Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #21: Gill1918 presents Ricky Sierra "How to Coach Combined Event Athletes at the HS Level"

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#21: Gill1918 presents Ricky Sierra "How to Coach Combined Event Athletes at the HS Level" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

0:00
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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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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Welcome and thank you for taking the time to listen to my
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presentation of how to coach the Maltese, which would include the
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decathlon and the pentathlon. To give a little background on
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myself, my name is Ricky Sierra. I am a decathlon and pentathlon
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slash heptathlon coach in the Middle Tennessee area.
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I have a club track team that I coach throughout the year and
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then I'm an assistant coach at the local high school,
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Ravenwood. For the last 15 years I have
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been learning as I go on how to best coach the Maltese and it's
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been quite the fun process of doing it.
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But as I've learned over these last 15 years, there really is
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not a ton of resources out there for people who are interested in
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kind of learning about. The Maltese is pretty lightly
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covered in general being kind of a very niche part of the sport.
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But it's also, in my opinion, the most exciting 2 day event
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that track and field offers. To give a little validity to
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what I'll be discussing, just a quick background on my
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experiences. You know, for the last, as I
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said, for the last 15 years I've coached the event with a focus
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on it. During that time we've had
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between the school I coached at and the club I coach at or the
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club I run, we've had about 15 individual state champions in
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the deck and the pent in the state of Tennessee.
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We do offer the Maltese at our state qualifier and then as a
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state championship. We're one of the few states that
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do it, which is part of the reason why there's not that many
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resources for the decathlon because not very many states
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offer it at their state championship level.
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So as programs in different states who are trying to win
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their team state titles, they probably are not putting that
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much emphasis on it since it wouldn't actually help their
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team. And for a lot of kids, that only
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chance to get to do it is at the AAU or USATF summer meets.
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Or if they're extremely talented and they can get the PRS and the
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individual events to get a add a, a bowl point total, then they
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could potentially compete at your New Balance or Nike Outdoor
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Nationals or indoor Nationals. So, so you know, when I started
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coaching Maltese, I just come out of high school and I always
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had had a big draw to the Maltese in general, just because
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I, it was quick to point, quick to notice how talented they were
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and all the events. And it wasn't the stereotypical
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idea of, oh, they're just kind of average.
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I got to watch Brian Clay a couple times in person and he
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really got to appreciate just how gifted not just he was, but
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the whole field was. And then obviously getting to
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see Ashton Eaton during my younger years, probably within
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that 16 to 24 range, getting to watch Ashton Eaton live a couple
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times really made you appreciate just how talented these dudes
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were. And now from the female side,
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you got Anna Hall, who's an absolute beast at what she does.
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And it doesn't matter what event she's in, she's elite at it.
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Anywhere from 22 foot long jumps to 2O28 hundreds.
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You know, there's not very many people in in the world who can
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say they do that. And she can do it in both
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events. And add in her hurdles and her
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shopping and everything else, she's obviously elite at what
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she does. So it it is a high, is extremely
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high level athleticism on display.
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I always tell the kids when we're training, this is the apex
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of sports performance. And if you're a sports
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performance coach or a strength and conditioning coach, the
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decathlon and heptathlon should be something that truly
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intrigues you because everything that we train in those type of
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situations, they put on display. So it's just a really cool
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event. So like I said, the purpose of
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this podcast is kind of give a a little bit of a timeline of how
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to put together a Maltese training program.
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You know, being someone who's been doing it for 15 years, you
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get a lot of coaches who come up to you at the state meet or the
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sexual meet and they try to pick your brain on things.
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But it's just a tough time because, you know, usually both
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boys and girls are going at the same time.
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So you're bouncing between events and it's just not a lot
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of opportunities to sit there and kind of talk about it, even
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though I would love to. So my hope is, is that if I
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actually send this little podcast in to Gil, it'll get
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posted. And then I could just say, hey,
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here's a podcast where I kind of broke down the basics of the
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Maltese. So without further ado, let's go
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ahead and hop into it. You know, so we'll start with
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the what I look for in a potential Maltese athlete.
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The goal every year for me is to identify, you know, somewhere
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within the top two to six fastest kids on the team and
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then try to convince one of those guys or gals to venture
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into the Maltese. You know, it's important for the
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Maltese to be high level at at least one of the events as a
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starter. So for females, I I'm always
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drawn quickly to if they're a good long jumper or a good
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hurdler because that's going to signify good speed.
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And then the boys side kind of the same thing.
