In my coaching mind with observations at meets

This is a little late as this is what I did a couple meets back. This is an example of what I do sometimes while observing meets. I do look for what the results are because the swimmers and parents are always looking at the objective result of the performances. A coach also needs to look at more than just the time on the clock, and more than just split times to see if they swam it properly. Sometimes we don't even time a race, but just sit back and observe as we look for other aspects of their stroke or race skills.

At our Holiday Meet I noticed our turns were a little awkward. Some of them were still pretty good turns in regards to how they competed with those in their heat, but I noticed that there was some hitches in the execution of the flip turn. I noticed a lot of swimmers abruptly making a flip turn with very little fluid motion. We had a bad problem with gliding and slowing down into the walls, so I tried to reduce the glide, but now it has left no fluidity in the flip turn. So, what to do next?

I began to think if the problem was the gliding or the body position in which we were gliding. I tried to solve the problem with the idea that we were just gliding too much, but now I am rethinking the problem that maybe it wasn't the glide but the body position.

So then, I did a workout where a portion of the practices our focus was to make a powerful final stroke of trying to press into a "downhill" position. The turns seem to flow much better. There was a glide, but with the head and hips in a slightly "downhill position the glide did not seem to lose speed as it did before with the glide in the turn. It is still something I need to spend more time on, but I feel like the new concept will help many of the swimmers with the turn as the shoulders will make no upward motion on the final stroke to the wall which will actually make the so called flip, even less of a flip because of the lead into the wall.

Coaches do a lot more than just take times and splits. It is the observation of performance that can be very powerful. At practice it can harder to see subtleties that the swimmers tend to do at fast speed, so then you observe and then take it back to practice. This is also why I personally don't try to teach too much at meets, as I want to to see what I need to do more of at practices. Not all coaches have this approach, but it is what I like to do to help me serve the group at hand, and not just the group by theory.