down the side of the course to view gate layout and snow conditions. There is no standard ski race course layout, it is at the discretion of the person setting the course at each race and so the inspection is vital.
Once inspected it was back to the top of the hill to race. Start orders are dependent upon FIS points, the better the points the earlier you start the first run. As the racing goes on the more skiers who ski the course, the more it deteriorates and the warmer it gets the more the consistency of the snow changes. This means that the condition of the course the athlete skis can be radically different from what they have inspected, the next time they see it is when they’re trying to ski it as fast as possible. This is just one of the things that makes the sport so challenging, the mental preparation and adaptability is massively important.
From a strength and conditioning point of view, timings and logistics of warm up and preparation are difficult. The early start, cold temperatures, being in ski boots and importance of inspection provide challenges. Working closely with the psychologist is very important to make sure that any physical preparation fits in seamlessly with the mental routine which is most definitely a game changer.
