Why coaches are having to protect triathlon
Here, Coach Philip reflects on the current industry situation and how coaches are doing their part as always, for the athletes. The industry is currently confused and in some instances desperate, but we need to rise above this to ensure the athlete’s health always comes first.
Though sometimes the coached athletes support you!
As a coach, I am used to dealing with both disappointment and success, it is a part of coaching. Not everyone can win races and things don't always go to plan. I think we can all agreed that 2020 is simply not going to plan!
However, I feel it is essential to speak up for many coaches. At Tri Training Harder, we stand very firmly around our values and mission statement. However, at times like these, we recognise that as a community, coaches in general stand by the simple starting principle of: do no harm.
Coaches, for the most part, think of profit only after the year accounts are in. In my years of mentoring coaches, I am always impressed at how selfless they are and how much care they put on their athletes.
An industry trying to cope
Triathlon as an industry is currently struggling. All of us are merely reacting to government guidelines, none of us knows when the current situation will change, and we have to be realistic that ‘new’ normality is many months away. Information on future events and racing is slowly trickling out. Impressive and brave decisions have been made by some organisations, such as Challenge who confidently cancelled Challenge Roth in late March offering generous solutions to its racers. Other big companies such as IRONMAN have been less committal to race delays and changes leaving athletes and coaches wanting to know more. They are however offering substantially better solutions than what their default terms and conditions would offer. As Challenge Roth highlighted though, costs are paid in advance, and they still need to be paid. Putting on an event is more than the day itself. A lot goes into the preparation beforehand including upfront payments.
For business, this time is brutal. However, transparency, communication and honesty go a long way to gaining empathy and respect. My heart does go out to events companies, seasonal companies (of which most triathlon companies are) and of course athletes. Sport and the goodness of it goes a considerable way to improving communities and leaving a legacy. However, we simply cannot act irresponsibly at this time for personal gain, we are all in this together.
Responsible Training – where is the advice?
Why is it that coaches are the ones who have to stand up for athletes? Why is the industry, the governing bodies not working together for the good of the athlete? Why is there no single clear message?
We know that over-reaching, through training load, can have a negative effect on our immunity. Therefore, all-out efforts at any duration come with significantly more risk and should not be taking place. Equally, doing something beyond what we are used to doing should not be done. The focus should be on maintaining fitness and improving our well being. Yet, I am seeing racing (clearly mainly virtual), ridiculous challenges, and so-called fitness “experts” offering advice to gain a quick buck.
Some people want to find evidence* to justify all-out efforts. They are seeking science to support their position, rather than allowing science to inform it. People are often quick to judge, especially at times of extreme dilemmas. Now, more than ever, coaches, people, and institutions of leadership must educate responsibly, empathise kindly and persuade meaningfully to help ensure that one bad apple does not misguide the rest of the apple cart. As coaches, we cannot do this alone, but inevitably we stand in the vanguard against irresponsible social media, fads, science, opinion, persuasion, fake news and comment. Individuals can make their own decisions, sadly at this time, poor decisions will have consequences for us all, but organisations and governing bodies must make sure there is no ambiguity or space for mistakes be to made. I was particularly disappointed to pick up May’s copy of 220 Triathlon magazine to see an 8-week plan to ‘maintain’ race speed including multiple weekly hard intervals for both bike and run.
However, I see top-quality coaches offering free content to help people progress at this tricky time but within health guidelines (Simon Ward, Rob Wilby, Rob Griffiths to name a few). Yet, if they are having an experience similar to myself, they are likely being bombarded with questions from athletes who choose to ignore this advice because there is a new race, or they want to have bragging rights online, or 'need' to train harder at this time. If athletes have so much spare time on their hands and are healthy enough to do so much training, why aren't they helping more in their community?
Unrealistic Comparisons
I have long spoken about the damage that social media can do to athletes, their well-being and the ability to frame information. Sadly, in this pandemic, the situation is no different. If anything with less to do, social media has more of an influence. At no point do I blame the professional athletes – this is their job and they need to earn a living from the sport. We need to recognise the context in which our training, racing and triathlon experience fits when compared to professionals. They have more of a need to train than amateur athletes for obvious reasons. Equally, what they do to “maintain” fitness, is very different for pretty much all amateur athletes. 12-hour rides, IRONMAN distance triathlons or marathons are not par for the course for age-groupers and so now, with a little more time on their hands, they should not assume they are at the same level as our current world greats. And we all need to highlight that. Professional athletes have a bigger influence to raise more money or good for charitable causes and can do so at a significantly reduced risk in comparison to an amateur, due to their relative fitness. Athletes- stop comparing yourselves to the world’s greats and learn from them, don’t imitate them!
