Danny Mackey (© Linton Taylor)
Danny Mackey is the head coach and manager of the Brooks Beasts Track Club, whose current 18-athlete roster includes three-time world champion Josh Kerr. A former athlete himself, he sat down with World Athletics to talk about his coaching journey...
Did your coaching journey begin with injury first?
Yeah, a little bit. I went to university to be a doctor and then switched to a double major in business and pre-med. I was captain on the cross-country team and loved racing and running. We trained really intense in college and I got hurt quite a bit. Back then we didn’t have the resources we have now at universities, you just had to figure it out. And I really liked that figuring it out side and working with the human body. In my senior year I was like I want to be a college professor and coach collegiately. I went to grad school at a really top university for physiology and biomechanics here in the US and then taught in grad school and coached at the university as well for two years. I fully intended to do a Phd and then work while coaching but it’s pretty hard to get university jobs. I applied to over 200 university jobs over a two-year period and didn’t get any offers. So then I worked at Nike in their sports research and innovation lab for about four years and had a similar job at Adidas. And then while that was happening, I was coaching pro athletes on the side and I also ran professional for Brooks after grad school before getting the job with Nike. So I knew Brooks as a company, and they reached out. So, I started the team almost 15 years ago.
With your injury background and your subject study, are you focused on the science side of things and also conscious of athlete injury?
The first person I hired was a physiotherapist when most coaches would hire an assistant coach first. So I went in that route, and science definitely permeates how I think about training and responses on the body. But when you’ve been doing this as long as I have now I definitely have become more appreciative of the art form of it too. I’m learning a lot, studying a lot, the psychological aspects and what are the best ways to make sure that athletes have the right tools to cope with stress and anxiety as running is a form of that. The more that they can work on it, the better they race.
Are you still evolving and learning as a coach?
Yeah, I’m a pretty curious person. I have a standard approach that isn’t that different than it was at the start but even this year I’ve done different training. I guess it would get dull if it was the same. The sport changes. You have your guiding principals which very rarely change and you’re also thinking what else can I be doing for the athletes to get faster.
Talking about going faster, you’re working on a world record in the mile for Josh Kerr. How do you coach for that?
It’s so different actually. Josh and I have always been focused on championships. Until he got pushed and injured in Tokyo, he had run a season’s or personal best in every Olympic or World final for six years. But for the world record you don’t know what other guys are going to do so you have to prepare for three or four different scenarios. Is he going to need to sit and kick in the last 200m, is it going to be a hard push for 600 out? So we’re working out a lot of game scenarios we have to be ready for. It’s so different because we’ve never tried to target time. So, I’m looking at the data to see what should the first 200 be like, what should the first 400 be to not burn through the phosphate system too much, then having a pacer. Those types of things we don’t normally work on so it’s been interesting, it’s been fun, it’s been a cool task.
It’s like a high-speed puzzle to solve together isn’t it? Do the workouts have to change if going for ultimate pace?
Totally, yeah. We were doing 800m repeats last week and we were running world record pace for them and I was like, “you can’t go any faster”.
Does that put stress on the body, is it a risk?
For some people, for sure but I’ve always protected and pushed Josh so it’s not anything crazier then we’ve done getting ready for Budapest or Paris or Tokyo. It’s just about building to do this. Of course you worry your athletes will get hurt but we’re not killing him.
What makes a good coach-athlete relationship?
Since we’re talking about Josh, I’d say we’re really transparent with each other. If it’s something that he thinks I might not want to hear he’ll still tell me and we’ll talk about it, and the same goes with me. I don’t hide stuff from Josh. Also, I think it’s important to keep your ego in check.
What makes a good coach then?
I think putting the athlete first is a really hard thing to do because they’ll come at me with a lot of kind crazy stuff. I think really caring about the proper culture, I think that’s huge. And I think it’s important athletes feel they can express themselves, which is ultimately what they’re doing when they’re racing.
Is there such a thing as a perfect athlete for middle-distance running?
Wilson Kipketer. He’s 5ft 7in, legs up to his chest, a big chest cavity which probably means big lungs, he’s got muscular lean legs and super smooth form. He was awesome to watch.
There’s a lot of hats to wear being a coach aren’t there?
There’s so many roles for a coach. Sometimes you need to be a business advisor, to talk through relational things that might be relevant to training, and trying to find out everything that’s going on with them as that’s beneficial to help them. It’s definitely like a service job.
As a coach how do you keep across so many athletes (18)?
Yeah, I have a three-year-old daughter too so it’s really hard. I work seven days a week. I try to get time for myself to run and go to jiujitsu but I also work when my daughter goes to bed. It’s not super sustainable but I do love it. I would like a little bit less people or more help because it’s not a healthy way to live but I love what I do so it’s fine.
You’re a victim of your success?
I never thought of it that way! I guess so.
