Newly appointed U.S. Men’s National Team coach Jurgen Klinsmann selected several coaches to work with him and the USMNT for the USA-Mexico game and upcoming matches with Costa Rica and Belgium in September. Klinsmann looked to Athletes' Performance for fitness and strength coaches, colleagues he had worked with while managing the German National Team and later FC Bayern Munich.
Darcy Norman, who first worked with Klinsmann at Bayern Munich in 2008, is one of the coaches Klinsmann selected to work with the USMNT, starting with the USA-Mexico camp.
August 15, Norman spoke with me about the methods and philosophies Klinsmann and his coaches are using to develop the U.S. Men's National Team.
LE: What’s your role with the U.S. Men’s National Team?
Norman: I’m a fitness and strength coach. Athletes' Performance, the firm I work for, is providing the services requested by Jurgen at this particular camp for fitness training. There were three coaches there from Athletes' Performance, Mark Verstegen and myself and Masaya Sakihana.
LE: Are you working with the USMNT through Costa Rica and Belgium?
Norman: Yes.
LE: Can you give me some background about how Klinsmann selected you to work with him at Bayern Munich and now with the USMNT?
Norman: Jurgen took his first head coaching job with the German National Team back in 2004 and he recruited Athletes' Performance to provide fitness training for the team throughout the preparation into 2006 World Cup. The group involved there was Mark Verstegen, Shad Forsythe and Craig Friedman, all coaches of Athletes' Performance, and obviously they had great success there, taking the team to the third-place finish. Shad Forsythe has since continued with the German National Team, being full-time head strength coach there and is still currently, and he is also still an employee of Athletes' Performance.
Jurgen left after the 2006 season and then in summer of 2008, he took the head coaching position at FC Bayern Munich and wanted to implement a similar methodology as what they used for the German National Team. So, he was assembling a team of coaches and my name came up and he asked if I’d be interested in interviewing for the position and I did and got the position. So, it was myself and Marcelo Martins who moved there and worked with the team full time.
That was my first time working with him full-time and hand-in-hand. I had met him previously and we knew each other, but I hadn’t worked with him full time until FC Bayern. He also picked some other folks who weren’t employees of Athletes' Performance, but had good relationships with those people so there was a common methodology used in the training.
Jurgen left Bayern at the end of that season and I stayed on at FC Bayern for another season with Louis van Gaal, came back last summer and rejoined Athletes' Performance full-time here in the U.S. Since taking the head position with the U.S. Men’s National Team, Jurgen again recruited Athletes' Performance to be the performance specialists in preparing the U.S. team and for the first camp, Mark, myself and Masaya started that process. I was honored for the phone call.
LE: Why Athletes' Performance for the USMNT?
Norman: Our mission is to provide the best methods - seamlessly integrated, efficiently and ethically - to enhance the athletes’ performance. We take this very holistic approach, leaving no rock unturned, to see what we can do to improve the athlete.
Our four main pillars are mindset, movement, recovery and nutrition and they get broken into subcategories, a big checklist of things. The methodology is like a bunch of gears in a transmission and each gear represents a certain part of wellness, performance, training, and nutrition. If one of these gears isn’t working well, that affects the rotation of all the other gears.
LE: Can you explain a bit how that might play out?
Norman: There might be a theme of the day for a training day. Everything relates to that theme. So the nutrition is scaled appropriately to execute on that theme, the strength and conditioning is scaled appropriately to execute on that theme, the recovery strategies are executed specifically for that theme, the warm-up, the movement session - everything is set in place to make that happen that day.
Moving forward, there will be a big emphasis on education, like the mantra ‘motivation through education.' We’ll educate them on the 'why' of what we’re doing rather than just telling them to go do it.
The attention to detail will individualize the program for each player and then combined for a group or a team. Each player will get an individualized nutrition plan and individualized training plan and individualized energy system development plan to improve their specific needs for the greater good of the team.
LE: How detailed is the nutrition plan?
