Bas DeBruin Edit
Mon, 8/9 7:08AM • 25:14
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
athletes, coach, people, sports, life, sport, triathlon, netherlands, training, asked, wheelchair, coaching, equipment, plans, medals, trust, schedule, thought, technology, study
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Bas DeBruin
00:00
Good evening, Pastor
Paul Barnett 00:00
Bruin and welcome to the Great coach's podcast. How are you today?
Bas DeBruin 00:05
Very good. Thank you. It's a strange time in COVID 19 time but still doing great family is healthy, at least healthy. So in our little small circle is good.
Paul Barnett 00:16
Well, look, I always ask people that I interview where are you in the world today? And what have you been up to?
Bas DeBruin 00:21
I'm in the Netherlands at home, as most people nowadays, in this time, I live in the northwest of Netherlands, a little town called Vega and say, five meters from the sea coastline, almost in the dunes. So great place to be nearby our training facilities or pretty nearby at home working at home as opposed to be nowadays.
Paul Barnett 00:43
Well, I'm glad that we could drag you away from your work for a little bit to talk all things paratriathlon because I am a big fan of the Olympics. And we are going to talk a little bit about that today, as well as high performance. I'd like to start actually by talking to you a little bit about your experience, because you've been the Dutch national paratriathlon. Coach for seven years, you've taken the team to the Olympics, as well as numerous international competitions. And so I'd like to ask you from this experience, what is it you think that the great coaches you've been able to see up close? What is it you think they do differently?
Bas DeBruin 01:18
It's hard to distinguish people, great coaches, and what they do differently from other coaches and at events. It's all about the athletes and the athletes perform. So you see good athletes, and you suppose that they will have great coaches maybe because the athletes perform at the highest level though when but that doesn't necessarily doesn't have to mean if you see a great athlete that you see also a great coach, not sure if he can answer that on the venues or at the Paralympics, if you recognize that for me if I have to say something about how to recognize a coach that I would like is how you get around with your athletes or people around you and the small things, how you communicate with your athletes, if you have a friendly, cooperative relation with athletes and not showing that you stand above the athletes walking around. Thank you. So it's all about the small things, I think, a good coach, if you don't see that they are the coach. That's about how it looks like me, for me from the venues. I don't know how they act when they're at home and the training venues. But I think the main part in recognizing a coach that you don't see them and if you see them, they're not above the athlete. And that's the main part.[PB1]
Paul Barnett 02:26
So you've been involved or active rather than Disabled Sports now since 1991. Could you share with us how you started out?
Bas DeBruin 02:33
Yes, 1991 then I was at age 21. I finished before our normal Middle College High School study in computer science, not a very high level but at a moderate level. And then we had our compulsory military service that days, I was one of the last guys that had to go in there for a year. And I was working in military painting tracks for the sixth time again, thinking I don't want to work at this level. That's not my life. I thought okay, I want to go to it again. And I mean to sports for my life. I did all sports I you can imagine. I was pretty good in all things sports whenever an expert in one. So I like every sport. I'm also mobile, like in technology, mechanics, measuring things, building things, also at a moderate level, but a lot of interests. So I went to another study center. So when I asked the question, I want to do something with sports and technology, and they gave me a brochure, but he has human movement technology study in The Hague maybe thought okay, that's for me, I know that that's what I want. But I also immediately had something about in with the study, you can develop a new pair of skates or bicycle or sport equipment immediately had something who cares about an hour faster bike far more interesting to make something for people with a disability to be able to move faster? Use your arms with a prosthetic I was immediately transforming it to how can I help people with a technology that makes their life better or makes them easier to perform in a sport without a not looking initially at the table sport also, because it's very hard to find jobs in that there are a lot of people inventing things, oh, people want to work in a sport. But I thought though, that that's something I can live with. It's worth working for. And I needed the volunteer at a multi sport just to recreative Club for people with a physical disability after riding the bus and playing basketball and pushing the wheelchairs and I really liked it. And in my study, I was always driven to projects about wheelchairs and cycles, anything by that with my internships also. So that's why I became more interested in why other people Disabled Sports and it's just sport without recruitment. That's it. So that's how I came into that world and I stayed in for my life or work and be really patient shops, building designing wheelchair sports, wheelchairs, selling equipment for people with physical disabilities. So I was in there for my working life just in an era work you have, but this is for people who have lost some body parts somewhere in life. So it's nothing different than working with cars or bicycles. It's just a way of using technology to make people move a little bit better. That's why I came into the disability part of technology. And through that someone asked me the other wheelchair racer training for the Paralympics in Was it 96 2000 I can't even remember. And they asked me to help me to train schedules, customized education study. So also physiology and anatomy trading stuff. I was training all my life also already and doing triathlons. So they asked me to make schedules, training schedules. That's how I came into the coaching stuff also. But it's always driven into sports for people with physical challenges. Somehow, I don't know why. Just interesting.[PB2]
