Coach Jones
06-10-2008, 11:00 AM
KNOW YOUR ROLE!
In a recent post I said that, in my opinion, it's important to have a clean break between athlete, coach, training partner and student (trainee, person attending a class, etc). I recieved a couple PMs about it so I wanted to bring it here and explain what I was referring to a little more.
With MMA emerging as one of the most popular sports around, MMA type gyms have popped up everywhere. Unfortunately, the majority of these new gyms are starting behind the curve.
They are operating under the illusion that MMA is actually "mixed" martial arts. It's not. MMA is a specific sport. It requires a total integrated game not a mixture of different games. That's an important distinction. A lot of the new MMA gyms are trying to teach separate skill bases and calling it MMA. While it may be MMA by definition - it's not the game of MMA.
These gyms, in order to try and make a name for themselves, rush students though the training process and get them in the ring as soon as possible - often well before their ready. The coaches want fighters and many times those new to the game are forced into that mold. That is not only detrimental to the new student, but to the athletes as well.
In my experience, there is a world of difference between training the competitive fighter and someone who enjoys the game or is there for some other purpose. It's night and day, really.
Everyone has a role to play. I like to use the analogy of a stagecoach.
The coach is the driver. They decide the route, prepare everything and steer the stage where it needs to go. If they hose up their role everyone is negatively affected and the stage crashes or runs off the side of the cliff.
The athletes are the horses. They are the heart and soul of the stagecoach and without them nothing happens. The follow the instructions of the driver and do the work. Regardless of the driver, the athlete will pull that stage to a destination. The right coach needs to be in place to make sure the destination is the right one.
The students are the passengers. By and large they have chosen to travel to the destination that the coach is steering the stage to. They don't necessarily want to pull the stage nor do they want to steer it. They like where it's going and are happy to be going there. The coach can make the ride smooth or rocky.
Okay, maybe not the best analogy but it'll do.
In order to get the most from your training you need to figure out for yourself why you're there and what you want to get out of your training experience.
This is where knowing your role comes in. When you're in the gym, are you functioning as a coach? An athlete? Are you there for enjoyment and/or to learn rather than compete? These are important questions to answer.
As a coach, it's not your job to be competitive with your students or athletes. It's not about showing them your better or tougher. It's about delivering what they need. I'm not saying that sometimes that isn't a thump on the noggin'. I'm just saying that too often you see coaches escalating the intensity of a drill for their own ego rather than the progresion of the student or athlete. In the role of coach you are not an athlete and not a student. You're role should be a very specific one - to make your athlete better and/or help your student progress. That's it.
As an athlete, you're job is broken down into the following progression:
1. Show Up.
2. Shut Up.
3. Listen to your coach - ONLY.
4. Follow instructions to the letter.
Way too often, I see the egos of fighters who are still wet behind the ears being catered to by their coaches. The coaches who so badly want to have a competitive fighter for their school clammer to please a promising prospect. That injures the coach's credibility in a major way and hurts the athlete. If you don't see eye to eye with your coach - get a new coach. You have only two options:
Do what you're told or find someone that tells you something else.
As an competitive athlete, you have the awesome responsibility of actually taking your game into the ring and performing under tremendous pressure. You need clear singularity of focus. It's not your job to design or tweak your training. It's not your job to second guess your coach. That's why it's so important that you find the right coach for you. Someone that you trust and respect. Find a good one that you gel with and stick with them.
To be a good training partner is probably the hardest role to play. It requires that you fend off the competitive desire and put your attention on someone else. A training partner can be either a student or an athlete but I believe that it's very important that borders are kept. What I mean is, it can be seriously detrimental to make a competitive athlete a training partner for a student. Not always, but it can be.
We are creatures of habit. An athlete has to be able to go out there and use what they've learned and engrained in competition and under heavy resistance. That is where their focus needs to be. When an athlete is paired with a student there is a huge disparity. This disparity can only be overcome by the athlete dialing down their skills and abilities. If the athlete consistently engages in a drill where they are performing at a more pedestrian level it will compete with their ability to perform at the top of their game when they need to.
