My theory is working!

A couple posts back I talked about how my gymnastics were having a hard time with competing on bars. I had decided to make a change to the set up of our equipment in the gym to make it feel closer to what we use in completion. From what I saw this last weekend it looked like it made a huge improvement in their competition routines. We had 5 hit routines out of 8. This doesn't sound too great but it is more than we have had yet this year. Also two of the falls were kind of expected. One of my athletes only has one eye and she has a lot of trouble with dismounting off the bars. She does great with every other part of the routine but when she has to land she never knows where she it at. So I don't expect her to land, I am really just happy to see her hit as best as she can. The other routine I wasn't really counting on was an athlete who has been injured most of the year and it is only her second attempt at competition. She was only inches aways from hitting though, and in a couple more weeks she will be the best routine we have. The last fall was a pretty scary one actually. The girl slipped off the bar and landed on her head. It was scary but she turned out just fine. She was back in the gym yesterday and only had some bruises on her knees where she hit the bar on her way down.

This week I plan on going a little easier on the girls. We still have a long way to go till the end of the season and the girls are looking pretty tired. We are trying our hardest to balance their rest and their hard workouts. It is going to be important for the girls to stay focused over the next few weeks as we get closer to state. This is what they have worked for all year and it only takes one bad routine for it to all be over.

Still not ready to be a 2......

Yesterday was the first race of the season for those in the St Louis area. Froze Toes is a 30 mile loop just outside Columbia, MO hosted by the CBC crew. They did a great job getting this race up and running this year. They had about 2 weeks to get it all worked out and really I had no idea, that is how hard they worked on getting it all put together. There isn't much in the way of climbing on the course and unless there is a lot of wind it is a pretty straight forward race. Guess what, the wind showed up in a big way.

Most of my team (Bj Keane, Kent Woermann, Jason Wulff, Eric Finks, Me and Jose Bugarin) were in the Cat 1,2,3 field. Dog Fish had brought a huge team with many more heavy hitters that we had, as well as Mercy. I lined up late and was at the back end of the field. I didn't think this would be a bad thing though as it was going to be a long race and there would be plenty of time to move up. Boy was I wrong! A group attacked what felt like at the end of the neutral role out and the field was being blown up right away.  I was messing with new equipment for most of the time before the race so I didn't get a good warm up in, so I was hurting bad only 5 miles into the race. At one point I was scared that my race was going to be over right then. Thankfully I was able to catch back up thanks in part to teammate Jose. Once I was able to catch up I found Kent and BJ and it was quickly decided that we couldn't just let the break go up the road without trying to bring it back. So we made our way to the front and started to pull hard. After a while it looked like we were pulling back the lead group and I was pretty tired so I thought I could move back in the group to get a little rest. I think I went to the front again at one point to try and help again but was not as helpful this time. After that time I moved back on the wrong side of the group and was in the wind and could not get out of it. Soon after I was gapped and hurting bad. That was only 18 miles into what would turn out to be a long day. After a few miles of recovering I started to chase hard again. The peleton wasn't that far ahead yet and I thought if I got lucky and they slowed I could make it back. A few of us started getting together and we started to chase pretty well. It never got together good enough to pull back all the way though. We chased for 30 miles before I couldn't do it anymore and blew up. The last 12 miles of the race was torture, limping back to the start in 30+ mph head wind.

I think it was a pretty tough day for a lot of people though. Out of the 60+ starter only about 25 finished I think.I was in the bottom three though :-) but I was glad I didn't give up and it was a pretty good hard workout.

I think I made some tactical mistakes in this race and to race against some of these guys who have so much more power than I, and more experience, I was really going to need to be on top of my game and be in the right place in the group. I still have a long way to go to be a 2, but I have a whole year to learn and get stronger.

If at first you don't succeed, do it a different way.