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If you can find a pole vaulter who's a good pole vaulter
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already, that makes a big difference just because
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generally speaking a high level pole vaulter for high school.
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So anywhere from that 14 to 15 foot range.
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It's also probably going to be a pretty high level athlete in
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general. So they usually make good pole
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vaulter, they usually make good decathletes.
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But if if in doubt, I just kind of go down my my chart of speed
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rankings that we do each week. And I find who's in that top two
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to six. I'll explain later on why I
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don't usually aim for the top speed person on the team because
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some characteristics I look for and the guys you're looking to
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be 510 or taller, 39 inch hurdles are a challenge.
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And then collegiately you're probably looking at six one
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because 42 inch hurdles are even more challenging.
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On the girl side of it, you can go down a little bit on the
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height just because the hurdles go down a little bit at 33
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inches for both high school and college, you can get away with
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being 55. But I would say if the kids that
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I've had state championships of on the female side, they've
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ranged somewhere between 5-6 to 59.
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So there's a little bit of a trend there, but you could
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probably drop it down to 5 five. I've seen a couple of good
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around that range athletes who've had success.
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So the next thing is, you know, on the boys side, you're looking
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for ultra competitive, you know, a little bit of a cocky
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arrogance to themselves. In order to be a high level
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decathlete, you've got to be confident that you can be elite
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at probably four or five events and then high level at the rest
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and then have a little wiggle room in that 1500.
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But there is there is a certain attitude that athlete has to
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have on the female side. Again, kind of talking about all
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the state champions I've had on the female side, they all had
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one common trait that wasn't just they were tall.
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They all played high level club soccer.
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I don't know how everybody else's state works, but in our
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area, club soccer, these kids hop in when they're five years
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old and they play it all the way up to high school.
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And it's it's super competitive, super intense.
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I could do a whole podcast on club soccer, but I'll save that
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rant for a different day. But it does show for the athlete
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when you're looking to kind of look for that Maltese female
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athlete, if they did play that high level club soccer, there is
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the competitive spirit there. So that is something that I do
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pay attention for. And then finally, the last thing
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I look for is loving to lift. As I said earlier, you know the
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Maltese is the quintessential sports performance event for all
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sports and if you don't love weightlifting, it's probably
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going to be pretty hard to be a successful multi eventer, both
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boys and girls. Generally speaking, the boys are
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biting at the bit to get in the gym or they already have good
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experience in the gym because they played football or had a
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team sport where there are resources put into their
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weightlifting. They've just been track
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athletes. It's normally their first time
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really getting into a weight room.
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Once they start working with me and really having a structured
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program put together for them. Girls are usually a little bit
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more of a, a fight to get in the gym, maybe 50-50 at the time.
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They, they're, they love it right out the gate.
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Other times, you know, you might need to go through a pentathlon
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or two to get them to see that 22 foot shot would improve if we
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just went in the gym a little bit.
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And that's usually how they start to create a love for the
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gym as they realize you're not going to get bulky, you're not
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going to get cut. You know, that cost a lot of
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money, a lot of food and a lot of things that you're just not
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going to do as a high school athlete.
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So you don't have to worry about it.
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There's people who spent that thousands of dollars a month to
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get bulky and they still struggle to do it.
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So going into the gym two to three times a week isn't going
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to do it. How do I so that's kind of what
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I look for in a potential multi eventer and it's a good map
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there for you to kind of try to follow to see if you got those
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in your program because I can almost guarantee you you do.
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How do I structure my schedule as a common question I get for
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the purpose of this podcast, we're going to go through the 11
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month training cycle. So this would be my club
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athletes basically. I do have a plan for fall sport
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athletes and I do encourage kids to do fall sports.
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I'm not somebody who's banging the table saying you got to
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focus on track all year. For the kids who want to do it
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and that's their passion, that's their drive, that's great.
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I'm going to support them. For the kids who want to go play
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football or soccer in the fall, I'm going to support that also.
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So it's, it is doable to do both.
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But again, for the purpose of this podcast, we're going to do
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the 11 month plan just because I think that will give the most
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amount of details of kind of how to structure something, how to
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structure a decathlon schedule. And for the purpose of the
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podcast, we're going to stick with the decathlon just so I'm
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not constantly saying decathlon, heptathlon.
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If I'm saying decathlon, just assume it applies to the
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heptathlon. So so an 11 month cycle, we're
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going to start on the back end of it.
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So let's say we just got through state the kids who qualify for
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New Balance or Nike just finished New Balance or Nike.
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The day that decathlon ends at Nike or New Balance, that group
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of kids are going to start their one month mandatory breaks.