We need one consistent message across the industry
I have seen coaches around the country, and indeed the world, come together with some excellent messages, coping mechanisms and care for each other. There are multiple Facebook groups and communities sharing ideas and helping one another. This is collaboration at its best and something we have long supported. However, that would be superfluous if we (the industry) could come up with one coherent message. This position in itself would support the event organisers, the athletes and fundamentally health services.
In an ideal world, we would have a definite timescale between when a lockdown would finish and the earliest week after that date (whenever it is) within which races could re-start. Perhaps, different distance events may need longer lead times. Nonetheless, this approach would remove the pressure athletes seem to be feeling to compete, over-train and increase their personal risk. This would help athletes feel more at ease with taking what is currently the scientifically proven, logical and safe course of action both athletically and morally.
When the time does come to open up events and races again, there has to be an appropriate time for athletes to prepare. Biking and running can in the most part take place more easily in a lockdown setting but what about swimming? No matter how much strength and conditioning and dryland sessions we are currently doing, we must progress at the pace of the slowest swimmer and allow a reasonable time for someone to return to swimming. Athletes will need to re-learn how to swim their distance. After all the work going into open water safe swimming programmes, it would ruin our sport permanently if races re-start too soon and athletes fail or in extremes die in the swim leg due to lack of preparation time. These are just the tip of the iceberg and before all of these considerations need to be made about global travel to events and borders reopening.
Focus on all aspects of wellbeing: mental and physical
Nonetheless, age-groupers and amateurs have to remember that although their sport is important to them, in the grand scheme of Olympic dreams being shattered and the global spread of COVID-19, it is ok to take the foot off the accelerator. Those elite athletes not competing in this summers (now postponed) Olympic Games, are doing exactly that at this time. They need to decondition, to rebuild. Critically at this moment in time, it is important to remember, this ‘need’ to over train has its consequences. Triathletes commonly pick up injuries as a result of over-use. Using all this spare time to overload the system has risk above and beyond the disputed impact on their immune system. At this moment in time, there is literally no support network available from sports physiotherapists. A niggle now ignored and untreated could be the end of a season as physio treatment is likely to be months away.
Inevitably, there needs to be a consideration on the psychological impact of people being in such levels of isolation and the stress imposed on them. Especially for athletes who are used to training with others, in squads and clubs, we need to balance the physical safety with the psychological impact. One should never be at the cost of the other. F1 is looking at racing in closed circuits to bring normality back to their fans and teams, we are already seeing the same thing for professional athletes in our sport. However, we should recognise that this is less for us mere mortals to have a green light to do the same, but more to bring some good news and morale into an otherwise bleak period of history. Everyone has to do their bit.
Know you are plotting the right course
For all you coaches out there who feel like you are swimming against the current, or athletes who seem overwhelmed by the fact you know, or the advice you are being given indicates that you should be going steady now but everyone else is ‘smashing training’ (and bragging about it too). Know that only dead fish go with the flow.
Remember, that when you listen to all the athletes who talk about performance, consistency is one word that appears time and time again. Keep consistent. Stick with the amount of training you were doing before-hand, look at growing things very slowly, and work on limiters which you may have put off at other times – there will be a good list of them that you can do in your living room. Consistency is not a sudden and persistent overload of training and racing – that is called over-training or non-functional over-reaching (N-FOR).
Be consistent; don't be foolish, and hopefully, at the end of this period we all come out stronger and healthier than ever before. The race season will return, probably at the tail end of the summer, and then we can all see who has had a successful spring isolation period and who has burnt out!
No matter who you are, remember, your coaches are always there to support you but recognise it isn’t easy being labelled as the “fun sponge”.
*A few papers indicate that exercise on its own may not reduce immunity. However, the obvious point (that is subsequently missed by those wishing to use these articles to prove their point) is that doing exercise of the intensities described still reduces their immunity. If that is due to nutrition, recovery or otherwise, is still unknown. So why take the risk?
We’re here to help
Tri Training Harder are one of the leading Triathlon coaching providers in the UK, using our wealth of experience to unite scientific and technological research with already well-established and successful best practices, to create a formula for triathlon and endurance coaching that works.
The result is an honest, dynamic, yet simple new way of constructing an athlete’s training to allow them to reach their potential.
If you’re planning your next season, just starting out in the sport or are looking for extra guidance at the very top end of the field, we are here to help, and our coaches would be delighted to hear from you. You can contact us via the website, and one of the team will be in touch.