Top 2 Reasons That You've Plateaued In Your Training

With the regular coaching playbook it is easy to get sucked into the black hole of the same monotonous drills day after day, practice after practice. In reality, creativity - not monotonous repetition - is the key to building strengths and overcoming weaknesses.  Consider the two main pitfalls that lead to plateau:

1. You practice a drill that you are comfortable with.  
Got flashy looking roll tacks? Then you're probably not getting a lot out of tacking on the whistle.  Dusting your training partner in every acceleration-on-the-whistle drill?  It's going to be hard to notice small improvements if you're consistently the first one out of the gates.  When looking to build on your strengths, instead of repeating an easy drill that you have already mastered, try something completely different.  Sail with your eyes closed and try to make it around your coach using only whistle signals to find the mark (best with an inflatable coach boat!).  Try to keep the boat stable while sailing heeled to windward as far as possible without taking water over the rail.  If you're working on tacking, try your tacking on the whistle without the crew wearing a harness.  If that's too easy, see if you can tack with the crew crossing the boat in front of the headstay.  To work on down speed maneuvers (like accelerations), try sailing around a buoy without ever being on port tack.

If you mix in drills that force you outside of your comfort zone, your foundation skills will improve a lot.

2. You practice a drill that pulls your focus in too many directions at once.

So on the surface, tacking might seem like a pretty simple skill, but consider the ingredients of a good tack: feet in the correct spot, smooth movement into the boat from the wire, consistent unhook, good timing between skipper and crew, fast hand switch, precise sail trim, precise weight placement, and much, much more.  If you're having trouble executing the perfect tack (and trust me: you are...) single out one skill to perfect before you move on.  One of my favorite ways to do this is to create simple drills that emphasize one aspect of a technique.  For example, if you are having trouble breaking the habit of clipping in before you are at full extension on the wire, practice hanging, and counting to ten after each tack before you clip in.  If you are struggling with your hand switch, practice completing the tack with your arms still crossed (i.e. don't do any hand switch at all).  Sail the boat perfectly for twenty seconds steering with the tiller behind your back and  allowing the skipper to trim main, until the boat is back to full speed, and then switch hands.

There are tons of creative drills like these that can help isolate your issues, or bring a new aspect into focus, so don't get stuck doing the same thing every day!

Dissecting the Training Toolbox

Throughout the season, there are a lot of opportunities to get on the water with coaches, but it's important to incorporate each opportunity into your overall plan in the right way.  Here is a comparison of Training Camps, Clinics, and Regatta Coaching to help you plan the right combination for your goals this year.

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Training Camps

Training camps generally have more boats, broader goals, and higher sailor-to-coach ratios than other categories of training events, which makes them super productive tools for improving boat-on-boat skills, but it is important to incorporate them into your training plan in the right way.  With many boats on the water, there is a premium on self reliance and goal setting: you need to be able to get yourself on the water on time, and know what your goals for the weekend are.  At our 29er HP training camps, we place a major emphasis on sharing information, and the list of drills is set accordingly:  round robin racing (every crew sails with every skipper), short course boat handling drills, starting line execution drills, and generally a list of weird skill drills to force everyone to experience the boat in a new way.

Best ways to take advantage of training camps: Learn new skills and get fresh ideas for what you should be pursuing in your training at home.  Hone racing skills in a non-regatta environment.

Note for parents: Training camps are generally cheaper because we have more teams to cover costs!

Clinics

In contrast to training camps, clinics are all about the coach-sailor interactions.  For newer teams, clinics are an opportunity to get immediate feedback on skills such as boat handling mechanics and sail setup.  For experienced teams, clinics are the perfect environment for speed testing and advanced skill work.  At our 29er HP clinics, we try to break up straight line tuning with personalized skill drills and course work to send everyone home with a whole new list of things to work on.

Best ways to take advantage of clinics: Know what you want to improve before the clinic starts so that you can ask your coach to look at specific skills.  

Regatta COaching

The most important thing to remember about regatta coaching, is that without a good training program, regatta coaching is far less effective than spending some quality time at a training camp, or a clinic.  Regatta coaching provides athletes with the opportunity to benchmark their skill set, while coaches can focus on helping to improve communication on the boat as well as tactics, and strategy. Learning tactics and strategy is one of the best parts of sailing, but without a solid foundation in boat handling and tuning skills, it's almost impossible to learn the process of making good tactical decisions.  Once you have reached the top level, regatta coaching is an essential part of developing a consistent playbook.

