Developing Age-Group Coach

How to grow and develop coaching skills. This is of course my opinion, so you don't have to use it as the you develop as a coach.

As a coach of a group of age-groupers, your main goal is always stroke development. Sure there is so conditioning in there, but the conditioning really begins at the Advanced Age-Group Level. Most new coaches start by coaching a beginning level group, if not, see if you can. It is the place where you can see so many things wrong, and it is easy to pinpoint. Just by watching your swimmers, and reacting to what you see, will help develop a coaches eye. If you go right to coaching high level swimmers, it is much harder to see flaws in a stroke, but with training with watching younger swimmers, you can train your eye to see things better. All new coaches, try to convince your Head Coach that you want to at least work with a lower level group to help develop your coaches eye.

It has become pretty standard that coaches write a workout in advance. Many times senior level coaches can use these written workouts to review and evaluate a previous season, so writing it down becomes very useful for future development. My experience with my senior coach was that he showed up with a workout, but never really stuck to it, but watched and listened, and changed the workout to what he felt like the group needed. So, when I started coaching younger groups I began with coaching on the spot. I think this type of practices developed my coaches eye, and made me realize more about developing strokes. I began writing workouts, and soon realized that I wasn't developing my swimmers enough, so I went back to improvising. This doesn't mean that you don't have a plan. You know what the basic idea of the workout is going to be, and you know how hard and how fast you want the training to be for the workout.

My opinion, the worst thing for a developing coach who is coaching age-groupers is a notebook. Why? Because in the beginning they tend to look at their notebook when they could be watching their swimmers. Think about when you do private lessons for competitive strokes. You watch, and then you instruct, and then they try to fix it. Apply that to how you coach, but instead of talking in personal words, use broader terms. You teach your group strokes together. It is the same as a private lesson, but you use terms that speak to many rather than an individual. Stop it with the notebooks.

If you go into coaching knowing how to fix everything, then you probably have know idea what you are doing. developing a stroke is different than changing minor things in a stroke as you do with senior level swimmers. Develop your coaching skills and your coaching eye, by watching your swimmers and reacting to what you see. You see a young swimmer not extend their front arm in freestyle. Maybe the haven't developed the shoulder muscles to do this. I should do more kicking on their side and develop those shoulder muscles, and then move onto to catch-up freestyle to continue to build those muscles while doing a freestyle motion, then I'll do 3/4 Catch-up Freestyle to continue to develop the muscles plus they learn the timing for front quadrant swimming. Let's then do some regular freestyle smooth concentrating on extending on the front arm, and surfing on the arm in front. You just did a whole workout off one thing you saw. All the kids need to work on it a little, some more than others. Plus in the regular freestyle portion you developed the term surfing on the front arm. Now hopefully you don't have to go over the whole thing, but just use the term to reference this correction. Quick Corrections. Of course if you have 10 and unders, you only planted the seed for the term, they really won't pick it up until about the 1000th time you repeat the term because their kids. You can create a progression of drills and small lessons for every correction that you see. That's when you know you are getting good. You pick up tricks and drills through the years, and you get better at creating a workout from looking at one instance during warm-up. make sure you check your self though, so that you are covering all the skills you needed to cover during the 4 week cycle.

I began coaching this way. I didn't know a whole lot of drills, so I just made stuff up. It worked, and many times I would find out the name of the drill later. Yeah I came up with drills, but really, many others were doing similar drills, I just didn't have a big enough coaching toolbelt back then, so I improvised. It made me better. I developed a coaches eye. I went to my brothers college meets, and senior meets with my dad, and watch warm-up. You see a lot of things in that warm area that give you ideas. The tough reality though was that some things young kids just can't do well. They are senior level skills and drills. You figure that out with experimenting as well.

Two things from this blog entry: Developing your coaching eye to become a better coach, and put away those notebooks with written workouts. You can spend that time you are looking at your notebook to watch your swimmers, and come up with a more meaningful practice and you become a better coach by training that eye.

Age-Groupers are IMer's

When a swimmer is going through the age-group portion of their career (normally around ages 6 - 16) swimmers sometimes have a desire to concentrate on a particular stroke. They choose a stroke to concentrate on because it is easy, fun, or they are fast at it. Despite the reason why they want to concentrate on a stroke they need to become an IMer.

