Lauren in the MH Times

http://www.morganhilltimes.com/sports/261206-field-hockey-drewniany-heads-lo-all-leaguers

New Blog

Hey guys,

So I created a new blog which will be a place for me to write down my thoughts on whatever I am thinking of related coaching etc... I figured it was best to leave this blog for only Live Oak related things (i.e. Meet results and stuff)

For me personally, writting things out is the only real way I can digest information, just reading it or hearing it doesn't work which is why I took advantage of this blog to get my thoughts down. Anyways if you are interested it is called "My Brain's Colon" (get it? its my way to digest information) My goal is to post everyday. So far I am 3 for 3.

Next Monday

Hope everyone had a great thanksgiving, I definitely did. Ate a ton thursday, played some ultimate frisbee Friday and then ate a bunch more. So Monday is the start of offseason training, I know I just made a blog entry wondering if we even needed it. It should be known that it is completely volentary and individuals who don't go won't be punished (don't even know how I could punish someone, it's track I can't reduce someones playing time)

The main goal is to keep people who wouldn't be active otherwise... active. We won't do any type of specific training, no block starts, no long jump approaches. It will be working on general fitness. There will only be 3 componants of our training: Strength, Conditioning, Flexibility. At the end of it I would like to think you are prepared for any sport rather than just for track. Anyways it starts Monday, Nov 30 at 3:20pm at the Live Oak Track

Fall Sports Round Up

Well now that all the fall sports seasons are finished we are on to winter. Soccer, Wrestling and Basketball are starting up. I don't think we have nearly as many athletes in winter sports, off the top of my head I think it is just Leach in basketball, Kenny in wrestling, and Alex Ukanwa in soccer. SO make sure you guys go out and support your track teammates in their other sports.

Before moving on though just wanted to wrap up the seasons of our fall sports athletes.

Cross Country (Adam Groen, Pauline Olsen, Chelsie Faulk)

As I mentioned before all three of our athletes made the CCS Meet. They would be the first to tell you it did not go as well as they had hoped. That being said it was a great season for all three. I think Chelsie and Adam took a couple steps forward this year and Pauline accomplished her goal of staying in shape and getting a good base aerobic fitness down before the beginning of the season.

Field Hockey (Lauren Drewniany, Catherine Sparling, Erika Rodriguez)

Well after I put the blog jinx on them by mentioning there chances of making the CCS Playoffs they ended up coming up just short, with a loss to Leigh and a forfeit win against Homestead. I don't think I ever saw a complete game but I did end up seeing like 12 halves, haha. It was really enjoyable seeing these other sides of athletes. Catherine making juke moves against defenders, Erika bringing a ton of energy to the game (I guess that is nothing new) and Lauren being a leader out on the field. Speaking of Lauren she came away with some recognition at the end of the season, being named First team all-league, Junior of the yeat and Non-Glam Player of the year.

Football (Lots, haha)

Like cross country and field hockey another tough ending to the season. They ended up making the playoffs and played against Terra Nova, the number one seed, in the first round. They had a 24-7 lead in the 3rd quarter but couldn't quite hold on and lost 28-24. The biggest thing about this team had to be it resiliancy. They started the season 0-4 and had tough losses to rivals (Gilroy/Sobrato) thet battled back though to beat Oak Grove, make the playoffs and give the number 1 seed all they could handle. Lots of positives to take out of this season. Also because I am a football coach I already know that some on the track athletes on the team will be also getting some awards and recognition but since we haven't had the awards banquet yet I am going to have to keep it to myself.

Great Job All, Hopefully next fall we will have even more athletes competing in fall sports.

Even More? YES it's true! haha

Here is another website with alot more of a science based background than the typical websites that are trying to sell something....

http://www.ifi.ku.dk/english/communication/previous_arrangements/consensus/program_video/

Free bit of advice that is worth every penny: People that take something simple and make it complex are trying to sell you something, People that take something complex and make it simple are trying to teach you something.

This is something I have learned looking through endless websites and research. I guess there is such thing as over simplifying but in general this is what I have found to be true.

More

Keeping with my current theme of lifetime learning I just wanted to pass along a website that I love looking at. IT has speeches from the TED conference which rountinely challenges the way things are and gives me new ways to think about problems.

www.ted.com

Offseason training?

Do we need it?

Up until 6 months ago I would have said yes... now being in my "questioning everything" phase. I really do wonder about it.

Erika qualified for 4 different CCS events last year, due to an injury she didn't start running until February (and we had to reduce her workload when she came back) Hard to argue she didn't have enough time. Tolson did come out for Offseason training and was able to make it to CCS and take a good 4 seconds off his 400 time. Mark always did offseason training, Courtney did absolutely nothing in between seasons. Both were very successful.

Is year around training one of those "imbred thoughts" that has been passed along? The people who do offseason tend to be the most dedicated (willing to work when it isn't mandatory or required) that probably has a bigger role on thier success then offseason training. (At the very least it plays a role)

THe logic of offseason training is the better shape you are in the more you can do, if you are out of shape it will be hard to do more than a 3*150s, but someone in shape can do 6*150s. They can do more, meaning they can get in better shape meaning they will perform better.

Maybe the truth is, that difference early in the year 3 150s vs 6 150s ends up being 14 150s vs 17 150s at the end of the year which isn't as big of a difference. Or maybe after you get to the point were you can do 10 150s there is no marginal benefit of going above that.

