My Application for USA Swimming National Team Director

Rumor has it, USA Swimming is looking for a new National Team Director. While the mainstream swimming media has chosen not to feature me on their list of "top candidates" for the job, I have had at least two friends jokingly ask me to apply. So, at their urging, here is my open application for the position of National Team Director.

While lists like the one linked above have focused on people with top coaching resumes, I think this misses the point. The National Team Director is not a coaching position. Frank Busch was crucially successful by not being as heavy handed on the coaching side as his predecessor. 

I'm drawing inspiration for my application from Bill Simmons 2008 campaign for Milwaukee Bucks GM. Sure, the Bucks passed Simmons up- but how is that working for them? So I say this to the powers that be in Colorado Springs: learn from the Bucks!

Few have been more critical than me of USA Swimming, but I recognize that I need more than just negativity to justify hiring me. I also recognize that there is a wide swath of "not broken, don't fix it" things with the top national swimming program in the world. So the following is my proactive plan for an even better America's swim team:

1. Bring USA Swimming into the internet age: Here's one area where it is hard to defend USA Swimming. Their website is terrible (it was terrible when it was last redesigned and has only grown more outdated since). How can we bring it up to date? Glad you asked:

-update the times search to feature live search updates. The times search is definitely the most heavily used feature on USA Swimming's website, and also painfully frustrating to use. Go to swimrankings right now. Do a times search. Start typing in a name to an athlete search. WOOSH! Names appear. This technology has existed for years, and yet USA Swimming still forces you to complete a painful search and sometimes click through page after page to find the athlete you are looking for. 

-outsource the sharing of all data, video/technical, and workouts. USA Swimming's insular nature has meant that they have lived in denial that Floswimming smoked them to creating a great sharing platform on minimal resources a decade ago. For the love of god, can we please just pay Garrett McCaffrey whatever it takes to share the best of the best of this stuff? Can we find a more effective way to get Russell Mark's videos out there? YES WE CAN

2. Move to cut ties with ASCA and provide real education to USA Swimming coaches. Can you believe that this position only requires a bachelors degree? How do we have a sport full of brainiac nerds, yet we have never fully embraced that culture from the top?

ASCA's education modules have leached off USA Swimming for long enough. How about we provide some real foundational knowledge to coaches. Engage and compensate people with real educations, not John Leonard's grabby old friends, to make curriculums in exercise physiology, cognitive and motor development, and performance psychology! But let's not stop their with the nerdyness

3. Bring back the Sports Science division. We live in an era of big data, in a sport full of people who understand what it means to conduct professional research. Yet, we have next to no scientific knowledge shared from the national level. 

I propose we create two full time staff at the National Team, to work as a team to collect and analyze data on what actually works in swimming. Let's stop arguing about training methods and actually study them. Let's find out who is actually doing the best job at long term development, and come up with best practices. Does this research need some review? I think there are hundreds of people out there in our sport with knowledge enough to give good critical feedback and establish a good research base.

These are just a few suggestions for making the National Team even better than it is today. Just because we dominate internationally doesn't mean that there are a lot of things that we couldn't do better. By holding onto our traditions that work and adding the best of what's new, perhaps we can continue to wide the gap between us and the rest of the world. 

Why I don't Swim for a Masters Team

It has now been more than a decade since I swam for a team. My last honest attempt came in 2009, when I swam a few practices for a team I was also coaching over the summer.

I've never found that the benefits of joining up with a team outweigh the costs. I love the idea of Masters swimming, and I can see the value that many people get from being on Masters teams. I have never found that it is for me.

To be fair, before I get overly critical of the way many Masters teams are run, I am an odd bird. I am a coach with very strong opinions on how I should train. Those opinions exist still at the fringe of popular opinion in the swimming world. I'm at peace with that.

The reality is that many Masters teams are not a natural next rung from the competitive college and club programs that proceed them. Many are stocked with swimmers that have no interest in competing and just want to stay in shape. Another significant block are triathletes, looking to make sure they are prepared for a long distance open water swim.

Everyone in the sport knows that triathletes, who can often come from non-competitive swimming backgrounds, typically have big pocketbooks and are eager for help, so it makes sense for Masters teams to cater to them. 

Competitive swimmers, especially ones that want to compete in sprint races, are rare. Because of this, training is not designed around them.

To compound this, many Masters swimming teams employ a "coach by committee" design, meaning that if you show up on a consistent basis you may have a different coach standing on deck for each practice you attend. This makes it challenging to expect any kind of continuity for practice style, or stroke corrections, or any of the basic pieces you need to get better.

