Coach Yourself to Win E-Book

Jon Emmett

• Herausgeber: Fernhurst Books Limited
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

This book will help you to succeed on the water whether your aim is Club, National, International (or even Olympic) level. With detailed analysis, challenging exercises and useful top tips throughout, everything is covered: from targets, goal setting and a winning mental attitude to boat handling, strategy and tactics (plus lots more). Handy diagrams on almost every page help to clarify complex concepts and scenarios, and brilliant action photographs bring the text to life. Each chapter is closed with not-to-be missed advice from Olympic medallists – making this a must-have book for all sailors who aspire to great success. This is a re-written and more focused version of the author's popular title Be Your Own Sailing Coach, and its publication marks the re-launch of the iconic Sail to Win series, loved by sailors for over 30 years.

Leseprobe

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COACH YOURSELF TO WIN

Dedicated to my Mum, whose unwavering support has been with me since my very first book.

COACH YOURSELF TO WIN

Jon Emmett

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Copyright © 2015 Fernhurst Books Limited

62 Brandon Parade, Holly Walk, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, CV32 4JE, UK Tel: [phone] | www.fernhurstbooks.com

This book contains content previously published in Jon Emmett’sBe Your Own Sailing Coach, published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a license issued by The Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The Publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. The Publisher accepts no responsibilty for any errors or omissions, or for any accidents or mishaps which may arise from the use of this publication.

ISBN 978-1-909911-21-5 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-909911-63-5 (eBook) ISBN 978-1-909911-64-2 (eBook)

Front cover image:Lijia Xu winning Gold in the Laser Radial Class at the London 2012 Olympic Games© Clive Mason / Getty Images Back cover image by Chen Jun All photographs by Jon Emmett, except: p5 & 69 by Chen Jun; p14 & 31 by Tim Davison / Dave Giles

Designed by Rachel Atkins Illustrated by Karl Brandt

JON EMMETT

GOLD MEDAL WINNING COACH & SAILOR

Jon Emmettis a professional sailing coach who coached Lijia Xu to win Gold in the Laser Radial class at the London 2012 Olympic Games. He is also the Training Officer for the UK Laser Class Association.

As well as coaching, Jon is a very successful and regular competitor, with successes including:

Byte C II Class

• World Champion

• European Champion

Laser Radial Class

• Masters World Champion (twice, including the year of writing)

• Masters European Champion (twice)

• Europa Cup Series Winner (twice)

• UK National Champion (6 times)

• UK National Ranking Series Winner (over 10 times)

• UK Inland National Champion (over 10 times)

Coach Yourself to Winis a re-written, more focused version of Jon’s popular title Be Your Own Sailing Coach (available as an eBook), and builds on his vast experience as a gold medal winning coach.Jon is also author of Fernhurst Books’Be Your Own Tactics Coach.

www.jonemmettsailing.co.uk

Also by the author:

Be Your Own Tactics Coach

A comprehensive programme to make you a tactical genius.

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1Targets & Goal Setting

CHAPTER 2Boat Handling

CHAPTER 3Starting

CHAPTER 4Upwind Boatspeed

CHAPTER 5Reaching Boatspeed

CHAPTER 6Running Boatspeed

CHAPTER 7Strategy

CHAPTER 8Tactics

CHAPTER 9Rules

CHAPTER 10The Winning Mind

CHAPTER 11Fitness

CHAPTER 12Preparation & Note Taking

END NOTE

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FOREWORD

I first knew Jon Emmett from his well-renowned book,Be Your Own Sailing Coach. This book has helped thousands and thousands of wonderful sailors to reach their dreams by improving themselves to be all-round sailors by following his detailed instructions. That included me – a Chinese sailor who was extremely thirsty to acquire comprehensive knowledge about sailing. That book imparted me with all the knowledge I needed to know as a professional sailor, but at the same time I was not satisfied and I wanted to further improve myself and become an Olympic Champion.

I was so lucky to have Jon as my coach towards the 2012 Olympic campaign. I have never got on so well with a coach like him before. He not only has a nice personality and character to work with, but he is also super competent in numerous roles, far beyond a sailing coach: such as acting as a psychologist to help sailors prepare mentally for competitions, as a meteorologist to analyse the weather conditions, as a nutritionist to plan a good diet for athletes, as both a personal trainer and partner when doing gym exercises to improve sailors’ fitness, as a physio to give advice for sports treatment and injury prevention tips, and so on. Overall he is a very efficient person and, apart from being a fantastic sailing coach, can help many members of the team to build good relationships and a great team spirit.

Jon knows exactly how sailors feel and what sailors want for the simple reason that he is still an active sailor by training and participating in various regattas every year. That’s why he understands the sailors more than many other coaches. He also really listens to them – the quality of communication between him and the sailors helps to secure effective training and progression all the time.

It was Jon who helped me to win the Olympic Gold in the London Games, and it is without doubt that this book will be a blessing for all sailors who read it. An excellent coach, he will give every reader the best value in sailing knowledge by sharing his experience and suggestions.

I hope that all of you who love sailing can achieve higher levels with the help of this book, and welcome whatever challenge the future may bring. Enjoy!

Lily (Lijia Xu)Laser Radial Gold Medallist, London 2012

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CHAPTER 1

Targets & Goal Setting

This book is for all those busy people who still want to be successful, and need to optimise every hour of every training session without a coach!

