Please note: I recently found some old articles from my old physicalengineering blog. I wrote many of these articles in 2015-16. I am not sure if I would agree with the contents in their entirety; however I am posting the articles to help keep track of my previous perspectives on certain topics. I hope you find them interesting, thought provoking, or if nothing else slightly comical.
A note to parents & coaches…
Whisky and Long Term Physicality Development have much more in common than you might be led to believe. With the 2016 Summer Olympics almost over there is a lot of buzz around what have British Sports being doing between London 2012 and Rio 2016 to build such an impressive medal tally, exceeding the London medal count and finish second on the medal table ahead of Sporting superpower China. There will undoubtedly be young athletes who will be aspiring to be the next Jade Jones, Alasdair Brownlee or Sally Conway; however their coaches and parents must not fall into the trap of copying how these senior elite athletes are physically training now, but rather what process they have followed to get them to where they are. The purpose of this article is to give coaches and parents of younger athletes some basic idea’s and concepts around progressive training and to reassure them that this process takes time and time cannot be cheated!
For coaches and parents who haven’t read the Great British Medallist study here is the link. It is worth it’s weight in gold so it’s a must read and it will give you some great insight into commonalities which shape the characteristics of elite medalling athletes http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-016-0476-2
Summary in case you’re short on time
- There are five stages to making whisky and five stages towards long term physicality development
- Stages 1-4 of both whisky making and long term physicality development require a systematic and measured approach, adding the correct ingredients, in the correct amounts, at the correct time during the process.
- Stage five is Maturation of the whisky and Competing to Win. This process cannot be rushed nor cheated, but rather we must trust out initial, time tested process and let the whisky and athlete mature.
- Too much screwing around while the whisky as in the cask, or while the athlete training to win will likely lead to a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth!
Now back to whisky making, and particularly how it relates to the development of long term physicality. To make a beautiful Single Malt Scotch Whisky, such as Glenmorangie, there are essentially five phases which must be transitioned through and these are very similar to our Long Term Physicality Development framework. Below is a table relating the five phases of the whisky making process to our five phases of our long term physicality development “process”.
| Whisky making Phase | LTAD Phase |
| Malting | Fundamentals |
| Mashing | Learning to Train |
| Fermentation | Training to Train |
| Distillation | Train to Compete |
| Maturation | Compete to Win |
Phase 1 – Malting & Fundamentals
To begin making whisky barely must be gathered, and then soaked it in warm (not boiling!) water so that the starch can become sugar – this process is called malting. Of course, the better quality of the starting barley the better quality the final whisky so it is essential to select the correct crop with the desired characteristics to make a quality whisky. After a few days malting, the barley is then transferred to a kiln where it is heated, dried out and any rough bits are weeded out at this point.
To being training a future champions we first of all need a volume – that is volume of different sports to sample and volume of quality children. By quality I mean children who have good PCDE’s (psychological characteristics of developing excellence https://core.ac.uk/download/files/18/17034234.pdf) as without these improving physicality is going to end up fruitless. Of course, the more suited the child is to the sport the better the chance of eventually ending up with a senior athlete with the desired characteristics for that sport – it’s difficult to be a world class men’s rower at only 5’2 with t-rex arms. Really, the fundamentals stage is more about shaping the mindset of the child. Just like a grain of barley, most of the children who come at the beginning have some rough edges and some “husk” which we must try to sieve out, but make no mistake we’re not making a beautiful whisky if we have poor grain from to begin with and it’s unlikely we’re making race horses if we’re only given ill-tempered donkeys in the beginning.
Phase 2 – Mashing & Learning to Train
The second stage of whisky making is called mashing and this is where the ground down malt (barley) is added to warm water and then “mashed” around for several hours so that the sugar in the barley is released, leaving a mixture called “wort”. This is repeated 2-3 times, each time increasing the water temperature, so that the best quality sugar released from the barley.
Similarly, with young children we must give them the opportunity to begin to develop their physical potential “mashing” them to different sports, different environments and experiences early in their development. For example, to develop physical skills young children being exposed to team sports can develop pattern recognition abilities; being exposed to gymnastics or parkour may develop individual movement skills across a wide movement vocabulary; participating in in things like dancing will develop rhythm, timing and accuracy with a partner; learning to play an instrument can develop high level of dexterity and attention to detail; and sports like rock climbing or diving will develop a lot of courage as there is a “danger” perception associated with tasks involving heights (although very safe).
Phase 3 – Fermentation & Training to Train
Fermentation involves cooling the liquid and passing it into large tanks called washbacks. The whisky distillers then add yeast which turns the sugar into alcohol. The distiller will carefully select the type of yeast to add to the mixture as this will impact the taste of the finished product. The fermentation process usually takes take two days, however some distilleries may leave it longer depending on the exact trademarks their whisky requires. The liquid at this stage is called ‘wash’ and is low in alcohol strength like beer or ale. They could brew the liquid at this point to make beer, but they are after excellence, so the liquid is now distilled for to be more refined, purer and much higher quality.
