Why The Short Course Explosion Hasn't Gone Long

Caeleb Dressel's swimming is so fast you can't believe it. Already an NCAA record holder after just his sophomore season, he pushed it to a whole new level this past spring, with new records in the 50 free (18.20), 100 free (40.00) and 100 butterfly (43.58).

That's right, as if his mind boggling 100 freestyle that put him on the doorstep of 39 wasn't enough, he also beat the man (Joseph Schooling) who beat Michael Phelps, in Schooling's best event.

For all his mind-blowing swimming, Dressel wasn't even on the US Olympic team in the 50 free and put up a couple solid 100 freestyles (47.9 and 48.1) on the 4x100 Freestyle relay. What demands explanation is, how can a swimmer like Dressel be so much faster in short course than an all-timer like Matt Biondi.

Biondi's best short course 100 was 41.87, giving Dressel a nearly two second advantage in that race. In the 100m, where a margin should theoretically be bigger due to the longer race, Dressel is just .9 faster (47.5 to 48.4).

Dressel is just one glaring example of a trend. Short course swimming (especially yards swimming) has seen an explosion in improvement over the last two decades. That improvement hasn't translated to long course meters, the Olympic format. So it begs the question: why?

The Skill Explosion

Basketball fans: have you ever watched highlights of Bob Cousy? The greatest ball-handler of his generation doesn't exactly blow people's minds with his moves in 2017. Yes, I know they allow more palming now- blah blah blah. Basketball has seen a skill explosion.

In swimming, skills are all the stuff that's not pure swimming (starts, turns, underwater kicking/pullouts)

Take a look at Matt Biondi swimming, at his peak (race starts around 3:24):

Here's Caeleb Dressel (shown in long course for accurate comparison)

There are some obvious differences that stand out right away. Dressel's start is worlds better than what Biondi or anyone was doing in a bygone era. 

Even more so than the aerial theatrics is what happens when they enter the water. I've watched enough Biondi races to know that this wasn't a particularly bad breakout. Seen with modern eyes, Biondi always had a bad breakout. 

He surfaces on too steep of an angle, his head lurching awkwardly up to the surface and looking straight forward. I went frame by frame at the turn, and it appears Biondi doesn't even fully streamline, and his legs are loose and unconnected behind him. 

Meanwhile, on the surface, Biondi seems like he could be swimming today. In fact, I would venture to say that if we could de-age Biondi and teach him a proper start, turn, and how to kick underwater, he might still be the world's best over 100m. 

The Short Of It

A focus on short course swimming can account for this skill explosion. Short course swimming rewards skills, as does higher intensity and measured race pace training. In three years coaching in Europe, I noticed that the majority of European countries placed a much higher focus on long course swimming. 

While that led them to have fit athletes, overall you can see a broad deficiency in skill especially at junior levels in European swimming. This, broadly, is why many European athletes have a lot of NCAA success- they pair a strong fitness with increased skill development and make a performance leap.

A leap in long course performance is possible- but it rests on two huge developments. The first will be some significant innovation in overwater stroke technique. Adam Peaty is a good example of a swimmer who has made massive improvements in the world standard of long course performance despite below-average skills.

The second innovation will come with a continued evolution of race pace training to prepare swimmers better for long course racing. There are some inherent conflicts in the race pace theories- with one of the biggest ones being that specificity is given a ton of value, but somehow you should swim repeat short course 25y or 25m to prepare for a long course 100m.

Any coach can tell you that where swimmers struggle to translate their performance in long course is from 25-50m, maintaining their stroke technique, speed and efficiency. I saw it first hand when I used race pace and skill to get a swimmer who had never broken 1:00 in 100 breaststroke to a 55 in short course yards. That swimmer promptly went to Summer Nationals and swam a 1:09 in LCM, which is a nice argument for Long Course only Olympic Trial standards.

Want to bring better analysis to your stroke technique and practice planning? Write me.

The Different Demands of Race Pace Coaching

"5000 Pull". That was all Gennadi Touretski, often hailed as a the genius of the swim coaching world, wrote up on the board. Then he walked away.

I heard this story from a swimmer who was training with Touretski as a part of his required Swiss army service. Touretski had for some time assumed the mantle of working with these swimmers, but didn't seem particularly interested in coaching them.

The purpose of this post is not to mock Touretski, who's coaching relationship with all-time great Alexander Popov is the stuff of legends. Touretski has used his coaching mind in far more creative ways than "5000 pull", but on this particular practice, he clearly wasn't feeling it.

I'm left to guess as to why. Did he feel the swimmers in the water weren't worth the effort? Was he not getting properly compensated for his time? I tried to put myself in his place- what would have to be going on for me to throw in the towel with a 5000 pull?

Intense Coaching

One of the least discussed aspects of the ongoing debate in the swimming community over practice intensity is how demanding the coaching is. Coaching a 5000 pull (especially if you walk off the deck and don't even watch it) is very light lifting. 

Meanwhile, a set where swimmers are going to swim 20x50 at 200 pace is exceptionally demanding on a coach. Swimmers need constant technical feedback, and will have time to hear it. Furthermore, having it "all on the line" means that swimmers will need specific adjustments based on where they are that day.

So, a coach that wants to do the right thing and change over to race pace will face some real challenges in doing so. For one, they will have to carefully consider whether they will still spend the same amount of time on deck, knowing that they will be coaching at a full sprint instead of a slow walk?

Do they want to have the same number of swimmers in the water? How will they divide attention between swimmers when there is so much more time that they are on the wall and able to receive feedback?

Race pace swimming undeniably demands more from the coach for the time spent on the pool deck. The tradeoff is better quality of both technical instruction for the swimmers in the water and just flat out more coaching.

Swimmers get a lot more value, and coaches should consider that as they change to race pace. Coaches should expect to get something of value in return for this expansion, a not easy feat with many administrators and boards. But it's crucial to start at the very beginning, before race pace becomes the "new normal" for swimming practice and coaches keep everything else on their plate.