I have been struggling with my girls competing on bars. They have made huge improvements in practice and are hitting more and more routines and parts every day. But when we go to competitions it all just falls apart. First I thought it is just nerves, the girls are too worked up about competing again and it will work it self out. Then it was a bad day maybe, then it was my fault. But then I started to think what if they and I are doing everything we can? What if we are missing something, something simple. We do routines where we simulate competitions, we make the girls do routines with too much rest, too little rest. Then it hit me, at least I think I have it this time. I think this is something that a lot of gymnastics bar coaches might agree with me on.

In our gyms our bars are fastened to the ground with 4 cables. These cables screw directly into the ground and allow us to loosen and tighten the cables as much as we want. When the cables are very tight, it makes the bars fast and responsive. My girls like the bars like this. When the bars are tight you get back almost all of the power you put into them, so who wouldn't like that.

Now when you travel to competitions for the most part the bars are not screwed into the ground. The facilities that large gymnastics meets use will not allow us to drill holes into the ground. So how do we hold the bars down?

We use what American Athletic calls a Freestanding Uneven Bar Adapter. It is a spider like, mass of steel that screws into the base plates of the bars and then attaches the cables coming from the bars to the outstretched arms of the beast, at the barrels. Now I have heard that those barrels are supposed to hold sand but I have never seen that. They have always been filled with water. It is much easier to move them around that way because you can remove the water when you are done. The problem is that water weighs less than sand, and the arms that extend out from the base flex. This causes a problem for the coaches and athletes whenever we use these setups. No matter how tight you get them they seem to only get looser. The more tight they get, the more the water jugs are lifted, and when an athlete is swinging around the bar they also lift the barrels, and flex the extended bars. This causes the bars to feel "different" than they would in the gym. So if you trained an hour a day on a piece of equipment, everyday for years, and then you show up to compete in front of judges, your coach, friends, and family, you would expect a piece of equipment that looks like yours to act like yours as well. But it doesn't, it steals your power. You have to work harder than before, change your technique. You start to doubt your self, thinking you are week. And then you are done. Once you think you are week, you are.

So how do you fix this problem? You don't want one of these contraptions in your gym. The bars footprint is already 18' x 13' and this thing adds another 3 - 4 feet in each direction. No one has that kind of room. So what then? Easy, loosen your bars, waaaaayyy loose. At least that is my theory, and I am sure there are coaches out there thinking duh, and some out there are thinking are you crazy you are going to kill your kids! For the first, sorry I'm a little behind, but why didn't you tell me this before? And to the second, it actually makes the bars less likely to fail. I had to explain it to my girls 10 times before they would get on the bars. Now I do have tension in the cables still, the bars aren't just slouching over to one side. I just have them so if you give them a shake from side to side they might move 3-6" each way. Now I don't think that this mimics the characteristics of a set of bars on a Freestanding Uneven Bar Adapter perfectly, but it gets them close. And anything that can get my girls to feel more comfortable at a meet the better.

So give it a shot, I will see how my experiment goes tomorrow night, competing at Team Central's STL Classic. I'll let you know.

Ooo and the first part of my fun weekend started with me getting my team's new kit in. As well as our new helmets and Shoes. I love getting new stuff. :-)

Mike Rickey, owner of Quantum Solutions, and I, after our first ride in the new kit.

The road team got white helmets while the off road guys did black

Everyone could pick their own color shoes, this is what I got!

Christmas in February

I'm getting our new team kit in on Friday, the girls have a competition on Saturday, and Froze Toes is on Sunday!

Our new kit was designed by team member Matt James and has a very retro feel to it. It was a feel that we had at our last team and wanted to have that again this year. Kit ordering is a tough thing to do. You have to get all these peoples sizes, orders, money, and then get it to them. And this is 10s of thousands worth of clothing that has to be gone though. The package we are getting weighs 71 pounds! The one problem I have with the orders is the companies that do this require minimum orders. So I have one rider on the team that joined us late and he is a bigger guy. Turns out I did not order any extra kit in his size. So now I have to order even more extra kit on my own dime and hope I can sell the rest of it. I guess it is just part of what I am getting into though running a team. There are some clothing companies that offer no minimum reorders, but last year we went with one of those companies and we were not happy with the quality of the clothing or working with their people. Even with the problems and stress of doing the order, I still really love it. 

