In 1999 he co-founded Velocity Sports Performance, based in Marietta, Georgia.  VSP offers tailored coaching programmes not only for elite athletes, but for any athlete.  This is because Seagrave’s philosophy is that the best athletes are the ones who get the most out of their ‘God-given ability’.

Which, if you ask In The Winning Zone, is portraying sport and sports performance exactly as it should be.  Sport isn’t about being elite or being the best in the world.  It is about being the best you can be.  That is what will make you a winner.

We had a lot of questions to ask Mr Seagrave, and he gave us a lot us answers.  If you like what you have read already, you will love what is to come…

WZ: Loren, In your professional career you have coached at every level, from absolute beginners to Olympic athletes.  Considering the variation in people’s ability, how would you define high performance in sport?

LS: High performance in track and field is relative to where a person is in terms of their capacity.  It’s not just limited to the most elite athletes.  High performance for the high school athlete is aspiring to make the Varsity team or the National Junior Championships.  All of those are levels of high performance, but at the level relative to that individual.

It is something that everyone should aspire to and not just be limited to the ultra-elite, Olympic athlete.  This could be a high performance accountant or a high performance doctor.  In any walk of life people should aspire to live to a high level of performance. 

It means living your life like an athlete.  Whether it’s from a nutrition standpoint, an exercise standpoint or a lifestyle standpoint, it is in order to get the most out of your high performance engine: the body that you live in.

It is a lifestyle.  That is ultimately what separates the absolute top athletes from the next level down.  They really engender the whole concept as part of their lifestyle and they become high performance people, as well as high performance athletes. 

Living the lifestyle of an athlete as a high performance individual can be translated into corporate life or professional life or whatever, even a housewife or a mother.  Particularly a mother, because she is feeding her children, so she has to engender a high performance household.

WZ: What is the most important element of coaching?  Trust? Experience? Know-how?

LS: Learning how to deal with people is the most important aspect of coaching. 

There’s a guy by the name of Joe Gandolfo, who was a tremendously successful insurance salesman, who said: “In all endeavours success is dependent on 10% product knowledge and 90% learning how to deal with people”. 

And that really relates to coaching also.  You could have the knowledge, but it’s the wisdom that counts.  Linking knowledge and experience with practical application is the quintessential element that one needs in terms of being a coach, whether it’s at an age-group level or working with internationals.

It is absolutely a learnable characteristic.  That is something we pride ourselves on at Velocity Sports Performance, in terms of developing our coaches.  We really feel that leadership can be taught.  People want to follow leaders.  They don’t want to follow managers.  When was the last time you heard about a ‘World Manager’ on the news?  People want leaders, they want to be led.  We try to develop the characteristics of a leader.

WZ: What does it take to make a good athlete become great?

LS: You have to ‘cultivate the burning desire’.  That is the real important thing.  We talk about starting out with a dream, and then turning that dream into something that you have just got to have, and attaching an emotion to it.  You have to be able to attach an emotion to it and create that burning desire, to be able to see it, and almost cry when you think about not getting it.  You just gotta have it!

Being able to cultivate that dream as an individual allows you to make the choices necessary to be able to get it.  This goes right down to choosing what you have for dinner:  ‘Am I going to have pizza and fries?  Or am I going to choose a lean cut of meat or fish and vegetables?’ 

It boils down to motivation.  Because motivation is the reason you choose X over Y.  And if it is fuelled by that burning desire, if it is on your mind all the time, if you have a picture of it on your mirror in the morning when you wake up, it can be something that drives you.  If the dream is big enough then the facts don’t matter.  It is the burning desire that determines the level of motivation, and motivation is the reason why you choose one thing over another thing.

WZ: What are the key ingredients to building a winning team?  Can there be problems in bringing together a team that has many conflicting personalities and proud egos?

There has to be a singular focus by all the members of a team.  It is done by identifying what the team goal is, and then being able to serve the team by subjugating your own personal desires for what the team is trying to do. 

Look at Phil Jackson, who coached the Chicago Bulls.  What he did with them was to be able to take superstars, and bring them together to give them an understanding in what it took in order to be a successful team.  Having the five best basketball players doesn’t always mean you have what it takes to be a successful team.  The US Olympic team have demonstrated that on more than one occasion. 

There was Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippin who were superstars.  There was Dennis Rodman who was a superstar and had a very strong personality, and then there were all the rest of the guys who were playing supporting roles.  So it all boils down to the same questions: How do you deal with people?  How do you identify what is important for an individual and turn that into fuel for a team situation?

