I agree with the other posters that how some one looks is not or should not be an indication of their knowledge and ability as a coach. Experience and success should be the key bench-marks.

As others have pointed out, some the best coachs in other sports are completely non-athletic. They may have run, or cycled or swam or whatever at some point, but now they coach or they may not have done anything but they have a PhD in Physiology - that's a possibility to.

I think what we are seeing in triathlon, beacuse it is such a young sport, is that many of the top coaches, Paul Huddle, Roch Frey, Dave Scott, Mark Allan, Gordo Byrn, Mark Allan, Lance Watson, Scott Molina and so on, are not that far removed from their competitive days and indeed, in some cases still compete at a serious level. There are many other coachs not so well known who are also very good recreational triathletes or lower ranking pro triathletes who are looking to train and make some money on the side to sustain themselves( nothing wrong with this) - it's the harsh reality of the sport. There is very little money once you get outside a theoretical top ten - 15 ranking in the world.

A triathlon coach who falls into the non-athletic category would be Col Stewart - Miles Stewart's father. I have only met him once and with the utmost respect, it did not look like he was going to go out for even a warm-down jog with Miles after a race. That being said, the man is one of the best triathlon coachs in the world! I would jump at the chance to have this man coach me.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Mike,

Good points.

I agree with you that a piece of paper, a cerification of some sort or another is no gaurantee that the coach is good.

Think back to when you and I started out running back in the '70's. We put total faith in those men that coached us in those days. Men like Brian Barnes, Don Mills, Paul Poce. What kind of qualifications did they have? I have no idea. What I do know is that what Poce taught me at TOC has stuck with me all of these years - it all get's back to the basics of endurance sports training: Hard work. Consistancy. Commitment. Hard work. High standards and long term goals. Did I say hard work!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

This is indeed an excellent thread. I'm gonna skip the whole CTS portion ('cause honestly I'm ignorant on that) but some other thoughts...

Certainly, results are what matter. You may get great results with someone who doesn't have a single "certification" and piss poor results with someone that has 17 acronyms after their name. I had a coach previously who was an IM pro, very good personal results but wasn't getting me where I wanted. I picked a new coach who had an excellent race resume (one of the best Masters in the US consistently) but more importantly had a stable of athletes with equally impressive results. And who caps the amount of athletes he coaches. Plus, I asked a LOT of questions - basically grilled the guy. And I've seen a huge improvement.

Certainly, I think it's like any other job: a combo of experience, book knowledge, instinct and a lot of intangibles. Experience plays a good part of it - though not all of course as many have mentioned. Some are great athletes but poor teachers, some the opposite and some both. John Cobb ("Glad to eat a donut with you...") is a fitting genius but certainly not a top level athlete; Tom D. is equally smart and also fit as a mule with a resume that most of us would kill for. Two totally different types yet also both the best at what they do.

Also, at least at some level, a coach has to be inspirational and in touch with what is going on in the sport.

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"To give less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." - Pre

MattMizenko.com

I agree entirely with you. What I wrote was also based on my personal experience as an athlete and as physician too.

To become a radiation oncologist, I went through 6 years of Medical School, then 2 more years for specialization and passed all the exams for the board certification. All I do, besides of treating my patients and training, is reading scientific papers in order to keep myself updated. I try to use in every single patient of mine all the information I’ve got in my medical education along with the evidence-based radiation oncology. I think that should work in the same way for most of sports coaching. (Observation: In Brazil, most of the soccer coaches are former players, with no certification at all. However, every leading team has a multidisciplinary board for physical, nutritional, physiological and psychological preparation).

Is this enough? No. As time goes by, I feel myself more experienced, having treated more and more patients and having seen patients treated by others. This gives me what is not written in the papers.

