Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #52: Gill1918 presents Rob Wilson "Check Engine Light"

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#52: Gill1918 presents Rob Wilson "Check Engine Light" · 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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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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Hey there coaches. This is Rob Wilson coming at you
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through the Gill Athletics podcast.
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First and foremost, Full disclosure, I'm not a track and
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field coach. I've never worked in track and
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field. I don't coach the events.
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I've never participated in the events.
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And so you might ask yourselves, now that you have that
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knowledge, what the heck is this guy doing on this track and
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field podcast? Well, I'll tell you.
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I hope to offer some more general information based on my
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experience, which primarily in the last three years especially
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has been with the special operations community.
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But I do have a bit of a tendril or two into track and field
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through Altis. So I've done various types of
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work with Altis, who I'm sure many of you are familiar with
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listening to this podcast. This CEO, Stu McMillan, has been
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on Gill Athletics more than once, I'm sure.
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And so I work with Stu and the coaches at Altus quite often
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actually. Now what I want to offer today
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is a bit more general in scope. And I think one thing that I can
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help with in particular is to provide or at least to help
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coaches deliver in simpler language, the knowledge that you
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have on how systems and processes work together in the
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performance environment and how to sort of sell the need for
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high performers to develop a self monitoring and self-care
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system to sustain performance. Now let me be more specific.
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I think at least for me, the target in the way that I work is
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performance longevity. So of course we want to win in
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the short term, but I think more broadly what I would like to aim
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for his performance longevity. Now performance doesn't just
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mean winning because a lot of factors contribute to whether or
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not an athlete wins. An athlete could have maybe
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their best performance ever and still lose.
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So performance means can I execute to my potential on the
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given day, right. Performance is about execution.
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Can I do the things that I want to do and do the things that I
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need to be able to do? And then there's longevity,
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which is length over time, right?
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Can I, can I maintain that set of capacities that allow me to
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continue to perform not just for a day, not just for a week, but
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for months and years? So what are the things that we
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need to have in order to not just have short term
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performance, but be able to sustain performance?
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And I'm sure all of you have seen situations where very
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gifted elite performers can't sustain the performance because
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they don't have the skills and habits that are necessary to
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keep them in the game. Now high performers are often
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good because at least in part because they can figure it out,
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at least in the moment, any unimportant information that
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that interferes with them getting the job done from
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performing the task. High performing individuals are
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very good at task focus. They can drive all of their
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intention to what needs to be done right now and to execute in
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that in the sporting event and often in training is very, very
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helpful. All right, and to some degree
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necessary. However, because athletes are so
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good at doing that, one of the things that happens is that that
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the price they pay is that they miss small sort of indicator
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lights that say, hey, you'd better look over here and start
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dealing with this small set of problems before they become
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bigger problems. And that's where the idea of the
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check engine light came from, right?
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This check engine light curriculum and and now a book
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that I've written by the same title is about knowing where the
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indicator lights are on the performance longevity dashboard
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of the athlete. Now, some of these ideas are
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tacit to coaches, right? We have all kinds of monitoring
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systems and assessments and data collection that we use all the
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time. And we're through our training
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and through our experience in the profession, we get really
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attuned to this information. But athletes are more focused on
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outcomes. What can they do?
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How are they performing now? They don't need to be as read in
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on monitoring systems and assessments as we are, but if
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they don't have any system to monitor these things of
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themselves, then we're always going to be in a lag.
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We're always going to be behind the 8 ball.
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And so instead of that, what we can do is build a dashboard.
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And this dashboard can have valid, reliable and accessible
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indicators with the purpose of calibrating their perception to
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improve their embodied sense of what it is they need at any
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given period of time. And there's really two benefits
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to that. One is athletes can make
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adjustments faster than we can make adjustments for them
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because they're living in their experience.
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So if they're educated about what kind of indicators they
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should have and what those things mean about their ability
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to perform, then they can make adjustments in real time much
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faster than any best coach in the world because they're living
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it. Second, if they run into
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problems that they are unsure how to solve when they talk to
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subject matter experts like coaches or people on the medical
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staff, they're going to have better language and a better a
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more calibrated sense of what they need so that they can
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communicate more clearly to people on their team.
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And again, that puts us in a more adaptive framework when it
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comes to solving performance problems instead of waiting for
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things to get so bad that they finally notice and then doing
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something having some sort of system failure, right?
