Coach Profile - Roddy Gaynor

Some great insights from coach Roddy Gaynor.

"one basic principle however when it comes to applying a coaching method to a specific athlete, just ask ‘does this make sense’?"

 

Q - What is your background - as an athlete, as a coach?

My background in competing dates back to the 80’s. Overall, I won 7 national titles from Schools through to Senior level. Winning the senior outdoor 800M in 1982 was something of a breakthrough and I went on to gain a number of senior international Irish vests. My best over the 800 was 1.48. I was a graduate of the US collegiate system and made All-American on three occasions at NCAA Div 2 level. The US experience was very much an eye opener as a young aspiring athlete. Having not been beaten as an Irish secondary school student for two years, to being completely off the mark against senior collegiate athletes was somewhat devastating.  I was released from scholarship at the University of Arkansas after one year and I was very fortunate to then go on scholarship to Pittsburg State University, but that was after a summer of when I was close to giving up the sport with confidence shattered. I guess the saying ‘that, that doesn’t kill you will make you tougher’ kicked in and after a couple of years of head down grafting, I started to emerge again as the athlete I once was.

These experiences certainly formed me as a person and much later on in terms of my approach as a coach.

In terms of coaching, I have to hold my hand up and say that my adventure into coaching was more by accident than design. I was actually out of my sport for almost 20 years, due to work mostly, but also for not having any real desire to get involved. That was before a very talented teenager in my home village Kieran Elliott was showing a lot of promise, but little guidance. Plagued by injury from playing football, it was a back to basics approach and I became obsessed in terms of his progress in sprinting and ultimately hooked back in!

I have not yet engaged in any formal coach education awards, but my original background as PE teacher and the fact that I worked professionally as a manager of sports and fitness centres for many years always kept my interest in all things fitness and athletic preparation. I did get involved in fitness training for some GAA teams and enjoyed it, but when I realised that I was the one putting in most effort in the process, I quickly got tired of that arena. I also worked at national strategy level in sport and had a lot of involvement in high performance strategy development. This I have continued as an academic over the last 17 years with our Sport for Business degree programme here at Institute of Technology, Sligo.

 

Q - Why (how) did you become a coach? Why do you coach?

I coach now because I really enjoy it. If that goes, I will definitely stop. The idea of developing an athlete in the holistic sense really appeals to me and my focus is very much with teenagers, who wish to commit to the sport. I might not be the most popular with the local football sports, as virtually all the athletes I coach made the decision to concentrate on athletics, but I can honestly say that I coerced none of them into making that decision. I believe that the certainty of the annual athletics calendar compared to the uncertainty of many of the team sports calendars is something that can be very appealing to a young sports star. That added to the fact that in athletics, the focus is on the Athlete first, which is certainly not always the case in team sports. This is something that I believe Athletics Ireland should promote more.

Q - Where are you based, where do you do your coaching?

I am based at the Institute Technology, Sligo and very lucky to have excellent facilities for training. Of course, as we are based at the coast, you can see our training group pop up in many different environments. I suppose my favourite spot has to be when we do our winter hill running on the marram grass at Streedagh Point in North Sligo. My group also uses gym facilities in Grange and at IT Sligo.

 

Roddy with Chris O' Donnell and Chris' Dad - Oordegem 2017

Q - What athletes do you coach or have you coached?

There are currently eight athletes in my training group, which is a group size that suits my other commitments. The star of the group is clearly Christopher O Donnell, but in terms of being with the group, Chris enjoys just being one of the guys. Also in the group is Shane Mooney a 110 hurdler who has won at national level. After that I have a terrific crop of young talent who will take my full attention over the coming years to help realise their potential. Darragh Kelly 800/1500, Conor Herity 400M, Ciara Mooney 300/400 Hurdles, Michael Kerins 1500/XC, Laoise Mc Brien 200M, Niamh Henry 400M. I always help out at the local club North Sligo during Autumn to get all our teenage athletes up and active.

I don’t have any direct coaching involvement anymore with Kieran Elliott (now at UL), but I do provide some critical mentoring on a very regular basis as he progresses through to senior athletics.

Q - What is your coaching philosophy? Is it more speed based, more volume based, short to long, long to short etc?

