Chris Stratton
04-14-2007, 11:12 AM
I found a very interesting article in “Quest for the Olympic Gold” on how athletes finance their sport. Its about amateur speedskating and its at: rightonthemoney.org/shows/402_olympic/intvw_cushman.html
Interesting to note: Generally parents are footing the bill until the kids are competing at the world championship level. Then the Olympic committees start kicking in. In the case of the speedskater in this article, they figured she was paying $5000 to $6000 out-of -pocket for skates, travel and entry fees. Then US Speedskating was paying $20,000 to $30,000 a year for her to access a sports psychologist, massage therapist, chiropractor, medical care, coaching, ice fees and weight-room fees. They figured that between costs for living, costs for actual skating, the services provided to the athlete and all the traveling, it was between $40 and $50,000 per skater. Contributing to meeting the expenses…about one-third by the US Olympic committee and over one-third by US Speedskating.
Even more interesting to note: At the Olympic level, the speedskaters have access to sports trainers that do massage therapy on the athletes twice a week, a sports psychologist that they use “so that an athlete can go to the line with the right focus and get the very best results possible,” blood draws done every month to “check that the athletes are not over-training, that they're not coming down with an infection, check that their iron levels are high”, a doctor who travels with the team, a nutritionist who sits down with the athletes at least once a month, a food service “that comes in and for the top 10 to 15 athletes actually caters meals for them four times a week,” bone scans to make sure that the training is not going to cause them problems later, heart-rate monitors that record their heart rate for every workout, lactate analyzers so that they're not training too low and they're not training too high and they have a video person who takes a video of them at least once a.
NOW…if our top amateur dancesport athletes, maybe just those who make the USA Dance championship finals, could get something like this…I think they would be willing to accept ALMOST any dress code.
While there's quite a bit there that wouldn't be a high priority for ballroom right now, I do think there would be a lot of benefit to creating situations that combine high-powered coaching with fairly comprehensive support services.
One of the real problems is that while you can fairly easily arrange training with outstanding coaches, it's substantially harder to arrange the kind of support that can maximize your ability to apply that information. There are some fundamental issues behind this.
For example, the model of 45 minute lessons seperated by at least a day (and usually many) is fairly detrimental to beginners, and still challenges even quite advanced competitors. Who has not had something work well in a lesson, but be unable to reproduce it 10 minutes later on their own? Or worse, gotten into an intractible disagreement with a partner over what exactly it was that made it work in the lesson - with no way to resolve that for 24, 48, or more hours?
Condensed blocks of time have their uses, but they shouldn't be the only sort of coaching. On the MIT team where I received my initial training, there was a second, extremely beneficial format - the "coached practice" which basically amounted to two hours of pratice time for all interested couples, during which there would be many opportunities to get 5-10 minutes of help from a coach for a specific issue, then practice it for a while while others were helped, and then receive additional assistance if needed.
Another major issue of course is the travel plans of leading coaches, both for competition purposes and teaching purposes. An active competition career can be extremely important to the coach's own development, and travelling the world helps the community at large by exposing others to what they have to offer. But it can mean a fairly serious break in the continuity of support for the students left behind. In theory, more advanced couples should be fine on their own for a week or two... but in practice, for every couple I've seen at practice these breaks can become real challenges to progress. A system of assistant coaches working as a team with the main information coach could do a lot to sustain progress - sometimes even a simple "practice referee" would be enough to make a major difference.
I think a fairly effective program actually is achievable, but would require a fair degree of planning and coordination. In particular, it would need to pair a world-class dance teacher of the present sort, with an organizational leader charged with looking after the program on a day-to-day basis - I just don't see it being possible for one person to do both jobs effectively, or at least not until an organization is well established. And that I think is the problem - competition communities tend to form identified with key teachers, specific studios, or in rare cases "programs", but each of these identities represents only part of what is needed, and by being the focus tends to inhibit the development of the other pieces. If 1/3 of what is needed is working, you can't very productively set up another of the necessary components across town in competition with it - you have to either forge an alliance, or enlist the necessary people in an effort to start something new in a yet-unserved location.
Which brings up the issue of setting and location. Today at least, a Ballroom program is going to have to utilize three sources of support: personal/family money from non-dance sources, students own teaching income, and some degree of sponsorship. While it might be tempting to build a gigantic ballroom somewhere with cheap rent to keep down costs, today at least it seems necessary to be located in a community with a population large enough and interested enough to keep many of the students employed.