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That would be like, well, that'd be like only changing the oil in
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your truck because the engine finally seized, right?
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That's why we have indicators on our actual dashboards in our
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vehicles to let us know what is the condition of the system
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currently, how are things running and what might need
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attention in the near future to keep it running.
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And that's really the purpose of the dashboard or the instrument
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panel, instrument cluster, however you want to think about
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it in any vehicle that you ever operate.
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Now, we don't want to just put anything on this dashboard.
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We want to have valid, reliable and accessible indicators.
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So valid means this indicator actually measures.
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The thing I think it measures is accurate.
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It's an accurate report of what's happening.
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So for example, if you have a chest strap heart rate monitor
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that's a valid indicator of the behavior of your heart during
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training. Then we have reliability where
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we want indicators that are reliable, they measure in
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consistent ways over time. And then we want accessible
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indicators, which means, well, I have it first of all, but also,
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and to me, this is where the rubber meets the road and
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performance. Does the athlete know what the
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information that they're getting means and what action to take?
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So one of the sort of bugaboos that I have in the performance
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industry in general is the way things like heart rate
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variability are used now. We have more wearable data than
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ever, more access to digital tools.
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Athletes are testing themselves, coaches are testing them, and we
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have all this data, for example, heart rate variability, and the
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athletes don't really know how to properly interpret the
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information and inform action. So often one of two things in my
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experience happens 1. The athletes don't know what it
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means, it doesn't reflect their experience and so they get rid
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of it. They just disregard it all
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together or they become so fixated on it that it becomes a
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limiter and their ability to express themselves properly
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during training, they become sort of neurotic about changes
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in in HIV. And so accessibility is not only
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OK, I have this convenient technological tool, but it's
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also I understand how to interpret the information and
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how to make sense out of it. So I know what action to take or
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better yet, what next experiment to do to get newer information.
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Now in terms of the application of this, I like to think about
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these indicators on this dashboard in three categories.
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So I think about it in terms of mind movement and matter and
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mind really, you know, it could mean a lot of things.
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I don't want to get too philosophically esoteric here,
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but mine for all intents and purposes has to do with the way
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that we respond to stress over time.
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So how does the psycho emotional physiological system respond to
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all stress from all directions over time, including not just
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training stress, but also things like familial stress, social
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environment, history of stress which may include things like
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trauma. And that all those things have
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to be considered when thinking about how an athlete might
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monitor their current and future response to different types of
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stress. Then we have movement, which is
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pretty obvious, right? If you're a, if you're a SNC or
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you're a track and field coach, movements pretty obvious.
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How well do you move your body in space and time and what
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markers are available to standardize those things?
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Now, if you're a coach, that in particular is tacit to your
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approach. That's what we learn as coaches,
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right? You're using movement screens
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and you're watching how athletes warm ups and their responses to
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warm ups and training loads changes over time and how
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coordinated are they? How much power do they produce?
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What's the rate of force development?
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All those kind of metrics that let us know how an athlete is
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moving. Now the third category is, and
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actually let me back up for a second here, I almost passed
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this important point, which is in this movement category, often
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what happens is because in general, human beings were so
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good at self organizing around problems that we're facing and
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athletes in particular are especially good at compensating
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and self organizing our own problems that they won't realize
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that their trajectory is headed towards somewhere that might
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ultimately limit them in the long run.
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It's helping with performance today, but it might be limiting
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performance in the future. And so it can be helpful for
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athletes to have some movement monitoring systems or frameworks
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that makes sense to them. So for for me, for example,
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regardless of sport, every athlete that I've worked with
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for sure over the last 10 years at some point has been asked to
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do sun salutation from yoga as a daily process.
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Not because I need everybody to levitate on Lotus blossoms and
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achieve Nirvana, but because I want athletes to see that
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there's some low friction formal movement patterns that they can
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do on a regular basis that give them information about how well
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their body's moving through space.
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Can they connect to simple shapes on a regular basis?
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Can they breathe in those shapes?
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So how's their nervous system responding even further?
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You can say, OK, well, if I do this thing every day that only
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takes 5 minutes, I, I'm really, I feel like annoyed that I have
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to do it today and I wake you up and I'm kind of grumpy about it
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and I don't want to do it and it's stupid.