Of course, when a patient comes for a consultation, I have to explain to him/her, in an appropriate language, what the disease and treatment are all about. And sometimes, I have to help the patients to deal with the psychological aspects of his/her disease (cancer, in the majority of time). If I don’t have this ability, I may equally fail in my mission. Moreover, I have to lead the radiation oncology team (physicists, nurses, machine operators, nutritionist, rehabilitation professionals, etc) toward the patient’s benefit. That’s why I agree with you about leadership in coaching. Obviously, a good coach must have the ability to realize the needs of his/her athlete and be able to fulfill his/her demands. I think that this profile should work for many amateur athletes, like me.

For pros, I think the things work just like soccer in Brazil, our leading sport. The coach may be a former athlete, with no certification. Most of them, in fact, can barely speak a correct Portuguese. However, they’ve played and trained under the guidance of so many coaches, that they know exactly how to guide players and the other professionals in a soccer team. But these other professionals I mentioned before are essential for the athlete’s success. Nobody, in the pro level, can win without lactic acid tests, VO2 tests, computer-assisted biomechanics analyses, and things like that…. It would be to simplistic think that only a good coach is responsible for the success of a pro athlete.

I think that most top athletes are self-coached for the most part and only get help "tweaking" their trianing programs from coaches. I don't think that CC is out there telling Lance exactly what to do. I think the most important thing to realize is how to combine art and science into training. I personally think that if one reads a few books: Periodization by Tudor Bompa, any exercise physiology book, Peak Performance by Hawley, Lore of Running by Noakes, Training the Kenyon way by Tanser (more art than science) and/or anything by Lydiard, that individual will probably know more about training than some coaches out there. Take a few years, learn what works with your body and you will get great results.

andrew

fpfrisco, absolutely. The Brazilian soccer example helps support my coach as leader AND technician view. At the pro level, we're talking about a different level, and different $$ involvement, therefore you often see more than one person responsible for someone's success. In that model, the coach (leader) can indeed afford to lack in the technical aspects. The premium is on their leadership abilities. Witness LA. He's got Johan for the leadership and race tactics, something JB is emminently qualified to dispense. The technical guidance, though, comes from people like Carmichael and other USPS staff.

We age-grouper type athletes, however, need our "coach" to be well versed in the leadership AND technical aspects. Some need more or less leadership. Some need less "in the weeds" guidance and more oversight. Most can't afford a battery of personnel hired to handle these areas. We need it in one person. I do think that a well connected coach (like one of the various "associate" coaches) can, by proxy, simulate that battery.

I daresay most of us believe we are capable of much more than our current PRs, if we could only put the details together correctly. But we're busy people with more important stuff like keeping a roof over our family's heads, and food in our bellies. With limited time available to pursue our chosen "hobby" or "lifestyle", a coach becomes an important part of managing our resources to help achieve our goals.

Lets see:

Arguably the best soccer coach / manager in the world is Alex Fergusson, the best distance coach Alec Stanton, best college XC coach Wetmoore????

Are any of these people qualified to coach? are they buy any of the measures listed above fit to coach (if anyone has seen Fergusson recently I'd guess not :) )

Was Earl Woods qualified to teach Tiger, Serena's father qualified to raise to women that have pretty much revolutionised womens tennis, based on this list of requirments of results and piece's of paper Serena's would never, if you read the previous posts here, have wrapped up the grand slam this weekend........

Sometimes it's not the piece of paper or how they look that make's a coach great, it might not even be their experience with the sport, there are many many successfull coach's that had no career's or mediocre career's and have gone on to coach some of the best if not the best athletes in the world..........

picking up on andrew's comment - lets get right to it. :) could vince lombardi play like ray nitchke, paul hornung, willie davis, or bart starr ? obviously no. yet he is the greatest coach who ever lived. so then, what of it ?? mr lombardi exemplified the one most crucial quality of all coaches. . . .

. . .the ability to have his charges W-A-N-T to be their best. to desire it beyond all else. if somebody can draw this from an individual he'she is a great coach, above all. the other things, up to date knowledge, psysiology, ability/gifts themselves, etc etc are all, in my opinion, secondary. none of those will make you a great coach if you cannot find and cultivate that desire within your athletes which will drive them from within.