Want to learn more about how to incorporate race pace into your own training or your team's? Write me!

Where Coaching Accountability Goes Wrong

Coaches love to glorify accountability. We love stories of athlete's "owning up" to their own weaknesses and failures, taking responsibility for them and then making a positive change. "If only more of my athletes were like that" we get caught thinking. 

"Accountability" may make coaches feel all warm and fuzzy in our stomachs. It may also reinforce a stereotype we have about "kids these days" and their lack of it. It's not the best way to coach. If we want to create thriving, resilient athletes, we should focus much less on accountability and far more on depersonalizing failure.

It's not about you

Funny enough, many coaches think of "accountability" as a selfless attitude. I'm about to argue that it is destructively selfish. In taking your failings and making them personal, you're actually draining the energy you need to make change.

Last week I put out a resilience test for swimmers. The test is based on explanatory style. Explanatory style, put simply, is the way that you explain events to yourself.

One aspect of optimistic people is that they tend not to attribute negative events to themselves, i.e they do not take personal "accountability" for bad events. As coaches we desperately want optimistic athletes- these are the people that will shoot high, push to the extreme and bounce back from failure.

Pessimistic people, on the other hand, tend to be very "accountable". More often than not, the negative things that happen to them are "their fault". They are ones that will "stay comfortable" in training and be haunted by failure.

Ego Protection

Again, we tend to think of those that are not "accountable" as egotistical. This is a social concept. I'm not suggesting athletes should not take blame for anything. Then you would just have a team of assholes.

A lot of "accountability", however,  is about ego protection. Coaches like to hear their athletes take responsibility for failures because it protects their ego. "It wasn't my fault," the coach can say to herself as the athlete takes the blame. 

Coaches need to model and teach optimistic explanatory style for their athletes if they expect to have optimistic athletes. One step is to drop all the ego protection around "accountability" and teach athletes to depersonalize failure so they can move on. 

Want to learn about how to make optimistic thriving athletes? Write me!

 

Get Faster, Faster: Work on Starts

Of all the skills you need to swim fast, the block start stands alone. It is the only swimming "technique" that has your entire body out of the water. Somehow, despite how simple the fundamentals for a good start are, poor start technique is everywhere, from the beginning to elite levels.

Don't believe me? I used to have a terrible start. I spent my first two years in competitive swimming tucking my knees into my chest to protect from belly flops. By the time I finished college, I had progressed to a slow two-foot on the front of the blocks leap.

So when I made my masters swimming comeback this year, I knew I needed to get better. But more than any other technique, it's really impossible to improve your start unless you can see what you're doing. Because I always swim alone, I had to sheepishly ask a lifeguard to film me.

Then I watched the video, and tried again. It didn't take a lot of attempts, but considerable focus to change my instincts.

When I got to my first meet, this happened (I'm in the farthest lane with a white cap)

Slow the video down to quarter speed at the start. It wasn't a perfect start, but I smoked my competition off the blocks. My start went from "mildly terrible" to pretty good with just a little bit of work. 

So how did I do it?

Start Learning

The nature of coaching swimming is that most knowledge is passed down from coach to coach. For whatever reason, very little knowledge about starts makes its way out there. That's a shame, because a start can have a huge impact on a swim.

Most people focus on reaction time, and if you do that you'd think there is very little reason to work on starts. Bad reaction times are in .8 or slower, good ones are .6 (sometimes .5, I was .58 in the video above. So why spend a lot of time on something that only means a couple of tenths difference?

The start has a domino effect on the race that follows it. A good start can get you into clean water, allowing you to swim free from the disturbance of others. Think Anthony Ervin with a slightly better start winning Olympic gold again. 

Having a great start also gives you a psychological benefit. I used to panic after my start- knowing that I had to play catchup on the rest of the field. Having a good start allowed me to settle down and swim my race as I had planned.

Perhaps most fundamentally, the kind of flexibility work you need to do to work on your start improves your technique on all four strokes, as well as turns and underwater swimming. One of the most frequent questions I see posted to the Swim Coaches Idea Exchange group on facebook is "Help with this start!". I'm here to help.

Are you a coach that wants to be great at coaching starts or a swimmer looking to get a competitive edge? Write me

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Swimming Is Too Cheap and Too Expensive

Swimming is a sport of privilege in the United States. That is not to say that everyone in swimming is rich, in fact quite the opposite (especially the coaches). The sport as presently constructed is extremely expensive. 

It is important to note that when I say "expensive" in this context, I'm not just talking about the almighty dollar. In fact, the expenses you can't put in a savings account far outweigh those that you can. Let's take a look at a few of the ways that swimming bears a huge cost for so many of the people that pursue it seriously:

The Swimmers

What is a "swimmer" in the United States? The vast majority are school age children. Therefore we can't talk about them without considering them as part of a family unit. Also, since they aren't in most cases expected to be full-time earners, we don't quantify their time in terms of the money they could "make".

But their time is valuable. We put public resources into their education for that very reason. So, every hour that they spend in the pool is time that cannot be spent doing something else. Every minute spent commuting to and from practice and to meets near and far costs valuable time.

Their participation is also extremely demanding on their families. Unlike a country, say like Denmark, where I used to coach, that has a wonderfully functional public transportation system and is generally safe to ride your bike from place to place in, Americans depend on cars for transportation. Parents of swimmers will therefore often spend inordinate amounts of time in cars. That time is another expense.

The Coaches

If many coaches seem unsympathetic to those costs, there is a reason for that too. Somehow despite the crazy expenses of swimming, many coaches draw very modest salaries. In exchange for those salaries, they are often expected in many cases to do the jobs of two or more people.

Consider your best local club swimming program. In order to pay their coaches even a modest salary they need to fill their lanes. As a college coach, it was not atypical for me to attend club practices at some of the best club teams in America where one coach presided over 30 or more swimmers. This is far from a club problem, in fact "elite" college teams stockpile huge rosters of swimmers as if some of them have an expiration date.