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So assuming you're not playing a fall sport, they're going to
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take one month off. I encourage even the fall sports
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kids to take one month off just because I think it's important
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and for the most part our schools work with us to at least
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give them a few weeks off. But if you're working with me
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year round, it's mandatory you take one month's off.
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This is really important, I think for all track athletes in
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general, but particularly for the multi athlete.
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This gives your body time to heal from the long season.
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A lot of these kids start indoor in January and they run through
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June. So that's half the year right
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there just competing. So we so they take that one
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month off, they rest, recover. They're not supposed to play any
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sports. They're not supposed to go play,
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pick up basketball in the gym. They're just supposed to be
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resting, relaxing, allowing that their body to heal and mentally
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to unwind from, you know, the long season after that one month
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break. We start with, I call fall
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training, which is traditionally called offseason, kind of my
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emphasis is during the offseason and speed development, the
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decathlon, heptathlon are both speed and power events.
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So putting in a big emphasis on speed and power is important.
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We will Sprint with purpose two times a week and that is to
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reinforce our speed gain and development.
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We'll put them on the GPS, we'll put them on the 1080.
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We'll do different variations of like, you know, single leg RDL
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into a Sprint, those kind of just basic Sprint work stuff
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that sometimes gets lost in the Maltese.
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But I've seen a lot of progress and success when we put this
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emphasis on it. In the fall, our most loaded
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time for lifting, we lift 3 * a week.
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There's a upper body day, a lower body day, and then we wrap
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up the week with a full body lift.
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The full body lift will include pull ups, a bunch of body weight
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stuff, hand stands, just kind of working on basic athleticism.
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At the same time, during the lifting sessions, we, I, we do
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what's called a primary lift. So that would be squat, bench,
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just your kind of basic stuff. And then we'll do what are
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called aiders or secondary lifts and we will do these before the
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primary lifts. And we'll do like a single leg
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RDL little bit on the lighter side, just working on our hip
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hinge and those kind of movements and strengthening
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around our hips or getting our shoulders warmed up just
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depending on what day it is. So it is, it is detailed, but
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also the goal is to get in and out of the weight room within 30
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to 45 minutes. And then the last kind of big
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thing that we do that will get my will get some fish shaking in
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my face is I do do 1 lactic session per week as a multi
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athlete. There do there does have to be a
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little bit of emphasis put on lactic tolerance between the two
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day event. Plus, you know, you got the 408
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hundred or 1500. You know, you do have to have
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some about some amount of lactic tolerance because we're not
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going to be an aerobic athlete. So we don't put any emphasis on
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like the 1500 as in training for the 1500.
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That's just called grit. And that's what the kids just
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have to rely on during that race.
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And you're chasing the points, you're not thinking about the
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time. So to give a real quick, just
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like here's what a Monday through Saturday would look
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like, and we do go Monday through Saturday with a
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decathlon and heptathlon athletes just because the goal
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is to have these sessions be 75 to 90 minutes long instead of
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having three hour sessions. We're trying to get as much done
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as possible. So Monday is time Sprint.
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So like I said, we'll put them on the GPS, we'll put them on
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the free lap. Kind of depends on what the goal
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is that day, if we're getting just top end speed or if we're
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trying to get our 10m sprints where I'll figure out the math
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on what they hit their mph. But we do have access to both,
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so we use them. After that, we'll go through a
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really quick hurdle session. And when I say quick, I mean
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it's you're looking at maybe the kids will go over 2 to 3 hurdles
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5 five times, right? The emphasis being on speed
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development, the hurdles, just to give them a little work on
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the rhythm of it. We'll do jammed hurdles
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sometimes. So that's where you walk the
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hurdles up 3 or 4 feet and they have to be quick on their
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three-step or we can do what I would call A535I mean, I'm
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sorry, 8353. So that's your traditional eight
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step to the first hurdle, three-step in between, you add
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10 feet to the third hurdle. So now they have to five step it
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so they're over speeding through it.
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And then you put the third, you put the last hurdle at
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three-step out and they're the goal is to not pull back and
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just Sprint through it and to practice on how do I get how do
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I get better at staying fast to the hurdle.
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Again, like I said, we don't we only get only get about four or
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five reps on it. So they got to make each Rep
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count and then we'll wrap up the day with our lower body lift.
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So you're looking on that day probably, you know, 90 minute
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session. Tuesday we'll do high jump on a
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short approach box. High jump is one of those
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critical events for both the HEP and the deck.
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You got to be a good high jumper.
