The ABCs of Coaching

Some lessons learned from a decade in the sport...

A is for Accountability.  Be accountable for your actions and hold your athletes accountable as well.
B is for Basics.  Stress the basics of sound technique every day.
C is for Communication.  This is the foundation for your success or failure as a coach.
D is for Developing your skills.  Keep learning and improving your skill set.
E is for Encouragement.  Your athletes need to hear it from you more than you think.
F is for Fitness.  If you are physically fit you will feel good and your athletes will respect you more.
G is for Games.  There is a place for these in every training program.
H is for Hard work.  There simply is no other way.
I is for Individualize.  Show an athlete that you are planning specifically for him and his motivation will soar.
J is for Jokes.  Tell them from time to time.
K is for Know your athletes.  As people first, as athletes second.
L is for Learn.  From your mistakes and from every possible source.
M is for Mentor.  Have one and be one.
N is for Negativity.  Run from it.  Be a force against it.  The world puts enough of it in your swimmers' lives already.
O is for Openness.  Be sure that your athletes feel they can talk to you.
P is for Parents.  The successful coach makes them his partners.
Q is for Question the conventions.  "Because that is how we do it" is not a good enough reason for anything.
R is for Racing.  Teach it. Preach it.  Encourage your swimmers to compete.
S is for Swim yourself.  You will have a better understanding of what you are asking your athletes to do.
T is for Teach.  The primary mission of a great coach is to be a teacher.
U is for Use your time wisely.  Coaching can take over your life if you don't prioritize your time.
V is for Vacation.  Make sure you take it.  It will make you a better coach.
W is for Winning.  Celebrate it, but don't make it your sole focus.
X is for eXamine your process and your results.
Y is for Yourself.  Being yourself is the most fundamental form of honesty.
Z is for Zeal.  Be a zealous fan of your swimmers.

Are You an UGLY Swimmer?

Do you exhibit these traits that might make you an UGLY swimmer?

U sually late is how you arrive to the pool. Be prepared and start on time to maximize your improvement potential.

G oal setting is a chore for you. Become a champion goal-setter if you wish to become a champion.

L azy around your walls. The turns can make an ordinary swimmer good and a good swimmer great. Concentrate on making yours better to make the leap to the next level.

Y earning to be better without making an increased commitment. Achievement follows a commitment to excellence.

Coaches Are Thieves

That statement is true of every good coach I have ever known. We are thieves.
We take training ideas from each other, borrow a saying, or use a set that we saw or heard from another coach.

And this is a good thing. Stealing from another coach's idea stash keeps our training fresh. It helps keep the athletes and the coach motivated. In the most successful eras of American swimming, coaches openly discussed, shared, contributed, and stole training ideas. In my experience, just one idea from another coach has often been the inspiration of many new sets, workouts, or training exercises.

I want to make this exchange of ideas among coaches (and swimmers) easier. There are a ton of brilliant minds, great sets, and fantastic drills out there that we can all benefit from. To that end, I have created the Swimming Wizard at swimmingwizard.blogspot.com. It is an open-sourced blog designed to collect ideas, bounce them around, and inspire new innovation.

Coaches, check it out. The Swimming Wizard would love to hear from you.

Top 10 Ways to Impress Your Swimming Coach

10. Don't miss practice. Want to be the best swimmer you can be? Showing up is a good start. As a coach, our primary chance to help you is at practice. If you are not there, we simply cannot help.

9. If there is a legitimate reason why you will miss practice, contact your coach beforehand, explain the circumstances, and ask how you can make it up. Connecting in advance of your absence suggests you care about the practice and more importantly, about your own training.

8. Show up on time. Don't be that swimmer who is perpetually late to practice. You'll anger most coaches and frankly, even perturb your teammates. If you think your fellow swimmers are forgiving of your tardiness, you're mistaken. Most dislike it or conclude you feel like you deserve special treatment or consideration.

7. Be prepared for practice. When the coach is planning your training, he is expecting that you will have the necessary items to perform as instructed. Not having your mesh bag, swimming equipment, water bottle, shoes for dryland, etc. is just plain sloppy and makes him wonder whether you really intend to improve or if you are just showing up hoping to get better.

