One aspects\nof starting coaching again is that you realize how very time-consuming coaching\nreally is: not only the travel to the track and the workout itself, but also\nwriting training programs, go to competitions and training camps, communicate\nby app, etc. But let\u2019s face it, nobody told me it was an easy or rewarding job,\nand after 30 years on the track you kind of should know how it is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in 14\nyears of absence from coaching athletes on an almost daily basis, you notice\nchanges. Fourteen years is almost a generation and with an ever increasing pace\nof change, those changes also seem to be amplified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since I\nhave been coaching elite athletes for a long time, the accumulated experience\nduring that time makes it interesting to compare these athletes from the 1980\u2019s\nand 90\u2019s with the current generation of athletes that I coach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are\nsome differences that I observed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. this\nmight be a coincidence but my current group of athletes makes me feel really\ndumb at times, all of them are\nextremely smart, thank God I still know a bit more than them about training and\ncoaching. They are all very rational athletes and cognitively well equipped.\nAlso they learn very fast, not only in cognitive sense, but also in the sense\nof motor leaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2. none of\nthem are full professionals yet, they all have a fulltime study or work\nsometimes with adapted working hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3. their\nmotivation and dedication are unbelievable, since I always thought that my\nformer athletes were already very motivated and I found it hard to believe one\ncould be more motivated than that. Wrong! They are extremely ambitious and have\nno problems raising the bar for themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4. an\nobvious one: the use of modern technology is fully integrated in the lives of\nthe athlete, not only the obvious use of their phones to communicate or to find\ninformation, but also the use of their phones for photos or video recordings .\nSo I have much more visual data from training and competition than before,\ncertainly since I came from the age of the Super 8 film camera. The limitation\nhere is the overkill of data. I hardly have the time to watch all the movies\nand take splits or count strides. We predominantly use it for visual feedback\nfor the athlete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
5. the new\ngroup is more independent and yes, like I wrote above, very smart, but like\nmany of their generation, they sometimes tend to suffer from cognitive\noverload, also because the extremely high demands of their study and their work.\nHowever, there is an increased incidence of emotional turmoil. Their brains\nseems to be overstimulated and at times their hard disks are becoming full. Thus\nis however a normal social phenomenon. More than before, the guidance of the\ncoach or better said: the psychological\/emotional mentorship is much more\nimportant than before. The numbers show that many young people of this\ngeneration already suffer from burnout, which is a tell-tale sign about the\nunseen load like the iceberg hidden under the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now all of\nthis has no scientific value, but I don\u2019t really care about that, my questions is\nif coaches who care coaching over a longer period as well share the same experiences\nthat I observe , or maybe, like often, I am in an exceptional position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am happy\nand proud to be lecturing on March 30 at the \u201cTransfer to Sports\u201d Seminar,\ntogether with my dear colleagues Justin Kavanagh, Jeff Moyer and Ian King, at The\nSport & Speed Institute, Chantilly, VA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I will be\nspeaking about advanced sprint training, and also about some new developments\nen experiences of the last year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n