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For the boys, the goal is to get to that 6 foot to six to six six
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range. And for the girls it's to get to
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5/6 to 5/8. So we do do a lot of work off
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the box. These are short approaches where
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the kids will get to work on leaning on their curve, staying
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back and away from the bar, really the basics of high jump.
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And then we'll go down and we'll do a throw.
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Traditionally shot put, if you know the order of events, you
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know, we do structure our schedule kind of on how
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decathlon would go or heptath heptathlon.
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So probably closer to heptathlon because we'll hurdle, then we'll
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go to shot put and then we'll go to we'll go to high jump and
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then we'll go to shot. And then on Wednesday we hit up
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a long jump, short approach off a box.
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Same kind of concepts where we're just working on the
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movement. So this could be, you know, the
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boxes 2 feet from the pit. The kids are getting a four step
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approach and they're just working on how to punch up, how
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to get their foot underneath their hip, really maximize the
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power off the ground without spending too much time on the
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plant ground contact, right? So you're just like one of the
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simplest ways I teach a long jump is the first step is to be
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able to do it while running fast.
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So we work on the mechanics of it in the fall and then we teach
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them how to just run fast through the plant.
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If you just Sprint at your top speed that you can get within
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your step range, you will jump further than you think you can
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jump. And then after we get a long
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jump, we'll go hit up javelin drills.
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Now, we're not actually throwing a javelin.
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Javelin all year is not advisable.
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It's a lot of tension on the elbow.
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A lot of injuries can occur on the elbow with javelin.
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So what we're doing is we're usually throwing tennis balls,
18:28
lacrosse balls, weighted balls, like weighted in ounces, and
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we're working on arm velocity, planting, hip movement, all
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those little things. We won't actually throw a real
18:42
jab until March. And then they have about a 2 1/2
18:46
month window where they get to throw a real jab.
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And then after that we'll go in, we'll do our upper body lift.
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Like I said, this would be bench incline, just a bunch of
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different basic, keep it simple lifts.
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I don't power, I don't do any Olympic lifts just because the
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time it takes to teach it isn't worth the minimal gains you will
19:12
get from it. Just because it could take a
19:14
whole year to get a kid up to where they're really stressing
19:17
their system, where you're going to get the adaptation you're
19:19
looking for where I can just kind of break it up with
19:21
different plyometrics. It's very common for us to say
19:25
do a bench press and then we'll do some kind of explosive push
19:29
up. So you're getting the absolute
19:31
strength with the bench and then you're getting the power and
19:33
speed with the a clap push up or something of that nature or a
19:38
Med ball throw, right? So there's just different ways
19:41
to work on what an Olympic lift is supposed to do without having
19:45
to spend as much time on it. Because again, like I said, 90
19:48
minutes, that's what we got to Thursday.
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We'll do tie sprints and block work.
19:54
So again, we can put the GPS, we can do the free lap.
19:56
Kind of just depends on what the day's calling for.
19:59
We always run with the wind to our back at our school, the
20:02
wind, we're up on a hill, so that wind can be humming
20:05
sometimes. So their time splits can be a
20:07
little deceptive because they got about a 20-30 mile an hour
20:10
wind at their back. This session probably 1 the
20:13
shortest sessions of the week because again, it's all about
20:16
speed. So you're only getting about 5
20:17
to 6 Max velocity reps After that you're kind of just beating
20:21
the dead horse so that this session on Thursday could be
20:24
done in 45 minutes. Friday is a plyo day.
20:28
It's a light day. We work on bounding, hopping,
20:30
skipping, all your basics of what attract athletes should be
20:34
able to do. We'll go through walking drills
20:37
and then for the decathletes, we'll hit them up on short
20:39
approach fall as we get a little bit further in maybe towards
20:42
October. And then Saturday, this is the,
20:45
the, the kids most dreaded day. It's the lactic session.
20:52
There's an argument that maybe we should put this day on Friday
20:54
and give them Saturday off. But I, I have found that if I
20:58
kind of start dialing down Thursday, Friday, because those
21:01
two sessions are probably going to run 45 to 50 minutes and then
21:04
the Saturday lactic session is going to hit and be done in
21:07
about 45 minutes. We get better results on those
21:11
each individual days. We do our Saturday workout at
21:14
like 8:00 AM. So when we're done by about 9:00
21:17
AM, they're not practicing again until Monday 3:30.
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So they're getting 48 plus hours of recovery after it.
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And they can kind of just focus on instead of being worried or
21:29
obsessed about what's coming on lactic day during our plyo
21:32
session, they just focus on that.
