Starting New Goals

Starting New Goals

As I turn my attention to the fall and the new school year and swim season, I have been thinking about what our team goals are going to be, what kinds of individual goals am I going to achieve, and how far can I get my classes and team to go this year.  

I look forward to the start of new goals, but it also got me thinking.  Why do we, so often, wait until we are at ground zero or at the bottom of the ladder before we set our sites on such high goals. Instead of living in the basement, and always wanting to reach the 5th floor every so often, what would life look like if we lived on the 2nd or 3rd floor?  

I believe in order to do that takes 3 things:

1.  Consistency - you have to do a lot of things often and on a daily basis.  We need to address each of the 5 components of health EVERY DAY.  In no order, those components are:  Physical, Social, Mental, Spiritual, and Psychological.  All five of those flowers need to be growing in your garden and one of those can't be acting like a weed and choking everything out.

2.  Persistence, (Elbow Greece) - If you are waiting to be inspired in order to take something on, think again, the most creative and motivated individuals are those that work hard at something every day, even when they don't want to.  Repetition will yield creativity.  A routine is not boring, it gives you time.

3.  Commitment - This is becoming a lost art as it is becoming easier and easier to back out of a contract, talk your way out of a goal, or find an excuse.  There is a lot of people selling the "Carpe Diem" approach and just living for the next day or whatever life gives us. Opportunities come out of commitment, not the other way around.

Good luck to all those starting new school years and new athletic seasons!

The Practice Range

One of the things I enjoy outside of swimming is golf.  Believe it or not, I even enjoy watching it on T.V.  Recently, I have run across a show that has caught my attention, as a golfer, and as a swim coach. The show is called the Practice Range and can be found on the Golf Channel the night before a tournament.

The show has a live camera on the Practice Range at the tournament site and it looks at what the golfers are working on and what drills they are doing to improve a particular shot, or maybe fix something that doesn't feel right.  As the camera goes back and forth from golfer to golfer, the guys in the studio comment on what they are doing, why they are doing the drills, and what they are trying to fix.

As I was watching, my mind wondered to what our swim practices looked like.

First, if there were live camera's in our practices with commentators back in the studio making comments, would they know what is going on? when they watch swimmers do drills, would they know what we are trying to work on? Do our "drills" even look like drills or are they just filler, so we can say we did our % of drill work? Is the coach even paying attention?

Second, from a skill building stand point (I am a big believer that swimming is more skill building than any of the other big aerobic exercises), there are some differences in how golfers and other sports build skill that we don't see in the pool.

Here are some observations from the practice range:

1.  Not worried about how many balls they hit (reps).  Would rather do less, with the desired outcome.
2.  There is not a time crunch (sendoff).  Very laid back, time to talk, and think.
3.  They work on all their shots, not just their favorites (strokes).
4.  They work on the simplest things the most, like short puts.  (streamlines)
5.  They pay attention to the outcome.  What happens as a result of this or that (stroke count/speed).


The more I watch and think about my own practices, the more I am convinced that building skill cannot happen on fast sendoff's or just sticking drill/swim in front of a set of 50's.

We have to allow our swimmers TIME to stop and think, the ability to COMMUNICATE with coaches and each other, and take away the STRESS of sendoff's so they can pay attention to what things feel like and know the outcomes, rather than how much rest they are getting before the next rep.
 

Dropouts & Workouts

I came across two interesting blog entries recently that made me think and raised more questions than answers.  The two blogs are from Swimming Science and Verne Gambetta.


The first article from Swimming Science talks about dropouts.  In particular, it calls swimming a "survival" type of sport and instead of looking at the failure of the program to retain athletes, the coach blames the swimmer for not being tough enough.  It also cites the reason's for dropouts as "having other things to do" which is true with everything, so I don't by that one, rather, I look at the next couple of reasons as pretty important which are "lack of fun," and "perception of failure."

In the next article from Verne Gambetta, he talks about the "Strength & Training Wasteland," referring to thousands of toys in the weight room, different programs, and youtube video's.  It seems to me that it is easy to make any exercise more difficult, and pride ourselves by working harder than the other team, but do we get in the way or our athletes performance? to try to be tougher.

How do these play off each other?

1.  How much "fun" is being had at practice?  I am coaching my 8 year olds little league baseball team and I hate to admit, baseball practices are a lot more fun for the kids, and even a little for me.  What can we learn from other sports?  I think we can do better.  Is it more important for the coach to walk away happy that his team worked harder than any other team or that the individual walks away knowing they improved and are part of something bigger.

2.  How important do your athletes feel to the success of the team and to their own future?  I think most athletes don't think that their contributions matter unless they are on the A relay.  Coaches need to work to change that.  Being around triathlons quite a bit, I find swimming is such a valuable skill that most adults would love to be better at and understand more.  I was an average swimmer at best, yet lead the pack in most triathlon swims.  Swimming is a skill as good as gold, when it comes to healthy living and enjoyment of life.  How can we get kids to look into the future?

3.  Are we just making it too hard, to soon, and too often?  Granted, there is a time and place for hard work.  Are we always trying to make it tougher, and sacrificing the fun and the learning opportunities for our kids? As Dr. Rushall writes, “[t]he canon that "if hard work leads to good performances, harder work will lead to better performances. The number of young people who have  been turned-off by swimming  training following that tenet, is likely to be much greater than one might care to admit.”  Let's be more creative, and scientific, before we just make last weeks dryland set harder than the week before.  

New Blog for Summer Workouts

I have created a new blog,  This Blog is meant to help college swimmers (especially my own) train over the summer.  I know club coaches will cringe at this, however, I have swimmers doing anything and everything over the summer.  Some  are working at camps, some are working 60+ hours a week, some are traveling, taking classes, and only a select few have the time to train with a club.  In fact, I have had very successful swimmers (Division III All-Americans) who have swam like crazy all summer and some that stayed in shape on their own or even a little cross training.

I will post workouts Monday - Friday.  Each day, the main set will be meant to take about 45-60 minutes, and I will leave the warmup and cooldown for you.  The weekly schedule will look like this:

Monday: Aerobic Endurance - steady effort, making sendoff's, low rest, some decent yardage, good blend of free, kick, and stroke:
Tuesday: Legs/Speed Work:  some good work with the legs, all types of kicks, and a few kicks for time and maybe a timed swim
Wednesday: Technique Day - I will try to throw some drills and idea's at you, even post some video to show you what I'm talking about.  Keep HR low, should be a fun, exploratory day
Thursday: Threshold - Equal part work to rest day, solid effort, more rest than Monday, but assigned to times.  I use the pace charts from T2 aquatics.
Friday: Speed Work - creative sets to maximize speed and end the week on a positive note.

Suggestions: 
*Feel free to do some cross training from time to time on Monday's and Thursday's.  Some Running/Biking/Hiking is what the summer is all about. 
*Lift weights on a regular basis
*feel free to up the yardage or adjust sendoff's/equipment/reps to fit to your time and facility
*Be consistent, it will pay off, there is no off-season for an athlete.
*Post Comments on workouts, it's always good to get feedback