Age Groupers - The Coach's Fountain of Youth

This week, with some of our assistant coaches gone on our team trip to Atlanta, I stepped in to coach our age group swimmers for a few practices. Granted, I didn't have the whole group because many of them were on the trip, but it still presented a few fun challenges:

1. Just keeping them in the water. They have this strong desire to climb out of the water at every opportunity, or do an underwater back flip or some other trick that does not involve listening.
2. Tactfully explaining how really good swimmers don't have to get out of the water to go to the bathroom every practice.
3. Telling a joke of the day where they don't already know the punchline. I got beat to the punchline for "Where did the cow go with his girlfriend on their first date?" both times I told it. By the way - it's "the moooooovies."

At any rate, coaching the age groupers was an enlightening experience. I am reminded about the learning process, and I have to rethink how I give instructions for a set. Sometimes they inspire new ideas. For instance, tonight I came up with at least half a dozen ideas to use at senior practice just by watching how the age groupers swim. Their mistakes remind me how vital it is to develop good habits at a young age, so that when this 10-year-old in front of me gets to the Senior I group I teach him the subtleties of race strategy rather that repeat the not-so-subtle nuances of streamlining off the wall.

I also love how the 12 & unders are not encumbered by the weight of the expectations of others, for most of them are just there because they love to get faster. They also love learning new skills instead of looking at you like they already know everything. It's so refreshing, it's like a fountain of youth for my coaching enthusiasm.

The Athlete's Improvement Curve

This is a simple model that can be helpful in understanding the long-term development of a swimmer. The scale on the left side represents the athlete's competitive performance. The scale on the bottom represents time over the span of the athlete's swimming career. Along the top, the dashed line signifies the athlete's ultimate potential. The three lines represent the Improvement Curves for three different theoretical athletes. Their trajectories follow three distinctly different paths, starting from roughly the same point.

Athlete 1 (bottom curve)
This athlete experiences moderate improvement early on in his career. Perceiving himself to lack skills that might make him a good swimmer, he mostly participates in swimming "for the exercise" or because his parents make him or both. Though he enjoys swimming, he is not highly motivated to get faster. He listens to his coachesat practice, but never really commits to making technical changes. His parents are only slightly supportive, believing that as long as their son is staying active, his activities are serving their purpose. Consequently, they only drive him to practice twice a week when he is 10 years old and only three times a week when he is 14. He does get taller, stronger, and more athletic as he grows up, and this means he does get faster, though at a much slower rate than his peers. His improvement flattens out in his teenage years as he enters high school. Competitively he lags far behind his same-age peers. He has no idea what his potential could have been because he never really made a strong attempt to find out. Athlete 1 represents the lower extreme of competitive swimming experiences.

Athlete 2 (middle, stair-stepping curve)
This athlete experiences an improvement trajectory quite different from Athlete 1. He too experiences improvement early in his swimming career. One of the key differences in Athlete 1 and Athlete 2 is that Athlete 2 perceives that he has some true ability. This occurs because he has a coach that believes in him, because he beat many of his peers at a meet, or because his parents encouraged him. He becomes highly motivated when he sees the connection between the work he does at practice and his own increased performance. After a string of steady improvement that may last for years, he goes through a rough patch where he doesn't improve with each swim or hardly at all. His improvement curve flattens out. This might happen because his workout attendance suffers, because his technique is limiting his performance, or maybe just because he is getting older. Eventually though, he gets back to near-perfect attendance, he and his coach figure out his technical glitches, or he gets taller and stronger. This leads his improvement to kick back up again, and soon he is dropping time again. This cycle of improvement and plateau repeats itself in varying time spans and for varying reasons for the remainder of his swimming career. He comes to understand that the stair-stepping pattern is part of the process. He takes failure in stride and looks forward to working toward his next success. Because of his persistence and enthusiasm, he enjoys his experience and succeeds in reaching high levels in the sport. Athlete 2 represents the broad majority of swimmers with a wide range of potential.