When it comes to my coaching philosophy, I am very much a traditionalist in terms of periodisation and really believe in building the phases of training! No progression in the meso cycles of training until core building blocks have been achieved. All my athletes go through a 6 week ‘training to train’ phase from September and during that time, I check thoroughly with regard to the functional movement of the athlete. Athletes who train and race with dysfunction in terms of movement and flexibility are fast on the way to injury and most likely a shorter career.  You could say I am a bit of a technique freak and I always find that no matter what stage of development the athlete is at, you always find some aspects of movement efficiently to work on at these weekly sessions. I think a lot of athletes speed up their drills throughout the season without noticing a drift in terms of critical body position and range of movement. At the start of the training cycle, it is a great time to slow it all down and work on these small, but critical points.

The other important aspect of this overall approach is of course injury avoidance through holistic athletic development and of course building in the prophylactic breaks on a regular basis to allow the body to recover. As I am dealing with teenagers mostly, the approach also must be age specific with strength training mostly been own body strength exercises in circuit training. This was the approach with Christopher who only started weight training within the last year. This goes back to the issue of dysfunction and starting any formal weight based or ballistic training without seeing a full range of movement will invariably result in a lack of proper strength gain and probably injury. A period of learning proper lifting technique is obviously very important at this stage. Within this, I also like to see a minimum of 10 weeks background strength training, before commencement of any plyometric work for those athletes who are at a stage to undertake this form of training.

In terms of the running, I would be of the approach that goes from long in winter to short. Get the athlete ready to take the appropriate volume in training in the Autumn/Winter phase with a good foundation. Athletes do not engage in track based speed endurance until mid-November at the earliest, but with the sprinters there is always work to ensure legs are turning over at full extension throughout entire training cycle. One of the big issues I deal with (as I’m sure many other coaches do) is trying to programme the right level of athletics training for the multisport talented teenager! There are so many young athletes who are also playing team sports and in essence, there should be no real difficulty, however with all our main team sports apparently ramping up the intensity of training in the various development squads on a year to year basis, this takes some micromanagement on behalf of the athletics coach, because you can be sure the team sports managers/coaches have no desire to do so and even more worryingly, have little awareness of the impact of too much intensity during the week.

One or two of my athletes are well used now to me asking what exact other training they have during the week, in order to make the right adjustment at my end. If this means just a concentration on technical and maybe aerobic/ conditioning work, well so be it. I genuinely believe that this is one of the biggest challenges with regard to the Irish talented teenage athlete!

One final thing in this area is that I always believe in bespoke training schedules for athletes and do not agree with a group of athletes pursuing the training programme that has been set for the star or main athlete in the group. Of course, there can be similarity and athletes can train together, but understanding the core strengths and weaknesses of each athlete is fundamental here, particularly the strengths which should always be developed upon in the training cycle. If you look at the current excellent crop of 400 metre runners we have in Ireland, it is so obvious that many of them are achieving high standards coming from different positions of strength with regard to their speed, endurance, strength etc.  

Q - What do you see as your main challenges as a coach?

Notwithstanding the issue above with regard to dealing with overtraining, I believe that the number of athletes that I coach allows me to stay in control of the coaching processes that I wish to pursue.

In general however, I have been somewhat dismayed at the rate and scale of teenage ‘star athletes’ that are not making the transition to senior athletics in recent years. In my opinion, it is a major problem for our sport and one that needs to be urgently addressed. It will not be easy to fix, as there are many reasons for why it is occurring such as over-training, lack of athlete specificity in training, transition to college are some issues. Certainly, the inclusion of the national junior and u-23 championships are very important from a competition structure perspective, but the acceptance of major athletes just dropping out, without a comprehensive understanding and follow up on behalf of Athletics Ireland is worrying.

Q - Do you have a coaching mentor? Or do you mentor anyone?

I currently do not have a coaching mentor, but I really enjoy chatting and sharing thoughts with other coaches around the country in terms of philosophy and approach. The greatest influence past and present on my entire approach to athletics training and coaching comes from my first very coach in athletics the late Pat Curley and this includes many coaches I have experienced on both sides of the Atlantic. Pat along with people like Sean Kyle were absolute pioneers in coaching terms in the ‘70s and I really laugh when I hear people talk of new ‘principles’ of training today, when Pat was pursuing so many of these 40 years ago.

Q - What is your knowledge source as a coach? Online, formal courses, experiences, other coaches?

My main source of ongoing education at the minute is constant reading mostly online in relation to specific coaching and training. There are so many outstanding professional athletics coaches who are prepared to share their coaching methods and this is a terrific source. I do have one basic principle however when it comes to applying a coaching method to a specific athlete, just ask ‘does this make sense’?