6. Give your best effort consistently at practice. We are not asking nor expecting every swimmer to be a world-beater every day. We merely expect you to perform at your capability and be willing to push that boundary every once in a while. Your effort will determine your results. Even the best coach does not bring magic swim-fast fairy dust to practice.

5. Listen and ask good questions at practice. Coaches like swimmers who are attentive and focused. If your coach constantly has to repeat himself, it wastes your time and his. If you have a question, find the right time to ask it--not 2 seconds before you are supposed to push off the wall, but during the explanation of the set or after practice.

4. Understand that every day is an opportunity to improve and once it is over the opportunity has passed. Be sure to get the maximum benefit each day. Be willing to make changes and seek the coach's insight on how you can do this. Don't just keep doing what you're doing and hope that your hard work will overcome your other mistakes. We know that many of you dream of achieving at the highest levels of the sport, so we have to work together to get you there.

3. Set awesome goals. Make them reasonable yet challenging, clear but flexible. Not only are they important to help you focus your energies, but goals can also help inspire your coach. A good coach is motivated by a swimmer with high goals and the drive to achieve those goals.

2. Let your coach know if he's doing a good job. If the practice engaged and challenged you, tell him. If you enjoyed the new exercise you tried for the first time, let him know. If you're a better swimmer or person at the end of the season, send him a handwritten thank-you note. The flip side to this, of course, is helping him improve. Is he unclear in his instructions on a set? Did he misunderstand your question or put you on an easier interval than you are capable of? Is there something that you are missing in your training? A good coach is responsive to your feedback and will look to improve.

1. Be a leader and make your personalized contribution to the team. The best compliment a coach can give any swimmer is that "you made everyone around you better than they would have been without you." If you hear your coach say that, know this: we were indeed impressed. Be THAT swimmer.

This post was adapted from 10 Ways to Impress Your College Professor

How To Be Mediocre...

Set goals you can easily achieve...Count on luck to help you reach them...Count on your talent even more...Congratulate yourself for trying...Accept less than your best...Be inconsistent in your daily effort in training...Arrive late to practice...Blame others for your failures...Forget to thank others for helping you succeed...Speak every negative thought you have...Relish being a big fish in a small pond...Rationalize your results when you come up short...Let your bad habits persist...Let factors you cannot control get in your head...Avoid improving your weaknesses...Commit halfway...Take it personally when your coach says you CAN do better...Ignore the clock at practice...Draft instead of passing...Do NOT kick under any circumstances...Read this list again and say "That's not me - I don't do that!"

Folks, this list is intended to be tongue-in-cheek and it is far from complete. Do you have any more ideas we should add to the list? Obviously, EXCELLENCE is the object of our pursuit.

Six No-No Phrases for the Swimming Parent

Several parents have asked me what to say to their swimmers to help them succeed. The conversations that happen between a parent and child can have a dramatic impact in shaping a swimmer's attitudes toward swimming. The phrases below are all things I have heard before, and I just cringe when I hear them. Each is an example of what not to say to your swimmer.

1. Introducing your child to someone as "the swimmer." "This is Johnny, the swimmer." Swimming is something your child does, not who she is. Help your child cultivate his identity as a person, and encourage him to be the best he can be at swimming. Ultimately, he will better be able to weather the storms of failure and enjoy the fruits of success in swimming if his identity is not wrapped around it.

2. "We came all this way/spent all this money/took all this time... and you swam slow/didn't try/performed poorly." Your kid is probably already disappointed in her own performance, without adding the weight of your parental sacrifices. Understand that it is the nature of human performance that your child will not perform at his or her best at every meet or in every race. The effect of making this comment is that the next time you make a sacrifice to go to a meet, your child will feel the added pressure - possibly to the detriment of his performance.

3. "Good job" (When your child doesn't perform well) She knows when it was a good swim and when it was a bad one. False praise does nothing but cheapen the praise when it is actually deserved. Try "good effort" or "you'll get 'em next time" or "I love you anyway."