I am still having trouble thinking there is no benefit to offseason training (shows how tough it is to get rid of ingrained thought) I think what we will do this offseason is more related to supplementry training. (Weight room, aerobic, medicine ball work)

Coaching Part 1

So one of the big problems with coaching is there is a lot of imbreeding (metaphorically speaking) "I had to do this so now you do." I am no different, you guys do alot of workouts that I had to do in college at CMC (500 bds, in&out 200s (old style, not the kind where we actually run to in&out), 50 sec repeats, hammerstrides) Those all came from Claremont. My feeling was we won 4 conference titles in my 4 years there (they are going for 19 straight conference titles next spring) it should be good enough for you. While studying other coaching styles in track I have discovered that at CMC we took alot of our workouts from Jim Bush (coach at UCLA for many years). SO at LO we are doing similar workouts to UCLA in the 70's and 80s.

So why is this a problem?

Well most track coaches look to other track programs for ideas and change but say I talk to someone who follows Bud Winter's (SJSU head coach during speed city) approach that seems like a good idea except Jim Bush was influenced by Bud Winter. WHen you start to study track you realize there is so much imbreeeding of ideas that horrible ideas are reinforced. I have completely stopped looking at track people for references, I no longer ask my old college coach for training advise, I don't read books by track coaches period, and I don't ask other coaches what they do. I cut track off about 2 years ago. Every book or resourse I use is from people outside the sport. I read what athletic trainers are saying (they say static stretching hurts perfromance when done before expolsive activities) so we cut it out of our program. Mark on the other hand is training at West Valley college and they still static stretch. Why? because Bud Winter used to have his athletes do it. His coaches blindly follow what Bud Winter did, the other coaches they run into reinforce it because they were influence by someone who was influenced by Bud Winter too. At the end of the day it seems like 'hey 1000s of coaches are doing this it must be right', turns out 1 person actually decided to do it, everyone else just followed.

Now I read blogs by strength coaches. Books by psychologists. I find as much info as I can and hope there isn't a single mention of track in it. That leaves it up to me to interpret how it fits or doesn't fit into our program. I also like reading things totally not related to sports and find connections, Seth Godin has a great blog about Marketing that I have found with alot of parallels to track. (I even bought his book "The dip" which has no sports mention whatsoever but felt to me like he was talking precisely about track). Malcolm Gladwell's books are awesome for athletes none are about sports.

If you are wondering why is this important? My response is look at the results of the 84 olympics in LA and 08 Olympics in Beijing besides Bolt is their much of a difference? Our sport is stagnating, why because coaches are still doing the exact same things they did in the 60's today. We need some fresh DNA in the track gene pool, way to much imbreeding.

Here is a quote from Seth Godins blog today: "One study found that when confronted with a patient with back pain, surgeons prescribed surgery, physical therapists thought that therapy was indicated and yes, acupuncturists were sure needles were the answer. Across the entire universe of patients, the single largest indicator of treatment wasn't symptoms or patient background, it was the background of the doctor." In our sport almost all the doctors have the same background. How can we advance?

Sorry

What was I thinking talking about ccs qualifiers before seasons ended. I jinxed it big time. Unfortunantly field hockey had a little bit of a rough ending. They were eliminated after playing the first place team on Wed, then they team they were supposed to play Thursday didn't show up. (they thought the game was Friday)

That being said I really did enjoy watching our track stars in their other sports. Track year around is probably one of the worst things you can do (and I am a track coach). I really do encourage you all to try out different sports (as long as it isn't in the spring, haha. Actually if their is a sport you enjoy more then track definitely do it).

A little tangent but the abruptness of the ending for the field hockey team had me thinking about this. In most sports your season ending is usually a disappointment, except for teams that win championships, it either ends in a loss or if it ends in a win it is on a team that didn't make playoffs. That is a very small percentage who have their season end positively. I know it is kind of a generalization but every last game I had, I went into it hoping it wouldn't be my last.

This is just another reason why I think track is so great and the fact that we can have PRs is awesome. You could have a long jump competition of 16 people and only 8 advance, but you can have all 16 walk away happy if they PR. Now people in team sports can feel this way too even after a loss if they have a caoch who has done a good job of putting the season into perspective. I just think track has an advantage becasue it would be more of a quantitative positive then a qualitative positive. "I wnet in with a PR of 20' and I jumped 21' " That is as tangible of a result as "I qualified"

Anyways congrats to Erika, Lauren and Catherine on a great season. I am biased but the way I saw it was Catherine was in charge of the offensive end, Lauren the defensive end and Erika was the bridge between them.

CCS Qualifiers?

Time for another update on our track athletes in fall sports. CCS is coming around in the next 2 weeks and we might have every track athlete make CCS. We are 3 for 3 so far:

Cross Country (Adam Groen, Chelsie Faulk, Pauline Olsen):

Monday was the BVAL Championships and all three track runners qualified for CCS. The girls, as a team, qualified by finishing 10th wth Pauline Olsen getting 21:56 and Chelsie Faulk getting a 22:23. The boys didn't have enough runners to have a team but Adam Groen was able to qualify as an individual by running a PR of 18:03.

Field Hockey (Erika Rodriguez, Catherine Sparling, Lauren Drewniany):

This is the final week of field hockey the girls are 6-3-3 and have 2 games left. The top 3 teams make CCS and right now they are just outside the cutoff. Their last home game is Thursday at 2:45 against the team that is just ahead of them.

Football: (Jacob Montoya, Artie Valencia, Kean Viziry, Kenny Lee, Dominic Leach, David Pelz)

Like field hockey they only have 2 games left. The first is against Leland at home this week and then next week at Santa Teresa. Also like field hockey they are right at the cutoff of making CCS. They only need to win 1 of the last 2 games to make the CCS Playoffs.

So if the FH girls go 2-0 this week and the football team wins 1 of its final 2 games, we will have a clean sweep of CCS Qualifiers.

Some action shots coming soon...