Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #1: Gill1918 presents Tony Holler "The 10 Pillars of Feed The Cats"

Transcript

#1: Gill1918 presents Tony Holler "The 10 Pillars of Feed The Cats" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
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  coaches, for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
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  Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
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  Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
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  you grow as a coach. We'll bring in the once a year
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  track clinic straight to your ears daily.
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  Interested in creating your own episode?
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  Everyone's welcome to participate.
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  Check out the show notes below For more information.
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  Now let's get into today's topic.
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  Hi, my name is Tony Holler. I'm the track coach at
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  Plainfield North High School. I'm presently in my 44th year of
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  coaching track. This is my contribution to the
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  Gill 1918 project. It's going to be called the 10
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  pillars of Feed the Cats. Feed the Cats is a way to cook.
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  It's not a system. It's not a recipe.
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  Here are my 10 pillars. Number one is that speed is the
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  tide that lifts all boats. One of the reasons why speed is
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  so important is because the faster your Max velocity, the
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  faster your submax velocity. In that way speed reserve
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  improves endurance. What this means is that you can
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  run submaximally at much more efficient in much more efficient
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  ways. Speed is related to
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  explosiveness. There's no such thing as a slow
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  athlete being explosive. You must be fast and strong.
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  I would argue that every event in track and field will benefit
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  from improved speed. The pole vault, the jumps, even
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  the throws. The faster the athlete, the
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  better the athlete. I love to talk about what
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  happened when Brian Kula, a very good friend of mine in Denver,
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  trained two female golfers. He did not train them like
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  golfers. He trained them to Sprint and
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  lift and jump and bounce. Their Max velocity sprinting got
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  2 miles an hour faster because they got faster, their club
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  speed got faster as well. And matter of fact, both girls
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  had club speeds that went 15 miles an hour faster because of
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  their speed improvement. Rest, recovery and sleep is the
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  foundation of high performance. In my Feed the Cat's pyramid, my
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  base is rest, recovery, sleep. If you're not doing those
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  things, you do not give yourself a chance to get to the next
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  level. You may be wondering what is the
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  next level? The next level is general
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  athleticism, Sprint, lift, jump and bounce.
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  After that, we can start working on sport fundamentals and track
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  and field. That would be things like
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  hurdling and vaulting and triple jumping.
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  By the way, the top of the pyramid is winning pillar #3
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  record, rank, and publish. There's only one recipe for
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  gaining motivation and that success.
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  Specifically the dopamine hits we get when we observe ourselves
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  making progress. That comes from a book called
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  The Motivation Myth by Jeff Hayden.
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  I truly believe that when you show athletes progress, they get
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  excited about their sport and become motivated.
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  I also believe that Record Rank and Publish gamifies practice
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  and makes practice much less miserable #4 tired is the enemy,
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  not the goal. We are looking for race horses,
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  not work horses. Vince Lombardi, 60 years ago,
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  said fatigue makes cowards of us all.
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  So what did coaches do? They went out and tried to get
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  their athletes as tired as possible every day, every
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  practice, so that they would be accustomed to fatigue entering
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  the game. To me, this is backwards.
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  I believe we need to prioritize performance over hard work, that
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  we need to prioritize performance over effort.
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  By the way, effort might be a coach's favorite word.
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  Because if their kids are too tired to perform, he can only
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  ask forever #5 never let today ruin tomorrow.
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  Never burn the stake. I love what Les Spellman says.
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  If you make a profit every day, you will never go broke.
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  In other words, we are looking for small gains.
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  We are not looking to burn the steak day after day and go
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  downhill and endless spiral getting injured, being
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  miserable. Instead we could do what James
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  Clear would suggest. James Clear wrote Atomic Habits.
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  If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you'll end up
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  37 times better by the time you're done.
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  Pillar number six, we want to be 100% healthy and only 80% in
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  shape, not the other way around. This quote is actually by Harry
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  Mara, the coach of Ashton Eaton. Another quote that I go to all
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  the time is that any fool can get another fool tired.
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  Personally, I'm in the business of winning, and hard work
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  sometimes interferes with winning if it detrains speed.
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  Pillar #7 We want to perform. In practice, I believe that
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  moderate exercise never leads to high performance.
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  I actually stole that quote from Bill Bauerman who is a distance
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  coach. He wouldn't have Sprint coach
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  like me. Bauerman of course coached
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  Oregon and coached the famous legendary Steve Prefontaine.
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  I believe that if you practice in 3rd gear every day, it's
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  crazy to think that that will lead to 5th gear performance in
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  a meet, in a game, in a race. I also believe if you train the
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  extreme, you train the entire range pillar #8 let the game be
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  the hardest thing you do. Of course in track and field it
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  would be the meet or the race, but let the performance be the
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  hardest thing you do. My dad was a basketball coach
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  who won 629 games in 47 years of coaching high school and
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  college. He knew what what he was doing.
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  He was a great coach, but he used to tell his teams every
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  year we are going to practice so hard.
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  The games will feel easy and it made sense to athletes.
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  To me, I'm the opposite. I want, I want the race to be
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  hard. I want the game to be hard.
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  Because if we overdo it in practice, we detrain the skills
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  necessary to compete. For example, if you train for
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  your first marathon, you don't run 50 miles every day.
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  You start small. You prioritize health, both
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  mental and physical health. So even though we train the
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  extremes in a feed the cat situation, we are micro dosing
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  those extremes and we stay healthy and we learn to love our
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  training pillar #9 kids are good at what they like and obsessed
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  with what they love. Love is a very powerful drug.
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  No one is good at what they hate, and I think that sports in
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  America has intentionally made practices miserable.
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  It was just the hell you had to go through.
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  To get to run in the track meet or to play in that football game
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  on Friday night. If you truly love something, you
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  don't have to be pushed. You feel pulled.
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  And my favorite education quote of all times?
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  And of course, coaching is nothing more than education is
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  that education is not the filling of a pail, but the
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  lighting of a fire that came from William Butler Yeats.
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  And that is the only quote that stayed on my chemistry desk
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  during my 38 years of teaching chemistry.
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  And the final pillar #10 make practice the best part of a kids
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  day. When kids love practice, they
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  will make you a better coach. We will reflect our athletes and
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  our athletes will reflect us. This is what I call the endless
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  feedback loop of feed the cats. Thank you for your time and of
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  course, remember to feed those cats.
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  Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
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  episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
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  It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
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  amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
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  The Guild 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
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  build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
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  heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
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  there. So please get a hold of me,
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  e-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
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  and let's help create your episode of the Gill 1918
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  Project. Hope you enjoy the day, they
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  will see you tomorrow.