It is often also quite difficult for an athlete, when put in that situation, to not try and "help" the student by assuming a coaching role. Whether the athlete is able to operate in that arena or not isn't the issue. "Coaches' Syndrome" can set in pretty rapidly. For those who don't know, "Coaches' Syndrome" is something that crops up with all of us coaches after a while. The role of coach is that of a guide and teacher. You are there to help your student or athlete develop their best game. In doing that you have to put away your competitive side and look only at what's best for the athlete. This often means that you purposely perform poorly. It also requires you to watch the student or athlete in a different way. When you operate in the coaching mode long enough, you start to engrain those habits. You begin to look through a coaches' eyes rather than a fighters. While this is perfectly fine for a coach it's horrible for the competitive athlete.
The best route is to pair up students and athletes separately. The students can be of varying levels as can the athletes. There is a different mindset and goal structure within each group that must be catered to in order to get the best results from both.
The student is by far the largest group. It's made up of those folks that have no desire to be a professional athlete. They are their for fun, exercise or because they really enjoy the game. They just aren't interested in dedicating themselves to the degree that they would need to to become really competitive. There is nothing wrong or "less than" about this group. If you belong to this group - great. It's not a knock on you. Everyone doesn't feel the need to get out there and compete at a high level. Nothing wrong with that. It's just important that if you fall into this group that you understand that. Another problem I see a lot is the person that goes into a group class and has the mistaken belief that it is preparing them to be a competitive fighter. It isn't. There's a hell of a lot more that goes into getting a fighter ready than attending a couple of group classes a week. Now, I say that with this disclamier:
With the curent state of MMA there are way more tournaments and competitions than there are good fighters. Many people could go out and compete on a small stage and do well against more than questionable competition. Personally, I am of the mind that MMA shouldn't be a human cock fight. That it should be a test of skill and ability That it should be about dedication to excellence and not about which monkey is going to get drunk, talk about what a bad ass they think they are and throw a chair through the window of the house (not that i'm knocking the Ultimate Fighter show - it's good TV).
Knowing your role is crucial to reaching your goals. None of the above should be taken to mean that you can't switch roles or forge a new one. You can absolutely. It just means that you can't try and play every role in the play and expect to get good results.
In a recent post I said that, in my opinion, it's important to have a clean break between athlete, coach, training partner and student (trainee, person attending a class, etc). I recieved a couple PMs about it so I wanted to bring it here and explain what I was referring to a little more.
With MMA emerging as one of the most popular sports around, MMA type gyms have popped up everywhere. Unfortunately, the majority of these new gyms are starting behind the curve.
They are operating under the illusion that MMA is actually "mixed" martial arts. It's not. MMA is a specific sport. It requires a total integrated game not a mixture of different games. That's an important distinction. A lot of the new MMA gyms are trying to teach separate skill bases and calling it MMA. While it may be MMA by definition - it's not the game of MMA.
These gyms, in order to try and make a name for themselves, rush students though the training process and get them in the ring as soon as possible - often well before their ready. The coaches want fighters and many times those new to the game are forced into that mold. That is not only detrimental to the new student, but to the athletes as well.
In my experience, there is a world of difference between training the competitive fighter and someone who enjoys the game or is there for some other purpose. It's night and day, really.
Everyone has a role to play. I like to use the analogy of a stagecoach.
The coach is the driver. They decide the route, prepare everything and steer the stage where it needs to go. If they hose up their role everyone is negatively affected and the stage crashes or runs off the side of the cliff.
The athletes are the horses. They are the heart and soul of the stagecoach and without them nothing happens. The follow the instructions of the driver and do the work. Regardless of the driver, the athlete will pull that stage to a destination. The right coach needs to be in place to make sure the destination is the right one.
The students are the passengers. By and large they have chosen to travel to the destination that the coach is steering the stage to. They don't necessarily want to pull the stage nor do they want to steer it. They like where it's going and are happy to be going there. The coach can make the ride smooth or rocky.
Okay, maybe not the best analogy but it'll do.
In order to get the most from your training you need to figure out for yourself why you're there and what you want to get out of your training experience.
This is where knowing your role comes in. When you're in the gym, are you functioning as a coach? An athlete? Are you there for enjoyment and/or to learn rather than compete? These are important questions to answer.