Becoming an IMer means that they develop all four strokes. Many times if they think more about their off events, it allows them to develop more muscle memory without thinking too much in their better strokes, and they actually get better because they've developed the motion even more. All four strokes develop different muscles, even though all four want to be same from the core out, the muscles that pull and contract are different throughout the motions.

The child will go through puberty and their body is going to change. This could cause swimmers best strokes to change, and without the development of all four through the early years, then they are behind in what might be their real best stroke.

Another reason why developing all four strokes is the mental side. As they get older it is hard to see improvement all the time. They learn how to deal with failure and deal with bad swims. Sometimes this results in a plateau, which is the hardest mental time of a swimming career. Many times it is the off events, that they can see their progress. As a parent, do not allow yourself to poo poo these accomplishments in their off events, these may the thing that keeps the kid in the sport, as successes aren't coming as quickly anymore. Plateau's are exactly that, a flat period where a swimmer stays the same or gets slower. Swimmers who work through a plateau reap the rewards later.

I remember at a coaches clinic years ago, they mentioned steering your swimmers to challenges and failures. What they meant by this was making sure that you had your swimmer swim an array of events through the swim meet schedule, and not have them only swim the events that they are good at. Through a Meet Schedule a swimmer should swim every stroke. once age 10 and above they should have mix of sprints, mid-distance, and even a little distance in there. Once 12, they definitely should have a full array of events. By, 14 a swimmer should have swum all the events. (If a swimmer started after the age of 12 there is give, as they might not be developed in swimming to be ready for the more challenging events.

One precautionary note. Distance events, even if they like them, should not be done at a lot of meets. These events are taxing on the swimmer, and even if they look like they may be a distance swimmer, they'll have to do these grueling events for many years to come. If they like them, let them keep liking them into college, and don't over do it on how many times you swim those events early on. Young kids should have exposure to the longer events, but in moderation in terms of how often they compete in them.

Another note: Don't get obsessed with the longer events. Understand that once 13, they don't get to do the 50's anymore, so allow them to enjoy those while they can. Same for 8 and under and the 25's.

Goal: 10 and Under to be 100 IMers, 11 - 12 to be 200 IMers, and 13 - 14 to be 400 IMers

Anytime, Anywhere

Just read an article on USA Swimming that brought me back to when I swam:

Article Link: http://www.usaswimming.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabId=2046&Alias=Rainbow&Lang=en-US

I remember swimming, and at the end of practice my dad allowing us to race off the blocks. We always stuck 25's and 50's as we raced each other. We had this anytime, anywhere mentality about those end of practice races. Most of us guys always thought that we could beat one another.

I also recall one of my teammates telling me what it was like racing me at meets. Brian told me, "It's always scary race you Kacy. We could be at the smallest of swim meets, but you could break out an amazing swim. He told me that it made him never slack off in a race because he didn't want to hear me talk about how I beat him." I think back on that comment, and I know that Brian raced hard at every race because he always wanted to beat me and the other teammates. I'd like to think that I prepared him to know how to race, as he practiced being in that race mode all the time.

I remember training with those guys. I remember coming back after a break of playing basketball, and insisting that I can train with those guys. It hurt like heck to try to keep up and make their intervals, but it made me prepared very quickly to perform again. I always hid how much it hurt because they were working hard, but they weren't hurting. I wanted them to think that I was that fast even after not being in the water. Oh my gosh did it hurt.

Was it a pride thing? Yeah it was. Brian raced fast because he knew that I was ready to race anytime, anywhere. He knew I was stupid enough that I felt like I could beat Lenny Krayzelburg when I was in his circle seeded heat (I didn't even come to close to him though). This same pride came to me when I got back into training after the basketball season.

I think the anytime, anywhere mentality really did pay off. Bad swims happened, and I shook them off pretty easily, but every race was a new race to beat some more people.

Swimmers always be ready to give your best. You never know when it will be your day. Always believe that you can contend anytime, anywhere.

