 Frank Carroll is one of the World’s top Figure Skating coaches with a storied past of working with such athletes as Linda Fratianne, Nicole Bobek, Michelle Kwan, Becky Hughes and Evan Lysacek. In 1997, Frank was named as the USOC Coach of the Year.
 Hugh McCutcheon is the National Coach for Men’s Volleyball having been named to that position in 2005. Previous to that he served as the Assistant Coach for the National team for two years. Hugh was a mixture of veteran athletes and emerging elite athletes on his team.
Olympic Coach - Let’s start with a definition of a veteran elite athlete. I would propose that it is an athlete who has achieved success at a World Championship or Olympic Games. The athlete would have been involved at the elite level in your sport for ten plus years.
Hugh: A Veteran athlete in our gym has been through two full quads of competition (which will include a World Championships, World Cup, and Olympic Games in each four-year cycle). Doing the math you can see that they’ve put in at least eight years on the team – but most veterans are closer to the ten-year mark because it usually takes a couple of years to make the traveling squad.
Olympic Coach - What about emerging elite, how would you define them?
Frank: Younger elite athletes under 18, they could be as young as 13. You must be 16 to compete in the World, so in our sport an athlete could be on the World scene at 16.
Hugh: Our emerging elites are usually the country’s best college volleyball players. We have tried to establish a “pipeline” where we monitor the progress of talented younger players through their participation in Youth (17 and under) and Junior (19 and under) level International competition, but we have found that, for a variety of reasons, our emerging elite athletes bloom later than in many other sports. One of the most important abilities we look for (and of course train) is technical mastery of the fundamental skills of the game (we assume that if they are being considered for the National team that they have great physical talents and abilities). Because of the complex nature of the motor patterns in out sport, and a lack of great technical coaching early in their careers, our athletes usually don’t show National Team potential until they are in their early twenties
 Olympic Coach - How do training loads (volume and intensity) compare between the two?
Frank: The norm would be more of a maintaining and polishing. It’s really not about learning new skills. It is about keeping the skills up and keeping your body in condition and not being injured. When you’re young you can bang away on the body and do as many repetitions of a triple lutz and fall on your hips, head and back and get up and go again, but when you get into your twenties you’re not going to be doing that anymore or you won’t be skating in the next meet, you may not be skating at all. It’s about watching the wear and tear on your body, maintaining the level of expertise and level of excellence without pushing it to the point where you are endangering your ability to put it out there and make millions of dollars.
Hugh: Initially the emerging elites cannot deal with our training load. Thanks to the NCAA they have been on a steady diet of 20 hours practice for 20 weeks with 28 competition dates per year for the four or five years that make up their collegiate careers. Our schedule (both playing and training) is more rigorous than that so the first few month are tough for them. However, once they acquire the physical capacity to train, they are usually very resilient and can work for long periods of time. The veterans are able to take a training load already and they know what kind of condition they have to be in so they usually come in prepared. Their main advantage, however, is dealing with the mental aspects of training. They have the ability to focus for longer periods of time so the overall quality of their training is usually superior. They are very in tune with their bodies so they don’t waste a lot of energy and they know what they have to do in terms of treatment and recovery to be at their best every day.
Frank: I agree. Most of the top elite athletes that I have ever taught have been so in touch with their body, the shape of their body, how much they had to weigh, what they had to do and they knew what their body was telling them. It is amazing.
Olympic Coach - It’s very interesting that both of you commented on the veteran being so much more in tune with their bodies than the emerging elite.
Hugh: These guys are professionals and their livelihood depends on them being able to do their job well. They know how to train, compete, and recover. The emerging elites are still trying to find their limits and figure out how to get the most out of their minds and bodies.
Frank: Veteran athletes are smart enough to open their mouths and say, I am having a problem. I might only have three of a particular move left in me. So, let’s do the three moves and make them count, don’t hold back, we want quality not quantity. With an emerging elite, they are not smart enough to listen to their body and they are not able to communicate as well, and they push themselves into oblivion and end up with stress fractures.
 Olympic Coach - So what about residual fatigue with a veteran?
Frank: I believe there is a physical fatigue and a psychological fatigue. With Michele, I coached her for over ten years, she was experiencing tremendous pressure from outside forces—agents, people who were telling her that she was so good and as the coach you are the one saying—this does not look so good, I think you need to come in and practice another session. They reach a point where they don’t want to hear the disciplinary things they were told when they were younger, because they are hearing all the other people. It is different when they are up at the top.
Hugh: There is a residual fatigue effect but it’s as much mental as it is physical. Our veterans athletes are all playing professionally for clubs in Europe and Asia so, in essence, they are competing year round – and that can be a grind. There is also a lot of research that suggests that fatigue is primarily a neural issue, more than it is a muscular issue. To try and avoid or minimize fatigue this we focus on recovery, active rest, and subtle variations in our training activities (not our principles) to keep the athletes fresh, and to keep the environment in the gym stimulating.