Paul Barnett 05:49
You've got this great background, motion technology. Sport. You mentioned rehabilitation there when you were talking as well, in paratriathlon, how would you describe the role of the coach,
Bas DeBruin 06:00
no different than in any sports there. As I said, it's sport, but with payment, that's the only difference. And that's very important that the whole world knows that I hate the word bearer, triathlon, it's ridiculous is trying along with our equipment. That's it, it's paratriathlon. If you have 50 kilo of overweight, then you're a pair of pair of trials that are too heavy to give you another pair of trial, if you miss an arm, it's just trial along with extra equipment. So there's no difference in coaching athletes with a physical official disability, I think, of course, we have colleagues in Olympic parts of the National Federation, the coaches, and then see what I do and see what they do. And the only thing I think is different in para sport, if you could call it that is that you have to be aware as coach, and at least be aware, and hopefully understand the extra challenges people with physical disabilities or physical disabilities have in life. So if you design a training schedule of 20 hours a week, and the physical or physiological theory is the same, it's all about strength, fitness and your answers, you can make the same schedule. But if you're not aware of the challenges in life, for instance, coming to a training, thank you the pain, extra difficulties with going to the toilet boots, on stumps, with prosthetics not being able to see so planning and trying to get to the training venue that all takes a lot of energy from athletes, makes life complicated. Training itself is not a problem. But everything around the athletes with some sort of extra challenge, you have to be aware of that as a coach and understand it. [PB3]
So you have to back up with all your plans, and let the athletes tell what's really limiting him or her doing a certain schedule you designed and you don't have to be frustrated about it as he coach coaches always want to go fast, and you have to stay to the schedule, then your last impaired sports, but I said you have to be aware of the other challenges the athletes have, if you let them have their own time schedule, they have their goals and you know where to get. But if you as a coach go too fast or ignore other things around that being a para, again, athletes have to be patient and let people find out themselves what their boundaries are, and don't set them as a coach. That's the main difference[PB4] .
I'm very patient and the Alico, she's thinking you better. How do you do that? Okay, you every time you can say, okay, and we do it differently, Okay, no problem, they would get racy, and it's part of the fun. So the same for any other able athlete, you have to always be aware of people their family situation, what environmental they grew up with a personal situation is maybe they have work, they have family, kids, maybe family they have to take care of in the life. So everybody has their own life and way they move around their environment, besides the sport. And if you're not aware of that, then you're somewhere it collides. It doesn't. I think that's an i embarrassed points that's made a little bit bit more maybe in the Olympic part. [PB5] So that's the main difference, I think, yeah.
Paul Barnett 09:02
Where does your patients come from?
Bas DeBruin 09:04
Well, I always say funny, I'm the king in lifting up my shoulders. So what if life doesn't work? Bigger, right? Why not? It has to be have a good reason. But I'm not the one who said the path and direction if someone thinks of you talk about training or doing things in life, and I said, Okay, well, maybe this is an idea and some of that, no, I'm 100% certain I have to go left and then right and we get to the same goal. Okay, let's do it. And if that doesn't work, after a few months, I'm sorry. Okay, I want to go that way. Because you said it before and maybe that's a better idea. Okay. Let's do it that way. Let's see my nature. I'm not a directive person or the general. Maybe that makes it easy. The athletes out there for me, for them. So it's not that everything's okay for me, but actually it is. That's an easy way to live. Don't make too much problems are not problems. It's just the way it is. Just But with the flow was also not what I mean, don't make a problem with everything. That's the best way to cope with life and everything in life.[PB6]
Paul Barnett 10:07
So I'd like to take you back to 2013. And you're announced as the coach of the triathlon team. And the press release that I was able to read says, The team's ambition is to medals at the 2016 Games in Rio. And of course, the team goes on to win those two medals and actually finishes third on the middle table, which was a tremendous achievement. And I'd like to ask, what did you do when you first became head coach that fueled this result that drove that those medals and that performance on the on the middle table?
