For Best Results, Understand Your Athlete

[H1]FOR BEST RESULTS, UNDERSTAND YOUR ATHLETE

ATHLETICS – CRAIG HILLIARD, Head Coach, Athletics Australia

I was originally a 110m hurdler but ended up having a knee reconstruction and seven operations for an injury. I knew I was going to be in a bit of trouble coming back from this, and I’d always had coaching in my mind as something I’d like to try. I really enjoyed understanding the physiology and biomechanics behind sport.

I’d already qualified with a Bachelor in Physical Education and Grad. Dip. in Sport Science, when an opportunity arose as an apprentice coach position for an athletics job. Thinking I’d never get it, being at this new ‘AIS’ place that had opened up, a friend encouraged me to start writing my application while I was still undergoing physiotherapy for my knee. The next thing you know, 3 weeks later I was flying to Canberra to be interviewed. I was offered the job by Don Talbot, who was the Head Coach then, and I immediately moved away from my comfortable situation in Melbourne. I had thought to move up for year to give it a go, but 33 years later, I’m still at the Australian Institute of Sport!

It was the opportunity of a lifetime to be immersed in something that was so new, flying by the seat of my pants, but also with the ability to put my stamp on where sport in this country was heading. It was an exciting time. I was pretty much thrown race walking to start. I was told to take over the coaching of then world record holder, Sue Cook. I applied the sport science knowledge I’d acquired, and Sue kept improving. More athletes came in and created a strong culture for walking. Gradually I took on further athletics events, such as hurdles. These were formative years for me in establishing my coaching approach and philosophy. I was very fortunate to be able to develop in more than one area and have success.

[H2]A COACH’S EDUCATION NEVER ENDS

Coaching is a constant evolution. I’ve been fortunate to travel a lot with the AIS, sitting down with overseas coaches and seeing the athletes they’re working with. That’s been the real education – to chat with them, see their athletes warming up, discussing a range of topics and philosophies. You can learn a lot from other sports, not just other track and field coaches.

No matter what knowledge you have or what courses you’ve done, if you don’t understand the people, the athletes you’re working with, and communicate the knowledge well, then you won’t succeed. You need to understand what makes them tick, how to build trust in you as their coach, build a relationship to be a more effective coach. Working at the AIS in the early days particularly was great for this, as you were surrounded by other sport coaches such as Bill Sweetenham, all on the same learning path as you, sharing knowledge across sports and dealing with athletes.

Unfortunately, we tend to get a bit siloed in our own areas now, focused on our own sport and we’re not as centralised as a hub of coaches and information. Our contact with each other as coaches is a lot harder to coordinate. That’s about the only negative to have come from the huge growth of the Institute. The positives are that it’s now at the cutting edge of sports science and coaching and the whole daily training environment is like a one-stop shop. You have small hubs of athletes who are goal-driven and encouraging each other to succeed.

There are more opportunities for coaches today, however it’s still difficult to make a career out of it. It’s certainly an aim of mine to employ more coaches in the high performance environment. We need more coaches for the future of our athletes. The best way we can upskill our coaches is not just in theory, but out on the track, in the weight room, being mentored by other coaches across the country. There’s no secrets out there – it’s about the application.

[H2]WHEN INJURIES STRIKE

In my initial naiveté, I didn’t feel the pressure to perform, even when the World Championships started in 1983. I just tried to get athletes onto teams, then hoped they would perform up to selection. I never put too much pressure on the athletes. I just got them there fit and healthy, then let nature take its course. That’s helped in many ways to survive coaching. You can get caught up in all the stress, but I feel that, at the end of the day, you can only prepare the athlete as best you can through the relationship and trust you share.

It’s a great journey, but it can also be fickle. Injuries strike at the last minute, such as with our team for the Barcelona Olympics. All 8 of my athletes on the team ended up with something wrong, such as Jane Flemming tearing her hamstring 10 days out. It was a real dark, low point for me. The AIS Director at the time was very philosophical, encouraging me to analyse what went wrong then move on, not to dwell on it. Prior to that moment, I’d enjoyed a pretty good run of success, with my athletes performing when it counted, so Barcelona was a reality check for me. It was a wake-up call for looking at what I was doing, how I was training, and working out what I really had control over. That’s the highs and lows of sport.

You’re always trying to the push the boundary to extract the best out of the athlete, so you’re on a knife edge all the time with injury. At the same time, you have to keep refining and understanding what’s going on and make on-the-ground decisions for your program based on the conditions on the day and the state of the athlete. The athlete needs to understand their body to give you accurate feedback on a session, to share the physiological responses they’re feeling, the differences from the previous day. Then you’ll get a far more effective result in managing the load across seasons, the year and Olympic cycles. This is a results of building trust with the athlete, and is absolutely paramount to performance. If you do that, you’ll increase the chance of success and decrease the chance of athletes getting hurt. When you go in blindly, don’t observe what’s going on and don’t get accurate feedback, then you’re in trouble. You’re always better off missing 3 days of training through caution than pushing through and ending up missing 6 weeks through injury.

[H2]RIO IS NOT WITHOUT ITS CHALLENGES

Heading into Rio, we have a large team of 61 athletes with a good mix of youth and experience. Every athlete has their personal coach attending, to make sure each athlete will perform at their best. Many of the young debutants have been competitors in the World Juniors. This is very much a transitional time in athletics with a lot of new athletes coming through and the team has a really good atmosphere with good leadership. Role models in sports are important and inspire younger athletes. It builds their self-belief in being able to achieve the same results. If we keep the momentum going that we have seen in the domestic season, then Australians will be standing up in all events.

Most Australian athletes seem to be competitive beings. Often, the harder the fight, the better we perform. This can also be to our detriment at times, because we can push too hard and end up with injuries but I think it’s part of our culture and how we approach competition. We want to get out there and give it our best crack – which is an important attitude.

This Olympics has been a logistical nightmare trying to pull it all together with the movements of the coaches in and out of controlled areas, due to the limited number of accreditations each country is given, which give access to various sporting and athlete areas such as the Olympic Village and competition venues. We’re trying to ensure that each personal coach gets access to the warm up track with their athlete, and hopefully also the warm up track on the day of their individual competition. This has been the hardest Olympics to deal with this accreditation issue, due to the size of the Olympics and the overlap of athletics with swimming in the scheduling – both sports for which Australia sends big teams of athletes and coaching staff. At the end of the day, we may have to prioritise key athletes and coaches.

[H2]MY TOP TIPS

1. Keep your eyes and ears open. Learn as much off others as you can.
2. Back yourself. Have the courage of your convictions and understand the sport inside and out, including the biomechanics, the physiology, and what makes athletes tick. If you understand this, you’ll extract a much better result from the athlete.