Swim Like a Monkey

In this first video, the monkey has very little wasted motion and there appears to be very little energy expended. Now check out this video of Alexander Popov, perhaps the most efficient sprinter the world has ever seen:

Popov clearly has tremendous hip and shoulder rotation, and though the video is in slow motion, he shows incredible fluidity of movement. He has very little wasted motion and when racing appeared to barely be trying.

This swinging "monkey bar" action looks a lot like swimming freestyle if you turn it on its side. As the monkey anchors his hand on the bar, Popov anchors his foreharm and hand in the water. As the monkey turns his hips and shoulders and trades gravity for forward momentum, Popov rotates his hips and shoulders and trades gravity (from one hip being elevated) for leverage on his forearm anchors. Whereas the constant force for the monkey is gravity, this constant force for Popov is his legendary kick.
So to swim with fluid efficiency of a swinging monkey like Alexander Popov it is vital that one use 1) a high elbow catch to establish a solid anchor, 2) a fluid, connected rotation of the core to get from one stroke to another with maximum length and leverage, and 3) a powerful kick.

The Key

It’s been pouring rain in Chapel Hill for about 48 hours straight it seems, and as I left Home Depot today, the deluge seemed to have reached its peak intensity. Despite barely being able to see my car halfway across the parking lot, I made a dash for it. I ran clutching my purchase in one hand and my keys in the other, stooping as though being shorter would keep me from getting as wet. At my car, I fumbled with my keys for a moment before picking the right one. As the raindrops blew hard into my face and the wetness soaked through my t-shirt, I tried to quickly put the key into the lock. I missed. Tried again, missed again. Now, getting frustrated, soaked and even more hurried, I tried again and finally the key went straight into the slot. I quickly hopped in and slammed the door behind me. Totally wet and out of breath from the run, I wondered why that was so difficult. Why was putting my keys in the door, a task I performed at least 6 times every day without messing up, so difficult for me to do in the rain?

At practice, most of the yardage we swim is at easy or medium intensity. This has to be the case, because it is just not possible for us to do everything fast. So we must do some things easy. Most of the time when I put my key in the car door, I am not in a hurry. I do it slowly, and I do not miss the keyhole. But today when I was hurrying, I messed up not just once, but twice. If I want to get better at putting the key in correctly in a hurry, I should gradually work on doing it faster and faster correctly each time.

The same is true about our technique at swim practice. We need to start by doing things correctly when we swim slowly, for this is the easiest time to do things right. Next we must focus on doing them correctly as we begin to go faster. And faster. And faster. And eventually at maximum speed.

Almost anyone can use proper technique at slow speeds. Swimmers who can use great technique at any speed including all-out racing speed have a tremendous advantage at the race. And that could be the key to helping you unlock your potential!

How Good Do You Want To Be?

After watching what I deemed to be an average performance by one of our senior swimmers the other day, I was exhorting this swimmer to improve his effort in training. "If you can learn to train better, you could be really good at that event," I said, hoping to awaken in him the desire to fulfill his potential. "But I am already pretty good," he said.
I paused for a moment. In a way, he was right. He has already ascended to the Senior I group, the top training group within NCAC. Just by doing that he proved his ability beyond probably 99.999% of the people on the planet. Still, he is only the 9th fastest swimmer on NCAC in that specific event, and nearly 2,000 swimmers in the USA his age are faster than him.
"You are missing the point," I responded. "How 'good' do you want to be? Are you satisfied with where you are at right now? Or do you want to be better?" Letting the thought sink in, he walked to the warm down pool, and I turned toward the next race which had already begun.
Each of us is faced with the same question in any endeavor we undertake; how good do we want to be? Are we so happy with what we have already accomplished that we are satisfied to sit right where we are? Or, are we willing to give ourselves a quick pat on the back for a job well done and then get back to the business of achieving our goals? Surely along the way we will experience success and we will suffer failure. Our response to success is as important as anything. Whether we sit back and stagnate or keep climbing the ascent is largely a matter of attitude. How good do you want to be?

Motivational Minute - October 10, 2007

I am reading a book right now called The Man Watching about Anson Dorrance, the women's soccer coach here at UNC. You have probably heard of him. Since I have been here, I have had the opportunity to speak to him and to listen to him speak. This is a great book and I want to read you a brief passage from it. It is about Mia Hamm, who you may also have heard about before. Mia was on the US National team before she came to play soccer here at Carolina for Coach Dorrance.

