Coach Conference: the Swiss Analyzers

COACH CONFERENCE 2009

Coach conference: the Swiss analyzers

ByLucie BabelOnSeptember 24, 2009InEuropeWithNo CommentsPermalink

Nine medals at these year’s World Championships, from which two golds in the long distance, a current leader at World Cup and a full hat at World military’s champs last week: Thomas Bührer, men’s national coach of the Swiss team, is on the lead of World’s most successful team ever. His lecture at the International orienteering coaches’ conference in Dornbirn, Austria, thus raised the curiosity and the attention of the other participants.

The Swiss structure in a few words

Switzerland’s orienteering federation counts a total of 5000 runners spread in 75 clubs, which makes from it “a small sport in Switzerland. But thanks to Simone Niggli we have a very good media coverage“, Bührer explains. Ten regional federations imply ten regional junior teams, which main task is “to support and develop these young talents and to lead them to competitive sport. With 14 or 15, they are of course not used to train regularly and need to be guided“. Around 250 youngsters from 14 to 20 years are member of these regional teams, which are in Switzerland also a compulsory step to participate in the several testraces to international competitions.

An average of two men and two women manage the step between the national junior team and the elite team every year. “The military gives some good support for this transition“, Thomas Bührer tells. Some of the best orienteers have the opportunity to accomplish their military duty (compulsory in Switzerland) as sportsmen. “We are trying to have it more flexible, for example with the current best juniors Matthias Kyburz, Martin Hubmann and Philipp Sauter. The idea would be that they will do the military and then stay in the National team for at least 2-3 years granted, without having each year any pressure to be quicked out. That way they have enough time to develop“. Switzerland doesn’t have any orienteering colleges, but some longer lasting high-schools where all afternoons are free from courses, letting more time to the athletes to train individually.

Coaching situation in Switzerland

All athletes of the elite team are encouraged to have a personal coach, who they are free to choose. “We try to have a good cooperation structure“, Bührer explains. “We meet all personal coaches twice or three times a year and discuss together“. The most demanding task, he assumes, is for the trainers of the regional junior team to define reasonable training loads for the youth. “I would feel much more under pressure when having to define training plans for the youth than for “my” athletes”,he says in a smile. Nevertheless, these trainers are payed only a few, which makes the situation insufficiant. “I’m actually surprised by the little theoretical knowledge the runners have when arriving in the elite team“, he regrets. “During junior age they don’t want to work theoretically, as they are still learning at school. It is sometimes an unpleasant situation for me, having to start everything from zero“. This he explains also by the fact that many personal coaches are former runners, wishing to transmit their know-how but not having the time to learn any new knowledge by following some coaching courses.

Strong and sane rivalry

“I’m a person who likes to have a well structured approach to some problems“, Thomas Bührerlaughes. “How can we further develops, how can we find solutions… In orienteering, I would say that 80% is training, and 20% is talent. Physically, it is enough to run a 5000m in 15′ to be among the best orienteers: but 15′ on 3000m isn’t a matter of talent, this is a matter of training“.
Bührer tries to have a lot of competition attitude among his runners during the training camps, making sure they have enough competition during some trainings. “For me, it is more important to have a good competition between the athletes than to have any specialization“. During training weeks just before WOC, having some athletes competing on all distances and some only in one, the question was to know how to do a suitable training plan for all of them. They indeed choose to plan it according to Simone Niggli, Daniel Hubmann and Matthias Merz, which lead Fabian Hertner, only involved in the sprint, to train on all distances. “I cannot make a mass start simulation for relay with only 3 runners!“, Bührerlaughes. As a result, Fabian Hertner got ideally prepared to some more difficult controls of the Hungarian sprint, and the other athletes got a higher competition.

Analyzing: one of the biggest strengths of Switzerland?

“Even tough the runners are very used to monitor the physical training, it isn’t the case of the technical training“, Bührer notices and takes example of some projects developped by the Swiss team runners. Dominik Koch analyzed his compass direction during a year, taking into account for each control, each training and competition whether the compass use was good, or bad. This allowed him to notice a positive trend with the time, an important aspect for the motivation too. Matthias Merz wanted for example to check if he was running in a prospective way enough, and monitored it in a similar way with table sheets he was filling after each training or race. Take the most of each leg, each training opportunity to improve and “put the focus on the most important issue you want to work on, to keep in efficiency“: one analyzing pole the Swiss team seems to have developped in an important way. “The runners become also much more critical with their training”, Bührer notices.

