Dryland: Running outside the Comfort Zone

So, my group many times runs once or twice a week. We typically only do 3/4 to a full mile of running. It is a short aerobic warm-up before getting into the pool, and a good cross training exercise that can pay off in swimming.

Yesterday the group did a mile and a half run for time. It was challenging, as many of them aren't great runners, and it is easy to go outside their comfort zone in running as they aren't trained runners. Afterwards I told them all that they did a great job as many were winded. Most missed the goal time, but most gave their all to reach that goal.

I talked to them about how most of them went outside their comfort zone, and that they must push the same way when they are in the water. My group has become better at swimming, so to just do what they once did is easily done, and they get used to training inside the comfort zone. The question would be, when was the last time you felt this tired from a swim set? I think the answers would vary.

Moved to the water and at the end of practice we did a 600 IM for time. The effort was there, as many ended winded the same way they were winded from the run. Most of the group took the lesson from the run, and applied it to the pool. I am not saying that my group swims in their comfort zone all the time, but sometimes they need that reminder that you must always push outside that comfort zone to continue to get better. It's part of the doing the "extra" on daily basis to become extraordinary, and not just ordinary.

Encouraging Competition

I believe competition is a good thing. I feel like, in the past, I have had most success in teaching life lessons with swimmers that compete and correlate their training with their competitions. It was one of those things that I was told as a young coach by my father. "Swimming is Objective, it is a time on the watch. When you make the connection between working hard and improvement when they are young they look forward to training. It is something that they can actually see, as the time on the watch gets faster."

A few weekends ago I watched the documentary, "Happy." It is a look into the study of happiness. Films are bias, so I always take these things and analyze with my own thoughts. One thing that I took from the film though was a Ph. D from Baylor who talked about the release of Dopamine. I remember this from my psychology class a little bit. The more happy someone is, the more dopamine is released in the brain. With time, the release of dopamine slows down, and can lead to diseases like Parkinson's. So they were encouraging doing activities to help keep dopamine releasing quicker. The doctor mentioned that aerobic exercise helped the release of dopamine, but so does competition. He concluded by saying that the best way to keep dopamine being released quickly is obviously physical sports as they have aerobic exercise and competition.

Competition though has led to many with low self-esteem and unhappiness. If competition in itself does help release dopamine, and thus make people more happy. What is the cause of the inverse result? My belief, is that it is the emphasis of winning and losing by the culture. An over emphasis over comparison at the young ages. Competition in itself has a stress of winning and losing, but we have magnified it by our attention to awards, recognition, and comparison to others.

Is there fun in competition? I believe so. Winning and Losing is a single result, not the competing itself. How many times have you played a board game and lost? Or played a card game and lost? Does this weigh on you and taken critically by your friends and parents? Normally not, so you just play again and enjoy yourself. No awards, no ranking, no comparison; just a fleeting sense of loss or victory.

What can emphasis on the result lead to? A slippery slope sometimes. I was also very much into poker when I was young, and I learned about poker. It helped, that right as I was interested poker it had become more main stream, and there was a lot of knowledge being put out on television shows. There is a phrase in poker referred to as being "On Tilt." This is when a poker player takes a loss so personally that they start doing dumb plays that they normally would not have done, and it becomes a slippery slope that can last for days, weeks, months, or years. That one bad hand stays on the mind, and then the next bad play is caused by the previous bad play, and then the next bad play is caused by the two last bad plays are still on the mind. This becomes the overwhelming increase of negativity that burdens you. This isn't just a poker symptom, but a symptom that can overtake anyone who competes.

Competition is a good thing neurologically as it helps the release of dopamine. This release of dopamine can lead to happiness, that I stress to my athletes and many times on this blog. Don't shelter your young swimmers from competition, but see it as an opportunity to compete and increase their happiness in a physical activity. Protect them from our culture that wants to put these heavy burdens on young athletes, and allow them to grow and enjoy themselves. As they grow older they will make higher goals that will be used to push them higher, and the competitions as just another opportunity to try to achieve those goals.

Development Programs

Developing Swimmers have a lot to learn, and as a coach you take your time and try to not only teach strokes, but proper execution of strokes, skills, and drills. At the same time you want to provide programs that are different and can teach swimmers different things about swimming.

I have tried to put together various activities and programs in the past to provide a change of pace, or an opportunity to teach a part of the sport that isn't learned at a normal practice. Many times these programs or activities are hit or miss. Even a program that in theory would do great things, can go really bad because something comes up that you hadn't planned for, or something that creates a lot of chaos.

