Coach's Corner Blog
Every month Coach Toni Minichiello will share his thoughts and insights into Jessica's progress and the challenging times ahead in the lead up the London 2012 Olympics.
The 2010 Indoor season is just days away and as some of Jessica’s fellow British athlete’s fly off to South Africa leaving the snow and cold behind, Jessica will open her Indoor season at Loughborough.
The indoor season is about competing; but it’s also a break from training, giving the athlete a chance to see how things are progressing. Truthfully, athletes are competitive people and enjoy competition much more than training, sport is supposed to be fun.
Success at the World Indoor Championships will be Jessica’s target, as she missed out on qualification in 2007. This time however as World ranked number one, she should gain an automatic invitation.
Winter training has begun for most athletes and Jessica is no exception. Fully refreshed from her break after the end of the season, she is back training hard.
Well not too hard to start with, but even so we have had the dreaded “DOMS” or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. The stiffness, aches and pains in the muscles as the body tries to adapt to the change from sharp summer activity to the volume of winter preparation work.
But it’s not just the body that is changing, for me I have a new post with UK Athletics as National Event Coach for Combined Events. More importantly Jessica comes back to training as World Champion and that brings more expectations and demands on the athlete.
Monday, 17th August - 10:10
(via text message from Toni Minichiello in Berlin)
They say it's not the winning it's the taking part and that sentiment
does in some way ring true, but I can from a coaches perspective tell
you that winning gives you a very different feeling, and it is one
that I will enjoy for the rest of my life. The question now is, what
now?
---
Sunday, 16th August - 19:02
(via text message from Toni Minichiello in Berlin)
Nearly there. Jessica Has not been out of the number one spot all of the heptathlon.
That alone has impressed me about the performance to this point. Granted the
800m is yet to come and I am in no way counting my chickens.
“What a difference a year makes”, or 343 days to be precise. Back then the drive home from the airport came with the solemn news that ripped the heart out of my coaching ambition, a determination I've held since I started coaching 16 years ago, to coach an athlete to an Olympic Medal.
This time the same drive home, from the same airport, but how different a day, smiles and relief that the news is so different. The aim was to achieve the World Championships ‘A’ standard. The result a performance beyond anything Jessica has ever done, 6587 points.
The National Championships and the Indoor City Challenge were the final preparation competitions for Jessica before the European Indoor Championships.
It gave Jessica an opportunity to compete in all the Pentathlon events before the big day. From my perspective Personal best performances in the 60m Hurdles and the 60m show that Jessica is in excellent running condition. Being close to personal bests in the jumps again shows she is in good form.
I suppose a personal best in the shot putt and everything would be ready to go. (but, you can’t have everything!).
As coach my aim is to improve performance in the athlete by way of a carefully planned, structured and detailed, training plan, however it’s nice to be surprised by athletes from time to time.
The Northern Championships in Sheffield marked only the 3rd time since the injury was diagnosed on the 2nd June 2008 (230 days) that Jessica put on a pair of spikes, following a hasty re-introduction to blocks 4 days previous.
The performance just 9/100ths of a second below her personal best was for me a pleasant surprise, as her running sessions resemble more the slogging work of November than the sharpening work that usually precede an Indoor’s competitive outing.
Just days to go to the end of 2008 and looking back it has been a mixed year but certainly a year of “could’ve, should’ve, would’ve”.
It is quite easy to look back on 2008 and say “good riddance” to a bad year, but there have been some good performances in notably Shot Putt, Javelin but also in Long Jump. Some excellent progress was made in running training and on technique development. What was really missing was the real competition opportunity to put them together in a Heptathlon.
From an athlete’s perspective it looks as if it’s all been wasted, from a coach’s perspective, I don’t think so.
Coach's Corner