WZ: What do you see as the difference between winning and losing?  If an average athlete excels him/herself, without finishing first, are they still winners?

LS: If you are talking about the professional level, it is about looking up at the scoreboard for your answer.  That is the reality of professional sport.  And when you talk to these guys, whether they play in the Premier League or the NFL, they want to win. 

But in terms of the developmental process, the coach has to be able to create a paradigm in order to make every player a winner all the time.  And that deals with personal achievement, accomplishment and discovery, and when you start to realise all these things are falling into place, then you are moving towards a high performance athlete. 

And if you are getting better and becoming personally gratified, then it is fun, and if it is fun, people play more, and longer.

The acid test for a winner is: If you gave your best effort today, and played at a level that you are capable of and learned something, and you are constantly moving forward and learning, then you can legitimately say to yourself, ‘I gave a good effort today’, and that is the sign of a winner.

WZ: Do you think that ‘born winners’ exist? 

LS: I don’t necessarily believe in ‘born anything’ because everything is so powerfully impacted by nurture and the environment.  You can teach people how to be achievers and you can teach positive thinking.  I think this is really important for parents to understand, because parents can impact their children, even in terms of their body language.  That can translate into a child’s performance.

WZ: How do you self-motivate?

LS: I think it goes back to the dream, creating the burning desire and always remembering why you are doing something. 
The first thing that I think is important for an athlete is to surround themselves with positive people who will help them work towards their dream.  You can’t always self-motivate.  The coach sometimes has to be able to remind you…

Coach: ‘Do you remember when you told me that you wanted to be the champion, is that still important to you?’ 
Athlete: ‘Yes Coach.’
Coach: ‘Well how would you feel if you didn’t get that?’
Athlete: ‘Well that’s just the way it goes.’
Coach: ‘Well then the dream isn’t big enough or important enough yet.’

But if they say: ‘Coach, it would make me feel terrible’, then they have to understand the choices they make will either move them towards their dream or pull them away from it. And to be able to be guided in terms of motivation is to be able to ask yourself that simple question: ‘What would happen if I didn’t get my dream?’

Ultimately self motivation is the most important thing.  Coaches can inspire and cajole and put the fear of God in you, but the athlete, particularly as they grow older and has more decisions to make, has the ultimate say in the decision.  So the ability to self motivate and get up every morning and do what it takes in order to move forward and reach your goal is ultimately the most important thing.

WZ: What do you look for in an athlete when you are on the training ground?  Is it possible to give 100%, all the time?

LS: The ones that succeed are the ones that changed their lifestyle.  They read the whole training programme and ask questions before they start.  They do the warm ups and cool downs perfectly, they never miss a pool session or weights session.  The person who can take care of business on their own has a greater possibility of moving to the next level. 

But if the coach has to call them up in the morning to wake them or bang their door to get them out for the first session of the day, then that is the athlete who will ultimately fall short.  People perform like they train.  And if they let go in training, either mentally or motivationally, what will happen is that at the most critical point, there is a let down.

WZ: How important is race day pressure – and how do you deal with this? 

LS: There is less than a 2% or 3% difference between the person who wins the gold and the person who didn’t even make the final.  But it is preparing yourself mentally to break the record.  Roger Bannister is a good example.  He broke the 4-minute mile record by practicing many times before he officially set the record. 

One of the responsibilities of the coach and the people around the athlete is to build up the belief in the athlete that they actually can do it.  Building belief is a critical factor in determining whether the athlete will accomplish their burning desire.

It is how the coach prepares the athlete for competition.  When Phil King was training Debbie Flintoff King for the 400m hurdles at the 1988 Olympics, every few weeks she would run a practice race at the exact same corresponding time as the Olympic Final would be.  She would go through the same routine, eat the same meals. They would go to the stadium as if it were the Olympic Final. 

Debbie won it by a dive at the tape.  Tatyana Lebedeva was light years ahead in the take off but Debbie gradually caught up on her.  Lebedeva actually took the victory lap because she thought she had won.  At the photo finish Flintoff King had out-leaned Lebedeva by 100th of a second.

It is that preparation. She had practiced the win.  She had seen herself do it a year and a half before it actually happened.  She had the confidence because she knew she could do it.

WZ: Thanks Loren

LS:  Thanks

RO

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