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That first thing is a clue. Hey, hold on a second.
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Why mine in such a bad mood? I did this for the last two days
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and it wasn't a problem today. I'm kind of kind of mad about
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it. What's going on with me?
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All right, so it starts to give them some insight.
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It puts them ahead of the curve so they can start to make
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adjustments early. So we have mind, we have
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movement, and then third, we have matter.
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And matter is about chemistry. What's going on under the hood?
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Do they understand what's going on with their blood work, their
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aerobic system, how to manage their sleep and the effects of
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managing the sleep? Do they understand the
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appropriate body composition for their sport and how their
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behavior effects things like that?
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Energy systems, again, there's far more to all this then we
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have time for in this podcast, but things that I go into in a
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quite detailed fashion in my work elsewhere.
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But point being that this mind movement matter sort of trifecta
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is just a verbal description, right?
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These things are all related to each other.
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Anything that you do in one category affects the other two.
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If you change something and in the way that you respond and
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recover from stress, then it's going to change potentially how
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your body feels and it's going to change your chemistry.
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And if you pull on a lever and your chemistry, it's certainly
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going to affect the way that you deal with stress and how well
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you can move. And they're all affecting each
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other all the time. But mind movement and matter
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essentially represent categories from which we can draw valid,
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reliable, accessible indicators to build a dashboard.
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And the point of the dashboard is so that athletes can become
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autonomous partners, collaborators in managing their
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own performance longevity, so they can become more educated
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about their own needs and either better handle them themselves or
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communicate more clearly with professionals who are helping
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them. Now, over time, this becomes
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this idea of tuning, and tuning is really oppositional to
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optimization. Optimization means there is a
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single solution that's best. And if you're not in this best
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category of optimization, then you're less than optimal, you're
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less than your best. But that's really sort of like a
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manufacturing model from the 20th century.
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We're biological organisms, We're not things, we're not
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machines, even though we use the analogy of machines like I do,
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right, check engine light. We're ultimately biological
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organisms. And so the way that we're
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changing and adapting and what our needs are in order to get
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the stain the same stable outcomes over time, it will
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change. And so as you develop these
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indicators and you continue to use them, what will happen is
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you will better attune to the changing needs that you have in
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order to get stable outcomes. And this is done with an
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experimental mindset, right? And we can use things like Dave
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Snowden's safe to fail experiments.
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Let me try something. Oh, you know what?
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I think I've been monitoring my sleep and I think the quality of
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my sleep might be inhibiting my ability to recover the best I
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can from the heaviest workload on the most dense training day.
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I'm going to try something simple and if it if it works,
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it'll really help. But if it doesn't, it won't hurt
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me. That's a safe to fail
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experiment. And I'm going to have some key
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performance indicators that I looked at and we're going to
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have discussions about those things, right.
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And that's probably, if your coach listening to me say this,
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you probably like, Oh yeah, this is probably kind of how I'm
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already interacting with my athletes.
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And that's a good thing. What Check Engine Light does is
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it gives some simple language to explain the tacit knowledge that
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we often have as coaches to our athletes so they can better
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participate in the process. Now, all of this is really part
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of a larger coaching philosophy that I've been using for many
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years and again most recently with a special operations
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community that's recently culminated in a book called
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Check Engine Light Tuning Your Body and Mine for Performance
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Longevity. In it, I explain all the
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concepts that I just talked about in much greater detail.
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And there's a workbook where there are short, safe to fail
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experiments in the back where you or your athletes can try
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things out and see what works. Not for the purpose, just of
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getting some experimental outcome, but for asking better
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questions. That's really the key.
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Does the athlete have the capacity to ask better and
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better questions? You can also to learn more about
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this general coaching philosophy through my sub stack, which is
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also called check engine light. So you can go to
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checkenginelight.substack.com or you can check me out on social
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media on Instagram. I'm at the check engine light.
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Again, this is Rob Wilson. Thanks so much for listening.
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Please check me out if you want to learn more.
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Thanks. Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here.
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Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Guild 1918
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Project series. It's really my mission, my
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passion to bring you massive amounts of value and I hope this
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one hit the mark. The Guild 1918 Project is really
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and teach other coaches out there.
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So please get a hold of me e-mail text message.
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Hope you enjoy today, they will see you tomorrow.