The importance of psychological training: the idea of a film script

Thomas Bührer wrote his diploma work on the subject “Imentscheidenden Moment das richtigetun”, roughly translated “to do the right thing in the decisive moment”, which lead to several projects related to psychological training inside of the Swiss team. The “Tag X” (day X) for example focuses on the fact that you should be at your best level when it counts the most. For this, Thomas Bührer introduced the principle of a film script. The athletes try to find and describe their ideal action process and summarize it by key words. It then helps to calm down, regulate the motivation, stear the attention and the concentration. A film script which though needs to be appopriated by the runners, until they use it in an uncounscious way. “That takes time“, Bührer says. “The fact is that this ideal action process is hidden under this film script: all thoughts of this action process have to be connected to these key words and become automatical“. Thomas Bührer prepared a real training plan for the athletes he focused on during his diploma work, very similar to any physical one, but for the mental training. He quotes some of the most impressive improvments he saw in his runners, the differences between Matthias Merz and Daniel Hubmann, their different ways of training mentally. “Icouldn’t prove it had a direct impact on the performance“, he recognizes. “Not all performed well after that“. Though, some maybe just needed a bit more time to apply it: “but I would say that Fabian Hertner’s medal was a long term response to this work“.

So, what is the key of the Swiss team? Thomas Bührer picks one answer: “We have a good mixture between rigorous competition attitude and an open knowledge exchange. The runners have no secrets, they exchange what they know“.

Coach conference: the Finnish mentality (1/2: JanneSalmi)

ByLucie BabelOnSeptember 23, 2009InEuropeWith1 CommentPermalink

JanneSalmi, seven times WOC medalist, chose cold and persuasing words to start his lecture. “As a runner, I was very critical about myself. My only goal was to be the best, and was the only thing I wanted to achieve. I am my worth opponent, and if I don’t look in the mirror, I won’t get better anymore“, Salmi insists. “This is also part of my reflexion as a coach“. The head coach of Finland talks also about his inner need to improve the orienteering world, which led him to modify the Finnish national team’s structure. “When I became the coach of the national team in 2005, I said I had the best team of the world, and actually I still think it was the case. But then I realized that there was a problem coming by the lack of successful juniors after these runners“.

“Does a top-junior ever meet a top-coach?”

One of the first measures taken was to increase the number of regional groups, meant for the 17-30 years old runners, as well as their professionality: 3 to 5 weekly trainings for the best athletes of the region, and the goal of having 4-5 full time coaches by 2012. “It has started well, despite we haven’t solved all financial questions yet“, he mentions. Two sport academy schools are based in Tampere and Turku, were the athletes can benefit from individual study plans. In the same time, a whole reflexion was done about the coaching of the national team. “There was no coaching before“, Salmi explains: “Being a coach consisted only in organizing the possibilities for the athletes to come to the training camps“. The elite team got twice as many weeks of training camps per year now than before 2005 and an increased number of runners, devided into the A, B and U-23 team (25 to 28 runners in total).

Strong club culture

Orienteering is a sport of tradition in Finland, a fact which influences the general training organization. JanneSalmi compares the situation to the similar Swedish one, suffering from the big rivalry between the clubs, instead of “looking outside the box“. The clubs are not responsible in forming the youngsters to top-level, “this is the purpose of the Federation“, but still an important base. Though “there are collisions between what the clubs would like – focusing on the big relays – and the visions of the national team”.He adds: “many runners are aiming for a place in the relay, and once they have achieved it, they lower motivation of the other runners pushes them down, more likely than the contrary”.

The coach as the servant

One of the biggest challenges JanneSalmi faces is the so called “finnish mentality”, which could be summarized by the sentence “I know better than the coach”. “I feel quite often that I don’t get the messages through their foreheads“, Salmi says. “The coach is servant, not master in Finland. This is sometimes frustrating, because I can see the same mistakes be always done“, and still not be listened to.
Another challenge, he explains, is the fact that Finland has very different terrains than the one of the competitions the athletes have to train for – too tricky orienteering with not enough speed. Also the map are really acurate: “there is a too high standard of maps, which leads runners to become unsure abroad when they notice there is something missing. They have to go over that feeling and just accept it“. Salmi quotes the fact about the too low amount of governmental support, not allowing them to know in autumn what budget they will get for the next year.

Vuokatti 2013

Since the World Championships 2013 were delivered to Vuokatti, Finland, Salmi aims to build the strongest team for there. “I planned a battery of testing and camps in order to scan the talented athletes and create a Vuokatti team“, he says. He hopes to get more individual coaches, 5 full time coaches by 2013, and guidelines. Salmi also wants to creat a “tougher” system. “We really have to look in the mirror, look also what we can learn from the others, and have tougher training blocks“. He would like the athletes to run the 5000m in 15’30 for the men and 17’30 for the women, which only a few reach. “It doesn’t seem so clear to them that running fast is important“, he regrets, and explains also that there is a real gap between the 20 and 25 years old runners, who would be needed for Vuokatti 2013. When a participant asks what the goals could be for there, “more than two gold medals in the long distance like MinnaKauppi and HeliJukola?“, JanneSalmi smiles. “It is actually a pity that I already lived that moment in my life, because there cannot be anything nicer in a coaching life“.