Now, would you consider it a good educational environment for a child if a math teacher had to preside over a class of 30 or more students? Many would not. What if your math teacher also responsible for teaching that huge group in an environment where she might need to leap in to save someones life. 

Why do teams charge the same fee for membership even as groups grow to huge sizes? The quality a coach can deliver to a particular athlete drops off exponentially past a certain point. if I were to guess, this point is around 12:1 athletes to coaches, but thats probably being generous and it could be 10:1 or 8:1.

So let's do some math on a single group of 30 athletes being coached for two hours by one coach. If the coach is delivering personalized feedback for the entire two hours (an impossibility, but let's just run with it anyway), and somehow spreads herself evenly, every athlete gets four minutes of personalized instruction.

What are you paying for?

The reality is that on many swim teams, despite the huge costs in time from swimmers, families and coaches, there is too little value making it through to either side. Both sides bear responsibility for how to fix this broken model.

On the swimmer side, families need to think about what they actually want to get out of participating in swimming, and how much that should cost. In many cases, there is likely too much of that cost equation that comes in the form of time and too little in the form of actual currency.

For coaches their is a need for re-calibration as well. Too often coaches pile on another practice, another competition, another week of the year without thinking about how incredibly expensive each of those things are for everyone involved. As coaches we need to demand and deliver efficient, valuable training, instead of always more.

We also need to stop agreeing to be the swim coach, the strength and conditioning coach, the sport psychologist, or even the director of operations (the list sometime goes on) for a team. Because no human being can do all these jobs really well. 

Swimming can reach even greater heights if we come together and realize that we are both spending too much and too little on it. 

Want to get more out of your swim training?

When Should You Do Double Practices?

Here's a question I see coaches asking all the time: "What is the right age for swimmers to start doubles?". Or "What level of swimmer should be doing doubles?". These are questions worth asking, for sure, but they miss the real question. Because the decision for swimmers to do "doubles", or train twice a day, has to do with a lot more factors than age or ability level.

Double practices are extremely popular at high levels of swimming, and in many cases seen as a bare necessity to be competitive at those levels. However, there are a minority of coaches who even at the highest levels eschew at least two swimming sessions a day. So how do you decide? Here are the biggest factors:

1. Are the swimmers making the best use of once daily practices? An easy indicator that you may have swimmers ready for doubles is that you feel as a coach that the swimmer or swimmers are practicing with good quality on the once daily training sessions.

There is no point at all in adding practice times if you don't have quality on single training sessions. Your job as a coach is to ensure quality in these once daily sessions first and foremost.

2. Are you training in a way that the swimmers can recover from a morning practice to an afternoon practice? The vast majority of coaches are training swimmers that attend school. Therefore you must consider that between a morning and an afternoon practice, there will be little time for passive recovery (like sleep). Can your swimmers bounce back and put in a quality training.

Training programs that need to put in regularly scheduled "recovery practices" are very inefficient. Why waste everybody's time like this? Rather, make your training such that swimmers can push their fitness at each training.

3. Do you have swimmers that want to train twice a day? This is probably the one I find most disagreement with other coaches on. I mean, who "wants" to come to morning practice?

In my experience, plenty of swimmers do, but only if you give them space to make the choice. In my career I have dropped morning practice altogether (at the NCAA Division 1 level, training a swimmer who won the ACC in a 200). When I brought it back, it was only for swimmers that wanted it.

Having swimmers bring a sullen attitude to morning training is a killer for the competitive climate of your team. Swimmers that choose morning practice are seldom sullen, because no one is forcing them to be there. You need to insist on creating an environment for this level of motivation.

As a coach, you need to look at the psychological and physiological big picture when considering double practices. Too often, coaches make a simple decision based on limited factors, to their own competitive disadvantage.

Want to make your training more efficient? Contact me for a free consultation.

How Coaching Upped My Parenting Game

Last week, I wrote about how parenting made me a better coach. The reverse is at least as true. While the old saying "you're never ready to become a parent" is true, there are many ways in which being a coach, and a swim coach in particular, gave me a leg up in my humble beginning as a father.

More than anything, parenting is the ultimate coaching job. It is extremely long term, constantly evolving, and it takes tremendous time and energy. It's also the most rewarding. Watching a swimmer go a best time is crazy fun. Watching your child learn makes you feel like the most important person in the world.

Before I get too weepy, there are some really practical ways that coaching prepares you for parenting:

1. Early morning wake-ups? No big deal- Babies do not come into this world sleeping 10 hours through the night. The early days of parenting are a sleep struggle for all new parents, and sometimes it feels like there is no end in sight.

If you've swum or coached, you've had plenty of tough wake-ups in your life. Waking up to hang out with a very cute little bundle that looks like you is far more pleasant. Even if she is screaming like a banshee. 

2. Knowing when to say "no"- As a coach, you'll encounter swimmers at many different ages and many different stages of development. All of them should be at a stage where they can handle hearing "no" from an adult. If you've encountered fifteen year old who can't handle hearing no, you'll be pretty motivated to go differently with your own child

As soon as my daughter started making phrases, she started hearing no from me. Especially when she fixated on "wanting" something and threw a temper tantrum about it. Instead I gave her a hug, reminded her that I loved her, but under no circumstances was I going to accede to a whirling ball of limbs.

3. You know how to trust other people who care for your child- As a coach, you are constantly working with other people's children. You know how frustrating it can be when parents react emotionally to something with their child and lash out at you. When you become a parent, you instantly understand the emotions these parents are feeling.

So when my daughter started daycare, and subsequently pre-school, I started from a position of trust with the people that cared for her. I said "thank you" at the end of the day when I picked her up. When my daughter was struggling with one thing or another, I came to them to ask for help and we tackled problems together.

It's an unfortunate climate in swim coaching that so many workplaces are not good for family life. Workplaces that recognize how much value they can get by giving their coaches the space and time to build these relationships will see a huge advantage.

Want to hear more about how to change the culture of swimming?

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How Parenting Upped My Coaching Game

There were little bite sized bits of avocado strewn on the plate. Occasionally, Olivia would poke at one before making a hasty retreat.