Saturday my girls are competing downtown at the St Louis Classic meet hosted by Team Central. We are getting down to the last two regular season competitions for the year. It is always amazing how fast the year goes once the season starts. I always enjoy my kids reaction when I remind them how little time we have left before state. Getting the girls to state is really not a hard part of the year. The states always try to get as many kids into the meet as they can. Once in state though, things get really stressful and tough. You have one shot to get to the next round. And once you get to regionals if you make one mistake you can just about go home. The competition get so good and everyone is so on top of their game that it is all or nothing. We spend the entire regular season trying to get the girls ready for this. But it doesn't always get through.

Froze Toes is a flat-ish road race in Columbia, MO. It isn't a hard race or a pretty race, but it is the first race of the year. And people around here can't wait to start racing. It has been a very mild winter here and I am sure that everyone has been putting in a lot of time on their bikes. I think that this year will be really fast the whole time. I am excited to be able to race with the Cat 1s and 2s this weekend also. It is always good to be pushed and we have some great 1/2 racers that are in this part of the country. We have a few guys on the team at the Cat 2 level and I will be trying to help them as best as I can to get a good result. My goal is that we are a big part of this race. We mix it up and get things done. It is always good for a new team to come out swinging.

Well just one more day till things start happening, I feel like a little kid waiting for Santa.

New Jerseys

Froze Toes has been known to have horrible weather, this year 55 and sunny though.

Quarq is the way to go IMO

Quarq power meters have come a long way since being created at a work bench over 10 hrs back in 2006 by Jim Meyer. His was not the first though. I believe that the first was made back in the 80s and Greg LeMond was one of the first users. Power meters come in several different types and measure how much power you are putting into your bicycle. That is a really dumbed down explanation because I don't know enough about them to really explain it. But if you want to know how the nuts and bolts work check it out here.

I purchased my first power meter in August of 2010. It was a PowerTap power meter that is housed in the rear wheel/hub of your bicycle. I sold it after just two weeks of owning it. The reason for me was that I could not race with it. The wheels were heavy and it was a not a aerodynamic as other race wheels that I had. You are able to purchase these hubs in any wheel that you want, but I already had multiple sets of wheels and didn't want to buy all new wheels with these new hubs for all the different applications I use the wheels on. So I had to look elsewhere for my power measuring needs. The best out there at the time was the SRM power meter. I believe the owner of this company was the one who created the first power meter for LeMond back in the day. So these guys were used to test all other power meters to. That also means they were expensive, and just too much for my budget. There had been talk of a new power meter that was going to come out that would be housed in pedals, but that technology didn't come out to this year so I would have been waiting for a long time, and I don't know it would have been worth it. So I landed on the Quarq Cinqo power meter, a late comer to the game but they had the most strain gauges, you could change it's batteries on your own, and you could recalibrate it on your own, after buying a 50lb scientific weight and program.

The use of a power meter in my opinion is like doping when compared to those who do not use it. I'm not saying that you have to use it to be good because plenty of people do. But with the help of one of these meters you know exactly what you are doing at all times and are able to tailor workouts to see results faster. Over the span of last season I saw an increase in my power of 20% in one year. This year I am already 20% farther along than the same time last year. All of this just from knowing that every workout I do was done to it's maximum. No wasted time.

I have many friends that ride that can't ride like this. Many people see riding as a release and don't want to think about anything when out on the open road. For me it is the opposite, I go crazy not knowing everything that I can. I actually find that I enjoy riding more when I have a schedule to follow, unless I am on a group ride. I just get too bored if I am not focusing on some interval. The other problem with power is that it is not a common sense type of thing. You have to study how to read your power files, and even after reading a whole book like Training and Racing with Power there is still a lot of deciphering. If you really want it though and you know what to really look at, power meters are a great tool though.