Still, the Finnish team will be able also to count on some of its biggest strength towards 2013: a big number of talented youngsters, a rising image of the sport, a big TV coverage and a strong orienteering culture, which will hopefully continue serving orienteering in this country.

Coach conference: the Finnish mentality (2/2: A. Juutilainen)

ByLucie BabelOnSeptember 25, 2009InEuropeWith2 CommentsPermalink

While JanneSalmimentionned the effects of Finnish mentality on coaching, AnssiJuutilainen presented the psychological method he introduced in the Finnish elite team, wearing an at first glance obscure name: Orienteering tendency analysis.

Orienteering as a mental sport

Even thought orienteering is clearly an endurance sport with its own physical demands, it is mentally extremely demanding. “The skills in orienteering are a complex cognitive process“, Juutilainen, beside it also five times world champion in ski orienteering, explains. “There are indeed no other similar sports“. The skill demands in orienteering are mostly on the mental side without high demands for motoric skills – “almost every one is able to run“, he adds.
The mental demands are thus various: what do I see and what do I store in my memory? How do I adjust the information from the map to the terrain? How do I find the most important informations? How do I use the earlier experiences? How do I keep concentrated, and what means concentration in practise? How can I tolerate exaustion and pain?

Different models and types of thinking

The Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Gustav Jung identified different types of thinking preferences. Catherine Myers and Isabelle Briggs-Meyer simplified this theory, giving bearth to the MBTI – Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. According to this model, most people can be divided into 16 different types of thinking preferences. Four categories of situations (outwards – inwards, gathering informations, decision making and lifestyle) each time lead to two different types of profil – every one should have a natural tendency to one or the other of these types. “This doesn’t mean that we don’t like to be from the other type, it just shows our natural preference“, Juutilainen points out. An extrovert person also needs moments of thinking and privacy, as well as a more “judging” person could like to have a more flexible lifestyle during a while.

- Outer world / inner world

• E= Extroversion: Feels pulled outward by external claims and conditions; prefers to talk and express ideas,opinions; needs relationships; gives breadth to life; is often friendly, talkative, easy to know; prefers to act, then think and reflect.
• I= Introversion:Energized by inner resources, internal experiences; prefers to think and reflect first; gives depth to life; is often reserved, quiet, hard to know.

- Gathering informations

• S= Sensing:lives in the present, “what is”; enjoys to get things finished, often slow to start first; understand best the overall picture by examples and details; starts at the beginning, takes a step at a time; doesn’t like theories without practical connections.
• N= Intuition:lives towards the future, “what might be”; prefers imagining possibilities; enjoy beginning new, often not much energy to finish; needs to see the overall picture first and then fit the details; jumps in anywhere, leaps over steps; doesn’t like routines without deeper understanding.

-Decision making

• T= Thinking: decides with the head; goes by logic; fact oriented; focus on rational and logical situations; good at analyzing plans; spontaneously finds flaws, criticizes.
• F= Feeling: decides by the heart; value orientated; goes by personal conviction; focus on relationships and harmony; good at understanding people; spontaneously appreciates.

-Life style

• J= Judging:prefers an organized lifestyle; likes definite order and structure; enjoy being decisive; handles deadlines, plans in advance; proceed with plans, not changing them easily.
• P= Perceiving: prefers a flexible lifestyle; likes to keep things open; likes to keep freedom; enjoys being curious, discovering surprises; meets deadline by last minute rush; often easy to make changes.

Application to orienteering

This type of modelling and analyzing the thinkingis still young, AnssiJuutilainen insists. How it can be applied efficiently in coaching is indeed still to discover, but some of its benefits are already shown. “The most important consequence is that it helps you to understand better your way of acting” – and avoid mistakes. Depending on the thinking preference, the athletes will have different ways of filtring the information they see on the map and focus on other informations. Some profiles are thus much keener to find the ideal route choice immediately, while others will naturally tend not to make any mistake, or react very logically when they do one. “Some people will for example never understand how it is possible at all to take a wrong control, because their thinking process doesn’t tend to it“. In another orienteering situation, they might however have more difficulties. To know one’s one type of thinking preferences helps then to understand which natural mistakes are done and are usually repeated, which are one’s individual strengthnesses as an orienteer, and which is the best individual way to activate the basic mental functions and be concentrated.