With my life, working on my own business, volunteering and raising a young kid, I don't have the time to waste on this kind of training. 

So, while it is not ideal, I coach myself and ask coaching friends for help. I video myself and analyze it later. I tailor workouts specifically to my own needs and do them on my own time. I do the same for Masters swimming athletes that could benefit from the same kind of specialization in their training. 

For me, training this way has allowed both me and my clients to get in the best shape of our adult lives, all while finding better balance in our work and personal lives. While I still would like someone to swim with me from time to time, the cost is worth it.

Are you interested in personalized coaching? Use the contact form and you will be contacted for a free consultation. 

The 2017 Easterns and Why High School Swimming is the Best

By the end I could barely croak out a few words. My vocal chords were spent and quite lucky that the competition was only two days long.

The 2017 Eastern Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championship was the dawn of a new era for what is still America's top private school competition. Although the meet may never match the glory days of Olympic contenders squaring off, it shouldn't try either.

The world has changed, and elite swimmers have gotten much older since the days when Gustavo Borges could swim at the Bolles School one year and then earn a silver medal in the 100 freestyle the next. Although Borges held on to his 100 freestyle record (now 26 years and counting), his 50 freestyle was finally broken, by Alberto Mestre, a senior from the Hill School.

So what can Easterns hope to be now? Well we started to see it this weekend at Franklin and Marshall. Easterns can and should be one of the most competitive high school meets in the country. The meet had a dramatic improvement of depth from a year ago. It took 4:38 to finish in the top 8 in the men's 500 freestyle, and 57.51 to do so in the men's 100 breaststroke. 

But a meet like Easterns should be judged by more than just the times on the clock. High school swimming is the most consistently underrated area of our sport. In fact, our sport suffers from a great inversion, where the parts of our sport that are actually inherently fun and would help to grow the sport are given the least serious attention from within. 

High school swimming taps into the natural, human love of competition. We love to see individuals and teams go head to head. We like to see a team champion, at whatever scale. Also, in a world where 3 hour plus baseball games test our patience, we like a flow of action that ends in a reasonable amount of time. 

The final crescendo of the weekend was Reece Whitley's high school national best in the 100 breaststroke. It seemed as if the whole pool, swimmers, coaches and spectators, were standing on their toes for it. Two events later, I realized I had the worst headache of my life. I sat down, dizzy. 

After drinking about 1.5 liters of water, I started to feel a little better. I had gotten caught up in the meet- the excitement of the swimmers and coaches, the joy on the faces of not just the winners but that first heat swimmer who went a massive personal best. This is swimming at its best. 

Are you interested in having an announcer bring new life to your competition? If so, use the contact button to send a message. References will be provided!

Frank Busch: USA Swimming's Calming Force Retires

Frank Busch retirement was much like his career as national team director. He left quietly, saying the right things, with a solid claim to outstanding results during his tenure at the top of American's swimming machine.

While Busch had his critics, his tenure was far less controversial than his predecessor, Mark Schubert, by a mile. Whereas Schubert wielded a heavy hand as National Team Director, Busch was far more subdued. He tapped into the essential truth of leading USA Swimming- that our athletes and coaches could have great success if there was far less top-down meddling in their lives.

It's easy to forget now, but Busch stepped into a messy situation when he took the job in 2011. He had to unravel the "Centers of Excellence" a Schubert brainchild that was an abject failure. He had to face the angry mob of coaches that saw the National Team Director position as an overpaid hindrance to getting where they wanted to go.

Busch was able to calm fears through his more understated approach, but he also made a lot of empty promises along the way. Banking on his own credibility within the coaching community, he assured the anxious masses that USA Swimming would close the technology gap that had emerged between its sorry website and the internet around it. 

That promise was never realized, but should not have been surprising given the rumor that Busch didn't even read his own e-mail as head coach of the University of Arizona. USA Swimming's website and knowledge sharing platforms remain woefully behind the times, with their only positive development coming from their partnership with GoSwim to bring technical video to their site.

Still others found it curious that a man who's career was so largely built on college success would be put in charge of an apparatus that mostly dealt with club swimming. I've always found this argument a bit silly, also given that Busch did have a history as a club coach, but the enmity between club and college swimming coaches is real.

The next National Team Director will have tough shoes to fill. Not only will they need to match Busch' coaching chops, but also will face criticism if there is any drop in USA Swimming's world domination. 

