The between season downtime over Christmas and New Year is a great time for reading and this year, although I couldn’t find a book I could so accurately identify with as that of Jennifer Saunders’ Bonkers a couple of years ago (and who would have thought I’d meet her on a cross country course in 2017?), there was plenty to keep me occupied.
I devoured the latest detective novel by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling), dipped in and out of John Medina’s Brain Rules, re-read Graham Greene’s Our Man In Havana and loved Peter Thiel’s Zero To One. Turning to the world of online reading I then stumbled upon something a little outside of my normal reading area but which fascinated me
“Video is perhaps the most useful performance tool available to coaches, besides their senses and experience” Carl Valle
Carl Valle is an American athletics coach who combines his practical coaching with expertise in performance data. He also has a strong understanding of the practical application of equipment and software in this area and focuses his time on testing elite athletes, using technology to help athletes reach their goals
His article entitled The Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes with Video Analysis first caught my attention.
Obviously An Eventful Life is the home of cross country videos and it has often occurred to me that our videos are maybe not being used by riders as much as they could to evaluate and improve their performance in conjunction with their coaches
“Video is a gold mine of information, and using it correctly can dramatically elevate any coach willing to do it right and make a small investment. I have used video religiously for 20 years, and I get more and more out of it every season”
Of course it’s great to share the video of your cross country ride with friends and family (who are no doubt enthusiastic and supportive even if they don’t know one end of a horse from another) but wouldn’t it be more productive to sit down with your coach to analyse your entire ride and determine what can be worked on in training?
In athletics, Carl Valle trains a different type of athlete and certainly doesn’t have to focus on two athletes – one two legged and one four legged – performing as a partnership but I still found some of his comments thought-provoking and very relevant to our sport of eventing. Many of them certainly could be applied to using video as an integral part of your eventing training, whether in conjunction with your coach or analysing your own performance
“Giving a random parent a stopwatch or whistle doesn’t make them a coach, and giving a coach a camera doesn’t make them an instant video analyst, either. Capturing video properly is the No. 1 problem in video analysis, and coaches are sometimes the prime culprits when recording athletes"
"If your video perspective or setup is wrong, no matter how smart or experienced you are, analysis will be problematic. Due to the ubiquity of smartphones, the prevalence of video is now out of control—to the point that we sometimes run out of storage space, even with added cloud services. The best analogy is a castaway on a lifeboat drifting in sea with water everywhere, but none of it drinkable”
An Eventful Life has spent several years perfecting the capture, editing and management of cross country footage. Initially our aim was to simply provide the ability for the rider to replay the video of their ride and relive the moment. Interestingly I’ve found when interviewing many riders, from grassroots amateurs to Olympic medallists, straight after their cross country ride that they cannot accurately and factually recall a lot of the specifics of the ride although the overall ‘feeling’ of it is very strong (and of course the adrenalin is still running quite high at that point)
At that level in some ways, the video is a long ‘photograph’, a memento of the ride and some riders ask why we don’t put in more side shots, similar to the type that photographers like to take i.e. the horse and rider side on, hopefully making a nice arc over a fence. The first reason is that this shot is very fast, less than 3 seconds, and is almost too fast to view properly on screen so, if we do these types of shots, we usually edit them to be seen in slow motion to enable it to be properly viewed
Another reason is that we believe that the approach and landing at a fence is not only a part of the footage that riders like to see but also that this is important viewing for anyone using the videos as a training tool
“Nearly anyone can record a video, but getting it done properly is a whole different story”
“Whatever your sport, you need to have a good idea of its problems in advance so you can create a plan. Otherwise, video will be unmanageable because its sheer volume will drown you”
In his article Carl talks about the type of equipment coaches need to create the appropriate footage. Professional equipment doesn’t come cheap so coaches need to spend not just money but considerable time on the right equipment, software and skills to manage it all.
How lucky are eventing coaches and riders! Assuming that we’re at the event you’re at, we can make it very easy for you. So many times I have been told “Thank heavens you’re here, my dad shakes when he films me on his phone and we can only get the Start and Finish!”
“Results with video are only possible when the changes come from decisions you could not have made with your own eyes”
The final fence jumped and through the finish flags - but was it a good ride?
With kilometres to cover, 20-plus fences to watch, varying terrain, natural obstacles to spectator viewing, the only way to review in detail most of your ride is with our cross country videos. It doesn’t matter where your coach is standing, they will not be able to see most of your ride and assess what is happening, why problems occur or what to do to fix them
“New coaches tend to focus on the error, but experienced coaches can see why it happened in the preceding moments. Video analysis is not about converting visual motion into geometry; it’s about taking the athletic action and improving on it in the future”
Carl warns ‘Don’t just send clips of highlights and errors. Many coaches can find faults on video; only a few of us can deduce why they likely occurred, and an even smaller number of us can fix the root problem’.
However, the ability to focus on the ‘preceding moments’ to a problem, particularly a fall on cross country, is an important tool for our sport. The number of deaths of both athletes and horses in eventing is a huge cause for concern and An Eventful Life works with various governing bodies to provide footage for risk management analysis. Having viewed many hundreds of clips where falls have occurred I am personally convinced that you can often see ‘an accident waiting to happen’ either on the direct approach to the fence in question or from several fences prior to it. Sadly many coaches don’t get to see this footage of pupils and their horses
Although it may dent a rider’s pride a bit to watch a problem and analyse it, to me this is ‘must have’ footage, more valuable than watching a foot perfect ride and this is why we have provided a Private option for the videos
“Using video is my favorite way to learn how athletes improve their ability to move properly, and each year I pick up valuable lessons that become the next year’s roadmap. I recommend taking video analysis seriously and getting every ounce of advantage out of it. Winning requires a position of leverage that is reliable and repeatable, and you can tap video today more than ever, as long as you use it properly and consistently”
I couldn’t agree more. Thanks, Carl