"it's icky" she said. She eats avocado almost every day.

"I don't like it." She whined. I took a big inhale, and got down on my knees next to her chair. I spread my arms wide and her head slumped on my shoulder.

We hugged and she started to cry. I squeezed a little tighter and she wrapped her little arms around my neck. After a few minutes of crying she conceded:

"I'm tired daddy". 

"I know". I replied. "And I love you very much, and I'm going to help you to go to sleep after dinner". I had disengaged from the hug with this sentence, and I was looking her in the eyes.

I sat back down in my chair. Her fork pierced an avocado, and she gingerly lifted it to her mouth. Within minutes, her plate was clean.

We're not so different, you and I

This may come as a surprise to some, but it turns out children are also human beings. There's a lot of advice out there about what to do specifically with "kids" as if they are some foreign species.

Since my daughter was born in December 2013, every hour spent with her I've learned a lot more about coaching than I ever would have spending the same time on the pool deck. While it would be impossible for me to list all the things I've learned in that time, here are some of the big ones. 

1. Trust comes before fun- One of the things little kids love to do (especially with Dads) is get tossed around. Olivia likes to be tossed in the air, or tossed on the couch. My physical fitness cannot keep pace with her desire to these sorts of things.

As an adult, we might not find it so fun to be tossed into the air. But she is confident that nothing bad will happen to her. She trusts me to throw her into a soft landing on the couch, and to always catch her in mid-air. Because of that trust, she is able to let go and just have pure, uncut fun.

All coaches want their athletes to have "fun". But do they trust you? Do they trust the people around them? Without trust, fun is pretty hard to come by.

2. People's "Problems" Are Almost Always a Rationalization

Let's return to the uneaten avocado. Olivia did not want to eat the avocado because it's "icky". But it turns out the real problem was that she was tired and feeling overwhelmed. When she was able to express that and get support, she could return a calmer emotional state and eat the avocado.

No amount of "but you love avocado!" or "eat your avocado, or else!" would have helped in this situation. As a coach, pay attention to the "problems" you are presented with by athletes. They may complain about a teammate or something specific that happened at practice. 

Too often we coaches focus on rationally fixing a problem, instead of keying into the emotional state of the athlete. Are they feeling sad, angry, or overwhelmed? How can we convince them that as their coach, we acknowledge how they are feeling and can help them?

3. It doesn't matter if you're right if the other person isn't hearing you

One of the most frustrating things you can hear a coach say is "well, I told [the athlete], but they did it anyway."

Parenting will put you in a lot of situations where your well-intentioned, reasonable advice goes unheard. You will think you have communicated clearly when you have not. 

With a toddler, you will tell them something many times before you get through. It is not ok to throw your hands up after a few attempts and say "well, I told her". You keep trying and find a way to communicate that works. 

Perspective

More than anything, becoming a parent has given me more perspective on coaching. I love swimming and I love coaching it. I love to watch people go fast, lead good lives and succeed academically. 

But I love my wife and my daughter more. On the most disappointing or frustrating day of coaching, I know it's not the end of the world. 

Lotte Friis Was Too Classy For This Sport

I first met Lotte Friis as a fan. I had stood in the stands, with my big Danish flag, waving it furiously as she battered her American opposition at the 2011 Duel in the Pool. Afterwards, I approached her cautiously and asked for a photo.

Three years later I found myself negotiating a contract to have her change her Danish club representation to the team I coached. On her next trip back home, she was in the water for practice.

Friis will not live long in the memories of casual swimming fans. That's a shame. Her best performances came races where Katie Ledecky did even better. She was an uncommonly brave swimmer, something that was in stark evidence even at her low points.

Friis was bitterly disappointed by the 2012 Olympic 800. As a coach, I wouldn't have been. Lotte Friis swam to win. She knew the only way to beat Ledecky was to stay in the race. There was no sense in waiting for the final sprint- that wasn't how Lotte Friis won races.

But while her pool racing was brash, outside of the water she was almost too kind. She deserved to have a big ego, but didn't. She was a tremendous ambassador for the sport of swimming and a good teammate. She was a superstar that knew how to instantly dismantle your awe of her.Friis' seemed to me habitually under-appreciated. She had to deal with a tabloid press (and even coaches) that celebrated her success but weren't shy about calling her "fat" when they wanted to insulate themselves from any disappointing performance. Oh, and they criticized her stroke for good measure, as if somehow a person could be woefully out of shape and lack any kind of skill, yet break world records.

When I think of Lotte Friis' swimming career I'll always remember her 2013 duels with Ledecky. A lesser swimmer would have been shaken by the London final. Friis was older, Ledecky was ascendant. It should have been a blowout.

It wasn't. Friis hung in the race until the final 100m. She went all fifteen rounds of a championship bout with perhaps the heaviest puncher in swimming history. Like the name of her book, Lotte Friis was a fighter. 

Why "Soft" Coaching Is Better

"And that's why English is the official language of America...". I was doing my thing- staring right through my seventh grade history teacher as she droned.

"There is no official language in America!" I blurted out, with embarrassed blood rushing to my face. What was I doing?

"Chris, please don't interrupt, and besides, as I said, English is the official language of the United States of America". 

I shook my head. The next day, when she admitted she checked and that, in fact, America had no official language, she didn't say I was right. Rather, she reminded all my classmates how rude it was for me to interrupt her while she was speaking.

That was the day I realized that anyone could be very wrong about something very basic, and would insist that they were right anyway.

But simply beating them over the head with the fact that they were wrong was not very effective. In fact, if the power relationship was imbalanced, it often made things worse for you. That's when I learned another way, a softer way of getting through.

A "Soft" Coach

As a coach, I've never been known for anger, or yelling, or for having the most torturous practices. In a meeting I will often speak far fewer words than whoever I'm talking to. I'm pretty proud of that.

I started my career at the University of Pennsylvania and was immediately thrust into a chaotic environment. Swimmers often got into the water late, sometimes not at all. One of my fellow assistant coaches showed up constantly late to morning practice.