Bas DeBruin 10:37
The easiest thing to do just find athletes that you are already certain they will win the medals. Now you're already done to find the athletes and ask them to do triathlons. And if they say yes, you're in. And that happened because of all my life already in rehabilitation sports. It's a hypothetical article. But I almost know everybody in the Netherlands in a wheelchair. That's not true. But I know the athletes in our sport, we've crossed over so long into rehabilitation, para sports in a house that I know the people, and he could be good in this sport. And he and I just I knew our top athletes yet love to use a phenomenal athlete. He already was 10 years ago, everybody saw it. And so and he always said, Well, he was an handcycling already world champion. And some people asked him or si para Atitlan was just starting. Isn't that anything for you? He did it for fun, and it was all small, but it was not Paralympic anymore. Well, he won't say it. Okay, because I knew him. Not very good. But I said once, okay, if bus asks me, he gets the coach, I will do it. So that was easy. That's one then just call him and say, okay, there's the World Championship, I thought, well, it could be that I'm not sure to 13 I was in this job. And July, August, we already had our first World Championship. And I asked him he didn't ever do. Maybe one separator and I tried one and ask him, okay, we want to compete, there are no qualification criteria, just compete. And he came became second, I think. So in the end, that's the first one. And the next one was another guy. He had Skipper. That's our number two. Unfortunately, for him, he's always number two. But he will, is as strong as yesterday. And I saw him at rehabilitation center at a workshop from the outset, big guy to be this long, strong, and I thought you were going to be a paradigm lead. He was okay, I'll think about it. And a few months later, he was in the reverse race. And he won, the best thing you can do as it goes to sort of look like a great coach is just find good athletes in your brain.
Paul Barnett 12:35
Well, he being quite modest, because parasport is very big in the Netherlands. It's quite popular. It's quite well funded. We'll talk about funding later on. But my understanding is that after Rio, the king asked for the fighter jets to be scrambled and to accompany the team in the last kilometers before they landed, met. That must have been quite a nice thing to happen when you were coming home.
Bas DeBruin 12:54
Yeah, Rio was of course my was my first big event. As a coach I've ever looked at it, I never saw it. So for me, it was great. Right and for the athletes also. And then they're coming out with the two medals from our guys and all the associate or the Dutch team is very good Paralympic sports also enabled by this small country, but it is all budget seem to perform very well. And we came back in our airplane and we were two jets. If it's something that was done before, I think we have an invader treated the same as the Olympic team. So also the Paralympic players coming on. And there were also two jets at the turrets and that's the nice thing from the Netherlands. Paralympic sport. Obviously, I hate the name is completely integrated and treated the same as Olympic sport. In practice. Of course, you always find some differences and it's not as great as I tell it now, it will be some little differences. But it's the intention is to treat it as the same as Paralympic slnb. So that that's great, and that you feel really professional as an athlete as a coach. Yeah, that so that was very nice. Yeah, you don't get back in about six months and that nobody sees you now.
Paul Barnett 14:04
It's very good. We were just talking about good shipper. And I read a fantastic blog from him when he was talking about winning the pair of Iron Men in Kona in Hawaii, any thanks, you actually he praises you for taking time off to come over and train him. And then he says he trusts you entirely. And in another blog from one of your athletes, Sander Coleman from getting pronunciation correctly. He talks about trusting you as well. And so I wanted to ask you about trust, because I know it's important in any relationship. But when training athletes that have a physical challenge, whatever it be, this idea of trust must be heightened. It must be increased a little bit. So I wanted to ask how do you go about building such strong trust with your athletes?