Frank: Recovery on a basic level for us is a cool-down and stretch after training. I think it is more important than the warm-up before. I do like them to take a certain period of time completely away from the sport. I want them to take the skates off and get away from the ice, but they need to be in the gym to keep up their bodies. But during the season it is different. Figure Skating is based on consistency of doing these very difficult jumps every time. The repetitions have to be done all the time. You can’t be off a week and come back; it’s not there any more. You have to do it. You have to keep your jumping going and your timing. It’s harder in Figure Skating to get something back than it is to keep it going. They like to skate six days a week and take a day off because they know it is easier to do some jumps, have some fun and lighten up and keep their timing up than train.
Olympic Coach - That makes sense because the Peaking and Tapering research says that you need to keep in touch with the technique in the more technical events. (For more information, see Summer 2004 Olympic Coach)
Frank: That’s exactly it.
Olympic Coach - How much input does a veteran have in their training program?
Hugh: I talk a lot with my veteran athletes. They understand the magnitude of what we are trying to achieve so I know they won’t ask for a drill or a training session off unless they need it. They know their bodies, so I’ll listen to what they have to say. If they tell me they’re tired or a little beat up and want out of drill I’ll almost always accommodate their request. Every now and then I’ll ask them to push through a drill or a training session if we absolutely need them. If they come to me and say that they physically can’t train anymore, it’s a different story, they’re done right away.
Frank: When they are younger, there is no negotiating with workout. When they get older, the body changes and they might say my back is killing me, so they don’t need to practice that move while they are in pain and we can wait until it is better. One thing a coach has to listen to is the athlete. It is not your body. You analyze what you see, but a coach that doesn’t listen to the athlete’s input about their body is crazy. You are trying to get back information, so that you can make a decision about what they can and can not do.
Olympic Coach - Hugh, you have athletes with families and other things, how is that different for the veteran?
Hugh: If you have athletes that are married you need to open a line of communication with the family, not just the athlete. You want everyone at home to be on the same page. We have a lot of guys on our team who are married, some have families. This added responsibility can be very impactful. Marriage and having children usually facilitates personal growth, a new level of maturity and perspective, which seems to make the athlete more professional, responsible, and accountable in the gym. On the down side, we travel a lot, so being away from family for prolonged periods of time (4-6 weeks) can be tough – especially if there are any problems. Usually the positive consequences of family life far outweigh any negatives.
Frank: There is a point when there are too many influences. Parents, agents, people concerned with their commissions and how much money was involved. There becomes too much input from too many people who looked at the skating and made suggestions, and sometimes the coach just becomes another voice. The coach’s voice needs to remain the primary voice.
Olympic Coach - What advice would you give to a coach about working with veteran athletes?
Hugh: Veteran athletes are athletes first – so you coach them just like you do your other players. The have a good grasp of the game and its skills so the nature of the feedback you give them is usually different. It’s more about gaining small technical efficiencies or helping them to make better choices in certain game situations. Emerging elites are still trying to acquire and master the fundamental skills, techniques, and tactics so the interactions are differently. If you can find the right balance between individual competition and team improvement, the veterans can be a great educational resource. They can accelerate the learning of your emerging elites significantly.
Veterans are allowed to have some input, some interaction with the coaches, that the other guys don’t get. Their experience and longevity is valued in our gym. I think having veterans is great. They usually make up the majority of your leadership group and because they know what we’re trying to achieve they can help establish and drive your team culture.
Frank: Listen to your own mind. Everyone in the world, when you have someone special, wants to give you advice. Everyone wants to have something to say—the NGB, friends, judges, other coaches. Everybody is going to have input about what you should do. What you should do is take in all this information, listen to everybody, take it all in, say “thank you very much” and then do exactly what your inner instinct tells you to do and make your own decision based on your own intelligence and what you think you can accomplish with this person. Everyone wants a piece of the pie. Take advice from people you admire.
I am a very hypothetical person. I have thought out all the answers ahead of time, all of the possibilities ahead of time, no one walks up to meet with something I don’t have an answer for, that is just the way my mind works.
I have it worked out in my mind to have an answer for athletes when they might have a doubt—you need to be quick and fast to have an answer.
For example, an athlete who told me he was so nervous and that he had never been that nervous before. I said, “Of course you’re nervous, you would be an idiot not to be nervous, but look you have a choice, take the nerves and make them work for you have them make you quicker, faster, stronger or let them destroy you. Make your choice.”
The coach must be prepared with a response for these cases.
Every great coach in the world is intuitive. I think coaching is a talent. I think you have an insight into what works and does not work. That is talent in coaching, it’s not advice from the outside world, it’s not people telling you what works, it is what you feel within yourself is going to accomplish the goal at the end of the rainbow. I think if you don’t have that then you are missing something very important.
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