The power of the team

Ever wonder why some of the best swimmers seem to come from the biggest teams? I believe it is from the power of the team.

Swimming by its nature is an individual sport. Within USA Swimming though, they have created a sport that can take advantage of the team advantages, and use it to create great individual athletes. I have mentioned many times that swimming is a tough sport and the career is filled with ups and downs, and even a few flat spots. How do we keep our great athletes engaged through these hard times? It is the utilization of the team.

I talk to my athletes that they need to want to push each other to help each other become better. They must also know that them not trying, or taking laps or sets off hurts not only themselves, but their teammates as well. When a teammate gets faster, it should celebrated by the whole team. If that person is in your group, then you know that you have a faster swimmer to help push you, or you have a new challenge of someone trying to take your position as the fastest at practice.

If you hear about high level swimmers choosing a place to train, many look at; who is the coach, but many times they looked to see who is going to be their training partner. In a swimmers career they should experience being on the bottom of the group; what it feels like to be the middle of the pack; and know how to be the leader (the person everyone is using to help them to become better). Every spot in a group is very different, but success can be taken from any of the positions if done well.

My opinion is that this is why USA had become so dominant in this individual sport. We have created the team advantage, and each of those teams compete, and then we end up with great group of swimmers in the end team (the Olympic Team). Yes, the world has caught up to us, and many of them now come to the states and take advantage of what the USA has fostered at the club and college level.

Many people come into our sport very individual minded, and very little care for the team. They either get tired of how we try to develop the team, and not just individuals; or they buy in and reap the benefits.

"Our aim is not produce champions, but to create an environment where champions are inevitable." -Forbes Carlisle.

Swim Paddles

So I have always had my swimmers using swim paddles. My younger ones I stayed away from paddles, but the old school square black ones worked great for the young ones who were just trying out paddles.

At first glance, what does swim paddles provide to the swimmer? Resistance. It is easy for people to see that the added surface area that the water makes contact with is going to create more resistance for the swimmer. Senior swimmers use paddles a lot for this purpose as they are in the development phase where resistance creates more power and helps build muscles.

My age-group swimmers though the point is not resistance. This is why small paddles is fine for them. Even if the paddles seems to small, as long as they don't grip the paddle with their fingers it is fine. I like to use paddles to teach how to feel the water. How to move the hand through the water and keep water pressing against the hand.

There are a lot of paddles out there, but I prefer the Strokemaker paddle. I like this paddle because if you remove the wrist strap from the paddle, the paddle will begin to slip off the hand at the point when the swimmer slips through the water. I tell my swimmers that they need to listen to their paddle. If a paddle slips off or moves on a swimmers hand I ask them where in the stroke does the paddle come off. With that information you are not just assuming with visual analysis, but actually information to tell you where the correction is needed.

Play with a paddle. Put one on and move your hand through the water. move the hand at different angles and watch how the paddles moves when water is pushing on the paddle a certain way. After enough times you can figure out how to analyze in incorrect pull by how the paddle comes off or turns on the hand.

There are a lot of fancy paddles out there. they have curves and holes to probably help for resistance purposes, but the simple strokemaker paddle is still the one I know best on how to correct an imperfect catch and pull phase by how the paddle falls off or moves on the hand.

Not trying to develop super strong arms on these age-groupers, it is about figuring out where they are going wrong on their hand motion in the water.

Swim Instructors: transition to big arms

For all of you Swim Instructors who read the blog. I know your summer only has a few more weeks and just a few more sessions, but I thought I put this up here while it is still kind of in the season.

When we teach a young child how to swim to be water safe; we very often teach the doggie paddle. It is an arm stroke that is easy to learn and they can effectively do the arm motion while lifting their head up. Essentially we first teach them to be propulsive in the water, and then we teach them to pick there head up, take a breathe, and then put their head to continue to swim. Once the child can do multiple breathes you have effectively made them water safe as they know how to move; how to get a breathe; and how to put their head in to flatten out to continue to move.

We then go on to try to teach them freestyle arms (Big Arms). This transition can be difficult as they like to revert back to the doggie paddle which can through off their arms, so that big arms becomes a hybrid arm stroke that is a short pull big arm motion. Today I had two kids who are in this transition. One is 3 and the other is 6. I tried this superman method and it worked great with the 6 year old, and not quite as effective with the 3 year old. I think the method can be used as an option to teach this, but is definitely not perfect.

I start with having them kick in a superman position for about 6 to 7 feet. Have them learn the superman position. Then we move on to Superman, one big arm, back to superman. You stop them because lets not throw a breathe in there to mess everything up. Then I will repeat the superman, one big arm, back to superman method and alternate the arm we use for each time we repeat. So essentially you are having them do a short version of catch-up freestyle in a superman position.