Mia Hamm was nervous. She was sweating profusely sitting across the desk from her coach. It was the goal-setting meeting at the beginning of her sophomore year, and she felt woefully unprepared. She had been through these things before, and she knew what the critical question would be, but she had yet to figure out the right answer. Stalling for time, she spoke first, and her coach nodded a few times and waited patiently for Hamm to take a breath. Then he leaned over the desk, stared her down with his piercing blue eyes, and asked what he always asks, "Mia, what do you want?" Hamm had a million things swirling through her mind, but she didn't want to give him a dumb answer. "Ummmmmm, to be a good soccer player?"
"Can you be a little more specific than that?"
Hamm cautiously threw out some numbers about the goals and assists she'd like to accumulate that season and then immediately began questioning herself. "Are those too high...Too low?"
"But what do you really want?"
Hamm was dumbstruck. She couldn't think of anything to say. Suddenly, instinct took over and she blurted out, "To be the best." It sounded as much like a question as a statement, but Hamm still couldn't believe what she had just said. The words sounded crazy to her, but the more she thought about them, the more she realized that they were sincere. She sat in her chair, silently waiting for her coach to tell her to be serious.
"Do you know what the best is?"
Once again Hamm sat there clueless, perspiring and praying that the question was rhetorical. Finally Dorrance stood up and walked around the desk behind Hamm. He flipped the light switch off. The two sat in darkness for a moment. Then Dorrance flipped the lights back on. "It's just a decision, a light-switch decision," the coach said. "That's all it takes, but you have to make that decision every single day. You can't make it today and then say, 'Whew, glad that's over.' You have to make it tomorrow and the next day and the day after that for the rest of your career."
"I guess deep down I wanted to be great, but I had no idea what that really meant when I first said it in the meeting," Hamm says now. "On that day being the best became something tangible, no longer abstract. It would require a huge commitment made up of a series of smaller efforts."

Hamm went on to become the greatest player in the history of women's soccer. She graduated from UNC after leading the team to four NCAA titles. She became one of the most famous women athletes in the world, an iconic symbol of women's sports. She was named the FIFA World Player of the Year the first two times that award was given.

This meeting with Dorrance was a seminal moment in Hamm's career, a moment where she could have gone one way or another with her career, and she chose to become the greatest player ever. Is there someone on this team who is going to become the greatest swimmer ever? Maybe, I don't know. I wish you each could see the goals that you have set for yourselves. All of you came in with goals that are set pretty high. If this group achieves those goals, we will be the best Senior group in the state of North Carolina. To top that off, it is possible that some of you sold yourselves short and didn't set your goals high enough! When you set those goals, you have to figure out what you need to do to achieve it. And that's our job - to help you realize what it takes. That's why we are on top of things like attendance, why we are trying to get the best effort out of you every single day - because you all have set your goals very high and have ambitions to be truly great in this sport. More than one person on this team told me they wanted to make it to the Olympics. That is a fantastic goal, but it doesn't happen without making that light-switch decision. From here on out, every time you have to make a decision to take a step toward your goal or not take a step, you need to take the step to be as good as you said you wanted to be.
The excerpt about Mia Hamm is a great example of an athlete who was already at an elite level deciding to become the best. Mia Hamm was already near the top of her sport before she came to play for Coach Dorrance at UNC, but she had to make that light switch decision to become the best player in the world. Whether your goal is to become the greatest swimmer ever or to be an Olympian or to just go two seconds faster than your best time, you have to make the same decision. Whether you make the decision every day or not will determine whether you reach your goal.

Why I Coach

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” someone asked me.

“A swimming coach,” I said.

“Ryan, you’re smart. You should go do something worthwhile like cure cancer or solve global warming.” My classmate's words stung.

I was a senior in high school and had made up my mind the career path I wanted to take. Several of my classmates scoffed at my answer to the question, conjuring up stereotypical images of a swimming coach- a fat guy with a clipboard, a stopwatch, and a whistle sitting in a chair. “Is that really what you want to be?”

I don’t remember my exact answer to that question, but I knew that I had found the vocation that I would passionately pursue from that day forward – to be a swimming coach. I didn’t want to be the kind of coach my friends were imagining, but much more than that.

The reason I began coaching is because of my swimming coach. Though I swam for him for less than two years, I was transformed by the experience. I learned the value of discipline, the joy of effort, and the meaning of pain. I discovered that when I set an objective, I could surely reach it no matter how far off it seemed. My coach had such an impact on my life, that I felt called to have the same impact on others’.

“Why do you coach?” read the hand-written note card last Monday during a sit-down talk with the Senior I group. The question stared back at me. I had put considerable thought into that same question many times, particularly when I left Florida to come to Chapel Hill. Not since that day in high school had the situation called for me to articulate my answer as clearly as I hoped to then. My answer was this:

I coach because I enjoy it. I coach for that moment when the hand touches the wall, the scoreboard screams victory, and the swimmer’s face says the hardship has all been worth it. I coach for the chance to fail and the opportunity to succeed. I coach for the people I grow to know and the relationships I have made. I coach for the opportunity to show a swimmer that he is capable of so much more than he thought. For the chance to be for someone else what my coach was to me – a motivator and a mentor.

Early in the movie The Gladiator, the Roman general Maximus seeks to rally his soldiers before battle. Shouting to the masses before leading them to certain death and destruction, he proclaims that “what we do in life echoes in eternity.” For me, that quote put into words the value of my chosen career. I had the privilege of learning firsthand the impact on a life that a coach can have - the personal empowerment and confidence that can be discovered within one’s self and lead to a lifetime of achievement. That is the essence of coaching for me – to show young people what personal discipline, effort, and courage can achieve and then sending them on their way. It is much more than just swimming. If I can affect someone’s life for the better, I believe my efforts can echo in eternity and have lasting impact on the world.