Not many people complain about having too much time on their hands. Sailing, like any sport, rewards hours of quality training. We want to make sure that any time we invest in our sailing is used as usefully as possible. One of the reasons why it is so hard to improve your racing is that sailing is such a time-intensive sport. It could take you many hours to arrive at the sailing venue, rig up the boat and get out on the water, whilst a runner or cyclist may be able to commence a great training session the moment they close their front door.

The aim of this book is to help everyone improve their skills in the shortest possible time, and this requires focus. When you go on a journey, to reach your destination you need to look at the map and plan the best route, not blindly head off in any direction. This means that you need to (assess yourself to) know where you are, and also know where you need to get to (your goals).

Coaching is a huge part of professional training – having someone to help with the analysis and give a second opinion – but for many sailors access to a professional coach is something that happens rarely or not at all and this is where this book can help.

After more than twenty years of coaching it made sense to put all of the most effective training exercises and key ideas into a book which will undoubtedly help you get towards the front of the fleet whether your goal is Club, National, International or even Olympic level. The same proven techniques will help you wherever you are in your sailing career.

Why are Goals so Important?

Well firstly, if you don’t have a clear target, how do you know when you have achieved something? Humans by nature like a sense of achievement: think of all the opportunities to win badges, certificates and awards when we are young (or indeed as we get older the targets, such as getting a degree, become bigger and better).

They provide motivation: if something is too easy (“my aim for today is to clean my teeth”) then there is very little feeling of accomplishment, or if something is too hard (or perhaps impossible, like running your first marathon in under two hours) it will lead to disappointment, and repeated failure can be hard to bear. The idea is to set yourself a rewarding challenge, something you can achieve if you really put your mind to it.

The purpose of this book is to break your overall sailing goal down into small and manageable mini-goals. After all it is impossible for a human to eat an elephant in one go but if divided into small enough pieces and given enough time, then, anything is possible.

Things which are measured are more likely to be achieved, as at the end you have proof that you achieved them (or not). This is why taking detailed records of the weights you lift is so important – so you can see where you came from, what you have achieved and what you need to do next. Try to learn skills in the easiest possible way, using a method than helps you remember what you learnt. For example, in my bookBe Your Own Tactics CoachI use character names (like Terry Tacker who tacks on every shift) as lots of research has shown that this is a very good way of remembering things.

Visual aids are also an excellent way of seeing information at a glance: not only is it much clearer than just rows and columns of numbers, but it is more rewarding to look at!

The key to improving your overall sailing ability is to work on your weaknesses. A good way to understand where your weaknesses lie is to compare your abilities in a number of areas in a single visual form.

The issue is: we tend to enjoy what we are good at and are therefore more inclined to practise it (and get even better at it) and dislike what we are not good at (and therefore not practise it and not improve at it). To improve our overall ability effectively, our training routines should be the other way round – focusing on our weaker areas. However there may be some events where you would choose to specialise, for example preparing for a championship which will be held only in strong winds due to the expected sailing conditions. This may mean that you could, for that season, neglect your light wind training, if only the result in this one regatta was important to you.

Dartboards

How to fill out a dartboard

An example of a boat handling dartboard

An example of a tacking dartboard

An example of a tacking exercises dartboard

You can, of course, make as many or as few dartboards as you like, but the more specific and the more detailed they are the better. So consider Chapter 2: Boat Handling: we could create a dartboard showing six key areas for all the boats we are racing (opposite, top). Perhaps having recently changed to a trapeze boat we are struggling to tack, gybe and bear away, but we are already confident to hold position, accelerate and head up.

Now we have identified some of the areas we want to work on (and boat handling is often a very good example of an issue we could expect when changing to a new class) we can go into more detail. So then we look at tacking (opposite, bottom), as it (along with bearing away), we decided, is the weakest area and therefore where we can get some rapid improvement. This dartboard clearly shows the specific areas we need to work on.

Now we can finally choose some actions to help us. This is so much more effective than just going sailing and ‘practising boat handling’. The final dartboard (above) shows some exercises that we can do to help our steering, body movement and sheeting. Those exercises which require us to do lots of tacks, such as riverboat, can be more useful than tacking on the whistle as they require more thought, whilst tacking in a race can hide your weakness as, even in a short race, boatspeed can help compensate for your poor tacks.

Most useful is when you do very detailed exercises like tying your tiller (so that you cannot steer using the rudder), fixed sheet tacking (so that you cannot steer using the sheet) or bum in the boat (not in this dartboard, but where you cannot move your body) which soon identify where the biggest issues lie and therefore where your time should be spent. Time management is a very important skill in modern life and you should keep careful records of your training to make sure it is paying off.

So good luck, train hard and enjoy the rest of the book.

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CHAPTER 2

Boat Handling

The phrase ‘boat handling’ refers to any skills that are not directly related to straight line speed. These can often be practised on land where the boat is securely tied to the trolley and you can analyse very carefully what is best to do with your hands and feet with no risk of a capsize.

The important thing is to be able to perform near perfect boat handling manoeuvres under pressure as this gives you lots of tactical options. For example, if you know that you can tack under someone without being rolled, or if you can gybe quickly making it hard for someone to cover you (or easier for you to cover them). You do so many tacks and gybes over the course of a race: if you can make each one just 1/3 boat length better, accumulatively that is a huge distance by the end of the race, and many fewer points at the end of a series.

It is also worth noting that slow speed boat handling skills, like those required pre-start, are very important too. It is not all about achieving rapid acceleration: being able to slow down, hold position and turn without going over a start line are all very important.