The magic of the empty white board

Alan Couzens, M.Sc.(Sports Science)

One of the coaches who had the greatest impact on me as both an athlete and a coach was my own long time swim coach, Alan White. Alan had that quiet, understated, Miyagi-esque wisdom thing :) The lessons that he taught me, without overtly saying much at all, stay with me to this day. One of those lessons is the magic of the empty white board.

Before I moved up to Alan's squad, I'd grown accustomed to my previous coach writing the entirety of the workout up for the day. Even to this day, I can still remember the sense of doom/anticipation that would await me as I walked into the pool: "Was the board going to say 8,000 or 3,000? Was there going to be a dreaded 5K time trial awaiting me?" I will never forget the first day I rocked up to Alan's program and saw nothing but a blank white board staring me in the face. WTF!? Is he running behind & forgot to write up today's session? No, the blank whiteboard was wonderfully purposeful...

See, my frustration/anxiety at not being able to see the entirety of the plan should have been a dead giveaway that I needed to not see the entirety of the plan.

Just before we dove in, he would take marker to the board....

Warm up: 800 free with every 4th 50 hypoxic...

And that was it. And, as I kicked off the 800 free, a funny thing happened: I no longer had that trepidation of...

"is this going to be an 8000m session?"

"should I hold a lot back here knowing that I have a doozy of a mainset coming up?

"am I even fit enough to handle this session right now?

"this mainset is going to HURT!"

None of that. Instead, my focus was on the present. On that one thing. When we got done with that one thing, he would take his trusty marker to the board and write up the next thing & so on and so forth. This simple practice remarkably changed my relationship with the pool.

And, something else I noticed: I rarely missed an interval anymore. Previously, I'd often find myself halfway down the whiteboard, in the midst of that combination of a tired day and a particularly tough set unable to hold a turn-around. As a swimmer, there's nothing worse that that feeling - Coach thinks I should be able to do this & I'm failing F-A-I-L-I-N-G. I think this happened a lot less with the empty whiteboard approach because Alan could "eyeball me" before writing his next prescription and amend it based on how I did with the previous set and whether I was having a "tired" day. I can't overstate the power of this adaptive approach - both physically and psychologically to your athletes...

I'm sure there were days where, at the start of the session, he had 8000m of solid work in his head but, after seeing the state I was in, it turned into a 3K easy day. Likewise, I'm sure there were days that he planned a recovery day & saw that I/we were on fire in the early sets & decided it was a good day for something epic!

The physiological benefits of this adaptability are obvious but, maybe, the psychological benefits a little less so...

I'm a planner. I love to see big picture plans of the day, the week, the season, my entire development as a swimmer :) & yet, I also feel the pressure that comes with these big plans. How the heck am I going to be handling a 100K week in 4 years if this 50K week is leaving me shelled right now? Am I really going to be able to hold sub 60s for 400 in a few years when just one of them is a maximal effort right now? When looking at, & thinking about, the big picture, these questions, these doubts run through any serious athlete's head & they're a waste! A waste of time & valuable energy...

All that really matters is now. All that really matters is whether what you're currently doing is making you a better or worse athlete. *This* is the magic of the empty whiteboard approach.

It's funny that, some 30 years later, I'm rediscovering the inherent joy of the empty whiteboard approach in a very 21st century way these days...

Every morning, I get up, I strap my heart rate strap on, I do my HRV test and I plug it into my computer along with my wellness scores and I wait to see what my AI coach is going to write on the proverbial whiteboard. Every day is like Christmas, waiting to see the wheels spin as my A.I. engine considers all the variables before deciding what to throw at me. And, similar to my experiences with Alan, I rarely find myself stressing over missing an interval these days because by virtually "eyeballing me" each morning, my A.I. coach very rarely gives me something that I can't handle. It's funny that this very modern reminder of the physiological and psychological power of the adaptive approach has me thinking back to some of my favorite lessons from one of the wisest "old school" coaches I've known.

Train smart,

AC