Coaching there was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I learned that, if you made an engaging practice, swimmers were more likely to get in on time for it. I learned that swimmers were far more motivated by somebody that saw the best in them than somebody they feared.

I learned that drumming up the importance of a swim meet hurt athletes performance more than it helped. Much better to give a supportive hug and remind athletes every day that you care about them regardless of their swimming results. 

I learned that the less punitive force you had to put on people to get them do what "needed to be done", the better. Nobody likes being backed into a corner, they like choosing their own adventure.

Taking Your Own Medicine

I've never understood the impulse in coaching: "do as I say, not as I do". 

Why do we call young swimmers "student-athletes". Because we want to emphasize that they have a more important mission (education) than sport, even if sport is it's own education. Why then, do we just call coaches "coach"? 

Don't coaches have a greater mission? Aren't I a Parent-Coach? Why do so many coaches tell athletes that they are doing sports for something bigger than sports, all while living a life so focused on sports?

"That's Not the Way It is"

When I hear one of my peers or elders giving all sorts of weird, pseudo-masculine advice on coaching, all because that's the "way it is", I'm back in my seventh grade classroom.

But instead of blurting out an interruption, I listen. What are they really saying?

"I don't know any better ways to do it, this is what I was taught".

So instead I try to show them another way. I don't expect them to take me on my word, but on the results. I'm still working on it. 

Want to learn more about "soft" coaching?

The Real Reason Susan Teeter was a Princeton Legend

Yesterday, it was announced that Bret Lundgaard will be the new head coach for Princeton's Women's Swimming and Diving team. Lundgaard had for years gotten nothing less than a full-throated endorsement from his boss, Tennessee head coach Matt Kredich.

Kredich's endorsement holds enormous weight, as prior to Tennessee he was undoubtedly the best women's swimming coach in the Ivy League. I say all this to establish one thing: this blog is not an attack on Bret Lundgaard, who applied for a job and did all the right things to get it. Lundgaard is not the problem here, and will in fact have an opportunity to be part of the solution.

Princeton's previous head coach was Susan Teeter. Teeter is a Princeton institution, so much so that I had nearly forgotten that she too came from the University of Tennessee to coach the Tigers. But her impact went way beyond her results at Princeton. Teeter was a mentor to more coaches, men and women, than you can shake a stick at.

In fact, she's definitely in my top five "Coaches I wish I had worked for", along with the aforementioned Kredich, Mark Bernardino, Bob Groseth and George Kennedy. Teeter often provided more guidance and support to assistant coaches on opposing teams than the head coaches of those teams.

To say Teeter is a "female coach" is like saying that Princeton is a "New Jersey Private University".

But to not discuss Teeter's gender is to ignore a disturbing process that is felt particularly hard in swimming. As I mentioned in a previous post, the situation for female coaches in college sports overall is getting worse, not better. I'm sorry to report once again to my fellow men, but it's on us.

Again, it is not Bret Lundgaard's fault. To understand who is to blame, and what somebody like Lundgaard can do to change this, you need to understand the process by which head coaches are made.

College swimming operates on an apprenticeship model. Many coaches start as volunteers, graduate assistants or other low paying positions. If they prove themselves, they can advance to be full-time, paid assistant coaches. Many of these assistant coaches are not well-paid, but they are in their 20s and early 30s and can find a way to survive.

At this point, part of the head coaches job is to develop their assistant coaches to be head coaches. This is what Matt Kredich has done for Bret Lundgaard, and Lundgaard was quick to thank Kredich for that development during his time at Tennessee.

Many of these assistant coaches start working their way into the head coaching ranks in their 30s. Often this is the huge attrition point for women in college swimming. Here is a list of excuses for this from my fellow men that I don't have patience for anymore.

1. "These darn women have babies and then don't want to coach anymore" HOW ABOUT YOU MAKE A WORKPLACE IN 2017 WHERE A WOMAN DOESN'T HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN HAVING A CHILD, A FAMILY AND WORKING THERE.

2. "We don't get any quality female applicants!". Sigh, There might be a little work involved here. Recruit women coaches. Find some women coaches you want to apply and ask them why they aren't. Correct these things. 

3. "But, like kids and child raising". Ok, I thought we already addressed this one but here's another idea for you. There are literally hundreds of great women coaches who have compromised their coaching careers for their children, but now those kids are getting a little older, maybe even going off to college.

Consider hiring them and developing them and not being agist and, I don't know, thinking about how maybe the experience of raising a child from a helpless infant to 18 years old might be extremely relevant to the job you are doing and actually might really shore up some of your own weaknesses.

Since the overwhelming majority of head coaches in swimming, even women's swimming, are men, it's up to us guys!  I hope that Bret Lundgaard, more than any result, fulfills Susan Teeter's legacy by developing great coaches for the future. 

Sports Bullying and The True Fight

Over at Swimvortex, Craig Lord has published an editorial by former National Performance Director Bill Sweetenham on the subject of bullying by coaches. Sweetenham, who was himself accused of bullying but ultimately cleared during his tenure, has a lot to say on the subject.

Before we get into his arguments, I will say I do not agree with Sweetenham on several points. His defense of bad behavior by coaches communicates a message I find dangerous: that elite sports is somehow so special that it justifies behavior we wouldn't accept in normal walks of life.

In his editorial, Sweetenham begins with a cringeworthy comparison between sport and war. Both are "abnormal" to him, in terms of what must be done to best the other side. This comparison is tired, ridiculous and insulting to the real risks of armed combat. No one dies if they lose a swimming race.

The rest of Sweetenham's piece centers on the fact that athletes must be motivated and pushed to exceptional efforts to get exceptional results. 

No one would question this, but the issue of bullying in coaching is not this. Concern for the behavior of coaches is not about how hard the training they are giving is or what they are demanding. It is often not a question of "what" or "why". It is a question of "how" they are doing this "motivation".