This season I tried to put one together, and it worked out great.This program began with one day when we brought in our two senior level swimmers to work one-on-one with our two beginning level groups. The fear is, how will the senior swimmers do in the instruction of these young swimmers. Our senior swimmers did a great job. The young kids enjoyed themselves a lot and they also got to know a senior swimmer. The senior swimmers seemed to really enjoy getting to know a swimmer, and trying to help them with swimming (which they themselves put so much time into). It went over so well, many of our younger swimmers wanted to know when they could work with their senior swimmer again.

Today, we took a friday workout and turned it into a practice swim meet. Again I used senior swimmers, and they walked the young swimmers through check-in, warm-up, checking heat and lane, reporting to the block, and they also cheered their swimmers on as they swam across the pool. It was a learning experience for the new swimmer, and another opportunity for our senior swimmers to help a person new to our sport.

There were some mistakes, including my own (the starter for the meet) as I forgot there was a 3rd heat, and I moved onto the next event. Whoops. There were others, but for the most part, it was another positive experience for all involved. I also hope that what we covered with athlete and parent about the meet process, will make their first meet experience better than without the practice meet. Anything to provide a better chance for good experiences at swim meets.

These kind of programs, we always create in theory to work really well, but sometimes they just fall flat on their face. I have had success' and failures, but continue to try to develop programs and activities to better prepare our swimmers and provide positive experiences. I got lucky this time, and it worked out really well.

Open Turns and IM Transitions

Last night we practiced IM Transitions. They were pretty good for the group, as this group has been taught many times on how to do a proper open turn. I made one change, and I had them try this out. To touch the wall and never grab on to it.

I remember doing this as a swimmer, I believe in the senior group, and remember that is was actually difficult at first. Last night for my swimmers, some had trouble, and some had no trouble at all. The results were very close to what I wanted from the direction; less pulling their bodies towards the wall. This created a better transfer of their hipsfrom one side to the next. The swimmers who had most dificult had a slow transfer of the hips, and thus, began to sink with no wall to hold onto to help them stay on the surface. Some made the adjustments as we repeated.

Another thing that began to improve as we did repeats, was the position of the hands for the finish. The grabbing of the wall has created a habit of touching the top of the gutter, but with the no grab touch turn, some made the adjustment to touch the wall just below the surface to reduce the amount of swimming out of the water. This also will create a ahbit to finish correctly for touch pads, as touch pads on the portion that goes over the lip of the gutter doesn't trigger a touch, so the swimmers need to be able to touch the wall and not the top of the touch pad.

I think that I'll move forward doing this a little more to see if I can break some bad habits with this method, and see what ends up hapening with our open turns and IM Transitions.

Know Your Why

You can find good information, when not even looking for it. Last sunday I was watching ESPN and the morning NFL show was on and they did a segment on the rookie quarterback Robert Griffith III (RG3). The segment interviewed veteran players who had gained a lot of respect for him as he came to the team. Most of these segments are all the same, but I took away a message that is RG3's catch phrase, as it is also his twitter tag. It was, "Know your why"

This seemed to really be an aspect that many of the former players seemed to respect. The idea that he knew exactly his "why." Many of the former and veteran players believed that this is why he'll be successful in the NFL. I believe it is a message of how to be successful at what you are focusing on at being successful at.

It goes directly to 2 points that I have brought up before in this blog: Goals and Purpose. I have stressed the importance that a swimmer's main purpose should be for themselves, as if the main purpose is for an outside source it is hard to keep that motivation over time. I also stress goals as being the key to long term success and being able to continue the work ethic through years of hard work.

Even the interviewees mentioned that fact that if you know your why, you can use that to push you to do that extra set, repetition, or effort. I believe that a goal can be used the same, as what is going to push you through that Saturday Morning Workout when it is workout number 9 on the week; you are in hour 2 of that workout; and your coach gives you a long aerobic set that you know you can totally fake the effort through the set. The self-reminder of that goal can be that motivation you need to push hard and do that "extra" to be extraordinary.

Knowing your why, I believe has to do with purpose as well. I think that if you know why you are there, you know why you have to always push through. I think it also makes you happy with what you are doing, and happiness is important to be successful, and part of sports that many ignore and prohibit them from achieving higher. Happiness is important.

So, do you know your why?