4. "WE need to get this cut, WE need to win this event, etc." How many lengths of the pool are you swimming, mom? It is your child's swim, not yours, and you should try to promote his ownership of his performance. Be his biggest fan--there to support him through good and bad--not his teammate.

5. "It's probably your training" (reason why you swam slow). As a parent, it is important that you buttress your child's confidence in his coach. If you have concerns about your swimmer's progress, address them with the coach. Passing your concern on to your swimmer is likely to weaken the coach-swimmer partnership.

6. "It's okay, you don't have to go to practice today." This one comes up when your child is tired, cranky, or is just not wanting to go to practice. It is going to happen at some point that your age grouper will have one of these days. But rather than act as enabler by caving to your swimmer's desire not to attend practice, remind him that it his swimming and his results at the end of the season that will be affected. Remind him of the commitment he has made to his team and to his own swimming. The key is to get your child to make the decision, rather than having you the parent act as the passive enabler. It's tough -- you may not want to take him to practice either, but taking this approach consistently will help your child take ownership of his performance.

Coaches, do you have more you would like to add? Parents, any questions about effective ways to talk swimming with your kid? Let me know!

No Kid Is An Absolute

In many areas of our lives, we are taught that things are black and white. There is right and wrong. Correct and incorrect. Winners and losers. But the reality is that ours is a world of countless shades of gray.

This thinking can creep into the coach and athlete's interaction at the pool. We must carefully guard against the human tendency to evaluate our swimmers into clear-cut categories in our minds. As coaches, we are constantly evaluating, assessing, and critiquing the athletes under our care - that is our job. It is our nature to classify Jimmy as a "hard worker" because we perceive him to be working hard on a regular basis. On the flip side, it is easy to classify Jane as a "lazy kid" because we don't perceive that she works as hard as Jimmy or his other teammates. Thus, we divide our swimmers in black and white terms in our minds.

The trouble with this thinking is that no kid is an absolute. Nobody does things correctly all the time, and nobody does them incorrectly all the time either. To see our swimmers in such black-and-white terms does them a disservice. For the swimmer who we perceive positively, it causes us to overlook his flaws and miss an opportunity to help him improve. For the swimmer we perceive negatively, we have not given him a fair chance to succeed.

The master coach understands that none of his swimmers are absolutes, and his evaluations of his athletes are flexible, fair-minded, and ever-changing. Take a look at your pool - do you see black and white or shades of gray?

Every Competition a Practice

Check out the corollary to this column, Every Practice a Competition

What are your goals for the end of this season? How fast do you want to go? What skills will you need to improve in order to achieve your goals? What steps are you taking today to improve these skills?

These are all crucial questions to ask yourself, particularly around each swim meet you attend. Meets represent a chance to test your skills, measure your progress, and hone your strategy. For senior swimmers, at in-season meets where a best time may not be the goal, it is important to have technical or strategic objectives so that the swimmer and coach may determine whether progress is being made. For age group swimmers who more often tend to improve their times dramatically while they are growing rapidly and learning new skills, it is equally important that the coach and athlete stay focused on the athlete's technical improvements, not just the swimmer's time. This approach will allow for continued development of the swimmer's ability and enjoyment of the sport.

Ideally, you have set goals for the end of your season. Use each competition during the season to take a step toward those goals, particularly in the areas of your technique and strategy. In this way, every competition can form a valuable part of your practice.

Are You a Big Shot?

His career stats:
7.0 points per game
4.8 rebounds per game
2.1 assists per game
1,107 games played

He is former NBA basketball player Robert Horry, also known as Big Shot Bob.

Click here to see a list of Big Shot Bob's all-time Biggest Shots.

Though that career stat line is rather ordinary, Horry is considered by many to be a potential Hall-of-Famer because he is one of the most "clutch" players of all time. When the pressure is on, he always seems to come up with the big play, thus the nickname. The ability to come through in the clutch is such a priceless skill for an athlete. For swimmers, this means being able to perform at one's absolute best at the big meet, as the #1 seed, or on the crucial leg of the relay.

