Evaluating Oneself

It's not hard to evaluate yourself because you want to believe that you did everything right, but it is important to review the things you did and the choices that you made. This is actually where having the blog and the wiki are coming in handy. Now I have a way to review myself even more so, as I have document proof of what I have done and the different approaches that I might have taken.

I feel like the Fall was quite a success and I looked over my notebook and reviewed the various practices. I noticed the way I conducted practice during that season, and I think that that will be a great way to conduct my practices in the future. I liked the format I took.

The mini-season, I don't think in the results worked out as well. I think that my swimmers needed the development of the basics, but I don't think that it was enough to get them where they want to go. I will probably from now on approach development through drills and having different focuses rather than stroke instruction breaking down the motions. It was like a swim lesson for a group rather than a Blue Group training practice.

Again I feel like the kids needed the basics, and I think that it will benefit them in the long run, but for the results of the mini-season I don't think I got the full potential of the swimmers during this little season.

Watching today's practice though as I did similar sets and drills we did in early October and they look so much better, and they made the sets much easier. I think I accomplished making swimming easier for these kids, and now will be the time to start challenging them. I can't wait to see what I will be able to get this group to do in the middle of the season when we get to our heaviest training part of the season.

I think that I did the short course season the wrong way though. I emphasized WAG a lot more than I should have, and I didn't de-emphasize JO's, but watching the swimmers, I could tell we weren't as prepared as we were for WAG. I think I may train right through JAG. I may do a little rest two days out, but not a taper. I think the kids will still perform well, but they will also be better prepared for JO's then. I'll push the concept that you don't rest to make a cut for a meet; you make a cut and then rest for the meet to get a second a swim. Again, Thank You Phil for that one. I think I am beginning to understand that concept better now. I always liked the idea of it, but always fell under pressure to rest the kids just to get that cut. Now I kind of see how doing that doesn't really produce the best results at the meet you see as the big one.

In the teaching of the breaststroke I did find a slight flaw in the breaststroke I was trying to teach, and that it worked for the kids who have those awesome breaststroke kicks, but kids who needed to take advantage of the propulsion created from the upper body the method of relying on lift didn't work so well. I will go back to a scoop and squeeze method and go over the fast blades through the water method for other times. I still think that the best breaststroke is a mix of the two ideas, and depending on what you are dominant on dictates what style a swimmer is better with using.

Swimmers are still bad off turns and on dives. I think that now that I have their strokes closer to what I am trying to develop; I'll be spending some more time on these race skills. Definitely will be going to Pat for help on this though. He really did a good job of transforming the dives of the college kids at FPU. Maybe I'll steal some of his videos he took and edited of his swimmers, as they have some good analysis on them. I hope they weren't lost when his laptop got stolen.