Chris DeSantis
Critiques Hurt When They Ring True

If you coach, then you will not be able to avoid making critiques. Even in the world of Positive Psychology, where there is intentional focus on feedback that is additive and future looking, there will always be advice on what not to do.

Chris DeSantis
What is the Value of Narcissism?

As we grow older, we learn to become self-conscious about being observed. I don’t work directly with younger kids, but having kids myself has reminded me of how well we learn to hide our feelings and thoughts as we grow older.

Chris DeSantis
Election Reflection

I can’t remember when I first heard the phrase “voting against their own interest”. I believe that politics are incepted at a formative age, such that unless you have some dramatic reversal in your adult life it is hard to know where things began.

Chris DeSantis
Something is Better Than Nothing

Which brings me to the topic of today’s blog. It’s wonderful to know what is ideal. What you would do if you could isolate one variable in your life? Decisions never actually fall so neatly where you can simply elect to do the optimal thing.

Chris DeSantis
USA Swimming Hiring Backwards

What does strike me as strange is that before this announcement USA Swimming had three crucial roles they were hiring for. One is the CEO, with Tim Hinchey’s long awaited sacking. Then there is the National Team Director who will oversee that entirety of the “wet” side of the operation. Finally there is the National Junior Team coach.

Sarah Sjostrom

How I Would Have Over Coached Sjostrom

Sarah Sjostrom is a phenomenal swimmer. Would you want to coach her? I think many coaches would say yes. The opportunity to work with an athlete on that level is a dream for a lot of coaches.

It's too easy sometimes to say to yourself that the coaches of these phenomenal swimmers are "lucky" to get some one with such "talent".

The truth of the matter is that the higher level the swimmer gets to, the harder the coaching gets. In my career I've worked with a handful of swimmers that ranked in the FINA Top 100. There is still a huge leap from that level to the level of a swimmer like Sjostrom

What I found is that I had a tendency to "over coach", to try to do too much, my first time working with a swimmer that was on a certain level. So I'm trying to do better, I'm trying to anticipate where I might go wrong should I ever get the chance with a swimmer that has Sjostrom's potential. Here's how I might have screwed it up

Stroke Finish

Sarah Sjostrom's completion of her stroke on freestyle and butterfly are something that honestly I wouldn't even think to teach someone until I saw them. Look at what happens in her freestyle. It confounds the technical discussion of "finish your stroke" versus "no, in sprinting it doesn't matter if you finish your stroke". 

More than any swimmer I have ever seen, Sarah seems to get her elbow out early, while somehow still finishing with her hand fairly far back, but with no flick of momentum with that arm up in the air. The stroke finishes hard and transfers energy into the recovery immediately, allowing her to both pull a lot of water and get a fast stroke rate. Look at this video in 0.25 speed from 2:13 (Sjostrom is in the lead):

Likewise in butterfly, Sjostrom has complete control over the finish of her stroke and is able to redirect her arms forward immediately. Compare the ease with which she recovers her stroke.

Sarah Sjostrom is one of the best "inside out" swimmers I have ever seen. The finish, the pull underwater, even her kick all come from an incredible center (the term core is politically incorrect these days) that gives her huge control over what her extremities are doing. 

Pacing

Sjostrom has just had her best freestyle meet of her career. While she has always been highly competitive in 50-100-200 freestyle, the butterfly races have been her bread and butter since age 15.

Sjostrom's butterfly pacing relies on devestating back-halfs. Her speed advantage in fly is such that she can go out in 26 low "easy" and have plenty of energy to swim the back half in 29. She tried to go out faster in Budapest and did not break her own record.

You would think that the same pacing rules might work for Sjostrom in the 100 freestyle, and maybe they will. But it's hard to argue that she should hold back in freestyle when she broke a world record and went 51.7. I would probably be even more likely to second guess this tactic after the 100 free final where she got run down by Simone Manuel.

But would we have seen 51.7 if Sjostrom had played it safe? Probably not.

Overall, Sjostrom's swimming shows a creativity and autonomy from herself as a swimmer that is unique at the top levels of swimming. The lesson we should learn as coaches is not to copy the precise movements she is making in the water, but to find out what process she (and her coach) used to create those movements.

Want help with your swimming technique? Write me.