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I picked a new coach who had an excellent race resume (one of the best Masters in the US consistently) but more importantly had a stable of athletes with equally impressive results. And who caps the amount of athletes he coaches. Plus, I asked a LOT of questions - basically grilled the guy. And I've seen a huge improvement.

Hey MattMiz, just wondering who this coach is that you're so happy with. Just curious.

You want me to share my secrets??? Well, okay. His name is Don Fink, check out his site at www.donfink.com. You're not in 35-39 age group are you? ;-)

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"To give less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." - Pre

MattMizenko.com

t-t-n and andrewmc, neither one of you are going to get any argument from me. You're absolutely right and your examples are great. Yes, Vince Lombardi was/is/will probably always be the greatest coach that ever lived. And he DID have the two sides of coaching, both leadership and technical aspects. He studied the game like no other for YEARS before he ever got to Titletown. He studied not just the game, but how to get his charges to perform; i.e. how to coach. When you add that to his supreme natural leadership, you know what the result was.

Same thing with Whetmore, et.al. They studied their respective games for years before reaching the levels of success. And look a little further into how they got to their level....It wasn't by waking up one day and saying I'm going to be a great _______ coach.

But for every name you've mentioned there are hundreds of others who were failures as coaches. Most lacked leadership, as is often the case with former star athletes transitioning to coaching. Some lacked the "education" they needed. Now I never said one needed a piece of paper. I DID say that one needs to study the sport in depth and have a good understanding of not just the basics, but advanced training methodologies.

When I inject that into searching through the current crop of multisport coaches out there...I'm going to get flamed for sure when I say that many just aren't measuring up in some aspect of their chosen endeavor. It isn't enough to love the sport. It isn't enough that he/she once went 8 or 9 hours for IM, or sub 2:00 for Oly. It also isn't enough that they just graduated college with a high-fallutin piece of paper claiming they know kinesiology or athletic training. It isn't enough to have been captain of every sports team you were ever on. Any one of these things doesn't qualify one to be a coach, let alone a great one.

A good coach brings elements of all of these, puts them together in a sound and solid philosophy, and like t-t-n wrote, conveys that to their athletes in a manner that not only makes the athlete WANT to be better, but actually succeeds in making the athlete better. That sounds like a pretty tall order. Well, it is. Not everyone can do it. Many of the current "coaches" would be far more successful in a supporting role, rather than trying to lead.

As always, though, someone will point out the exception or two, like the William's sisters' father. I'd bet, though, that a closer inspection would show that he was a masterful student of the game of tennis. There are always those who learn something best by observation rather than formal classroom teaching.

In the end, I think we're all saying the same things, just attacking the question from different angles. We all think it takes more than a love of multisport, a three-day clinic and a website...to be a coach.

I agree that a piece of paper is often times just that. I too had the pleasure of being coached by Don Mills (he used to coach the cross-country and track teams at University of Waterloo when I was there). I have no idea what his formal "coaching" qualifications were but he sure had some tough workouts for us and got excellent results from a lot of guys. As you said, anyone who can bring out the work ethic in their athletes and convey a love of the sport is a great coach as far as I'm concerned. They don't have to be someone with an awesome race resume.

I coach high school cross-country and track and haven't bothered to go for any certificates. My educational background is in mathematics and computer science so I don't have qualifications from that either. However, I have been involved in running for 25 years and have trained with some very good coaches and can put together my own program and a program for my school runners. I always tell them that consistency and hard work and more consistency are the keys and the actual workouts that the coach gives are secondary. One of the best coaches I have ever worked with for running is Pete Grinbergs in Waterloo. His strength was that he could get people to put away their egos in workouts and stay healthy and not overdo it (which of course leads to consistency!). That is what makes a good (smart) coach.