Ranting and raving and unleashing a childish temper on an athlete at a swimming competition is not coaching. I've seen it many times, it simply shouldn't have a place in sport. I've heard it justified hundreds of times by colleagues because it "gets results".

You can scare an athlete into trying harder in the short term and maybe get a good result, but you are damaging them in the long term, and that's not what coaching is about.

I have seen so much behavior in the coaching world that is totally unacceptable, and the coaches escape any consequence because of the strange culture we have created around sport. This is the real problem, not the very small chance that athletes are lodging false accusations against coaches as some sort of revenge plot. 

Sweetenham ignorantly declares that "Any experienced coach knows that sporting administrators, theorists, psychologists, change culture experts, external motivators etc. do not possess a real feel for the athlete and the process." Which is a nice way to justify anything a coach does under the auspices "only a coach can understand what needs to be done here". 

I reject this argument. Coaches need to be held to a higher standard, not excepted because others just don't 'get it'. The next generation of elite athletes will have input from many sources, not just one "god" coach, and that will be a good thing. The world outside of sport has a lot to tell us about how we should motivate athletes positively to even higher planes of performance.

Want to learn exceptional motivation techniques that also help athletes succeed in life?

Specialized Coaching is Not Just For Elite Athletes

In the world of coaching swimming, it's dangerous to call yourself a specialist. Even in the college ranks, where there are 'sprint", "middle distance" and "distance" coaches (the most common specialties, coaches fight it.

They fight it because getting pigeon-hold with a specialist title means that you could miss out on that next big opportunity. If you're known as a "sprint coach", and "they" really want somebody who knows "distance", well you're out of luck.

The fight against specialized coaching is a silly one. It's denying reality, and good for no one involved. Imagine if Anthony Ervin was out there, insisting to everyone that he was just as good at the 1500 free as the 50. Would that be good for anyone?

No, and in the same way, it is ok for coaches to admit what they are good at (and what they are not good at). It is also far too simplistic to say that a coach is "bad" at coaching sprinters or "good at distance". Coaches have a set of skills that work in a system. The sum of those skills can mean positive outcomes for certain swimmers and negative outcomes for others.

This is where specialized coaching comes in. By knowing and admitting what your skills are, you can augment how many swimmers will be successful by having swimmers coached by coaches with different skills, skills that may connect more with them being successful. While we often think to do this at the elite level, it is actually equally important at lower levels, where we miss opportunities to move potentially great swimmers developmentally because we fear specialized coaching.

Let me give you an example. In 2015, I was with the Danish Junior National team at a meet. We had a swimmer on the team, a sprinter. She had poor skills, bad turns, bad dive and did not know how to perform a relay start (even though she was due to be a on a relay).

How was she relatively successful then? She had a coach who connected with her enthusiasm for the sport. She loved to race and compete, and she overcame a lot of her skill deficiencies with her attitude. Her coach was not perfect, but he had done a good job.

Now imagine if that coach had been able to team up with a coach or coaches who's skill set was all built around teaching the details of swimming. The more a coach brings other specialties into the mix, the greater chance for success they give all their swimmers.

At Chris DeSantis Coaching, I'm not trying to do anything that I'm ok at, or pretty good at, definitely nothing I'm bad at. I'm only working in the areas where I am exceptional, and that I know I can make a big, lasting difference in only a small amount of time. Are you interested?

ASCA Is A Waste of Money That Hurts Our Sport

Hundreds of times, I've uttered the sentence "I didn't get into this sport to get rich" to a fellow coach. There's always a knowing laugh on the other end. Most swim coaches get into this sport because they love it, and they love sharing that love with others. The feeling of doing so is so addictive that they will even go so far as to threaten their own health to get that fix.

So it makes absolutely no sense that many coaches, with so little in personal resources, let an organization like the American Swim Coaches Association (ASCA) have some of those resources. The organization persists for all the wrong reasons.

I'm writing this knowing it paints a target on my back. The American Swimming Coaches Association, and its Executive Director John Leonard, hold immense sway in the world of swimming. 

Leonard is a con-man. He paints himself as a crusader against corruption. He is corrupt. With one hand he rails about drugs in the sport, a safe "controversy" as you would be hard pressed to find any American swim coach with a "pro-doping" stance. With his other hand, he fights the culture change swimming so desperately needs.

John Trembley, MItch Ivey, RIck Curl are just a few of the big names that could rely on Leonard/ASCA's support right up to the very end. Joe Bernal got inducted into the ASCA Hall of Fame a few months before being banned by USA Swimming.

The more benign con of John Leonard and ASCA is that they institutionalized themselves to such a degree that even ethical, well meaning coaches often feel compelled to dance for ASCA. Look at nearly any club coaching position and you will find some sort of "ASCA level" in the job qualifications.

I don't blame the parent boards who include ASCA certifications in job postings. They are desperate for some sort of independent body to tell them whether a coach knows there stuff. Unfortunately, the ASCA education program, and even the performance qualifications for coaches to reach levels, is no such guarantee.

The final piece of the puzzle is ASCA's annual convention. Again, many ethical, fine coaches feel compelled to attend. It's the biggest such gathering of swim coaches in the United States, and almost nobody goes to conventions for the talks. They go to be in the same space with other people who are doing the same thing. They go for the social scene.

However, as long as the good coaches out there hand over their hard earned cash to ASCA it will continue to exist in present form. There's nothing inherently wrong with a coaches organization, an educational program for coaches, and the people in it. But ASCA is not the organization swim coaches deserve.

It's time to choke it off, so please stop sending money for useless certifications and plan your own weekend getaway with coaches you like. You'll be doing something really great for the sport of swimming.  

Why Your Swimmers are "Choosing" Backstroke

Let me set the scene for you. Your in the heat of a swim practice. Your the coach and you've written a set, a set where you dreamed that all the swimmers could work on their stroke (non-freestyle). It all seemed perfect in your head. You made it "choice", because you're smart and you know that the swimmers will be more motivated if they have some autonomy over what they do.