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So that's kind of the logic of why we put it on Saturday and
21:37
and it's not volume. You know, our lactic sessions, a
21:40
good example of what we would do is we could do three, one 50s at
21:45
Max speed. They get about two minutes to
21:47
recover and and that's it. And then the session's over.
21:51
Another example would be what I learned from a mid distance
21:55
coach that I've loved and it's called a 3221.
21:58
And what happens is you Sprint the 300 as fast as you can, you
22:01
get 90 seconds, You Sprint it 200 as fast as you can, you get
22:04
90 seconds. You Sprint it 200 as fast as you
22:06
can, you get 90 seconds. You Sprint it 200 as fast as you
22:09
can, you get 90 seconds. And then you add up those times
22:11
that'll give you a split. So for a girl, a really good
22:16
split would be about two minutes in total time and then you would
22:21
add 15 seconds to that time. And that gives you kind of where
22:25
they're eight hundreds AT. And over the years, I found this
22:28
to be extremely accurate. And so this is something that
22:32
we'll do maybe once or twice a month.
22:35
And that's their that's their volume.
22:36
And that's what we do our volume wise.
22:37
And then Sunday's off. So that's how a fall session
22:42
would work. Look, we go on three weeks of
22:45
training with one week of a recovery week where they only do
22:48
about 25% of the volume that we would traditionally do that
22:52
week. So it's very light practices
22:54
could be done in 30 minutes and there's no lactic session that
22:59
week. So three weeks on, one week off,
23:01
that's how my fall would normally look.
23:03
As we start to transition to indoor and then our in season
23:06
training methodology, we start to put a different priority on.
23:11
We keep the speed priority, but we also put a huge priority on
23:14
being fresh. So we're not going to push the
23:16
limits that much during the in season portion of our planning.
23:20
The goal with the offseason fall training is to stack days so
23:24
that when we get into our in season now we can focus on more
23:28
technical aspects of the sport. We can put more emphasis on the
23:31
speed training, being really precise with it.
23:34
And then depending on kind of how the meets fall, you know,
23:38
they might not even ever hit a lactic session during this time
23:40
Just because we have our meets where I can plug them into
23:44
events and get that lactic hit that I want to get instead of
23:48
viewing things through a three-week, one week cycle, I
23:52
look at it through seven day cycles now.
23:54
So if we have a meet on Saturday during indoor and then the
23:57
following Saturday we have a meet, well, we're probably only
24:00
going to train on a Tuesday, Wednesday, and that's their time
24:04
to work on the events that we need to work on.
24:06
The rest of the time it's recovery or it's like, you know,
24:09
on Tuesday we hit our speed session, right.
24:11
So it's that's kind of how it works during the in season
24:14
portion. Then we put priority on full
24:19
approaches during during this in season time.
24:24
So we use both the meets and practices to get our full
24:26
approach down during indoor. Indoor is really just a stepping
24:30
stone for outdoor. So this is where we kind of work
24:32
on the event specific. So we'll use the indoor to fine
24:36
tune our full approach. But when you're doing full
24:39
approaches now you got to incorporate that into your
24:41
planning because, you know, in a long jump, you could be
24:44
sprinting 30 meters and that's, that's, you know, that's getting
24:48
within that range of speed training, right?
24:50
So if I'm doing that, then I have to incorporate that into
24:53
how I do our speed training that week and make sure I'm not over
24:56
burning out these kids. So that definitely puts a little
25:00
more pressure on the coach to be paying attention.
25:03
You know, like I said, speed stays, the speed stays the
25:06
staple of our training. If I have to make choices
25:09
between if we're going to weight lift or if we're going to do
25:12
speed or if we're going to do something technical, I'm going
25:14
to go on the speed side just because that's going to have the
25:17
biggest long term impact on the kids performance.
25:21
You know, I really encourage coaches when they talk to me to
25:24
don't get ahead of don't get ahead of your skis when
25:27
scheduling. Trying to plan a decathlete in
25:31
season and a one month, a 2 month plan.
25:34
It's it's difficult at the high school level for sure,
25:37
especially 'cause as you start getting to the outdoor season,
25:39
you could have a meet on a Monday and then a meet on a
25:42
Saturday. You could have a meet on a
25:43
Saturday, then a meet on a Wednesday.
25:45
So trying to plan is just hard because you got to be able to
25:49
talk to the athlete, understand how they're feeling.
25:52
And if you guys, if you got to skip a training session to put
25:55
priority on recovery, put priority in recovery.
