The Expert Pedagogue Revisited

On Keith's presentation on 27/04/2012 we discussed the 'Expert Pedagogue' once again. Keith spoke briefly about John Wooden an American college basketball coach. Wooden was the only coach to win 10 NCAA national championships. John Wooden had what he called a seven point creed.

• Be true to yourself.
• Make each day your masterpiece.
• Help others.
• Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible
• Make friendship a fine art.
• Build a shelter against a rainy day.
• Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.

These seven core values or creeds are what Wooden based his coaching and life around and he remained true to these values until his death in 2010, just 4 months before his 100th birthday. Below is another of Wooden's renowned works the 'success pyramid'. This pyramid outlines what Wooden believes to be key to achieving your goals in conjunction his seven creeds. Above all, until the day that John Wooden died, he remained true to himself and his values. He was quoted as saying,

                “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

Prior to Kieth's lecture based around Wooden, I knew little of his achievements and coaching work. However, revisiting the idea of the perfect coach, the presentation has begged to me to question, is John Wooden the 'expert pedagogue'?

More information can be found about John Wooden here and http://www.coachwooden.com/  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wooden 

Planning a Program

The lecture from Keith presented on the 20/4/12 was on 'Planning a Program'. In typical fashion I am late posting my blog and as always I apologise to my blog readers. 

Planning a program is a huge responsibility for coaches and is one of the main roles of the coach. Keith discussed with us the fundamentals of planning a program and areas for the coach of the future.

My experience in planning a program is quite limited. For the benefit of new readers of my blog I am involved in coaching a masters athlete in track cycling. Kieth encouraged me to think about coaches that I have had in the past and how these programs were planned and implemented. In conjunction with my limited coaching experience, my time as an athlete has taught me a little about training. 

One thing that I've learnt is that programs MUST be individualised. I was prompted to think about this from Keith's discussion about fitness. Kieth outlined that fitness should be a relative measure to an individual's current level of fitness and how we may measure this. With my athlete (Daniel) it has become apparent that a high volume of training is not appropriate for him. Daniel benefits from a low amount volume with a large amount of recovery too. In this way Daniel's training program is periodised like no other. 

Keith also discussed accounting for sickness and injury within a training cycle and the temptation of an athlete and coach to attempt increased volume and/or intensity on return to training, in order to accelerate adaptations. This is something that I have not so far been tempted to do this in planning Daniel's program as a coach, however, this is most certainly something I have been tempted to indulge in as an athlete. In modern sport, illicit performance enhancing drugs is something that have been used by professional and amateur athletes alike in order to enhance recovery and adaptation; however with the World Anti-Doping Agency acquiring increasing amounts of funding every year the temptation for athletes to use drugs in rapidly decreasing. 

Coaches must constantly assess the needs of the athlete and elicit how much time is dedicated to each component of training such as strength, endurance, power, speed and lactate. The debate between competition and training will be ongoing and different coaching styles and programs may both be conducive to high performance of the same athlete.