Except they all chose backstroke. "YOU CAN'T ALL BE BACKSTROKERS!" you scream, either internally or out loud. You look at lane two. There is Agatha. She complained to you last meet about how "we never train breaststroke". And she's swimming backstroke. Your blood starts to boil.

Take a deep breath. Count to ten if you need to. Here are some reasons why your swimmers might be making this choice, and what you can do about it.

1. They might be backstrokers- Have pity on them for being the most inferior sect of swimmers. Shots fired Garrett McCaffrey. 

2. The sendoffs could be wrong- One of the biggest rookie mistakes in constructing practice is to assign a single interval time for all three strokes as if they are equal. Backstroke and butterfly are much faster than breaststroke by an order of 3-4 seconds per 50m on the elite level.

Also, if you are not training race pace (why aren't you training race pace?), then backstroke will be much easier to do at below race pace, for longer distances. 

Swimmers instincts to avoid butterfly and breaststroke when sendoffs do not allow them to do the reps at quality are correct. Common technical problems in these two strokes are a result of "struggle" technique when forced to do repetitions with inadequate recovery or too long distances.

If I were designing a race pace set of 25s for butterflyers, backstrokers and breaststrokers to all do together, it might look something like this:

30x25 on :30/:35/:40

Backstrokers able to go under 1:00 should start on the :30. Backstrokers 1:00-:1:12 on :35. Breaststrokers up to 1:00 on :35, Breaststrokers up to 1:12 on :40. Butterflyers up to 1:00 on :35, up to 1:12 on :40

Any butterflyers or breaststrokers who struggle to string more than a few together at 100 pace, you could consider adding 1 sec to their 100 pace, focus on efficiency, or making every 4th one "easy"

3. Your swimmers are scared- Do you know the theory of learned helplessness? It's really important to understanding why people don't do things that would benefit them. Training hard, particularly in breaststroke and butterfly, is painful. 

As a coach, you need to build a bridge between this painful training and results. If your swimmers are scared and avoiding it, it is because they don't see the bridge. Yelling at them may scare them enough to take the leap, but will ultimately just be adding another painful thing to avoid.

Have empathy for your athletes, and connect with them on the level they are on. Figure out at what level they will be willing to risk themselves, let them go there and make sure they see the progress that results. 

4. Their backstroke technique is poor- I thought of backstroke as an easy stroke when I was a swimmer. Why? Because my backstroke technique was terribly. 

Specifically, I barely kicked when swimming backstroke. Kick is the most obvious thing that all coaches want swimmers to do, but much like breaststroke and butterfly, it makes things much more painful. But much like an appropriate risk in butterfly and breaststroke, this pain brings better results.

If swimmers are going to insist on swimming backstroke, you need to insist that they maintain a steady, narrow kick. Don't allow backstroke techniques that make the stroke "easy".

If you've tried all of the above and your swimmers still insist on swimming backstroke, don't give up hope. Someday, they may grow up to win an NBA title.

Sexism in College Swimming: A Man's Guide

Yesterday, I wrote about the stunning inequity between men and women in college swimming. The blog focused a lot on the describing the problem that's out there. What it didn't do is talk much about solutions.

Now, rather than mansplaining to female coaches about what they should do, I'd rather reach out to my fellow men. We hold the most power to do something about this situation, and with that power comes the responsibility.

Here are some things you can do as a man to address this issue. For the purposes of this advice, I have split these into a "boss" category and a "colleague" category. We'll start with the most powerful:

For Bosses

1. Actively recruit women to coaching positions- One of the most frequent complaints I hear from men about the lack of female coaches is that they can't find any "quality" candidates for their open positions. This is lazy. Yes, if you have an open coaching position at school you will most likely be deluged by men applying to that job.

That does not mean that there aren't actually a lot of well qualified female candidates out there. Spending time recruiting them will give you a competitive advantage because you will tap into a market for assistant coaches that many of your competitors are ignoring. Imagine if you got to recruit in areas of the country that your competitors totally ignored. Wouldn't that be an advantage?

When I was a head club coach, I easily filled my staff with over 50% women, helped them find opportunities for advancement and generally felt as if I had a competitive advantage because of it. It was a win-win-win.

2. Create a family friendly workplace- The world of swimming jobs is notoriously bad for families. Between the odd hours, the lack of off-season in many Division 1 programs and often non-existent family leave policies in athletic departments, it's a tough world out there, especially for those looking to start a family. Also, don't forget about the bad pay!

Men can be at work the day after a child is born, although I wouldn't suggest it. Women, on the other hand, have unavoidable disruptions with work should they choose to have a family. Some of the worst attrition in among the ranks of women in college coaching comes after the birth of their first child.

If you're a head coach, go ahead and read this excellent guest article on Swimswam. Please realize that Greg Meehan and Tracy Slusser did not lead Stanford Women's swim team to a NCAA title despite her being six months pregnant when she started working there. They made a conscious decision that coaches having a family would be a strength of their program.

There's a giant talent pool of female coaches that have left or never tried college coaching because of the poor work-life balance. This inequity can be a huge advantage if you are bold enough to make a change. 

For Colleagues

1. Don't be a bully- Women are far fewer in number in college swimming. They are often excluded from the socializing and casual deckside banter that is pretty much the lifeblood of coaching relationships and hiring.

They are also easy to pick on. As I pointed out in my article on Teri McKeever, female coaches often get criticized for characteristics that are praised in male coaches. As Toni Armstrong points out in the article above, female coaches are also pushed to "masculinize" their coaching style. Isn't that some paradox?

No wonder female coaching attrition is so high. Isolated, pushed to act a certain way and then criticized for it. The situation can feel hopeless. As a male colleague, you need to break out of this system and rise above it.

2. Be an ally- As a male coach, there are so many things you can do to shift the power balance towards women in swimming.

Cultivate female mentors (there are some amazing ones out there), and talk openly about that mentorship. If you're a male coach and don't have female mentors you are really missing out on some amazing wisdom.