Quarq was recently purchased by Sram, which I was happy to hear about as I am also a big fan of Sram components. This purchase has lead to Sram releasing their own branded power meter this year with a newly designed Sram Red crank specifically made for the Quarq spider. It has dropped a considerable amount of weight and added stiffness with the addition of a 5th arm on the spider. This is all from what I have read though, as I do not have the funds at this time to purchase one. I hope to maybe buy one next season though.

That brings me to my last point about the Quarq. Many people look at this crank based power meter and think it is not a good option because it is too hard to move from bike to bike. But this is untrue, and I would argue that the new crank based power meters take as long if not longer to swap from bike to bike. This is a video that I found right before I purchased my Quarq that really sealed the deal for me with how easy it is to switch between bikes. My two bike even have different bottom brackets, one is a GXB style while the other is a BB30 with adapter cups. Still only takes me a little over a min to go from my road bike to TT bike. The only reason I would like to get the new one is I would like to have a 54 or 55 tooth chain ring on my TT bike. Not really a necessity, more a desire, but I digress.    

The negatives that I have found with my Quarq are that I have needed to send it in two times to have repairs done. Both times the unit was shipped to and back from their headquarters for free and was back in just a couple days. Both times they completely replaced the spider which was a nice plus as both times it was an updated model.

So if you are in the market, look long and hard at the Quarq. I think you wont be disappointed.

Pretty!

If you don't like your coach, that is your first problem

How many people out there have a coach or a trainer that they don't like, or should I say they don't think knows what they are doing? How many people have kids that have coaches that you think don't know what they are doing? If yes, why are you still with that coach? Having a coach that you trust is the most important part of training. Especially at an elite level, if you think your coach is steering you wrong, you will never reach your potential and most likely you will regress. There are a lot of great coaches that work near me and we all compete for the same athletes. If one kid moves from one gym to another the only thing they are going to get different is new personalities. We are all just as good as the next guy. Granted there are some that are not as good, but this is not the point. The point is, that if you are going to get a coach first you need to do your research. Find the best coach you can find. If you are going to spend money on someone to teach you something don't you want to get it from the best. Once you have found that great coach, drink the cool-aid. If you don't, why did you choose this person to train you or you child? If you don't believe with all your being that this person can make you the best YOU can be, why pay them? Having a coach that takes you to YOUR best is all that anyone can ever dream of. Some people's best take them to the Olympics, or World Championships, while others can run a 5K or win a chess tournament. As long as your coach pushes you to your limit then they are a great coach.

Don't get a coach that is nice to you! This person should not be your friend, and if they are, you need to keep the two relationships apart. Great coaches have to push and pull you to places that you have never been. They take you places your body and mind tell you, you should not be. They push the limits that you have placed on yourself and show you a new world you never knew existed. But without trust, without faith, you will never get there. There is only so much a coach can do. They cannot move your legs for your, they cannot think for you, they don't get to be on the field competing for you. You have to do all these things on your own and you; the athlete, or competitor, are the one responsible. You have to execute what you have been taught or you have just wasted your time and the time of your coach.

Elite athletics is mental, if you want to be elite you have to believe you are elite. And then you have to work, and work harder than everyone else. This is very true in any field when you are at the top. Finance, science, medicine, all the leaders in these fields know they are the elite. They are talented people that knew that talent would reach a point and then they had to work. Some elite athletes can get there on their own, there are sports that you don't really need a coach all the time. But I bet those people are few and far between, and I also bet that at some point they did have a coach. Someone that showed them what it was like to work harder, longer, faster, than they ever thought possible.

So the next time you think that the person coaching you sucks and you want to get a new coach, realize that it was most likely your fault you are in the situation you are in. Not the coaches. You chose this person, you chose to not follow the plan, you have the final say. If you had done everything that person had said to do would you be where you are today? Could you have been better if you just listened? Does this coach have other athletes that have improved when you didn't?

Just FYI this is not about me but about a conversation that I had with another coach, just got me thinking.