What skills enable a swimmer to perform at his best in these situations? I would argue that confidence is the clutch performer's biggest asset. Confidence developed over time, through success and failure, perhaps nurtured by a coach. Coaches - this may be the most vital skill we can impart to our athletes, the self-belief that "I can do it when it counts." For it is the performances in the clutch where the athlete is exposed for what he is, where ordinary actions become the stuff of legends.

Toiling Upward

Last week during a morning practice that was poorly attended, a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow popped into my head. Quick research on the internet showed it was from the poem "The Ladder of St. Augustine," which I had never read in it's entirety. In my opinion it is pretty inspiring, particularly to the individual who faces challenges and adversity but is willing to work harder to achieve what it is that he wants.

The part that I remembered and especially enjoy is the 10th verse. Here is the entire poem:


The Ladder of St. Augustine
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!

All common things, each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.

The low desire, the base design,
That makes another's virtues less;
The revel of the ruddy wine,
And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things;
The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings
Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes
The action of the nobler will; --

All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminent domain.

We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone
That wedge-like cleave the desert airs.
When nearer seen, and better known,
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.

The distant mountains, that uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern -- unseen before --
A path to higher destinies.

Nor deem the irrevocable Past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.

Whisper to Be Heard

A funny thing happened a few weeks ago.

While coaching our senior practice, I was holding my two-month old son on my chest for about half an hour between when my wife arrived and when one of our swim moms came to babysit him. Not thinking ahead, I had planned this 30-minute block to be a particularly teaching-intensive portion of practice. With my nearly sleeping infant son a mere inches from my voice box, I was forced to calmly and quietly give the swimmers verbal instructions. And the most amazing thing was that they really listened intently with a focus I have rarely seen.

Whispering isn't my style. Our pool sounds like most indoor pools during swim team practice - a cacophonous mixture of splashes and voices, and I typically yell or at the least speak very loudly just to make myself heard. Some of the swimmers pay close attention. Some don't. Most are casually listening, their other ear directed toward their private conversation with a teammate (perhaps this is an indictment of the weight they lend to my words). But this whispering thing was totally different. Ears perked up, they huddled around me, conversations stopped, and every eye and ear was on my next syllable. Maybe I'll give it a try more often...

Why the Subtitle?

To explain the phrase below the title of this blog... I feel that many swim coaches do not use their creative or cognitive abilities to the maximum. Many of us (myself included at times) are slaves to the ideas of the successful coaches who came before us and are afraid to find a better way. I strive NOT to be this way - to find my own way to be most successful, incorporating ideas of my own with the wisdom I have gleaned from others to be myself, a "thinking" coach.

Waiter, This Steak is Delicious!

Recently, we completed a shave and taper meet where the group was simply on fire. Many swimmers had huge time drops over a wide range of events, and the buzz in the stands among parents seemed to be positive. More than one parent complimented me after the meet on the "beautiful job with the taper" I did this season. I truly appreciate the compliment. We all like knowing that others approve of our work, but these parents missed out on an important concept, and I missed the opportunity to explain it.

Attributing one's success at a championship meet to a great taper is like crediting the delicious steak you ordered at a restaurant to the classy way the waiter carried it to your table. Certainly, it has an impact on the steak's presentation (you wouldn't like it if the waiter dropped it onto the floor), but to really find out what makes it a great steak, you need to look further back in time to its preparation in the kitchen.

A swimmer's success or failure is primarily due to his preparation or lack thereof. The taper is the final act that presents the season's results, but the main credit needs to go to the work the swimmer did all season long.

For more on this topic, see "The Six Myths of Fast Swimming" Myth #6.

How Swimmers Ruin Kick Sets

Kicking is among the most vital skills that young swimmers need to learn. A strong kick provides a firm foundation for success and improvement in the long term. Unfortunately, I think many swimmers sabotage their chances of improving when they do kick sets. Here are the ways I see this happen:

1. Turning Kick Sets Into Social Hour
When swimmers kick with boards, they often use it as a chance to chat with their teammates. This takes the focus away from the kicking,and may even encourage the swimmer to lift his head and drop the hips, ruining the body position.