The list of candidates floating around also exposes the fact that women and minorities are woefully under-represented at the highest level of USA Swimming. If the new director is a middle aged white male, as is likely, here's hoping that they will do more in their tenure to address this intractable problem. 

Project Under Update: Slowed But Not Stopped

"I think I'm getting closer, but the scenery's the same. Am I a disappointment? "

-AWOLNATION, "All I Need"

The past few weeks have had frustratingly slow progress. I've been sleeping poorly, nothing new in my life unfortunately. There has been one day in February where I have slept uninterrupted for more than six hours.

The lack of quality sleep has hampered my recovery, and in turn my training has been stuck in a holding pattern. I spent two weeks going to the pool and either having to take a step back or struggle to replicate my previous best performance. 

Did I Do a Good Job?

Over my life, one of the things I've struggled with most is knowing when to admit to myself I've done a good job. I've always been followed by a restlessness, uncomfortable lingering around any "success".

These days, many people complain about a culture where every kid gets a trophy, but the opposite is even more worse. I grew up feeling that my mom, my most important relationship in my young life, was almost always disappointed in me. I didn't know when I was doing well, but I certainly knew when I had made a mistake, which seemed often. I knew I was a burden and a hindrance to her living the life she wanted. i knew that the sooner I figured out to do things for myself, the less disappointing I would be.

In Swimming, Hope

I've written often about how swimming changed my life. That's not an understatement. Although good coaches were few and far between, the best ones filled a hole that I desperately needed. Every hard set that I pushed myself through, a simple "good job" from coach healed me a little bit. 

The clock told its own story- as time flew off and I improved rapidly, I had more evidence. I was doing a good job, the hard work was paying off. 

Begging for rest

Just as I started to really get where with swimming, my sleep problems started. Looking back, it was hard for me to understand. I simply found myself laying in bed, my body exhausted but my mind racing.

Older has more perspective. The stress of life only builds through its first half- but I had no safe space, nowhere I could turn for help with the thoughts and feelings that were stressing me. I tried, like everything else, to go it alone. And I failed.

The lack of sleep was one factor on in stopping my progress in swimming for a while, which only led to vicious cycle, where I felt more and more stressed about how I was not "doing well". At one point I started forcing myself to swim bruising workouts on Sundays, especially at night after a disappointing meet, as a punishment for my poor performance. It didn't help.

Better, Than Worse Again

I was lucky to have two exceptional high school swim coaches, both of whom are still my friends today. By the end of high school I gave up club swimming, and through their nurturing and support, managed to move forward in swimming and feel more restful. I spent too much time at the pool, often showing up more than an hour early to practice. It felt a lot safer than home.

All that reverted terribly when I went to college. I found myself with a coach who saw my insecurity and how it could drive me to train harder. He saw that if he withheld any praise I would dig in harder, hoping against hope that he would see me. I spent two years training harder than I ever had, and getting slower.

In four years of college swimming, I was never late, never missed a practice. When I got sick, I would come in and train on my own so as to not get other's sick. It was at this time that I started to sleep truly terribly. I became a true insomniac- having some nights where didn't sleep at all.

A bandaid is better than just bleeding

I went to my doctor, and told them what was going on. At least, that I wasn't sleeping. I was prescribed medication to help me go to sleep. It worked, mostly, at least enough that I slept like a normal person, good some nights and bad others.

I don't blame my doctor for not digging deeper as to why I wasn't sleeping. I didn't give any indication that anything else was wrong. I presented as an otherwise healthy person who for some strange reason couldn't sleep at night. But all the things that kept me up at night where still there- my mind still raced when it needed to rest.

Getting to the bottom (of it)

I spent most of my adult life managing along in this way. I never dealt with the reasons why I didn't sleep, but I slept ok because I had a medication strong enough to overwhelm all of that and get me to rest.

At around the same time I started to even conceive this project, I knew that I would have to start working on the underlying issues for my restlessness sooner rather than later. And while I am still obviously struggling, here is what I have learned so far:

1. It is important to recognize when you have done well. This goes both for mundane, continuous stuff, but also small one time things. One of the things that has always kept me up at night is the immense pressure I felt to be my best the following day. Everyone has bad days, but when you can't acknowledge your own good ones you're trapped.
2. "Other people matter" The famous simple words of Chris Petersen. But in this context, it means that no one can just handle all their emotions, their stresses and anxieties. You need to have people to share them with that will help you to deal with them.
3. Revisit areas of learned helplessness. At many points along this process, I have decided that I could never get better, that I was just a "poor sleeper", and that was that. That mindset is a block to ever getting better, and while redirecting it is a blog post of it's own, you should always evaluate what areas you have closed off for future improvement.

