| Coaching Philosophy |
Integrated Performance ManagementEAS Coaching is founded upon the basic concept of Integrated Performance Management. This is the collective oversight by the coach and athlete of training, racing, health, and lifestyle in concert with the judicious use of the athlete's available resources. During the discovery phase and throughout the relationship, EAS Coaches work with their athletes to define the influential variables that are present in the athlete's life and on the playing field. In turn, EAS develops Athlete Performance Plans that are reflective of these variables that play a large, yet sometimes under appreciated, role in athlete performance. Psychological Warfare"Sport is symbolic war." An apt metaphor for high level athletics in which the athlete's career, livelihood, relationships, et al. are constantly on the line. High performance athletics is not a game to the involved competitor... it's life. When it's time to race, the athlete must be ready for battle... in doing so, the mental component can never be taken for granted. EAS uses a proprietary task-focused blueprint for the development of an athlete's psychological strength called Technical-Tactical Orientation or, more aptly, "TNT." Simply, this is a dedicated philosophy for teaching how to "control what can be controlled" in the athlete's preparation and racing while concurrently minimizing the stress impact of myriad uncontrollable variables inherent on the field of play. In using TNT, the coach focuses on specific physical and technical tasks for the athlete to accomplish that will allow the rider to place himself into a physical and mental position to be competitive in the racing environment. More directly, it's the psychological edge that makes sure the athlete is ready to respond when it counts... on the battle field. Experience is Critical to SuccessEAS is founded upon the philosophy that coaching is inherently an art form and that the coach must have high-level personal experience in order to truly produce the best results. A coach must understand implicitly what an athlete is experiencing in order to successfully apply coaching knowledge on the road and track. EAS believes in the power of science in sport. In addition to using modern training techniques on a foundation of traditional best practices, EAS also uses a number of tools for objectively valuing and assessing athletic performance. However, too many times EAS has seen applied exercise science not match the theoretical expectations anticipated by inexperienced coaches with sports science degrees. Sometimes what works in the laboratory doesn't work at all in the field. "Competitive cycling is an extremely hard sport and it's not always easy to define what's a manageable workload and what's not." says EAS founder, Erin Hartwell. "In this modern coaching era, a strong foundation of physiological understanding is requisite to being a good coach. However, a coach must also know what it feels like to ride for six hours in the rain, race a time trial at the limit, lift a 90-percent weight the day after a hard cycling session, or come back from a hard crash. "Numbers can only tell you so much... for a coach to competently assess rider feedback, they need to know what the training and racing experience is genuinely like. The feeling in one's body after racing 200 kilometers is not something that's easily described in a textbook. "Only experience will tell the coach what is physically realistic and what workload combinations will produce either a favorable and predictable improvement or lead to injury and an overtraining state. Simply, the coach needs that subjective understanding to balance the objectivity of science." Culture of FivePassion, Preparedness, Patience, Perseverance, and Power are the five key maxims that make up the Culture of Five and form the foundation on which EAS bases its programs. Independently powerful virtues, together these five principles provide the framework necessary to maximize athletic performance and further personal achievement. Through the Culture of Five axiom, EAS will strive to develop and refine these attributes by nurturing the athlete's Passion for sport with a well-planned curriculum that maximizes the athlete's strengths, minimizes the impact of weaknesses, and provides the sound infrastructure and planning that promotes genuine Preparedness in one's athletic and personal lives. EAS promotes an understanding and confidence in Patience through the clear explanation of its training methods, program timelines, by working to genuinely understand the athlete's long and short-term goals, and by competently defining attainable expectations for its athletes. Perseverance is nurtured by an experienced coaching staff that is familiar with the peaks and troughs of serious training and competition; teaching that to be at one's best, the athlete must learn to persevere, always finding a way to "get up when knocked down." Finally, it's time to unleash the ultimate factor to success and the reason for the hard work and sacrifice: Power-Carpe diem!-seize the day... the ability to set free one's strength, speed, and endurance-everything the athlete has trained for!-when called upon, when it counts... not falling victim to performance anxiety and pressure on the competitive stage. The Culture of Five... are you in? InfluencesIn addition to others, EAS has been heavily influenced by Y.V. Verkhoshansky, Tudor Bompa, Charlie Walsh, Rene Wenzel, Dragomir Ciroslan, the Norwegian, British, Australian, and USA National Teams, and the Olympic Committees of Norway and the United States. These forward thinking leaders, programs, and institutions have paved the way for many successful coaches and systems throughout the world. EAS is indebted to their contributions to sport. Importantly, EAS has been positively impacted through its many world travels as athletes and coaches-experiences that developed of the ability of its staff to manage diverse and dynamic settings and to respond under intense pressure when it counts. |