The mental side

There is a chance that I have already blogged about this, but after so many posts I lose track of what I have and what I have not blogged about. As our pool is shut down to due a swim lesson swimmer pooping in the pool last night, I am going to be doing an all dryland workout. Yes, some of the swimmers will attend the workout at our other site, but I am going to offer an all dryland workout at our rancho-simi pool.

Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with these workouts as I began my coaching at the old Selma Pool, and that old pool had problems all the time, and we didn't have an alternative site for a few years. I learned from these workouts that you can actually get a lot done in the form of doing activities that you want to do, but you have a hard time finding a good time to put it into a practice where you extend dryland beyond its normal allotted time.

One thing I get to do is do breathing exercises. I did this my first season I was here, but didn't do it last year. This allows the swimmer to learn the skill of controlling breathe, and trying to get them relax their bodies. If a swimmer cannot relax while on land, then they probably can't be able to do it while in the water.

From the breathing exercises you can move on to Visualization. This visualization is both to help them create in their mind the feeling of going through their trained motions, but also to help them visualize positive moments, which make it more possible for positive moments to happen in their life. It is hard to do the first time you do the activity, but with practice it can be a great tool to keep positive energy in a swimmer.

The other aspect that I plan to do (other than traditional dryland of running and body weight exercises) is talk about the goals that I am seeing in their goal sheets that have been turned into me. The group has a hard time making long term goals. One year seems to be the trend of the long term goal. I plan to talk to them about looking beyond the one year, and look to 3, 4, or even 5 years down the road. They also show a tendency of being very conservative with the goals. Typically, I have to calm down swimmers goals, but with this group it seems as though I am going to have to pump them up.

Dreaming big is ok. The fear of dreaming big, is that you won't be able to achieve it, but without a dream that is big, the likelihood of doing something big is very small. Dreaming big though needs to have an appropriate timeline, and their lack of looking beyond 2 years makes this difficult. Don't be afraid of failing, set the bar high as it will allow you to do more than if you set the bar too low all the time. Dreaming Big can become demoralizing if you just stop there, but if you create appropriate short term goals along the way, the big dream can stay as that highest bar that you continue to move towards.

Swimming, like many other things, is highly driven by a mental state. These three exercises are all about the mental side. Change the motivation of fear to the motivation of positive thoughts and goals. The goals must be set by the athlete so that they can own it. It should not be done by a parent or coach. The motivation is driven from the swimmer not by: an award, compensation, or fear of what an adult may say or do.

Those that can develop their mental side of the sport will have the best chance of success in their career as a swimmer.

Today's short talk with the group

Sorry, I had two things on my mind today.

I was talking with my brother this weekend, as he attended the World Swim Coaches Clinic (Man, I wish I could have gone). He told me about the Key note speaker, Bill Sweetenham, someone who I have mentioned in previous posts. I kind of already knew his thoughts about how we are trending to not doing enough aerobic development with our young swimmers, but my brother also mentioned that he referred to the lack of participation of the 200's of stroke and the distance freestyle events in our 11 - 12 year olds.

I have been telling my swimmers for awhile now that I expect them to do these events. Not something that they'll do at every meet, but that they try these events before the age of 13. Of course, this is for those swimmers who have a background of swimming properly, as it isn't pretty to watch an unprepared swimmer do these events. Not sure if I created this idea off of reading Sweetenham, but I might have.

My brother told me that Eddie Reese, Head Men's Coach at the University of Texas, talked at the clinic and referred to Sweetenham's key note, as he noted that many of our nations best sprinters such as, Ian Crocker, Brendan Hansen, and Neil Walker; all made their first national cuts in longer events before becoming great sprinters. He referred to these 3 as they were 3 swimmers that swam for him that became elite sprinters.

I talked to the group about thinking about doing these events going forward, and that it doesn't matter if you think you are a sprinter or not, excellence in these other events could become a path to excellence in your main events.

I am excited about my group though, as on a few of their goal sheets that they have turned in, some did include a particular long event that they'd like to do this coming up season.

Coaches: Creating a Culture

This is not easy to do, but it is the thing that will best serve your team and swimmers. I've read about how we are suppose to change a culture that is limiting a teams success. Many times it is the culture that is the underlying problem. They all say how hard it is to change culture, and with any kind of change; it takes time. The thing they don't tell you is what possibly is going to happen when you change a culture. Do they talk about how many people get upset with the way you are now doing things? Do they tell you that swimmers who aren't made out to be part of what you are trying to sell are going to quit your team? Or how those who quit your team may go to another team? Some mention it, but really don't go into detail.