25:58
All this work means nothing. If if you get to your sectional
26:01
decathlon, your athletes right on fumes, right?
26:04
So we want to make sure we're fresh and fit.
26:08
So that kind of gives you a quick rundown of how we do
26:10
things. One more thing on the in season,
26:13
I only left two times a week and that's if we can make it work.
26:17
We always try to get in at least one time a week and do some kind
26:21
of lift. That could be a full body lift
26:23
just to keep them active in the gym.
26:25
But again, like I said, I'm not going to force anything.
26:26
I'm going to listen to the athlete.
26:28
I'm going to talk to them. Part of being a Maltese coach is
26:31
that you have to have a very good communication line with
26:34
your kids so that they can communicate to you how they're
26:37
feeling. Don't don't push what you
26:39
believe is best. I, I know there's all this,
26:42
there's a big buzz about, oh, you got it in season lift, you
26:45
got it in season lift. This is how you stay healthy.
26:48
Anything that is exerting energy is going to wear down on the
26:52
tire tread that your athlete has.
26:54
And in order to reboost, you know, sometimes you just got to
26:58
relax. Put them in the, we have
27:00
compression boots, we have saunas.
27:02
We got, we like these kids like, like part of what I do is tell
27:06
them we take this seriously. So they'll hit up a sauna,
27:08
they'll do these things, they'll hydrate, they'll be in the
27:11
compression boots, they'll go get a massage.
27:13
They need to get a massage. We have a stretch lab so they
27:17
can go to a certified trainer basically or personal PT.
27:24
And, and this guy specializes in stretching, right?
27:27
I know that's not everywhere. That's just part of being in the
27:31
area that we're in that there's just literally everything for
27:33
athletes here. And so they'll go and get
27:36
stretched out like a really deep stretch.
27:40
That's good when you're feeling tight and stiff.
27:43
Now, obviously we don't do that before an event or anything like
27:46
that, but you're coming off a hard meet.
27:49
There's nothing wrong with going in on a Sunday and getting
27:51
stretched out and getting massaged and all those good
27:54
things. So that's kind of what it in
27:56
season looks like for me. OK, so moving on.
27:59
So let's go over a few mistakes that I've made as a Maltese
28:02
coach. The first one is I did not put
28:04
enough emphasis on walking drills and I didn't utilize the
28:08
box for other than just short approaches.
28:11
So what I do now with box a lot for long jump, instead of trying
28:16
to teach kids how to land into a long jump pit will actually land
28:18
on a high jump pit. They'll do what I call like a
28:21
trot approach where they're kind of trotting up to it.
28:24
They'll hit their move and then they'll learn how to pluck their
28:27
feet into the foam mat instead of into the sand.
28:30
This seems to really help the athlete not have to worry about
28:34
that sand looks kind of hard. And no, they're actually just
28:36
laying on the foam pit. So they tend to be more
28:38
receptive to what I'm trying to articulate to them.
28:41
The Walking drills are great also because this is just a
28:44
really good way to reinforce concepts that we're trying to
28:47
teach them on how to, you know, plant how to do a penultimate,
28:52
how to punch up on a long jump, how to plant leaning back and
28:56
away from the bar. And you're doing this in a very
28:59
controlled slow setting. So it gives these kids a chance
29:02
to kind of slow down their brains and get a full
29:05
understanding of what I'm trying to cue them with, right.
29:10
The second mistake. And I feel like this is so
29:13
common. There's probably multi coaches
29:15
that will disagree with me on this, but especially at the
29:18
collegiate level, a hurdle session does not count as a
29:21
Sprint session, particularly at the high school level and really
29:25
even at the college level. Because if you got a freshman
29:28
boy college athlete who's coming in and learning how to do 42
29:30
inch hurdles, it doesn't matter how good of a hurdler they were.
29:34
There's going to be some hesitation there at the start.
29:36
So you're not really working speed if the kids hesitating,
29:39
right? And then I would argue it's
29:42
really hard to hit top end speed when there's literal barriers in
29:45
your way. That's why the best hurdlers in
29:47
the world are running 1271 tens, which would probably translate
29:52
to what, like an 11, seven, 100? I promise you, they're a lot
29:56
faster than 11, seven, 100 runners.
29:58
So hurdle sessions don't count as Sprint sessions.
30:01
You got to, you can do what I do, which is do the speed
30:05
session on the front end, the freshes, and then go do hurdles
30:07
and work on the rhythm. Or you guys just space them out
30:11
how you want to space them. The third mistake I've made was
30:15
too much volume with multiple workouts a week.