2. Pulling Into the Turn
In a race, using the legs to kick hard into all turns (particularly in backstroke and freestyle) is important to maintain one's momentum and execute the turn at maximum speed. Yet, when I watch most swimmers perform kick sets, when they pass under the flags they will stop kicking, take one or two arm strokes, pull with the kickboard, and then reach for the wall. This reinforces the bad habit of not using one's legs into the wall, not to mention reducing the training effect. When a swimmer kicks for 15 yards, pulls for 5 yards, and then pushes off and glides 5 yards, the legs don't get nearly the same workout.

3. Impatience Leading to Cheating
The quality of patience is a difficult one to get youngsters to buy into, particularly in a competitive environment. Many swimmers put competing with their teammates ahead of focusing on their improvement. The impatient swimmer often pulls on the lane line, pulls into the turn (see #2), or if kicking without a board uses small hand sculls to keep up. Often the impatient swimmer is one who excels in swimming but lags behind his teammates in kicking. Coaches must be careful to emphasize improvement to this swimmer and put him in an environment where he doesn't have to worry about racing.

4. Only Performing One's Best Kick
Often, coaches will give a kick set and allow swimmers to choose whether they perform flutter, dolphin, backstroke, or breaststroke kick. Unfortunately, (often because of impatience -- see #3) swimmers will practice their best kick. That isn't bad in itself, except that means the swimmer neglects his weaker kick. Generally speaking, time spent working on your weaknesses is far more productive than time spent working on your strengths. In addition, we want every swimmer to be well-rounded and to be able to swim all four strokes efficiently, which requires strong kicking ability.

5. Not Taking Kick Sets Seriously
Many swimmers look at kick sets as a chance to rest between swimming sets rather than chances to improve. With that attitude, the swimmer is guaranteeing that is all the set will be.

6. Not Kicking Fast Enough
This often occurs in conjunction with #5. An intense and focused kick set can be just as difficult as a swimming set. Very good kickers understand this. Poor kickers often don't push themselves hard enough, sometimes because they don't feel as though they excel at kicking, thus perpetuating the mediocrity.

7. Holding the Kickboard Incorrectly
The proper way to hold a kickboard is with one's arms extended, grasping the sides (not the top)of the kickboard, leaving enough space between the swimmer's chest and the board to put the swimmer's face in the water. I see some swimmers wrap their arms around the top of the board, resting their chest on the bottom of the board. This causes several problems, including putting a strain on the swimmer's lower back, and forcing a kicking position that is unnatural. An unnatural kicking position leads to a movement pattern that is altogether different than that which we see during swimming.

And, in the spirit of fairness, two to blame on the coach:

1. Over-Reliance on the Kickboard
Kicking is best done while floating on the surface in a body position similar to that during swimming. Doing lots of kicking with a board makes your swimmers better...kickers with boards. To make them better kickers when they swim, do more than half of your kicking without the board, and include kicking in your swimming sets or do more drills that require strong kicking. Sean Hutchinson, the coach of King Aquatics whose swimmers are known for being strong kickers, does virtually no kicking-only sets.

2. Not Doing Enough Kicking
Make it a priority. Measure your team's ability. Work to improve it. Measure your improvement. Find creative ways to make kicking fun. Point out kids who are good kickers - they aren't always your best swimmers. Everyone can become a better kickers, and some swimmers can become MUCH better kickers.

What Your "Tech Suit" Will NOT Do...

-It will not make up for the practices you missed.
-It will not correct your technique.
-It will not make you turn faster.
-It will not get you off the block more quickly.
-It will not help you stretch for the wall at the finish.
-It will not win a race for you.
-It will not keep you from breathing in and out of your walls.
-It will not make you more determined.
-It will not make you dolphin kick off the turn.
-It will not make you any faster than you deserve to be.
-It will not take credit for your successes.
-It will not take responsibility for your failures.
-It will not replace experience.
-It will not make you stronger.
-It will not help you take better care of yourself away from the pool.
-It will not cover for your lame excuse.
-It will not wake you up for morning practice.
-It will not help you warm-up properly.
-It will not make you tougher.