My experience, I tried to change a culture. Only to have it thrown back into my face. It was done passively, but it was done nonetheless. The deep rooted culture defeated me, and I basically just resorted to figuring out how to change it slowly, and create a grassroots system to try to create the culture earlier. I didn't stick around to see what would happen, as I had fought upstream for so long that I got tired even though I was making ground in changing the culture.

Now, I joined a team that the culture change had already begun. It was going into the hard times though. We battled with trying to convince people of what we wanted in our athletes, and there was some resistance. We lost some very good and talented swimmers. Now we are going into the third season, and we are still losing swimmers who have a hard time fitting into what we expect, but the team is becoming more and more filled with swimmers with the mentality that we want. I preach to my group about things all the time. I preach about the things that I have seen that will allow them to succeed in our program. We talk about swimmers needing to be persistent, but as a coach we need to stay persistent as well. I feel like I might have made the mistake before in hopes of getting more numbers, when I truly should have been persistent in changing the culture.

As it is the year of the Olympic Bump (numbers for most teams rise), it is a great time to creating the culture as so many are new. You weed out a few who feel like your crazy, or you don't know what you are doing, but you end up with the core group that will be the core of your team for the next 3 - 4 years. These kids develop that culture, and you hope they can portray it well enough, that they wear off on other new swimmers in the future. In 2008, I didn't do a good enough job of this, as I was so busy trying to reconfigure the business side of the club, that I allowed the summer league culture to continue.

Again, I say to the coaches out there. Good Luck.

swim meet scheduling

We did our swim meet schedules a few weeks ago, even though they aren't finalized yet. This is always a fun process, trying to figure out how meets are going to provide a good opportunity to perform and at the same time not do the exact same meet each time you attend one. So, what are the different ways of having a swim meet? I am going to provide some different types of meets and what the purpose of those meets are in my opinion.

First thing is the normal ABC or BRW meet (depending on what LSC you swim in). These meets are your normal meet that offers a lot of different events and are swam by age-groups. These meets have become so much the norm, that meets do become somewhat stale after so many. These meets are typically done with the scoring and placing by division (the reason why they are called ABC or BRW). For a ABC meet, the divisions will be based on national motivational times, and there will be a 1st place for the A division, B division, and a C division. This makes it so the swimmer competes within their competition Level (Southern California has their own time standards of Blue, Red, and White, BRW). These meets I see as the best opportunity to be gearing up to make qualifying cuts for championship meets. Even though you can do so at other meets, this meet provides the swimmer most of the events to try to qualify.

Next there is the next most common meet, which is the Senior Meet. These meets normally have time standards, and all swimmers compete against others of their same gender, age plays no part in scoring, placing, or any aspect at this meet.

The intersquad meet. These meets are to provide your own team an opportunity to compete in a smaller meet environment. These meets will normally be much shorter and many people enjoy that aspect. New and younger swimmers benefit from this kind of meet because there is not the huge number of swimmers in attendance, and the pace of the meet can be slowed down due to the smaller size. The downfall of these meets, is that your faster swimmers don't have the competition from other teams, but it is still a nice change of pace for even your fast swimmers.

The Dual, Tri, or Quad meet. These meets are with 2, 3, or 4 teams competing against each other. These meets are designed to be fun, and it is easy to cheer as there are only a few teams that are competing, so there is a high likelihood that a teammate is swimming in the pool in every heat. I like to allow the swimmers to enjoy these meets, and the idea of racing and not about achieving a time standard. This is a good change of pace, and a great way to build team spirit. These meets also are typically smaller and quicker, so it allows for the pace of the meet to be slower and not as rushed.

Pentathlons. These meets are meets where swimmers can compete in all four strokes and normally an IM event. Scoring is kept for all five events, and the awards are for a cumulative score. This is great to promote development in all strokes, which is a major emphasis of an age-group program. Again, I don't stress qualifying for championships at these meets, but rather competing to try to get the best score possible.

IMR and IMX Meets. These meets are like pentathlons, but the format of events is defined by a nationally recognized program by USA Swimming. The scoring is based on Power Point System that doesn't take into account what place you finish, but rather a score from 1 - 1000 based on your time. This is probably a more accurate scoring system than by placement of pentathlons, and again it awards the highest score by age. These meets are really important as it helps get more participation in the IMR and IMX program, which becomes a determining factor later on if the swimmer wishes to apply for national or zone camps, or special programs offered by USA Swimming. Almost all of these programs include some requirement of a good IMR and IMX score.