Baby Steps

Last week I took a vacation with my wife. No kid. I swam every day but without pressure, without a pace clock. I just felt the water and did what felt good. 

We did almost nothing. For the first time in my life I sat still by the pool and took some deep breaths. Although I was still awoken at night, I quickly fell back asleep. There was nothing pressing for me to do a good job on the following day.

Upon my return, I went back to the pool. Can you guess what happened?

I did 30x25 breaststroke, all of them on :15 seconds pace, for the first time ever.

The 2017 Easterns and The Role of Announcing

In the water, Mathias was pumping his fist and yelling. Clearly he was excited, but the crowd was silent. It was the 2014 Danish Open, and he had just broken a National record, only no announcement. A few seconds later,  the stuttering announcer tripped over a few words alerting the crowd to the swim.

When I announce the the 117th edition of the Eastern Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championships next weekend, this is the kind of moment I will be desperately trying to avoid. I first got a chance to announce the meet seven years ago, for Floswimming 1.0 with Garrett McCaffrey. Now I'm back, older and wiser and reflecting on what it takes to do a great job announcing a swim meet.

First, with all apologies to one man announcing crews who do the impossible, announcing a swim meet is really a two person job. Like any other sports, you need two things: play-by-play, and color.

The play-by-play person is there to make sure everyone watching the meet can follow the action. They will announce who is swimming in what lane, what team they are from, and who got their hand on the wall first. They can also announce awards, spots for finals and generally act as the traffic cop of the meet.

This is an incredibly important job, even at meets where some of the same information is provided via the scoreboard and heat sheets. A running commentary allows people who just tuned in or entered the building to get into the competition right away.

I will not be doing that job- for that I will have my colleague Luke Ryan.

The color is meant to provide context to what is happening. We know someone swam and touched in a certain time- was it a big improvement? Are they on pace during the race for something big? How do certain results affect the team race? The color person creates a narrative for the meet and adds knowledge that is not obvious to the crowd.

For swimming, our most well-known combo is Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines, who have announced the last six Olympics games for NBC sports. Hardcore swimming people love to hate these two- primarily because they know more than the context Gaines provides (most of the audience, however, does not). 

There is room for an argument that Gaines should do more to educate the casual fan, that he could reference which side a freestyler is breathing too a little less and explain more of the tactics to the folks back home. After all, fans of other sports have come to like increasingly insightful commentary in their own sport.

Can I pull it off? Give the meet a watch and find out! I've been preparing detailed notes for weeks so I can do my part with Luke to add to the meet experience for swimmers and fans.

Remember Bill Belichick When Hiring Your Next Coach

Photo By David Shankbone (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bill Belichick is the greatest football coach of all time. That's at least up for argument this morning after he won his fifth super bowl and crowned a dynasty in a free agent football era. For all the things written about his coaching "genius", one thing has always stuck out to me. In a world where coaching hires are still often made on the basis of playing ability, Bill Belichick stands as the strongest possible counterargument.

Football wasn't even Belichick's best sport. He was better at Lacrosse, where he managed to become captain of Division III Wesleyan University varsity team his senior year. Think about that for a second. Bill Belichick was a below average Division 3 college football player (Wesleyan plays in the NESCAC, a Division III league that forbids its members from post-season play). 

Look further down Belichick's coaching staff, and you'll be hard pressed to find a "star" athlete making game plans. Defensive Coordinator Matt Patricia played at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was also a Division III player. 

Coaching and playing a sport are two totally different skill sets. I've often compared the practice of hiring coaches based on what they achieved athletically to hiring a competitive eater as the executive chef of your restaurant. Yet despite the obviousness, coaching hires continue to happen.

You don't have to look far in the swimming community to see the wealth of coaching opportunities given to former "top" athletes. While some do turn into great coaches (I'm looking at you Rick DeMont), many contribute heavily to the stagnation of coaching development. They try to coach the way they were coached and don't look to advance coaching.

I can guarantee you that Bill Belichick coaches very differently from his coach at Wesleyan in the 1970s. The innovations, the tactics, the ability to get players who "didn't fit" elsewhere to be stars on his team all came from a humble athletic career. That career forced him to think a lot about what it took to influence the winner of the game without his own playing prowess.

So the next time you're making a coaching hire, look for those inquisitive minds. Look for the nerds who never caught your attention between the lane lines but did plenty of thinking on the poolside.