Athlete 3 (top, steepest curve)
This athlete experiences a meteoric trajectory over the course of his career. He experiences rapid improvement as a youngster. Immediately tapped by coaches and teammates as a prodigy, he is perfectly motivated from a young age. His parents take him to practice every single day and never have to convince him to go. He improves regularly even if by small amounts, and never has a meet where he doesn't go all best times. He does this by continually adapting and improving his technique, and never letting his motivation flag. As he grows taller and stronger, these physical adaptations exponentially magnify his improvement to even higher levels. Eventually, he becomes an unbeatable winning machine. Athlete 3 does not exist.

The reality is that nearly every swimmer follows an improvement curve that is similar to that of Athlete 2, depending on his natural talent, work ethic, commitment, and a host of other factors. More on the Improvement Curve in a later post.

Coaching vs. Managing Practice

In my experience, there are a variety of ways that coaches go about running their practices. We all have our funny ways of doing things, and we each have our own style. What seems to me to be a common thread among successful coaches is that they don't just manage the practice, they coach it.
It may seem like semantics, but let me explain. Truly coaching practice means teaching, encouraging, correcting, disciplining, instructing, and demonstrating. In short, interacting with your athletes in a way that makes practice productive, fun, and successful. Sometimes I see coaches fail to coach practice and instead they manage it. Often, this coach is working with more athletes than he or she can handle, is under-prepared for practice, or is coaching athletes who swim at a level beyond the coaches' skills or maturity. This coach spends his or her entire time just making sure the athletes are doing practice. But in my view it's not just the "doing" that makes the athletes successful. It is the doing, the learning, the motivating, and the interaction that makes a coach-athlete relationship at practice successful.

What it looks like... when you enter the water properly from a dive

When executed properly, a racing dive should take a swimmer through one “hole” in the water. Imagine yourself diving through a donut floating on the surface of the water. Watch this slow-motion example and watch the three stages of entry take place (the small circle represents where the swimmer will enter, and will not move.)

1. As the swimmer is about to enter the water, her hands are perfectly streamlined. Fingertips are touching the water in the center of the circle, the head is tucked between the arms, and the body is ready to “knife” into the water.
2. As the swimmer begins to enter the water to the shoulder, her head has entered the water in the same place as her hands, and she has lifted her legs to angle them toward the “hole”. Her momentum is carrying her entire body straight toward the circle.
3. The swimmers fingers, wrists, elbows, head, shoulders and hips have all entered the water in the same place, and her legs, ankles and feet follow into this same hole. Notice how her toes are pointed. This is the last thing you must do as your body enters the water. The smaller the splash, the better!

What it looks like... when you achieve your dreams

It is my absolute favorite moment at the swim meet. The swimmer has put years of his life, thousands of hours of pain and fatigue, and every bit of his hopes and dreams into this moment. He has trained with this moment in mind, doing everything he can to make this moment turn out the way he planned. When the swimmer touches the wall and turns to look at the clock, he sees an instant verdict . He has either succeeded or failed, won or lost. This moment alone defines the million other moments of preparation. And when it arrives, this moment is as pure as they come. The emotions burst forth in their true form. This is what it looks like...when you achieve your dreams.

Every Practice a Competition

Have you ever tried training all by yourself? Did you feel motivated and find it easy to push yourself? If you are like most swimmers, you find a solitary training environment to be more difficult. Conversely, having a strong team around you can make you better.

Your teammates can be one of the most influential forces in pushing you upward toward swimming excellence. In fact, you should compete with them every day. It will make you improve, it will make your teammate improve, and it will make your whole team improve. On each and every set, pick out a teammate to race. Every lap, try to make your turn faster than the person next to you. Take fewer strokes than your teammate, or try to dominate your practice partner coming off the wall. Find ways to make every practice a competition, and soon you will be swimming to new heights!

What it looks like... when you use proper head position in breaststroke.

One of the most common technical errors swimmers make in breaststroke involves head position. Inefficient breaststrokers commonly lift and drop their head over and over with each and every stroke. Obviously, your head will rise and fall as your torso rises and falls through the stroke. What needs to stay constant is the angle at which you hold your head.

To keep your head at the correct angle, be sure that your eyes are always looking forward and down. Rebecca Soni, who won the Olympic Gold in the 200 breast in Beijing, demonstrates perfect head position in the photo shown here. Her eyes are focused on the water out in front of her hands, not on the wall at the other end of the pool.

Steady head position means steady body position. Steady body position means less drag and more speed!