Results for a new season

Just finished a one day fun meet to begin the season. All of our swimmers did great. As a team, from the swimmers who had previous times we had over 93% improvement, and we had 83 swims be swimmers first time competing in an event. The swimmers seemed to have a great time, and I really enjoyed seeing my swimmers cheering on their teammates.

The group has developed so well, and the new swimmers have begun to adapt to the group, and I think have developed some speed just by swimming in the group. It says a lot about the idea of developing as a group. The leaders excel as they accept the leadership role, and the rest of the group does there best to keep up.

A new season brings new expectations. These are good and bad. Some begin the season not seeing the value of one's improvement as they thought there would be a bigger drop since the last time the swam a short course event. This is a real bad tendency. I hear parents make comments to their children about aspects of their strokes, or parts of their race. The parent doing their own analysis and giving their own criticism. The improvement is what I tell the kids to celebrate, and it is hard for them to celebrate when a parent is breathing down their neck about things done wrong. As a coach, we give them praise for a great race and point out a few things that we need to work on. Most of the time the kid nods and realizes that they've heard it practice before, as I use the same practice language when talking to them at meets for a quick analysis.

Always remember that the swimmer needs to enjoy the improvements, even if its only the one one-hundredth of a second. This should be despite the expectations of what the expectations of the season are for the swimmer. Enjoy the victories, ask most successful senior swimmers, the victories of personal bests don't come quite so often when they get to the higher level. Develop the mentality that every meet there should always be improvement, and that swimmer is in for a hard ride mentally as they grow older, when the improvement slows down, and they have to try to change their mentality just to prevent them to hate the sport.

A new season, and good results starting off this season. Most exceeded my expectations for this first meet, and I am even more excited about what is to come this season. The first meet was to show just where we were after some stroke work and doing some base conditioning. Barely touched some of the little details, but I have a much better idea of the detail work I need to emphasize on now though. A lot of work to do, but the beginning is looking pretty good.

Self-Esteem

I always read articles about different things, and I saw one the other day that looked at the idea of self-esteem being developed of being a negative thing.

I say hum bug to that notion. I have coached too many kids with low self-esteem, and seem them transform as they developed a new self-esteem during the time I coached them. As a coach this is normally what I experience when I get these kids when they come to me.

The parent comes up to me and introduces themselves, and then explains to me that their child is joining mainly for the fitness aspect and that there isn't much interest in competing. I normally just nod my head and think to myself, that's ok for now, but we'll see what happens as we go forward. The child begins to practice, and seems to enjoy themselves at practice as they feel as though the are learning how to make swimming easier (always a big concept for me). I always talk to my groups about swim meets, and performances done at meets prior, so the swimmer kind of just sits there and listens. A small is approaching, and then I go to the swimmer and ask them they'd be interested in swimming, and they are hesitant, but many times they say ok. The parent asks how to signup and I try to walk them through the process. At the meet, the swimmer swims, and since they have No Time's it is always a good swim because it is a life-time best. They realize that I don't stress the place, but care about the effort that they put forth. The second swim meet normally follows, and the improvement normally comes, and you can see the confidence build in the swimmer, which leads to better practicing and better performances. The parent normally comes to talk to me on how their child has improved on other aspects as well, and a new sense of confidence have led them to achieve more.

Self-Esteem gives them the courage to Challenge the Impossible.

The article isn't completely off base though. I just think they swung all the way to the other side rather recognize the aspects with self-esteem that have become worse. Although Self-Esteem in kids is positive, the lack of failure is very prevalent. Parents shelter their swimmers from having opportunities to fail, and only focus on keeping it always a positive. This has developed a fear of failure in many young people. Developed by the over protection against failing. This allows for Self-Esteem to not over flow from the swimmer, but tempered by the times of failure. It is not good to win all the time. Very few can be self-driven to the point to achieve success without a loss or disappointment. Why not allow your child to deal with a loss or failure? You are there to comfort them, and help them understand that is a time to learn by evaluating your preparation. Preparation leads to good Execution, I believe John Wooden put it. If they didn't execute well, then it came from the preparation, so they must think about that one time they were running 2 miles, and they decided to walk because the coach wasn't watching because he was helping a team mate stretch out a cramp.

