Using the iPhone as a Coaching Tool
Recently, a community college student I’m tutoring came to me with an assignment in which she had to discuss a 21st century technological innovation. One of the topics we considered was the Smartphone. She owns an iPhone, as do I, although mine is an older version – an iPhone 4. She ultimately decided on a different topic, but our initial dialogue, in which we talked about the positives and negatives of Smartphones, got me to thinking about my reliance on my iPhone in my coaching of hurdlers.
While I’m not one of those oldheads who resists advancements in technology regardless of their obvious benefits, I am generally suspicious and distrustful just for the simple fact that changes in technology are almost always money-driven, and I have no desire to line up with the rest of the suckers eager to buy the latest greatest new thing. I like to live as close to nature as possible, and I’m well aware of how too much attachments to gadgets can create a chasm between my natural self and the me who interacts with people on a daily basis.
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Indeed, my brother Greg, who is ten years older than me, and my sister Jo, who is seven years older than me, both purchased iPhones before I did. I didn’t get mine until two years ago, when it was time for my free upgrade from my flip phone. I loved my flip phone so much that I was planning to get another one. But when scrolling down the list of phones that I could upgrade to for free, I didn’t see my old phone, or any like it. It was either move into the Smartphone era or go phone-less. So I relented.
Phone as Video Camera
Two years later, I can say that my iPhone has proven to be quite useful to me in my coaching. As mentioned in an article or two in last month’s issue of The Hurdle Magazine, I have started coaching Keare Smith – a post-collegiate athlete who ran for Virginia Tech a few years ago and whom I coached as one of my club athletes during his high school years. As we prepare to compete in 2015, we are making a lot of changes to his hurdling technique. The iPhone has proven to be an invaluable resource in enabling us to document our progression.
The best thing about the iPhone as a video recording device is that it’s handy. I don’t need high quality footage when I’m just filming reps of practice sessions. I need something that allows me to be efficient and that allows me to keep the practice session moving without long delays between reps. With Keare, I film at least one or two reps of every drill we do. As we continue to add new drills and variations to old ones, I make sure to film enough of them so that we have a good sampling of what he has already ingrained and what he needs to focus on for improvement.
During workouts, I can film a rep, look at it with Keare, have a brief discussion with him about it, then move on to the next rep. Between sets, I can send him a group of recorded reps and he can look at them on his phone while I look at them on mine.
Sometimes I’ll upload clips to YouTube just so I can delete them from my phone and make room for new ones.
A lot of times, I’ll look at the recorded footage again when I get home, and I’ll always see new things that didn’t catch my eye when I first viewed the clips. I can bring those insights with me to the next practice. And I can text Keare right then and there so he’s thinking ahead right along with me.
The iPhone also allows me to scroll while watching a video, so I can watch it in slow motion. By pausing and screen-shotting videos, I can see how Keare looks at each stage of hurdle clearance.
So yes, as a video camera, the iPhone is all that and a bag of doughnuts. The only problem I have with it is that it can’t zoom in. (Maybe newer versions do have that feature; I don’t know). So, recording races or 400 hurdle workouts on an iPhone wouldn’t be very useful because I wouldn’t be able to see much of anything.
Phone as Stopwatch
The iPhone can come in handy as a stopwatch in a few key scenarios. One would be when I am without my regular stopwatch. Maybe I forgot it, maybe I let another coach or one of the distance runners borrow it. In such a case, the stopwatch feature on the iPhone can serve as a viable emergency back-up.
A more common scenario would be that I need more than two stopwatches at one time. Let’s say I have twelve athletes divided into two groups of six running 200’s. I can time one group with one my regular stopwatch and one with the phone. Or lets say I have my 100/110 hurdlers doing 150’s while my long hurdlers are doing 500’s. Again, the phone serves as a second watch that enables me to time both groups with minimal management issues. Sometimes, with a single group, I’ll time their reps on my regular stopwatch, and time their recovery periods on my phone.
The iPhone also records splits, so I can record touchdown times for either hurdle event as need be.
The only drawback with the iPhone as stopwatch is that it’s a touch screen. Stopwatches work best when there’s a button to press. That way, you know it started without having to look down at it to make sure. On more than occasion I’ve touched the start button, or thought I did, only to look down and see triple zeros staring back at me.
Phone as Notepad
The notepad feature on the iPhone is one that I use quite frequently, both on and off the track. In my coaching, it serves several purposes. First, it serves as a convenient place to record times of workout reps during practice. So if my Keare and the other guys I’m working with this time of year are doing 3 sets of 4×200, I can record the times of each rep right after they cross the line. I can always go back later and put the times into a more formal spreadsheet.
Along those same lines, the notepad can also serve as a training log. There, I can write what drills we did, the details of the workout, how each athlete looked, what the weather conditions were like, etc. As with the video camera feature, the notepad, when used as a training log, allows me to mark the progression of my athletes. I can be half-asleep lying in bed, yet I’m getting work done, making mental notes on how each athlete is responding to the various workouts and figuring out what tweaks or changes I need to make in the immediate future.
I also use the notepad often to jot down ideas. If I think of a drill I could add, hear a cool quote that I’d like to share with my athletes, suddenly remember an old workout that I’d like to dust off and incorporate later in the week, I can jot down a note to myself and bring it with me to practice.
In youth track, I can never remember the spacing for the funky age groups – the 11-12 year old 80m hurdles, and the 13-14 year old girls 100m hurdles. In both cases, the spacings have no marks on the track. And for the 80m hurdles, the start line is different too. So what I did was I found a website that listed the spacings for those races, copied them down into my notepad, and now I can just go back and pull up that note whenever I’m working with a hurdler in one of those age groups.
Let me just add as a side note that, as a writer, I can’t begin to explain how valuable the notepad feature has been for me. I’ve written entire chunks of articles on the notepad while stuck in places where I couldn’t access a computer. To me, there is no downside to the notepad feature. It’s all good.
Phone as Messenger
The text message feature is not unique to the iPhone, or to the Smartphone in general for that matter. But it’s worth discussing here anyway, since it ties in with everything else.
I like text messages just for the simple fact that I don’t like talking on the phone. Many people I know can talk on the phone all day long until the break of dawn while getting along just fine with performing three or four other tasks at the same time. That’s a skill that I lack. If anything, I am the anti-multi-tasker. And when I’m talking on the phone, I feel like I’m stuck talking on the phone and that I can’t get anything else done until this phone conversation is over. Texting allows me do other things, to be other places mentally, while engaged in a dialogue. I like that.
As a coach, text messaging has proven to be the best way to communicate with athletes on a regular basis. If the practice time changes, I can send out a text. If someone had a real good workout, I can text “great job today” later that night just to let him or her know I appreciate the hard work. At big meets, when I’m trying to track down athletes, texting is an option. As I mentioned earlier, when filming practice reps, I can text a rep to the athlete immediately, or I can do so later that night, and we can text back and forth about what we’re seeing in the video clips.
Conclusion
To me, technology is all about functionality. And I find my iPhone to be a very practical tool that has helped me in my coaching tasks and in my interactions with my athletes. And the best thing about it is I can keep it in my pocket at all times, so it is always readily accessible.
Still, I don’t feel that technology can replace creativity. It can enhance it, but it can’t replace it. Even with the video camera feature, for example, I still need to trust my naked eye, trust my gut, and maintain the ability to give my athletes instant feedback.
So my iPhone hasn’t really changed the way I coach. But it has provided me with new options and valuable tools that have enhanced it.
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