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Michel Leblanc |
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Quebec’s Coach of the Year, coached
Marie-Hélène Prémont to the silver medal at the 2004 Olympic Games. He
describes what it is like to coach athletes scattered across Quebec.
Who am I?
I am Michel LeBlanc, a trained physical educator (BSc in physical
activity, Université de Sherbrooke, 1987) and an NCCP Level 4 coach.
The Fédération québécoise des sports cyclists (FQSC) (www.fqsc.net)
hired me to coach the Quebec mountain bike team in 1999. I live in
St-Nicolas, a suburb of Quebec City and am affiliated with the National
Cycling Centre of Quebec (www.centrecyclistedequebec.com) as well as
the Bromont National Cycling Centre (www.cyclisme-bromont.ca).
Athletes on the Quebec team
The number of athletes I work with has increased from 14 in 1999 to 30
in 2005. This increase is largely attributable to the success our
athletes have achieved in national and international competitions. All
the athletes are recognized by the Quebec Department of Municipal
Affairs, Sports and Recreation through its athlete support program
(www.mamsl.gouv.qc.ca). The athletes live all over Quebec, but the
largest concentration (40 per cent) is in Quebec City. Their ages vary
from 16 to 31 years, with an average age of 21 years. The team is
composed equally of men and women.
Services
The FQSC offers a wide range of free services from which all athletes
who are members of the Quebec mountain bike team can choose. I provide
them with annual planning and coaching consulting services as well as
an evaluation of factors affecting performance such as PAM or VO2max
tests. They also have access to equipment. We have 10 training sets,
ergometers, bicycle roller systems, and cardiac monitors. As long as
they are on the Quebec team, they can borrow this equipment.
Personal trainers
I am not the primary coach for all the athletes. I train11 of our 30
athletes. It is a choice we made in order to leave athletes free to
choose the person with whom they want to work. We believe that athletes
benefit from working with a certified, experienced coach who lives in
the same area as they do. More frequent meetings help athletes to
develop. This arrangement has allowed me to work with the athletes’ 13
personal coaches. I created an e-mail distribution list to keep
athletes informed about the latest news on the mountain bike scene,
since not all of them are mountain bike specialists.
Operations
Let’s recap: FQSC is based in Montreal and I live in St-Nicolas, so I
divide my office work between home and downtown Quebec City, and my
athletes live all over the province. Accordingly, we operate in an open
environment, in contrast to a volleyball coach, who works in a closed
environment.
Because of their ages and stage of development, most of the athletes
attend school and live at home with their families. We prefer to leave
them in their family and social environments as long as they can
succeed at both their academic and their athletic endeavours. We do not
expect them to leave their families to live near the national cycling
centres.
Naturally, with communication tools such as e-mail, telephone, and
cellphone, it is very easy to share information with the athletes and
coaches and send information to them. Not so long ago, I remember
sending training programs by fax. What a waste of time!
The invention of e-mail has made my work much more efficient; it’s made
all the difference. All the same, it will never replace speaking to
someone in person or over the phone, so this method of communication
should be used carefully. I try to see my Quebec City athletes once a
week. This is easy during the general preparation phase, involving one
supervised session a week of bodybuilding work in the gym. I try to
telephone my athletes who live elsewhere once a week. Every Sunday
night or Monday morning, they must send me a weekly training assessment
to help me better plan the next mesocycle. I try to talk to all the
athletes for whom I am not the primary coach at least once a month to
share information.
During the year, close to a dozen training camps and competitions are
scheduled from January to August. These give me an opportunity to meet
with the athletes, discuss matters with them in greater depth, and get
a better sense of how they are doing on a daily basis.
Pros and cons
One advantage of our approach is that it allows our athletes to develop
greater independence and responsibility in various areas, including the
development of a strong work ethic for training. In addition, by
managing their own training schedules, they can better adapt their
training to their studies and level of fatigue. However, this requires
more discipline, commitment, and attention to detail on the athletes’
part, because otherwise they can easily miss the boat.
Athletes must have a very high level of personal motivation, because
they do approximately 90 per cent of the training alone. All the same,
this is in keeping with the nature of the discipline: Mountain biking
is an individual sport in which you have to rely on yourself. On the
one hand, this approach frees the coaches, enabling them to devote
their time to other coaching tasks. On the other hand, the coaches
cannot track athletes’ progress on a daily basis and adjust their
training accordingly.
In conclusion
No system is perfect. It is certainly true that I would like to see the
athletes more often and supervise their training more closely. At the
same time, such is the nature of my work that I can oversee the entire
program, including logistics and administration, as well as coach
training. This system requires a high level of discipline from the
athletes, but it also teaches them to become independent in short order
and to handle their own training more effectively along with the rest
of their day-to-day activities.
Happy coaching!
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