Look for situations where your female co-worker is selling herself short and be the person who tells her she deserves more. As we approach salary and evaluation time, be open with your co-worker about how you will approach the head coach.

At least start

These suggestions are just a beginning. There is so much work to be done! Ultimately, the more we improve the standing of women in our sport the more we improve our sport for everybody involved. 

Are you a woman who would like to speak out on this issue? Write me for a guest posting spot. 

This is a Pay Chasm, Not a Pay Gap

There is a silent crisis going in college swimming. Silent because it's happening so slowly and to an already disadvantaged set of people (women) that it hardly gets any attention at all. That women are disadvantaged in college swimming is obvious. What is not obvious is that things are getting worse.

I sat down last night to comb through publicly available salary data for college swim coaches. Due to public accountability laws, salary information for state university employees exists in searchable databases in many cases. Many large state universities are also some of the highest performing college swimming and diving programs.

I had a theory- that much like many other fields, women were getting paid less. What I found was horrifying. Not only are women getting paid less to do the same work, they are sometimes getting paid less than their male counterparts despite more experience, time served and education at the same institution.

The Not Bosses

I looked at combined (men's and women's) programs from power conferences (SEC/ACC/B1G). Why? Because these are programs with large coaching staffs (allowed up to six coaches on the same staff). In all cases I looked at there was at least one female staff member, (in one case two).

I excluded head coaches, because head coaches of combined programs in these large programs are overwhelmingly male. Courtney Hart (my former boss) remains the only woman coaching a combined program in a "power" conference. Likewise if you look at the collegeswimming.com top 50 ranking of Division 1 teams (men and women), there are only one female head coach of a combined program, Mandy Commons-Disalle at Cincinnati.

Any comparison including these two women would unfairly single them out, something which I have taken great pains to avoid. 

I averaged the salary of non-head coach staff members (male) and compared that with the female average for twelve schools for which such data was readily available. The average male salary was $70,000 a year, while the average female salary was $56,000. This is means that women are earning 79% of what men are for similar positions at these institutions.

The "Good" Jobs

Here is where you may interject and say "well, this post has a dramatic title, 79% is pretty much the same as the nationally cited pay gap". A couple of reasons why this figure is more dramatic than you might assume:

First, the biggest reason for this huge gap in non-head coach salaries is that the better positions are overwhelmingly filled with men. The "special" assistant coach titles like "Associate Head Coach" or "Head Assistant Coach" or however coaches are promoted internally, are almost unanimously male.

Likewise, diving coach positions, which often pay better than normal assistant coaching positions, are almost unanimously male at these top programs. In one of two instances where a woman held an associate head coach position, she dramatically swung what was going to be a far worse gap in salaries.

If you think that a fair, merit-based system has resulted in men almost unanimously having these jobs, then I have a membership fee at ASCA to sign you up for. Finally, these are the schools where salaries are easily researched. The people making these salary decisions know this information can be found! Imagine what is happening at private schools or other places with less public accountability.

But wait! There's more

Other highlights/lowlights from my research:

-At one school, despite a female coach having nearly a decade of experience, she was paid less than two fresh faced male assistant coaches added within the last couple years

-At the other school with a female associate head coach, she was paid half (!) the salary of the male associate head coach.

-In the only program with multiple female staff members, a female staff member with a Doctorate (in a relevant field) was payed a lower salary than the men despite two of those men only having bachelors degrees.

'Tis The Season

The college hiring season is in full swing. Here are some things you can count on:

-If a female assistant coach leaves a position open and she was the only female working for a male head coach at a women's program or a combined program, it will be "unofficially" required that the opening be filled with a female.

This unofficial affirmative action does little to help women, and in fact allows Athletic Directors and Coaches to pat themselves on the back as if they are actually making an effort to make a fair playing field for female coaches

-Returning assistants often are evaluated around this time, and have their one year contracts renewed in June/July. Salaries are negotiated. Want help researching if you're getting a fair salary? I can help

-One of the most powerful women in college swimming, Susan Teeter, is retiring. Whether or not her job is filled by a man will determine whether it follows a national trend, where female coaches from the early days of NCAA sports have generally been replaced by men as the salaries and stature of those positions improve.

Up next, how can we as stakeholders in college swimming make this situation better? 

Do you want information on how to improve the gender diversity of your team or coaching staff. Write me

Don't Visualize With Anxious Athletes

When I bring up the topic of mental skills with swim coaches, I hear one word more than any other: visualization. It sends chills down my spine. While visualization (a sort of mental dress rehearsal for actual competition) has value in certain situations, it can actually do more harm than good, especially when dealing with athletes that are anxious in competitive situations.

Visualization as a technique has existed for a long time, long enough that I remember doing it in the mid 90s as an age group swimmer. For a long time in my career, I dismissed it. When I did give it a try, it was my most anxious swimmer that convinced me that it was the wrong solution.

You see, if someone is anxious about an upcoming event, asking them to imagine themselves in that event is far from helpful. Anxiety plays tricks on your mind, and intrudes on your rationalizing of what will come in the future with horrible, unlikely outcomes.

If you don't address the underlying anxiety an athlete is facing, asking them to visualize is like forcing them to have a nightmare. The visualization will then have the opposite effect you intended as a coach, as it will make the "unlikely" poor outcome more likely, and only reinforce their paranoia.

I'm convinced that one reason visualization is so popular is that it is a "one off" type of exercise, something coaches can pull out at random interval and declare that they did what they could to mentally prepare athletes.

That is not to say that visualization is totally useless. For athletes that are especially visually oriented, (think artists or designers), it can be very effective in augmenting their performance. Just be careful that those athletes aren't also fearful in race situations, as the negative effect will be even greater.

To address the underlying anxiety athletes are feeling about competition, the solution is much more about a long, sustained effort, just like teaching any other technique. As I have discussed in a previous post, there are concrete steps you can take as a coach to address this situation. 

There are a lot better ways to improve the mental skills of your athletes than visualization, with many research backed techniques out there that can make a huge difference. Want to add them to your team or personal practice? Write me for a free consultation.