30:19
Early on, I definitely had a mindset that the decathlon is a
30:22
hard, gruelling sport and that in order for a kid to be
30:26
successful at the decathlon, the training had to match the
30:30
intensity of what a decathlon is.
30:32
I've learned over the years that's a very bad principle.
30:36
But again, I I had state champions, I had great marks,
30:40
but maybe those kids who were scoring 6667 would have broken
30:44
7000 if I had been better planning on how to volume them.
30:49
The biggest mistake that I regret doing besides just doing
30:53
too many workouts is doing race pace efforts.
30:58
So this would be like, let's say we're getting ready for our
31:01
1500s, so we'll start doing some repeat twos at the race pace or
31:05
repeat fours at the race pace. This is so dumb on my part and I
31:09
just look back and laugh at it because there's just so many
31:11
better. Like it doesn't even work for a
31:14
multis athlete because we're not aerobic athletes, so doing race
31:17
pace work just doesn't do anything for us.
31:19
It makes a lot of sense for a distance kid because they're
31:21
doing a lot of aerobic work, so that race pace might actually be
31:24
the fastest they run that week where we're sprinting all the
31:28
time. So what does does race pace
31:29
really do for us? I tell the kids like I laugh at
31:32
it. I say just go out there and be a
31:34
dog in the 1500. Get with the lead pack and you
31:36
just fight to stay with them. And then you can lay on the
31:38
ground for 30 minutes if you need to lay on the ground for 30
31:40
minutes after. And we've had pretty good
31:42
success with the 15. I would say our average time is
31:46
somewhere in the 4:45 to 450 range.
31:49
I mean, for decathlete who's not who weighs on the average weight
31:53
is probably 170 lbs. That's a pretty good 1500 with 0
31:57
aerobic work. And then finally, the last
32:01
mistake, and I kind of touched on this early, I spent too much
32:04
time trying to recruit the elite athlete on my team, on my school
32:09
team to want to be a decathlete, particularly kids who had fast
32:13
100 times. So let's say the fastest kid on
32:15
the team coming out of the tryout was a 10, nine, 100.
32:20
I would spend too much time trying to recruit that kid
32:22
because like, hey, you know, 10-9 is a great time for this
32:26
area. But when you look at the bigger
32:27
pond of sprinting, it really doesn't move the needle that
32:30
much. The kid would not be super
32:34
receptive of it because since that kid had been five years
32:36
old, he'd been an elite sprinter.
32:39
So in his mind, he's been an elite sprinter and in our area,
32:41
he's been an elite sprinter. And that's what he wants to do.
32:43
That's fun. That's, I'm not going to say
32:45
it's easy, but it's fun. And they just had no interest in
32:48
the multi. So that's where I kind of
32:50
learned to focus on number the two through 6 because everybody
32:53
wants to be the best in their school at what they do.
32:55
And if I can present them a path to achieve it, they give it a
32:57
try for sure. So that's those are my mistakes
33:00
I made. Moving on to common mistakes I
33:03
hear from coaches and athletes. The the biggest mistake I see is
33:08
just trying to put an average athlete or an average person
33:12
into the competition to give them a chance to be on varsity.
33:16
Again, it's not something that like just drives me up a wall,
33:19
But I also think it it loses the point of what a Maltese is
33:23
supposed to be. If you're putting in a kid who's
33:25
a 445 Miller because you can't make your varsity distance
33:29
squad, you're all you're doing is just punishing that kid
33:32
because he's got to go through a lot of events to get to his best
33:35
event. And by that time they're pretty
33:37
deflated. And you know, unfortunately, I
33:39
have seen kids in the past just kind of lose their running love
33:44
because they just get hammered in decathlons.
33:47
And you know, if you got a kid who's a 445 or 450 mile, that's
33:50
a great time. You know, let that kid just be a
33:53
runner and enjoy it instead of putting them into this apex
33:56
environment of athletes where you know, they just don't stand
33:59
much of a chance. Another mistake we hear or
34:02
another mistake I hear from coaches is, you know, they're
34:05
working four or five events a day.
34:07
So let's say they go through like day one all in one day and
34:10
then they end the session with a 400 workout.
34:12
And then the next day they do the next day 2 events and then
34:15
they end it with a 1500 workout and then they repeat it on
34:19
Thursday, Friday. It's too much.