These things you must do on your own to become the best swimmer you can be!

It Ain't Over Until It's OVER!

A terrific example of what not to do. The race is NOT over until you cross the line or until your hand touches the wall!!! Celebrate early and you may not be celebrating at all. Finish the race and THEN enjoy the moment!

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.

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.

Moving Up: The Parent Transition

"Moving up" is an important experience in the life of a swimmer. When a swimmer is old enough, has shown a sufficient level of commitment, and has improved his skills to a new level, he will be invited to "move up" into the next training group. The invitation is an honor, a sign that the coaching staff believes the swimmer is ready to take his performance to new heights.

Moving up often means increases in commitment, training time, the difficulty of practices, and a new group of teammates to train with. Each of these aspects of the move-up can present challenges. Thus, the swimmer will need the support of his parents. This brings us to our topic: The Parent Transition.

When your swimmer moves from one group to the next, you as a parent must also make a transition. These changes include:

• Increasing your own level of commitment. Your swimmer will likely be expected to practice MORE OFTEN. At NCAC, our groups are set up so that each group practices for a longer duration more frequently than the group below it. At the senior level, this means that your swimmer may now be expected to attend morning practices. This of course means that you may have to drive!
• Adjusting your expectations for your swimmer's performance. Generally speaking, as swimmers get older they swim best times by smaller margins with less frequency. For instance, 10-year-old Johnny drops 6 seconds in the 100 free every meet all season long. When Johnny is 16, his goal may be to drop 3 seconds in the entire season. This may not happen immediately when a swimmer moves up, but with increased levels of training, he may be more fatigued and have a more difficult time swimming fast during the season. Rest assured, if he is working hard, the coaches are preparing him to swim faster than ever.
• Being willing to travel more often and for longer distances. For younger swimmers, we often don't have to travel outside of the Triangle area to find competition to challenge our swimmers. As swimmers get older and reach more elite levels in our sport (particularly the Sectional level and beyond), it will become necessary to travel further for meets. Regional and National meets are usually held in locations outside of North Carolina, and we want to find new competition and faster competition to continue to challenge our swimmers. Think of the story of the Japanese koi fish. When kept in small ponds, they don't grow particularly large. When set free to larger bodies of water, they grow to much greater lengths. In order for our swimmers to become "big fish" we must expose them to the "ocean" of competition that exists outside of our North Carolina pond.
• Taking a step back and encouraging your swimmer to take ownership. Often, young 10 & under swimmers are motivated to swim fast in order to make their parents proud. As swimmers progress into the early teens, this motivation dries up and a swimmer must be motivated from within by his own desire to succeed. He also must learn to take responsibility for all aspects of his swimming. For instance, a 12-year-old should be packing his own swim bag, and a teenager should be waking himself up for morning practice. With increased responsibility comes increased ownership and a stronger internal drive to succeed.

Making The Parent Transition is a vital part of a swimmer's growth and development from novice to age grouper, from age grouper to senior swimmer, and from senior swimmer to elite champion.

The Six Truths of Fast Swimming - Truth #5

Myth #5 of Fast Swimming: "That little technical thing won't make a difference."
The 5th Truth of Fast Swimming: "The little things ARE the big things."

First, there is no such thing as a 'little thing.' Drag is a huge factor in determining swimming speed, and each small technical adjustment can have an impact. Not only that, but a bunch of these small technical adjustments can add up to so much more.

Think about the last time you saw a penny on the ground. Was it worth picking up? Would you have been more likely to pick it up if it was a nickel? How about a dollar? What if every time you walked down the street, there was a penny, and every day you picked it up? Eventually, you would begin to accumulate enough money to be able to purchase something of value.

As swimmers and coaches, we sometimes get stuck in this "penny on the sidewalk" mentality, one that says the changes we can make are so small as to be insignificant. But the truth is that it is the sum of these changes that make a difference. Thus we must strive daily to make small incremental improvements. Some days, we may be able to make a dollar's worth of improvement. Other days, just a penny. But if we strive for improvement each and every day, the sum will be well worth the effort.