(Oh Yeah, Superman position is arms straight forward, hands at about shoulder width)

This is a method for those kids who are having trouble doing big arms. I have other kids who have no trouble doing big arms after they show me big arms out of the water they can quickly transfer that movement into their swimming. The method may be good for them as well though, as you will begin to teach the front arm extended at an early age. That will help their future swim coach who will have to develop the position as they try to teach front quadrant freestyle stroke.

Coaches attitude on the deck

Young Coaches, love what you do and show it. Many coaches think that when you start you need to have this great knowledge of stroke technique and physiology. I picked all that stuff up along the way.

I began at 16 years old having my own group of swimmers by coaching a group of around forty 11 - 12 year old boys and girls for a small town summer league team. I knew very little about stroke technique and how to properly develop fast swimmers. I enjoyed myself at every practice, and had fun all the time; Swim Practice and Swim Meets. Those kids had a great time, as I ended coaching some of them in High School, and they informed me how fun it was. I figured out that if you demonstrated that you cared about their swimming, they enjoyed it and had fun with you.

I coached our Red Group this last Friday at CLU, and 2 of the kids were new to the team. They weren't very talkative at first, but by the end of the practice I had them talking and joking with me, while still listening and doing what I told them to do.

I am not what you call a fun coach, but my swimmers always enjoy swimming for me. I don't play a lot of games and do silly things with them very little. I run boring to the point workouts. Not hard all the time, but focused on the goal of the workout. I was this way even when I coached younger kids at RCA. The kids seemed to still enjoy it. My belief is that they enjoy it because they know that I care, and I demonstrate my desire to make them better in a light-hearted and patient way.

The way you coach can pour over to your swimmers. If a coach is always negative, I feel like you end up with negative swimmers. If you're optimistic, I feel like you end up with optimism in your swimmers. If you enjoy yourself every time you are on the pool deck, your swimmers end up enjoying themselves when they are at the pool. No, it doesn't work 100% of the time, but it works out more often than not.

I love what I do! I think my swimmers like to swim as well. I have seen kids join part way into it, but end up being very determined while I was their coach. I love to see that. It makes me continue to love this job, and look forward to seeing my swimmers the next day.

Coaching is full of a lot of stress, anxiety, and frustration (especially if you are part of the dry side of the team), so you have to love it. That love makes you block out all the hard parts, and always think of the great things that are part of coaching. The good out weighs the bad, and I have had my fair share of stress in my short career.

To the Coaches, Love it!

Risk Averse

Today I was reading a Investing Magazine. I enjoy watching CNBC and researching stocks and bonds, and playing with strategy and how things go in the financial and business world. We are in a time that more and more people are beginning to avoid risk, and the article I was reading was talking about how it is risk that has made people wealthy, and has led to America being the leader in innovation in the past. Now what is going to happen with the risk aversion.

I bring this up in this blog because I recall writing another paper in college talking about avoiding risk because of a huge fear of failure. A fear so huge, that they actually don't risk at all, by not even taking a chance. I called it the Slacker Excuse. You know that high school kid who is such a big slacker. They aren't willing to admit that they are afraid of failure, but they are as they act as a slacker as an excuse to underachieving.

I remember this happening to me. I never realized it until much later, but through examining my path and choices, I realized that everyone around me told me of my potential, and I feared not living up to that potential, so I took on the characteristic of being a slacker. The phrase that these people hear all the time, "Could you imagine what you could if..." This phrase was normally followed by work hard, put effort towards, or put the time in. For some reason, when I was young, hearing this made me even more afraid of doing the "if part" because what if I didn't live up to the expectation of the result of that extra work or effort.

My paper talked about how this was not only seen amongst young people in sports and school, but that the business world was seeing a slow down in new methods and innovation because failing was looked so bad upon in the business world. One research article asked the question, "where would we be without the scientific method?" You know, come up with an educated Hypothesis, being wrong, and learning from the wrong result. This would then lead to the next hypothesis, and hopefully a result closer to what you wanted, but possibly wrong again. The article concluded that the failure is not an option method has led to less creativity and more unwillingness to do something different to become better.

So back to sports, are we seeing an age of more risk avoidance? Taking a risk is the way someone achieves something great. If you just do what everyone else around does, then are you going to be extraordinary? Do you try to that "extra" on a daily basis to separate yourself from those around you? To be extraordinary, you must be willing to do the "extra" to achieve it. Don't be afraid of not living up to the potential that someone else puts on you. Put forth your best effort, and do your best to not only do what your coach and teacher sets as the bar. Try to clear that bar by as much as possible on a daily basis. Don't be afraid of taking a risk; risk is the way that people separate themselves from the rest.