Norman: It can go really deep. Everyone’s got their likes and dislikes with food, what their goals are nutritionally – are they trying to gain weight, lose weight, improve lean body mass. Do they have food sensitivities, things they can or can’t have? Then, nutritional strategies are built for that person – their pre-training nutrition, their in-training nutrition, their post-training nutrition, their general nutrition and their game day nutrition. We give them strategies so they don’t have to think about anything. They can just look at the card, look at the recipe and say, ‘Hey, I just need to eat those things to get my optimal performance for that day.’
LE: Considering the Mexican National Team’s chicken incident during the Gold Cup, where does the USMNT get their food when traveling? Do you bring it with you?
Norman: Yes, absolutely. We bring all our food with us. There are certain things we can get in different places, but if certain countries have issues we’ll travel with all that stuff.
LE: How does the new USMNT team training differ from the German National Team training?
Norman: This time around it was probably pretty similar because the coaching philosophy in this camp is similar to what it was with the German National Team. There’s going to be a lot of stuff with the ball that will help with technical and tactical improvements. Not knowing what [the USMNT] have done in the past, I can’t really say what’s different from the previous coaching staff because I didn’t work with them.
LE: Your resume shows that you’ve also worked a lot with skiers. Isn’t skiing a banned activity for pro soccer players?
Norman: In the U.S., a lot of contracts - it doesn’t matter if you’re a soccer player, it’s any professional athlete – keep you from participating in high-risk sports and skiing is one of them. In Europe, that’s not the case, contracts aren’t written like that. With Bayern Munich, a lot of the guys would go skiing and it was not a problem.
There’s always an inherent risk in any activity and some things have a little higher risk than others depending on your experience and rational of thinking. Because of the risk of injury a lot coaches don’t let their soccer players go into a situation considering knees or that they could blow an ACL.
When I was growing up ski racing we played soccer as a dry land activity related to skiing, so a lot of kids in the ski world have a big participation in the soccer world.
Contracts in Europe are a little more loosely written when it says what things you can participate in and what you can’t. In Europe you can do other things, they don’t have that hard language in it. In North America, I think we’re definitely a more litigious society, we want to cover our risk, so a lot of that is written into sports contracts.
LE: Klinsmann looked liked he was enjoying coaching USA-Mexico. Can you give me an anecdote that illustrates what some of his philosophies are?
Norman: The biggest thing is that I’ve never really seen him in a bad mood. He always looks for and emphasizes the positive. If something goes wrong, instead of, ‘You should have done this,’ it’s, ‘Next time, let’s think about this.’ He’s always looking to the future, never dwelling on the past.
He’s constantly learning to try to stimulate himself, whether it’s learning another language, learning how to fly a helicopter - he always wants to improve upon himself. He’s a very good influence all around.
LE: Jurgen Klinsmann is learning to fly helicopters?
Norman: He’s taking his helicopter’s license at the moment. I’m not sure how far he’s gone through, but he’s gone through all the practical stuff and flown solo. He just needs to take the flight exam, the paperwork.
LE: Why does he want to fly a helicopter?
Norman: It’s been a dream of his, his whole life and something he’s wanted to do since he was a kid. Through his playing career and all the different things that come into your life, he’s never had the opportunity, but recently the opportunity provided itself and he jumped on it. That’s just the kind of guy he is. He’s got his goals, the things he wants to achieve and he’s always evaluating it and trying to be better.
He’s a great guy. He wants the best. He wants to turn over every rock to make sure that we’re doing everything possible to improve the success of the team. He’s never satisfied with the status quo - he’s always wants to be better, get better, improve all the people around him.
LE: How do you see Klinsmann affecting the USMNT?
Norman: He’s going to have a very good, positive influence. He appreciates the history of the team, the game, the players – where they’ve come from. He wants to build on what’s been done already and move it forward. He’s a very positive guy. He wants to have success, he doesn’t dwell on the past, he’s always looking forward. I think it’s going to be really good.
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