34:21
You're burning the kids out, you they're not going to be able to
34:23
sustain it the first week. They're probably just cooked,
34:27
you know, But if you put the emphasis on speed training and
34:30
sprinkle in the technical work with a high enough caliber
34:33
athlete, and it doesn't have to be some super elite athlete, it
34:36
can just be a high enough caliber athlete, they will pick
34:39
up on it as they go. And then like I said, you can
34:42
use meats to get you can use meats to reinforce what you're
34:45
trying to teach. Finally, you know, what am I
34:48
trying new this year? Because I really encourage the
34:50
coaches around me, and I do it myself, is to always be
34:55
experimenting, always be trying to challenge your thought
34:58
process that you previously had, because that's how we become
35:01
better athletes. I mean, better coaches.
35:03
And the athletes are usually pretty receptive of it because
35:05
it also kind of changes things up a little bit from year to
35:08
year. One of the first things that I
35:10
have changed is I'm using competition for reps So putting
35:14
that major emphasis on recovery. I'm not, I have not budged on
35:18
that all year. I've done it in the past, but
35:22
I've also kind of slipped back into kind of old mindset also.
35:26
But this year I have not budged on it.
35:28
Like I said earlier, we're doing one to two days maths of
35:31
training and then putting the rest of the emphasis on
35:33
recovery. Again, I've done this in the
35:36
past, but this has been like, I will not budget on it and I have
35:40
to look myself in the mirror every morning and say do not
35:42
budget on this. So that's something that we've
35:44
changed a lot. So using competition as our
35:47
reps. So that's our long jump, high
35:48
jump, whatever we're doing at those meets.
35:52
The lifting strategy with our primary lists, the maximum
35:57
amount of reps they will do in a week for those primary lifts are
36:02
somewhere between 10 to 15 and the effort that they're putting
36:07
into is going to be 90% their one Rep Max.
36:10
So we'll do our secondary lift where we are getting warmed up
36:14
for it and then we'll go in. I, I think in my past I've put
36:18
too many reps in the weight room and I'm really trying to
36:21
condense it down and the kids love it.
36:23
They've they've really, really enjoyed it.
36:25
And then finally, we are 400 in our way through the 8 and 15.
36:29
So this is we're doing a 400 and every meet they're in as long as
36:35
we're feeling healthy, if there's some kind of like hip or
36:39
knee, which we had no health issues.
36:40
So that's awesome with my multi adventures.
36:44
But if there were, we would dial back a little bit.
36:48
So we're using our four to get ready for our 8 and 15 for our
36:51
HEP and Deck I, I have a very high confidence that the 400 is
36:56
going to translate really well to the 800.
36:59
I believe the 1500 will see good results from it because just
37:03
because it does, decathletes who were 56 second 400 runs last
37:07
year are now down to 52. So just that speed reserve
37:11
increase is going to help. So we'll see what happens
37:16
overall. I mean, that's kind of my basic
37:18
rundown. Those are my mistakes.
37:19
Those are how I kind of schedule things.
37:21
Like I said, there just isn't a ton of information out there for
37:26
for a coach who wants to coach the Maltese.
37:30
My hope is that this is giving you a little sneak peek of kind
37:33
of how a competitive club multi team will work and that you were
37:37
able to learn a little bit about it.
37:40
Again, my name is Ricky Sierra. I am a Maltese coach out of
37:43
Brentwood, TN. You can follow me on Middle TN
37:46
Athletics on Instagram. I do have a Twitter, but it's
37:49
kind of there for me to just post into the Twitterverse and I
37:53
don't really do that much engagement on it.
37:55
Most of my work is put on Instagram.
37:59
Feel free to reach out. I love to talk about the
38:01
Maltese. If you haven't noticed, I just
38:02
spent about 40 minutes talking about the Maltese and I'd be
38:05
happy to kind of go over how we do things with my club in more
38:09
detail. I can't program a plan for you,
38:11
but I can definitely give some opinion on how to put how to
38:14
start 1. So again, middle TN athletics on
38:18
Instagram. Feel free to reach out.
38:20
Thank you and thank you, Gil, for this opportunity.
38:24
If you do, if I do end up sending this to you and then you
38:27
end up posting it. Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here.
38:30
Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Gil 1918 Project
38:34
series. It's really my mission, my
38:37
passion to bring you massive amounts of value and I hope this
38:41
one hit the mark. The Guilt 1918 Project is really
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dependent on you if for you to build your own episode, to hear
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your voice, to have your voice heard you have something to say
38:52
and teach other coaches out there.
38:54
So please get a hold of me, e-mail, text message, Twitter,
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39:04
Hope you enjoy today, they will see you tomorrow.