Bas DeBruin 14:45
Now it's not something I do on purpose. So I have a plan for it. I think you can only do it that way. If it's in your character, I'm sure if I say something, I'll do it and that simple and it's not a small thing. So always keep my promise for For instance, I was thinking about if you would give me a bag with a million dollars, and you asked me to carry it for a year, and I don't know you'll, you'll get back after a year. It's not more than normal isn't about trust, I don't know, if I have to pick up someone at three o'clock in the morning because he calls me to he has a problem, I'll pick him up with something that's has to be in your life, how you raised from your parents, but it's nice that they trust me, I trust them. So that maybe that's the point. If you trust other people, they trust you, you get back what you give. It's also a very everybody says it. And it's the elevation of the sentence if you get back what you get. But I really think that's the key. And I get back what you get. [PB7] It's not intentional plans.
Paul Barnett 15:42
It's a great saying, Are there any other sayings or values or even behaviors that are really central to who you are as a coach, and that you really demand and talk to your athletes about?
Bas DeBruin 15:53
Well, that's also funny, because if you see documentaries about coaches, especially in team sports, they're in the dressing room, having great speeches, and lifting up the team and saying things that are hitting the spot, and the team is going out of their mind. And they're performing like never before. I'm not a coach like that you won't see doing a speech or anything. So I'm not a talker, with athletes about, I'm not going to sit down at a desk and talk about what people feel of how they have to act, or how they think I act. I really hate those conversations. It's just in during a training day, we talked with people I talked with the athletes about things in life. And it's just a sentence sentence here. It's not, it's never planned, I do a lot of things unplanned. So it's always for me, it's always from the heart. It's never planned. So I'm really interested if I ask a question or say things another, and my athletes also do that the same to me, we don't have plans, conversations about how to act or how to perform or how to treat each other, just live your life and then you address it, you get what you get. But if an athlete makes, we do a lot of in facilitating thing with training venues, we try to do as much as we can to make athletes give them the possibility to train at the right facilities have the great training schedules make life as easy as possible. And then we do a lot of work. And if athletes don't appreciate it, or don't appreciate or don't see the value of that, or just our bits, or you didn't treat me the right way, or I think I should have more than you really have me on. I never get angry. But I get angry if you don't see the value of the things we all do for people. And so we're honest. And if athletes or any person is not honest in their reaction, then I get very angry sometimes. And it takes a very long time to see me getting angry. But then I'm also just a few sentence show that I'm not very fond of how people react to certain things, certain things. But that's it. That's it's already done. I just say some things. And then within two sentences, it's already solved again. And then we go back to normal and there's no problem anymore. So there's nothing as plans in my strategy on how to communicate with people. What do you like best about being a coach I never thought of I don't see me as a coach, it's not a job. It's just fun. I will say my my children really asked what are you doing that you're just getting off the phone, sometimes typing on your computer, having doing sports on a training camp going to NASA and us, you never seem to have stretched out that right? We are the coaches are completely free, and how to run their business[PB8] . And we have great high performance manager, he's the best manager you can get everything we do. Again, he trusts us. So everything we do is okay. And if you give that trust to people, they won't do crazy things. And maybe it's also because of the type of coaches we all have in the National Federation that difficult. It's all about trust again, and it Trust Me and articleshould completely. So that's maybe the fun part of being a coach in this position. I can do we can do the athletes can do whatever we think is good, and the best to perform at the highest level and nothing. That's the fun part. Now, maybe in another position in other Federation in our sport. I wouldn't like to be a coach. I'm not sure if I like to be a coach. I don't know, this is my first coaching job. It just felt right and it's going okay, but I'm not particularly educated, or I didn't study to be a coach, I can be something else. If I don't like it anymore in a lot of other settings and other sports. I'm probably not a coach. I don't know. It's just having doing what I like. I hope people think I'm doing a good job.
