Well it’s been a while since I’ve updated this thread. Yes- I am STILL working with the same athlete. It’s been a fascinating journey over the past few years, and I have learned a ton coaching this athlete (and others). I’m sitting in Orlando, FL as we are here to race at the NTC Pure Athletics meet on Saturday April 18th. It will be his season opener.
I guess a good place to start would be recapping the 2013 and 2014 seasons briefly. I will go into more detail about each season later, as there is so much to talk about. The amount of learning about high performance athletics that I have been able to achieve in the past two years is really unbelievable. When I made this insane commitment (and believe me, it is truly irrational and illogical) to coach a National level athlete in 2012, I didn’t take the decision lightly. I had already read Speed Trap a dozen times by then, and I knew that the commitment level required would be very high. I’m a single guy, and coaching has probably ensured I remained that way. The amount of time coaching at this level takes is very high if you want to do it properly (in other words following Charlie’s principles).
The 2013 season started off very well. He ran a significant indoor personal best at the Metro Track and Field Centre in the 400m, running 48.54 to come second by 0.04 to a former National champion. The MTFC 200m track is very tight, and it was an excellent time as well as an excellent race. He ran numerous fast times indoors that season, but in retrospect I raced him too often. He was feeling sick for probably the entire month of February 2013 due to racing weekly, and running frequent personal bests. He ran a spectacular 21.77 from lane 3 at MTFC, a time that hadn’t been seen indoors there in many years. In retrospect, we ran too much on that indoor track and it’s simply too risky.
If you read the early part of my journal, you know I’m pretty good at making a few big bonehead moves every season. For 2013, the biggest bonehead move was undoubtedly getting caught up in racing too much indoors. After his huge 48.54 PB, we were scheduled to run the 200 indoors the next day. Even though he was destroyed and shouldn’t have ran, I had him line up for the 200 the next day anyway. I believe I was trying to compensate for him not finishing the 400m final in 2012. I wanted him to run on back to back days to prove he could do it. It was stupid! The 200 was a nothing race, and running it after pouring his entire being into the 400 the day before was simply foolish. What was to be gained? Nothing really. What were the risks? Why injury, of course.
He ran the 200, and on the second step he stumbled no doubt due to his CNS being shot. He ended up aggravating an old knee issue. It bothered him for the next week or two, but he had already been invited to travel to Trinidad for a Team Ontario 4x400 relay meet. He ended up going to the meet and running despite the fact that he knew something wasn’t right with his knee.
When he returned, we didn’t fool around- we went to the very best Sports Doctor in the western hemisphere, Dr. Anthony Galea. If there is one principle I would suggest to everyone, it is DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME with mediocre talent, be they massage therapists, coaches, doctors, etc. If you want to be the very best you can be, you OWE it to yourself to go to the best. Anything else is just going to waste your time and money. In my experience dealing with the incredible people we have met along this journey over the past few years, I have noticed common threads among every outstanding person we have come across. (Just a few examples: Angela Coon, Waldemar, Ben Johnson, weights guru Mario Greco, KitKat, ESTI, Dr. Galea) All of these people are incredibly helpful.
- They are incredibly generous. Their central concern is always “How can I help you?”
- They listen to you, as a coach, deeply and meaningfully, and are thus able to get to the root of problems FAST.
- They are holistic in their understanding. They understand key big picture concepts VERY clearly, have a clear philosophy, and NEVER get bogged down by details.
There are basically two guys you want to see if your athlete gets injured, either Dr. Galea in Toronto, or Dr. Müller-Wohlfahrt in Germany. I can’t say enough about the incredible quality of Dr. Galea’s care. We went in to see him over the knee issue, and he quickly identified the issue via a few manual tests as a potential torn meniscus. We walked over to his MSK ultrasound technician, and indeed the scan showed three tears, two of which were probably from previous issues. The doctor suggested PRP therapy instead of surgery. For those who are unfamiliar, PRP involves removing some of your own blood, spinning it in a centrifuge to separate the platelets, and injecting the platelets into the injured area. This can be very effective for speeding healing of tendinous areas, as there is minimal blood flow to these areas and healing tends to be compromised.
You can pull up a bunch of contradictory studies that may tell you PRP does or does not work, but I really don’t give a crap what studies say. If you’re trying to coach high performance and you’re waiting for science to guide you, you well and truly may find yourself 30 years behind in many areas, so have fun with that. Our results with PRP were excellent. There were three injections spaced 8-10 days apart. After the first 8 days, the tears had shrunk by 50%, a further 50% by the following 8 days, and by the third ultrasound (about 18 days later) the tears had completely scarred over with zero surgery.
Be aware- you can get PRP from a lot of people, but careful MSK ultrasound guidance from an excellent technician coupled with a very skilled injection practitioner are what I suspect make a big difference. If you have a quality athlete and have the money, I strongly suggest Dr. Galea.
Regardless, after the knee injury and the packed indoor season, my athlete seemed to have a crisis of confidence. He seemed lethargic, less confident, and less motivated. He decided to not continue training toward Nationals. This was doubly frustrating as 2013 was a weak field, and even with compromised outdoor training I feel he would have been an incredibly strong candidate to win. Looking back, I think I overloaded his nervous system tremendously by getting caught up racing during the 2013 indoor race season. I now understand how sensitive his nervous system is, and it was definitely too much racing in too short a period of time. He lost confidence after the injury, and part of that I believe was the impaired status of his CNS. This was a great lesson to not get too caught up with immediate results, and view the season as a process of slow but steady progress that cannot and should not be rushed.
