Training to Win E-Book

Jon Emmett

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

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Gold medal winning coach, Jon Emmett works with sailors and coaches around the world and is frequently asked things like: 'What is a good exercise to improve this?' 'Why do we do this exercise?' 'How do we make the exercise more / less difficult?' This book is the answer to those frequently asked questions. It contains training exercises for each element of a sailing race. As well as describing and illustrating the exercise, it tells you what skills you are trying to improve, why and how to make the exercise harder or easier. The book will enable coaches to deliver better, more focussed, training sessions, but it will also help sailors who don't have the benefit of a coach to practise and improve their sailing skills. The exercises are marked as to whether they are suitable for solo boats, groups of boats or those with a coach boat. As Aristotle said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit." Armed with this book, get out, do some training and improve your sailing skills!

Leseprobe

TRAINING TO WIN

Training exercises for solo boats, groups & those with a coach

Jon Emmett

For the accompanying video, please click

To my loving Mum who has tirelessly supported me and my sailing career from the very beginning.

JON EMMETT

GOLD MEDAL WINNING COACH & WORLD CHAMPION SAILOR

Jon Emmett is a professional sailing coach who coached Lijia Xu of China to win the gold medal in the Laser Radial Class at the London 2012 Olympics. He coached Lijia again for the 2016 Rio Olympics and has since coached sailors from the United Kingdom, Israel, Malaysia, Finland and Argentina aiming for the Olympics. 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 (3 times)

• Masters European Champion (6 times)

• UK National Champion (6 times)

• UK National Ranking Series Winner (over 10 times)

• UK Inland National Champion (over 10 times)

Jon is also author of Fernhurst Books’ Coach Yourself to Win, Be Your Own Sailing Coach (ebook only), Be Your Own Tactics Coach (ebook only) and Tactics Made Simple. Jon also contributed significantly to the latest edition of Fernhurst Books’ The Laser Book.

www.jonemmettsailing.co.uk

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

CHAPTER 2 Starting

CHAPTER 3 Tacking

CHAPTER 4 Gybing

CHAPTER 5 Covering

CHAPTER 6 Mark Rounding

CHAPTER 7 Upwind

CHAPTER 8 Reaching

CHAPTER 9 Downwind

CHAPTER 10 Fitness

END NOTE

FOREWORD

Most Olympic or America’s Cup teams spend much more time training than they do racing in competitions. But the Club sailor, at the other end, tends to do no training at all – just going out and competing in their club race every week. Some countries have great training programmes for certain youth classes, but most adult and many youth classes miss out. In other countries, there are few or no formal training programmes.

It is for this vast number of sailors who have little or no training available to them, and their coaches, that Olympic gold medal winning coach, Jon Emmett has written this book: Training to Win. It covers over 50 different training exercises, each of which is classified as to whether it can be done by boats on their own, groups of boats or boats with a coach boat.

I had the fortune to race against Jon as a Youth sailor in Lasers and was always impressed by his analytical approach. It was therefore no surprise to me that he transitioned so successfully to coaching.

The book can be used by a boat training on its own, a group of boats wishing to train together, or a coach training one or more boats. Doing these exercises will, without doubt, improve your sailing and your race results. They include exercises that I have used regularly in my sailing career and ones which Jon uses with his Olympic-hopeful trainees. Masses of diagrams and photos from coaching sessions that Jon has run around the world bring it all to life and make the exercises clear, while Jon’s text explains what the exercise is trying to achieve.

I wish you every success in improving your sailing through these exercises.

The person I have spent much time training with was, of course, Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson. I am therefore delighted that this new book, in the Sail to Win series, is supporting the Andrew Simpson Sailing Foundation.

Iain Percy

2 x Olympic gold medallist, 1 x Olympic silver medallist, 4 x World Champion, 4 x America’s Cup Challenger

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book is written for all sailors and coaches to help you train more effectively, be you a sailor training on your own, a group of sailors training together or a coach training one or more people.

Coaching young sailors in China

I hope that, through using the tools included here, you and / or your trainees can have the best sailing season ever and achieve your desired goals both now and in the future.

This book was written as much by necessity as by desire because, as I have worked with many coaches and sailors over the years, there are some questions that I hear over and over again: ‘What is a good exercise to improve this?’ ‘Why do we do this exercise?’ ‘How do we make the exercise more / less difficult?’ It made sense to put it all down in a book, so it could reach far more people than I ever could in 1:1 conversations.

Success is about focus: we need to know what our aim is and how we intend to achieve it. Therefore, contained in these pages are many exercises used by World Champions to grass-roots sailors which have been shown to be successful, but more than just the ‘how’ I have included the ‘why’ because, when everyone clearly understands the aims and objectives, both motivation and understanding are improved.