Kids are supposed to mess up. They are supposed to do things wrong, and be corrected. They shouldn't go through their whole childhood always just happy. In sport it is the same. We talk about the undefeated a lot, but the thing that undefeated youth team didn't learn that season was how to deal with a loss. I think it was Archie Griffin who said that the number one thing he learned from football was that after he got tackled for loss on a run, he had to get back up and be prepared to go at it again.

Self-Esteem is good to build in children in my eyes. I also believe that they need to learn to deal with failure as well. Swimming provides plenty of these times in a swimming career. The character is found in the child on how they respond to the failure, not in the success of the sport.

Watching the Hips

This season I am spending a lot of time committed to watching the hips of my athletes. I emphasize swimming from the core, and the hips tend to be a great indicator of the use of the core.

After spending some time watching the hips I noticed that some of the athletes actually pull before the initiation of the hip rotation. This causes the hand to reach the hip without it being fully rotated having the swimmer press their hip out of the water (looking like butterfly hips) or the slide their hips to the side to allow their hand to exit without hitting their hip.

Backstroke I am also looking at the rotation, or the lack thereof. I know there those out there who like the flat backstroke, but I still prefer the rotation. Rotation in the shoulders doesn't seem to be the biggest importance, as much as the rotation in the hips. I watched Peirsol's video where he slides his hips, but in the slide his hips do seem to rotate as well. The upper body does seem to have not much rotation. I coach age-group swimmers, so I like the idea that they learn the rotation, and if they need to create more power as a senior swimmer then they can see if the slide works for them. I am still a fan of rotation though.

Breaststroke is where I like to emphasize hips a lot. A lot of swimmers don't realize how to drive the hips forward, and many who do drive the hips, actually push them down to create the same type of motion, but in the wrong position in the water. We do core building during dryland on some days, which is going to allow athletes to drive the hips and keep it high in the water. Some of my swimmers haven't created the core strength to do this yet, but I still try to get them to learn the motion.

As I teach the hips to drive forward in breaststroke, I have learned that I need to be careful on the butterfly hips. I have used body dolphins to teach the hips to pop by pressing the chest down and lean on the lungs, but they want to come up to breathe by pressing their hips down or forward like in breaststroke. This has created some pretty deep hips on the "uphill" phase of butterfly, almost created a dead spot of forward motion, and a very energy spending effort to get the body to "downhill" because how far the hips must rise to break the surface of the water. I plan to go over the idea of lifting the body during the downward press of the stroke, and to leave the hips be due to what has happened to many of the swimmers hips on the "uphill" phase.

Hips, the strokes starting all of its motions from the core of the body. This has always been something I talked to the swimmers about, and did some corrections for it in the past, but now I am just spending a little extra time on it. Every season I try to cover a different aspect with more emphasis, as many of the swimmers are starting their second or third season with me, so I try not to make it the same old thing. Last Fall it was emphasizing the Relaxation of the 3 R's of swimming speed. Although I still talk about it, I haven't emphasized it as much as last fall. This fall so far has been all about the hips (the core).

The Next Phase of the Season

So far I have done some conditioning. Dryland has been concentrated on conditioning and strength building. The first weeks included a lot of me talking about what swimmers are trying to develop in this phase of their swimming. The main concentration has been some stroke technique. This Developmental part is very basic, and going over the motions by explaining what I want to see from them. Some kids get it in this phase, but a lot of it is establishing the idea of the motions, and a lot of the growth will happen as they apply these ideas to when we are doing stroke technique sets and drills.

What now from here?

Now I will concentrate on developing strokes utilizing drills, and correcting the drills to make sure that they are getting the most out of the drills. I will still pull kids to the side and give some one-on-one instructions as the group is doing stroke concentrated sets.

Now I will begin concentrating on Starts and Turns, and begin to train the swimmers. During sets, I will be using terms and phrases that I have established during the first three weeks to be able provide fast feedback during the sets. Hopefully getting a workout that is similar to what Wooden described as his workouts for UCLA basketball that were fast paced and a lot of feedback as they are working.

Looking forward to this season, as I plan to train a little more than last fall. I do have new kids to the group who need to develop and catch up to the group, but I really hope that motivation to be part of the group helps them. They seemed to learn a little more about feeling the water and a big emphasis this season has been concentrated on what the hips are doing during the four strokes.