Interesting to note: Generally parents are footing the bill until the kids are competing at the world championship level. Then the Olympic committees start kicking in. In the case of the speedskater in this article, they figured she was paying $5000 to $6000 out-of -pocket for skates, travel and entry fees. Then US Speedskating was paying $20,000 to $30,000 a year for her to access a sports psychologist, massage therapist, chiropractor, medical care, coaching, ice fees and weight-room fees. They figured that between costs for living, costs for actual skating, the services provided to the athlete and all the traveling, it was between $40 and $50,000 per skater. Contributing to meeting the expenses…about one-third by the US Olympic committee and over one-third by US Speedskating.
Even more interesting to note: At the Olympic level, the speedskaters have access to sports trainers that do massage therapy on the athletes twice a week, a sports psychologist that they use “so that an athlete can go to the line with the right focus and get the very best results possible,” blood draws done every month to “check that the athletes are not over-training, that they're not coming down with an infection, check that their iron levels are high”, a doctor who travels with the team, a nutritionist who sits down with the athletes at least once a month, a food service “that comes in and for the top 10 to 15 athletes actually caters meals for them four times a week,” bone scans to make sure that the training is not going to cause them problems later, heart-rate monitors that record their heart rate for every workout, lactate analyzers so that they're not training too low and they're not training too high and they have a video person who takes a video of them at least once a.
NOW…if our top amateur dancesport athletes, maybe just those who make the USA Dance championship finals, could get something like this…I think they would be willing to accept ALMOST any dress code.
While there's quite a bit there that wouldn't be a high priority for ballroom right now, I do think there would be a lot of benefit to creating situations that combine high-powered coaching with fairly comprehensive support services.
One of the real problems is that while you can fairly easily arrange training with outstanding coaches, it's substantially harder to arrange the kind of support that can maximize your ability to apply that information. There are some fundamental issues behind this.
For example, the model of 45 minute lessons seperated by at least a day (and usually many) is fairly detrimental to beginners, and still challenges even quite advanced competitors. Who has not had something work well in a lesson, but be unable to reproduce it 10 minutes later on their own? Or worse, gotten into an intractible disagreement with a partner over what exactly it was that made it work in the lesson - with no way to resolve that for 24, 48, or more hours?
Condensed blocks of time have their uses, but they shouldn't be the only sort of coaching. On the MIT team where I received my initial training, there was a second, extremely beneficial format - the "coached practice" which basically amounted to two hours of pratice time for all interested couples, during which there would be many opportunities to get 5-10 minutes of help from a coach for a specific issue, then practice it for a while while others were helped, and then receive additional assistance if needed.
Another major issue of course is the travel plans of leading coaches, both for competition purposes and teaching purposes. An active competition career can be extremely important to the coach's own development, and travelling the world helps the community at large by exposing others to what they have to offer. But it can mean a fairly serious break in the continuity of support for the students left behind. In theory, more advanced couples should be fine on their own for a week or two... but in practice, for every couple I've seen at practice these breaks can become real challenges to progress. A system of assistant coaches working as a team with the main information coach could do a lot to sustain progress - sometimes even a simple "practice referee" would be enough to make a major difference.
I think a fairly effective program actually is achievable, but would require a fair degree of planning and coordination. In particular, it would need to pair a world-class dance teacher of the present sort, with an organizational leader charged with looking after the program on a day-to-day basis - I just don't see it being possible for one person to do both jobs effectively, or at least not until an organization is well established. And that I think is the problem - competition communities tend to form identified with key teachers, specific studios, or in rare cases "programs", but each of these identities represents only part of what is needed, and by being the focus tends to inhibit the development of the other pieces. If 1/3 of what is needed is working, you can't very productively set up another of the necessary components across town in competition with it - you have to either forge an alliance, or enlist the necessary people in an effort to start something new in a yet-unserved location.
Which brings up the issue of setting and location. Today at least, a Ballroom program is going to have to utilize three sources of support: personal/family money from non-dance sources, students own teaching income, and some degree of sponsorship. While it might be tempting to build a gigantic ballroom somewhere with cheap rent to keep down costs, today at least it seems necessary to be located in a community with a population large enough and interested enough to keep many of the students employed.