When "A win is a win" isn't

Yesterday was another big competition for my team. The level 9s competed at noon, and my 2 level 10 that night. In the level 9 session we were the biggest team by far with 8 kids. There is no rule in USA gymnastics to determine the size of a team. And each meet determines their own way of tallying the team score. The most common way is the top 3 scores from each gym. There are advantages and disadvantages to the number of athletes needed to count. The higher the number needed the bigger your team needs to be, but also the deeper in talent your team needs to be. Having to only count 3 athletes should have helped my team a lot as we are so big meant we could drop 5 scores. There were some teams in the competition with only 3 kids which meant they would have to be pretty perfect as a team to do well.

We started off on bars, which I feel is a pretty good event for us to start on. We often start our workouts on bars so any time you can make competition similar to practice it is good. I set up my line up in such a way that I put my most consistent athletes up first building to the best bar routine and if I have girls that struggle with their routines I put them more at the end of the rotation. This is so that their possible miss will not effect athletes after competing after them. With my team this is really important to start off strong and build the momentum. It might sound harsh to say that I know a kid might not make a routine but remember I see these kids every day and know how often they hit routines in practice. It is not often that an athlete does something different at practice than what they do at a meet. 

So bars when about what I thought it would, the kids I thought would hit, the one I hoped would hit and is our best routine if she does didn't, most of those that I knew would fall did, but one kid did do better than I thought she would. I think I might need to do a little more tweaking of the lineup and maybe I can get a little more out of the team. 

Next we went to beam and it was a mess! Our first athlete fell twice within the first 2 skills of her routine and acted like she had never been to a meet before. It was a total collapse. Our next two athletes did the exact same thing! I'm not kidding these kids are monkey see monkey do. It wasn't till our 4th athlete that we had a gymnast even stay on the beam. Unfortunately it was a very rough routine, but the athlete at least fought to stay on the beam. We ended up with 2 more athletes staying on the beam and doing very well, but out of the 7 that we had compete a beam routine, only 3 hitting is not a good %.

Floor was a little better with 6 out of 7 staying on their feet. But our best floor routine fell, and 2 others changed skills in one of their passes. Floor is an event that you should never fall on in my opinion. For me as an athlete is was almost never a worry. Once I had a routine dialed in it was a sure thing in competition and an opportunity for me to show off my power, skill, and dynamics.

Last was vault and for the most part we did well again just not as good as we should have done. Two of my best vaults either did not get credit for the position of their vault, or fell on it. Vault is tough because it is all our nothing and is a painful event. Even a vault completed perfectly can be very painful to land and that is often scary for an athlete. We also almost never train onto a hard surface in practice. As an athlete I never did and I don't like to with my athletes because of how hard it is on their body.

When the meet was all said and done we ended up with a 109.2. An okay score for a level 9 team but not good enough this night, nor will it be at state. We ended up losing to Extreme Lee Summit from Lee Summit, MO. This team is very good and has really come on strong over the last few years. They beat us with only 3 athletes on their level 9 team competing this evening. But because of a technicality we ended up taking home the 1st place banner. Their coach forgot to send in a team entry fee so compete in the team competition. This has happened to me before and is very unfortunate to happen to a great group of kids that did a great job. This is when a win is no a win for me. We told our girls that we won because of it and that as hard as it is to hear, it should not have happened. A team with 3 athletes beating a team with 8 (only 7 competed on 3 of 4 events) should never happen, and they need to think about that and how much they want to win at the end of the season.

Some people would like to look at this meet and think that I am being to hard and need to give the girls credit for the win. Those people don't know what it takes to be the best, and that is what I am paid for. We should have easily been 2 points higher if not more in our team score, and it might take more than that even to win at State.We still have a little time to get everything dialed in, but time is running out. Getting our athletes to understand how fast that day is coming in a tough thing to do with how young they are. It is my job though, and I still think I can get it done this year. I want a state championship level 9 team this year and I am not going to be happy with anything less.

This meet is hosted by World Class Gymnastics and is a fun one every year.