Most of the group seems to be ready to do this new level of training that we are going to do this season. Excited also because Senior 2 seems to be working a little harder this year, and I have asked Red to continue doing stroke work, but not be afraid to push during the third phase of the cycle we set up for that group. White Group looks as though they are establishing some good strokes also, and also developing some of the more basic skills that we want our younger swimmers to do. I like where everything seems to be headed.

Also re-started CLU satellite and it looks like it may be a success beyond what we expected for year one. Almost 30 kids out there and mainly new members. Things are looking great as we continue to develop the team.

The high cost of swimming

I was reading other blogs and comments, and one person commented on the high cost of joining a club swim team. I agree that the cost of joining a club team is expensive nowadays. So why is the cost so high? I thought about it the other day as I was planning how I was going to do lessons this next year for competitive strokes.

There is lap swimming available at the pool we use from 7:00pm - 8:00pm. It costs $3 for a swimmer to use those lap swim lanes. If you have a coach with you they also have to pay the $3 fee. That would be $6 a day just to use the pool. You practice 5 days a week for roughly 4 weeks a month. You are now shelling out $120 a month just to use the pool. What if you paid a coach $10 an hour to coach your child? That would be an additional $200, so you are now paying $320 a month to become better at swimming.

This scenario also puts the factors into play. What kind of coach do you have for $10 an hour? No other swimmers there to push the athlete to become better. No friendships made which make the hard times of swimming easier to cope with as you have friends to lean on. There are other aspects that aren't great for this formula.

I was on vacation, and I saw another community pool charging $6, and I think that was just admission on to the pool deck, so a swimmer, a coach, and a parent would be $18 a day. Wow! The cost of that program just shot up. I think the is only $2 for some pools I have seen, but they aren't normally opened all year. These facilities aren't making money hand over foot either. Our pool site said that this was a rare year where they were in the black (it could be the fact that our swim team is back using this facility on a regular basis and pool rental fees). It is the nature of the beast now. High cost of operating a pool is causing high cost of participating in swimming.

Despite our high fees, we still have between 130 - 170 athletes, so we haven't out-priced our area. The space is limited, so too much more growth we couldn't be able to handle out our base site, as it is a long course pool, but with lessons, high school sports, club water polo, masters swimming, water aerobics, and club swimming; there isn't much space for much more.

Getting More out of Swimming: Time Management

Everyone says that you learn life lessons from sports. It is widely talked about because so many have learned a lot from participating in sports. When I first began coaching I knew there were lessons to be learned, but I wanted to know what you learned from the sport of swimming. I felt like with this knowledge I could help gear my coaching to promote the lessons to be taught. I realized there lessons from swimming that not everyone learns, and I don't feel like I learned some of those until I began coaching.

One lesson I realized is kids learned by going into a high level group with a lot of commitment is Time Management. This one is learned by being successful at swimming and at school. To coordinate practice, school work, and other activities that you may do in your life. I remember going to college tours and they talked about how the GPA of students normally go down from there high school GPA as they learn Time Management on their own. This is a skill swimmers had to learn with club swimming and school, and it can prepare them for the demands on time that college can demand.

As a coach, you hear the excuse, "I didn't come to practice because I had too much homework," or "I really had to study for a test." We have all heard these are reasons why someone opted to not attend practice. As a coach, we promote being committed to your school work, so we allow this to be an excuse. If we didn't it would not look very good on our part on developing a student-athlete, but learning time management is about knowing how to sacrifice time spent on other things to make sure that you do what you have committed yourself.

I remember when my grades got bad, my father didn't make me not go to practice less, so I could commit more time to study; he made me go to practice more. Kind of counter intuitive, but it worked. I became a better student and a better swimmer. Of course there were other factors on why I became a better student as well, but that is a whole essay in itself.

As a coach, all we can do is try to explain to swimmer and parent the importance of learning how to manage time and be able to stay committed to both without sacrificing any part of either. Otherwise, we pretty much have to just bite our tongue and rant in private, and then continue to try to explain why it may not be the best excuse to miss practice. We don't believe that swimming is more important than school, but we do believe that balancing the two is not only doable, but beneficial.