“Rowing coaches by nature know our athletes are doing all this work, putting in all this physical effort, we owe it to them to put them in the best position to win.” Rich Kesor, Head Coach, Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville
You may think that this article has rather missed the boat. London has long faded into memory and we are now fully focused on Paris, just 19 months away. Olympic cycles come and go and as soon as one is ending another is starting.
Following the London Olympics and Paralympics, the House of Lords conducted a report which asked “how robust is the research and evidence base for improving the performance of elite athletes”? In other words, to what extent are we applying what we are discovering about human performance to go higher, faster and further? Their investigation concluded that we are not and there is a huge gap between the developments in sport science and what is being applied by our coaching staff. Do we believe that things were any different before Tokyo or are things any different as we head towards Paris? Coaches are continuing to use old methods and holding fast to philosophies that are not based on contemporary science. The report found that coaches are under tremendous performance pressures and resort to what they know works, what has worked in the past and what they know will work in the future. This is known as the status quo bias with no room for the disruption of innovation.
The Olympic cycles never stop and like trying to step onto a moving carousel the music and mechanical horses never stop. It is almost impossible to stop and review what happened from one Olympic cycle to the next and implement those critical “learnings.” For innovations and new research to be applied it is hugely disruptive as systemic and structural changes mean that everyone needs to stop doing, change and move off in a new direction. I first encountered this when I first discovered an innovation in 2016 I was keen to introduce it to Rowing Australia. At the time, Rio had just finished and there were another four years before Tokyo. I thought this was plenty of time to get my innovation sorted. To my surprise, I encountered a string of excuses “we cannot test as our top athletes are now not at their peak” and later it would be, “sorry, we are developing the new squad” then this morphed into “the Olympics are too soon” … the thing is, there is never a good time to interrupt an Olympic training program with an innovation. This is what the House of Lords report found and what I have personally experienced.
After every Olympics, there is also a great deal of finger pointing and we know there were lots after Tokyo. We know that it is never any one persons fault but a culmination of multiple factors which all contributing to a given outcome. The important thing is how do we put into practice those lessons? But time and again we are condemned by the sins of the fathers into repeating patterns and sticking to time-proven formulas. What rowing coach do you know that has actually changed their approach, practice or philosophy from one season to the next or from season to the next or one Olympic cycle to the next? Australia had tremendous success at Tokyo and had a series of extraordinary wins that exceeded their own expectations. It needs to be noted that Australia’s and New Zealand’s performance was aided by geographical isolation with few athletes succumbing to the virus or their training uninterrupted. An extra year of development in the southern hemisphere against a virus ravaged the north. Though recently, after the 2022 World Championships, a few eyebrows were raised about our underwhelming results. What happened to all that Australian Gold? Coach, any ideas?
Coaches are humans after all and we know of our species that when faced with two choices we stick with what we know, even if the change would be advantageous. Why would we assume that coaches are any different? Yet the coach needs to remember that they hold the lives of their athletes in their hands. The athletes have done everything in their power, they’ve been chosen, done the work, and have done everything that was asked of them. I think it is time to ask our coaches, have you done everything in your power and provided your squad with every opportunity, explored every avenue, and followed up on every new idea?
Rich Kesor, the coach of Montgomery Bell Academy, Nashville is one coach who stands apart in this regard. He gave an interview to Aram Lemmerer about adopting innovations and his motivation. What was significant about this interview was that he had his athletes at the forefront of his mind, not his own coaching position. This novel approach to innovation has seen a dramatic rise in the success of the MBA rowing program. This year the MBA program produced a Gold in Intervarsity Nationals in the LW1x and LM2x.
“I have a young group and I am trying to find some advantage for them … Rowing coaches by nature, we know the kids are doing all this work putting in all this physical effort we owe it to them to put them in the best position to win.”
If this attitude can transform a rowing program at a high school level, I wonder what effect it could have on a national program.
2020 SRA Nationals – MBA makes the finals for the first time in the school’s history. MBA are now a growing force in the US winning multiple Gold in 2022.
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