Best ways to take advantage of regatta coaching: Do your homework between regattas!  Take notes during debriefs so that you know what to work on.  Keep a playbook to document all of your tactical plays.

The Process: Embrace The Pressure

The ISAF Youth World Qualifiers.  In the last eight years, I have attended the regatta six times, three as a sailor and three as a coach.  The event holds a special place in my development in both realms, and every time I participate, I learn a tremendous amount about myself and my teammates.  

Mentally, the regatta can seem like the most difficult event of the year to win; being the fastest, the smartest, and the best team on the water is not always enough.  Small errors often lead to a cascade of mistakes in the heightened competitive environment, and the psychology of knowing that you only have one shot to get it right can be consuming. The most important tool to bring to competition at this event is without a doubt, the right mindset.

Be confident in your training

Coming into the top mark, Dane and Quinn are on port, battling for first or second after a heroic rally from a deep start.  As they approach the three boat length circle, they are bow ahead, but just barely.  With their blazing speed downwind, they can easily afford to duck the first place boat, and catch them again after the mark.  But they don't.  With both boats inside of the zone, Quinn throws a last minute tack at the mark to try to squeeze around inside, and from my vantage point it looks clean, but a second later I hear the shout, "Protest."  Later that night, after sitting through hours of tense protest hearing, Dane and Quinn get disqualified from the race, using up their single discard, and setting up a tough battle for the remaining days of the event.

If you are vying for a top spot at this regatta, you have probably put in hundreds of hours on the water in the last year, and your experience in the boat will show.  On a wide open race course, anybody can execute a good maneuver, but in high pressure situations, there is no substitute for experience - knowing when you can make the cross, where you need to tack inside, and when to take the high percentage duck.  Trust your training, and stick to what you know.  Remember, the best you can do is to sail to your potential; you can never exceed it.

Be confident in the racing format

Race 7 - the final race of the day.  So far our scoreline for the day was a 3, 2, 1, and we were keen to continue the trend to hopefully put some points between us and Judge and Hans.  The course four placard went up, signaling a three lap race to finish the day.  We came off of the line with good speed, and by the top mark, we had established a lead, followed by Max and David, and then Judge and Hans.  This was exciting. Aside from the first race of the regatta, this was the only other race where we had been able to get a boat between us! We went around the course once.  Around the course twice.  Around the course a third time.  We passed the committee boat to round the leeward mark and turn back upwind for the finish, and as we approached the leeward mark, we heard a horn for the first place finisher... We had misread the course chart, and instead of sailing through the finish line on the downwind, we had gotten three quarters of the way to a mark that wasn't on our course!  By the time we got the kite down, and got back up to the line, five boats had finished ahead, and Judge and Hans had erased our regatta lead.  This in itself wouldn't have been the end of the regatta, but an impending sense of doom set in. Two days and three races later, we lost the event in the last race of the regatta.

In an average twelve race series, there are 24 upwind legs, 36 mark roundings, 60 minutes of pre-race jockeying, 180 standard maneuvers, and ultimately 420 minutes of racing.  Don't let a single race outcome influence the rest.  With thousands of decisions to be made over the course of a regatta, a few bad tacks, bad shifts, or bad starts aren't going to end your regatta.  Be quick to let mistakes go - they are part of the statistical inevitability that is sailboat racing.  Instead, focus on what you can control.  As Quinn says, "The mistake isn't the first error, but allowing emotions from the first error to create a second."

Embrace the pressure

In 2006 I sailed my first Youth World Qualifier - the C420 Midwinters in Jensen Beach - with Oliver Toole.  The event was our first out of state regatta, and we were blown away by how many boats were competing.  We knew it was a qualifier for something, but we didn't really know what the ISAF Youth Worlds were.  For four days, we battled it out around 20th place, stoked to be racing at the top of the fleet, especially in the breezy conditions.  Eventually finishing 18th, we were dimly aware that there was a battle going on for the Youth Worlds slot, but mostly we were just stoked at a good first performance.  

At the 2007 Youth World Qualifier, we entered the event with confidence in our training, but with no goals except just sailing well.  Judge and Hans had won most of the West Coast circuit and had been to CORK, Worlds, and other international events while Oliver and I had only been sailing the boat together for a few months, training mostly by ourselves at home, and competing in a handful of local events.  There were some "big name" opti kids who had bought boats for the qualifier, and lots of teams had high powered, private coaches with them on the water.  Again, we felt like small fish in a big pond.  It wasn't until half way through the regatta when we were leading the boys division by a comfortable margin, that we started to feel any pressure.  At the point that all eyes were on us, we had already established our rhythm, and the pressure just added fuel to fire aggressive tactics, and confident execution.