These meets all have their own flavor, and can be very different experience. What kills many of these meets intent, is coaches and parents who treat them all the same as a way to get a qualifying time standard. These meets are available, but there are other meets that should just be fun; developing a team atmosphere; or developing a racing mentality. Allow meets to be different, and not all like the normal ABC or BRW Meet. This change reduces that amount of times that we increase stress on the swimmer (stress not being a bad thing, as it can be a motivation, but we need to control how often that stress is applied).

To everyone, have a great short course season this fall.

My Experience: Welcome to the Senior Group

I moved into my fathers Senior Group at 14, the summer after my 8th grade year. It was a new experience swimming in the senior group. I remember one experience very vividly though, as I remember being very shocked, and it set my view of what was expected of me now at this level.

So first let me explain that we trained in a small pool, and the lanes were very skinny. There wasn't a lot of us in the group, but we still shared lanes and had to circle swim.

We were doing one of the main sets that we did all the time in the senior group (4 x 400 Free style pull descend 1 - 4, the intervals changed depending on the lane you were in). So, we have pulling gear on; pull buoy and paddles, and we are going on this set. I'm focusing a lot on pacing myself as I want to be sure that I am descending the set, and I wasn't able to change my kick speed (my favorite tool of controlling my descend set) as it was a pulling set.

I am swimming down the lane, and my scrawny long arm is peaking over the lane line on occasion with these brand new paddles (a size larger than I had ever used). On the 3rd 400 pull I am passing Heidi who was swimming in the other lane. Heidi was attending Junior College, and was a Junior National level swimmer, so I had a good deal of respect to her. I smacked her in the face with my paddle because my arm had come over the lane line. I stopped, as it wasn't just a graze; it was a smack. I looked over to say sorry that I hit her. I here my father yell, "Kacy! what are you doing stopping?" I glanced back at Heidi, and noticed she didn't even break stride when I smacked her. I didn't respond to my father, just put my face back in and picked it up.

I got back to the wall. I was ready to say sorry, but she left on her final one, and she never even seemed to care that I had just smacked her in the face with a paddle.

I learned very quickly, nothing stops you from achieving your goal; even a practice goal. When you get smacked you just push on through like it never happened because you have something that you are trying to accomplish. My time in the senior group, I got hit and smacked all the time. The group never was as small as when I first joined the group, so it happened more often as I got older. I played it as Heidi did, you just keep going, no matter how much it hurt. That soon translated into other parts of my workout. There were times when I got back into the water and there was no reason for me to try to keep up with some of the other guys in my group, but I did. It hurt, but I had learned that despite the pain, you pushed through to accomplish what you want to do.

That was my welcome to the senior group moment, and it helped me as I grew into a senior group member.

Swimming levels

I am going to begin with explaining the levels. There many new people to swimming who read this and the explanation will be the main part of this post for them. I will continue on my opinion after that.

There are two levels of swimming. There is the Age-Group Level and the Senior Level.

Age Group is actually a type of competition that swimmers are divided up by Age-Groups. Sometimes the swimmer will compete with other Age-Groups, but awarded and placed by their Age-Group. This is typically done to help make swim meets not take so long.

Senior swimming is also a type of competition where the swimmers compete against everyone in a particular event with no regard to age. These meets normally have qualifying requirements, and is the higher level of competition.

Ok, so now to the rant. Why is this so confusing even within the sport? Because not even all the coaches can define where Age-Group ends and where Senior begins. It is confused by the group of swimmers that barely make senior meets and therefore still attend Age-Group Championship Meets. Many believe that you are an Age-Grouper until you are 19. Others think that you are a Senior swimmer once you make a specific Senior Meet. Some Swimmers and Parents think that you are a Senior Swimmer once they are in a specific practice group. Everyone comes up with their own definition. The problem comes when we try to create meets for these levels.

I wish we just saw it as three levels (names don't really matter, so we'll make them basic). The beginning level will be 1, the middle level will be 2, and the last level will be 3.

1 would be 14 and under. 2 would be 15 - 18, and 3 would be college and post grad. Local areas could then expand by making other levels based on ability as it applies to the area (all areas have different issues and demographics that require different programs).

Get rid of the in between we have now that confuses the transition of Age-Group and Senior swimming.