All grains of barley have the potential to become fine whiskies, just all children have the potential to become champions given the right ingredients are added at the correct time in their development – now is that time to add the general ingredients. Ingredients, such as structured and progressive aerobic endurance training, strength training, speed training added during these puberty years are going to catapult the basic physicality of these young athletes and you will undoubtedly see a very quick increase in their performance. It is essential that these basic general physical characteristics are developed in a non-specific way as it is already likely their volume of Judo or sport-specific training is increasing during these years, so instead develop endurance using swimming, running, cycling; and develop strength using weightlifting, rock climbing and gymnastics. Remember, some athletes ferment quicker than others, but trust this process and be progressive in adding new physical training elements and don’t be tempted to add a whole load of new things at once. We might have the beginning of a great rugby player, footballer, fencer, or Judoka but bottling them up now for the big leagues based on some quick physical improvements will mean they’ll likely end up a common beer.
Phase 4 – Distillation & Training to Compete
Next the liquid wash is heated in the tall stills where it vaporises and condenses at the top. This is repeated a couple of times and the condensed vapours are collected as are used to make the whisky. Interestingly, the first batch of condensed vapours are the strongest seldom make the final cask and neither do the stragglers of condensed vapours which are too weak – these are recycled into the system to help make the next cask of whisky. Only the finest, middle vapours, known as the “heart make the cut to be matured in the cask.
Every great athlete needs a little pressure to rise to the top, now is the time to add a little heat and watch how the highest performers separate from the others! How often do are coaches excited about the strongest, earliest batch of performers coming through that their poor behaviours are ignored and they are let into the final cask only to ruin the culture and taste of the entire barrel? How often do are weak behaviours accepted? Athletes with weak behaviours who will likely never consistently perform and perhaps dilute the strong, desired taste of the batch, making it a nice dram but never one to remember. Critically, we must be inclusive and put nothing to waste so these athletes to improve the potential of the next batch coming through. Remember performance is multi-faceted and complex – athletes that truly achieve great things and make the final cask are rarely the very strongest, rarely the first vapours who rise first out of the stills but are for certain the purest with the correct blend of skill, physicality and mentality.
Phase 5 – Maturation & Training to Win
The final stage of the whisky making process is taking the condensed, collected alcohol spirit and sealing it inside a barrel. The type of barrel, typically sherry or bourbon cask, is going to shape the trademarks of the whisky, such as the taste and colour. The whisky is then stored in the barrel, and the time it is left to mature for is the age of the whisky you see on the bottle, whether that’s 10years old, 15years old and so on. Interestingly, the environment the whisky is stored and left to mature in will influence the final product which is just one of the reasons whisky have different characteristics making them truly unique.
Maturation is the stage where, as coaches and parents, we need the highest levels of self-awareness and restraint. Stages 1-4 require a huge amount of time and effort invested to ensure that each stage has been optimised to yield an alcohol with the highest potential to mature into a fine whisky. However, what typically happens in coaching is that our alcohol doesn’t taste like a 10year old whisky after only 1year in the cask, so we get frustrated and we tweak it and hope this fixes the taste. We see our 17year old girl not as strong as our 27year olds women so we try to push for bigger loads in the weight room before the athlete has earned the right to lift those load. Look at it like this, if we only added the silver 1.25kg discs to each side of the barbell ONCE A MONTH, then over a 10month training period that would be 25kg improvement and in 3years 75kg improvement. But, instead some choose blast up the intensity, training maximally every session because somehow training with the same bar load for 3-4weeks before increasing won’t work – utter nonsense! Then another year down the line we again taste the 2year old alcohol expecting it miraculously be tasting like a fine 10year old, and unsurprisingly it doesn’t taste right so again some more tweaking happens. Despite having seen the successful 27year old athlete’s journey, knowing what landmarks they hit in their development journey, we ignore all this and frequently abandon key principles and they fact that things sometimes just take time. This process of tweaking and screwing around with trial and lots of errors is repeated time and time again, and after several years the mixture that was on the correct, evidence proven path to become a lovely whisky is instead a concoction with no desirable characteristics…it kind of tastes like whisky but isn’t!
This is similar to what we see all the time with athletes – as soon as they finish being juniors and enter the senior ranks they have some of the skills and characteristics of the senior elite players, particularly from a strength & power perspective. At the end of athlete’s junior careers, if we have done our jobs correctly they should be as strong, as powerful and as “fit” as most elite seniors, but of course they haven’t had the 5-10years exposure to high level competition with these physical characteristics so of course their physicality in judo-specific situations wont emerge for some time. Yes there are unique individuals who may have been exposed to unique cask, in a unique environment at a unique time, but that is exactly why we use these athletes as example…because they stand out as exceptions! In a sport like weightlifting, or strongman, it’s very rare we see young athletes excelling consistently at the elite level. Yes they may be super strong, just as strong as the elite in basic exercises which take relatively less time to develop the skill & coordination for; but it takes time, lots of time, for this “transfer” to allow them to demonstrate their strength in the complex Olympic lifts and Strongman events. As judo coaches and parents we can recognise this in other sports, but somehow feel judo is “different”!
As coaches we try to cheat time, somehow expecting the impossible and wonder why our newly made alcohol doesn’t taste or perform like a mature whisky or athlete. Rather than trusting the initial stages of the process that have been completed to perfection and letting the athlete mature they are continually muddled with and altered which will change the time proven destination. Now, I am not saying that the process cannot be monitored, cannot be improved, made more efficient, or even phases of the process accelerated…but some things take time and we need to trust in the process. Trust that by exposing the mixture to the correct environments early in its development and allowing it to mature we will arrive at something beautiful, it’s been happening for years; remember patience is a virtue.
When things don’t happen right away, just remember…
It takes 6months to build a Rolls-Royce and only 13hours to build a Toyota.
Trust the process.
Allan
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