Paul Barnett 19:35
That's what I like. When you first started coaching. I've read where you said you felt responsible for everything and you weren't very good at letting go. I can see you nodding. How did you learn to find the right balance as a coach
Bas DeBruin 19:48
that i said before i didn't have stress now that's not completed. Of course you can have stressed if you make yourself too important. If you think you're responsible for everything. That's something I've learned you Can't control everything. And you don't have to, because the more control you want the least you have. And that's something that I've learned a lot in life. And that's really what I always see at other coaches who are having a burnout or going out of their mind because something is not going to plan. And I think that there are the type of coaches that control types, they always want to know everything want to control everything want to decide everything. In the first few years, I would like to have the traveling perfected equipment birth, I thought I have to be not in a directive way not saying how it should be. But I thought I had to do everything and help everything with people every in every way I would drive everybody, every athlete to every venue training facility, I would pick them up, arrange the equipment, everything that's needed. But that's the way you won't last for long. And it's everybody's own responsibility to get to the training facility, a good luck the best, because that's part of the challenge. And that's what learning experience also for an athlete. And if you're having a flat tire, good luck, fix it. And that's maybe also raise your children. If you do everything break, it's they won't learn a thing. And you're responsible for them to hold their life so and things can go wrong, and things should go wrong to learn. I recall that my my character is to be very helpful to people always. And it's better for yourself at the end. Also for the other person not to help. A lot of times you can be understanding and sometimes helpful, but not in a way of getting it all out of their hands and doing everything. That's what I've learned[PB9] . And that's just shared a lot of coaches I think should do. Because otherwise you get crazy.
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Paul Barnett 21:39
In the last six to 12 months, are there any particular resources, books, courses, TV shows, anything that you found particularly helpful in your development as a coach?
Bas DeBruin 21:49
Well, we have that's also nice in our work in the Netherlands, our National Olympic Committee Paralympic Committee has a lot of workshops interactive now for now, it's interactive lessons, discussion panels, with other coaches where you can discuss problems of approach challenges situations with each other. We have a lot of experts that give workshops on physiological items, psychological training, so we have a lot of possibilities to learn in that way. So as I said, coaching is not my job. It's something I just came somewhere on my path, and I went into it. So I'm not reading the coaching books, how to be a good coach. It's interesting, but it's not the way I am. The book is written by someone who did own his his way or her way. And that's not me, I find it astonishing how coaches in team sports, what I said, have their team doing whatever they want with a speech, and then I'm full of admiration of that type of coaches, but I'm not like that I can't do it. I just look at it and say, Oh, that's pretty cool. But I don't know how to do it. So I don't read a lot of coaching books. I just tried to learn in practice and do it the way I think it's okay. And if it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't fit athletes, that's certainly true. We have athletes that really like to be directed more or have the power to say I do it this way, this way, this way, and then you get the medal or there's no, there's no not the way I'm coaching Sheldon, please go somewhere else, or we find someone who can help you in this way. I like to do with the way I like to do it. And there's no book that can change me or help me a lot in that. Maybe it's a bit right for a coach, but I don't want to be or I have no ambition to be the greatest coach. Also, I just do it the way I think is okay. And if I can help people with that, let's go.
Paul Barnett 23:33
Let's talk about legacy then. Because I know that you've got many, many years left as a coach, but at some point you will probably retire. And when you look back on your career, what is the legacy that you want to leave as a coach,
Bas DeBruin 23:47
you have coaches, like I said, they'll always be remembered as they really now some coaches are really technical, perfect, they have tactics, they can manage a team of 30 athletes and make them do whatever is necessary for the best performance, which are known as that and being not a nice guy. It's too simple to say I like them to remember me as a nice guy, because that's not what I'm hired for being a just being a nice guy. But I think essentially that's what life is about it there's nothing wrong that people think of you that's a nice guy. I think everybody would think about that of each other in the world. There will be much better worlds and the way you do it is letting people do their own thing in the way they think is the best by assisting them helping them facilitate a facilitate with whatever they need with your knowledge help them in develop training experience finding the right in this case, equipments just being helpful out there anything okay? He was very helpful for me to get us this level. That's more than enough. If I could be helpful performance of an athlete whatever level then it's okay for me[PB10]
Paul Barnett 24:55
as Tiburon. It's been fantastic talking to you today. I love hearing your story. And we'd like to think that there are many, many years of triathlon coaching ahead of you and I look forward to watching with interest as you move towards other Olympic Games. So thank you for your time today. Yeah, you're welcome. Hope to see you again.