In a competitive year, probably only the top 10-20% of the fleet will have a shot at winning the event.  When you start to feel the pressure, embrace it! Not many people make it to the point where they get to compete in those high pressure situations, so have fun in the spotlight, and let it build on your confidence.

Do what needs to be done

I have seen this lesson over and over again at this regatta, and solidified it both the easy way, and the hard way on occasions.  When you have done the work to be at the top, and you are confident in your training, you have the opportunity to win the event, but in a fleet of boats who are all gunning for the top spot, staying on top of the pile while the target is on your back can sometimes seem like an impossible puzzle.  While it might seem obvious, one of the most challenging things to do is to keep the goal in mind, and do what needs to be done.  If you need to start near your competition, don't be tentative - be confident.  If the only way to win is to split sides and take a risk, send it hard.  If you need to win a match race, go get in the battle as soon as the prep flag goes up.  Trust your skills, and execute the correct strategy, even if it seems difficult.

If you can manage to keep racing straightforward and stay confident in yourself, you will maximize your chances of sailing to your potential, and ultimately that's all you can ask of yourself and your teammate.

The Process: One Step At A Time

In the past few months, Dane and I have run a few regional clinics, coaches several events, and worked with many teams on improving boat handling skills around the course.   There has been some good improvement from many teams, but the rate of improvement varies a lot from team to team.  While everyone needs old lessons to be reinforced every once in a while, the teams who make the most progress are the ones who really drill down into the details and master each individual skill before moving on to the next one.  Here are a few important things that you can do to ensure that you master new skills and arrive at your next event ready for the next piece of the puzzle.

Practice The Fundamentals
When Quinn finished the crew swap round-robin drill at the Long Beach ODP camp, his first comment was, "Everyone needs a lot of work on their fundamentals."  Fundamentals are the building blocks that go into every other maneuver including balance, feel, smoothness, quick reaction time and more.

While it's easy to gloss over the fundamentals in our quest to get racing quickly, they are often times the factors that cause teams to plateau in ability.  Here are some drills that you can incorporate into every practice to keep pushing your fundamentals forward and to prevent plateauing.

• Work on feel:
  • Rudderless sailing
  • Blindfolded sailing
• Work on balance:
  • Boat yoga
  • Tacking in front of the forestay
• Work on having smooth, quick reactions:
  • Heeled to windward progressions
  • Freestyle trapeezing

"Intensity without good foundations is flawed"

- Kenny Kane, Crossfit Games coach

One. Step. At. A. Time.
One of the biggest functions of a coach is to simplify everything happening on the water to come up with one or two changes that will improve a team's outcome.  Frequently I have parents ride along in the coach boat, who want their sailor to master twenty different lessons in each visit to the coach boat, but it's very important to pick one thing to work on, and master that single thing before moving to the next thing.  For example, during our April clinic in Santa Barbara, the main focus was on light air gybes, and specifically the timing of the kite relative to the steering.  At this most recent ODP Camp in May, it was very obvious which teams fixed that issue, and which have not yet.  Those who have fixed the issue can now move on to the next item on the checklist, while those who practiced "boat handling" in general, might be a tiny bit better at everything, but still don't have satisfactory gybes or (likely) any other maneuver.  To help organize what you are focusing on in each condition, try putting together a SWOT Chart like this one, and tracking your improvement over time.

Focus On The Details
We have discussed this before, but we can't emphasize enough how important it is to focus on finer and finer details the better you get.  Almost all of the teams that we work with at this point have the a solid foundation of skills; most teams can get on a starting line, find a clean lane, and pick their heads up out of the boat to think about tactics during racing, but at the top of the fleet, that is not enough.  The top teams consistently push themselves to focus on finer and finer details: obviously they nailed their hand and foot positioning, but did they pull on the boat as hard as they could in the exit?  Was the rate of pull consistent?  Could they have varied the rate of pull to eek out a tiny bit more acceleration in the middle of the flatten?

Whenever you receive criticism from a coach, make a note of what it was, and dig into it when you get to train by yourself.  If the kite switch in a gybe was your weakness, try to determine why it didn't go well.  Was your foundation of footwork and handwork good?  Was your timing correct?  Did you do any extra or unnecessary movements?  Were you limited by your fitness?