As a coach, it's not your job to be competitive with your students or athletes. It's not about showing them your better or tougher. It's about delivering what they need. I'm not saying that sometimes that isn't a thump on the noggin'. I'm just saying that too often you see coaches escalating the intensity of a drill for their own ego rather than the progresion of the student or athlete. In the role of coach you are not an athlete and not a student. You're role should be a very specific one - to make your athlete better and/or help your student progress. That's it.
As an athlete, you're job is broken down into the following progression:
1. Show Up.
2. Shut Up.
3. Listen to your coach - ONLY.
4. Follow instructions to the letter.
Way too often, I see the egos of fighters who are still wet behind the ears being catered to by their coaches. The coaches who so badly want to have a competitive fighter for their school clammer to please a promising prospect. That injures the coach's credibility in a major way and hurts the athlete. If you don't see eye to eye with your coach - get a new coach. You have only two options:
Do what you're told or find someone that tells you something else.
As an competitive athlete, you have the awesome responsibility of actually taking your game into the ring and performing under tremendous pressure. You need clear singularity of focus. It's not your job to design or tweak your training. It's not your job to second guess your coach. That's why it's so important that you find the right coach for you. Someone that you trust and respect. Find a good one that you gel with and stick with them.
To be a good training partner is probably the hardest role to play. It requires that you fend off the competitive desire and put your attention on someone else. A training partner can be either a student or an athlete but I believe that it's very important that borders are kept. What I mean is, it can be seriously detrimental to make a competitive athlete a training partner for a student. Not always, but it can be.
We are creatures of habit. An athlete has to be able to go out there and use what they've learned and engrained in competition and under heavy resistance. That is where their focus needs to be. When an athlete is paired with a student there is a huge disparity. This disparity can only be overcome by the athlete dialing down their skills and abilities. If the athlete consistently engages in a drill where they are performing at a more pedestrian level it will compete with their ability to perform at the top of their game when they need to.
It is often also quite difficult for an athlete, when put in that situation, to not try and "help" the student by assuming a coaching role. Whether the athlete is able to operate in that arena or not isn't the issue. "Coaches' Syndrome" can set in pretty rapidly. For those who don't know, "Coaches' Syndrome" is something that crops up with all of us coaches after a while. The role of coach is that of a guide and teacher. You are there to help your student or athlete develop their best game. In doing that you have to put away your competitive side and look only at what's best for the athlete. This often means that you purposely perform poorly. It also requires you to watch the student or athlete in a different way. When you operate in the coaching mode long enough, you start to engrain those habits. You begin to look through a coaches' eyes rather than a fighters. While this is perfectly fine for a coach it's horrible for the competitive athlete.
The best route is to pair up students and athletes separately. The students can be of varying levels as can the athletes. There is a different mindset and goal structure within each group that must be catered to in order to get the best results from both.
The student is by far the largest group. It's made up of those folks that have no desire to be a professional athlete. They are their for fun, exercise or because they really enjoy the game. They just aren't interested in dedicating themselves to the degree that they would need to to become really competitive. There is nothing wrong or "less than" about this group. If you belong to this group - great. It's not a knock on you. Everyone doesn't feel the need to get out there and compete at a high level. Nothing wrong with that. It's just important that if you fall into this group that you understand that. Another problem I see a lot is the person that goes into a group class and has the mistaken belief that it is preparing them to be a competitive fighter. It isn't. There's a hell of a lot more that goes into getting a fighter ready than attending a couple of group classes a week. Now, I say that with this disclamier:
With the curent state of MMA there are way more tournaments and competitions than there are good fighters. Many people could go out and compete on a small stage and do well against more than questionable competition. Personally, I am of the mind that MMA shouldn't be a human cock fight. That it should be a test of skill and ability That it should be about dedication to excellence and not about which monkey is going to get drunk, talk about what a bad ass they think they are and throw a chair through the window of the house (not that i'm knocking the Ultimate Fighter show - it's good TV).
Knowing your role is crucial to reaching your goals. None of the above should be taken to mean that you can't switch roles or forge a new one. You can absolutely. It just means that you can't try and play every role in the play and expect to get good results.