Throughout this book I have used photos and film taken when I ran a training camp for Chinese sailing coaches and their young sailors at the Vanhang Sailing Center in Longcheer, Shenzhen in China to show real examples of the exercises. Inevitably this means that they do not ‘look perfect’ like the diagrams, but that is the nature of sailing. Sometimes, in unstable wind conditions, sailors can be right next to each other in different wind speeds and directions and then there is also human error, where sailors are naturally early or late for the start, for example. Time and distance is a key skill and one we look at a lot in this book.

But don’t be fooled by the fact that some of the photos are of children – I use all the exercises in this book with the Olympic competitors that I coach – you will see photos of some of them too! From children to Olympic gold medallists, the sailing techniques you need to perfect in training are the same!

Documenting the best way to train is so important, not just for sailing federations and training schools, but also for all sailors. This is true not only for those coming through the youth programmes, but also for the adult sailors – it is never too late to teach an old dog new tricks! Each and every one of us can improve our racing performance through good training.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.

ARISTOTLE”

Loncheer, Shenzhen in China – a superb sailing venue

So, this book is written for sailors and coaches to get the most out of their training.

There are a number of exercises for each area because different exercises achieve different objectives. It also helps to have variety.

Some of the exercises in this book are ones which can be done by one boat on its own, many can be done by groups of boats without a coach or coach boat, while some need a coach. These are signified by the colour box the exercise appears in:

The majority of coach-run exercises should feel ‘race-like’ because this means that, when the sailors experience something similar in a race, they will recognise that they have been in the situation before and feel more comfortable, whether it be having to do a sudden tack, reversing out of a situation or whatever.

Another benefit of a more race-like situation is that the sailors will be more motivated. This motivation is highlighted if the coach says they are recording the race results. Even if there are no prizes (or penalties… e.g. last place cooks the dinner), it inspires sailors to do their best.

It is certainly worth having the more race-like exercises towards the end of a session, when the motivation may be on the decline.

When You Should Train

Being in the right place at the right time for training is important, particularly because sailing is such a time intensive sport.

Looking at the big picture, you need to maximise your training time at the correct venues, which may be:

• Your home club for your Club Championship

• Where your most important regatta of the year is to be held

• Where the next Olympics is going to be

But you also need to think about the time of day to train: both making sure that you are well rested from whatever else you are doing on that day and bearing in mind the conditions where you are training. If, for example, the sea breeze is only really blowing from 12:00 to 15:00, then maybe this is the most suitable time to train and, where possible, other activities can be built around it.

Remember to look after yourself: illness and injury are the biggest causes of loss of performance. THINK! If you are feeling unwell, pushing yourself for that one extra hour on the water or in the gym is likely to negate any beneficial effect of the training. If you feel sick, over-tired or in discomfort, your body is trying to tell you something. Plan your rest days well in advance and stick to them.

A Good Warm-Up

When we undertake physical training, a good warm-up is essential to prepare the body for exercise and to reduce the risk of injury. It also improves mental focus because the mind and body are strongly linked. This is definitely true in sailing: you need to prepare both physically and mentally, especially if you have not been sailing in similar conditions recently.

Some of the top sailors may also choose to go out 10-15 minutes before the planned training session, to do just a little bit of free sailing to get comfortable with the conditions. It also ensures that they are not late for the first exercise!

If there is just one boat, good warm-up exercises (which can also be done with more than one boat) are:

Tight Circles

You don’t need a buoy to do this (although it does make it easier to judge how tight your circles are): you can do it on your own without a buoy or alternatively around a RIB.

Tight circles around a buoy

Circles round a RIB

Practising 720s

A slight variation is practising 720s, but with the emphasis on keeping the speed up rather than making the circle as tight as possible.

Practising a 720° turn

Some good examples of warm-ups for groups with a coach are:

Short Course Windward / Leeward

This will help with tacks / gybes as well as windward and leeward mark rounding and laylines if the marks are fixed.

A very short course windward leeward

Short Course Figure Of Eight

A figure of 8 works well with a small group as people will meet in the middle (port and starboard); this is certainly a good way to wake people up!

This can be done either by tacking at each mark (as shown above on the right) or, to make it more difficult, by gybing at each mark.

Assuming that both the marks and weights (the weight at the bottom of the mark or attached below the mark to keep it upright) are identical, the marks can just be dropped in the water, drifting equally downwind, rather than anchoring. This saves time when setting up and finishing the exercise, especially if the training area is in deep water (and therefore takes a long time to anchor the buoy).

These exercises become more difficult the smaller you make the course. So, generally, the more sailors / stronger the wind, the larger the course you need for the same level of difficulty.