Mad Scientist Ray Looze Shoots for the Moon

Let me preface everything I'm about to say with this: I do not know Ray Looze. My impression of him is mainly formed from pool deck gossip and fifteen or so years of following the Indiana University Swimming and Diving team from afar.

I started nerding out about Indiana in the early 2000s, when a star of my local club scene went to swim there. It was an eye opener for me. I felt like a real country bumpkin watching our local hero miss the conference team and compete in a last chance meet instead. Furthermore, I recall them having a guy (named Murph Halasz, I think) who went 1:46 in the 200 fly, and that was not fast enough to qualify for NCAAs. 

I couldn't believe it. It was my first introduction into how crazy fast NCAA swimming is and was. In the subsequent years, Indiana remained a fascinating program for me. I remember how impossibly fast Colin Russell seemed, and then the drama that ensued when Colin Russell got ushered out of NCAA swimming.

The Russell saga established Looze' reputation as someone who pushed the boundaries. Indiana remained an always solid national presence, often derided by other coaches for exceptional recruiting classes and somewhat less exceptional results.

As I wrote about earlier, all of that changed when Looze shocked the college swimming world by managing to recruit former heated rival Dennis Dale over to his staff a few years ago. Now he's made two stunning pickups.

The first was Coley Stickels, the man who, in my humble opinion, has the most creative workouts in the country. Stickels has cut a swath through various club coaching jobs over the last decade, and success has always followed. Although, Stickels has a reputation for being even more of a loose cannon than Looze. That's where the mad scientist part comes in. 

He followed that dagger by pulling in Mark Hill, formerly of Michigan and currently at Old Dominion Aquatic Club (and his own business Flow Swimming). Hill played an instrumental role in Michigan's 2013 National Title, and has spent the last year disrupting the swim clinic game. Hill will also help IU's already strong recruiting with his impossible-to-not-likeability. 

While NC State is everyone's favorite ascendent team right now, Indiana is now staking their claim. They've built a coaching staff that can put them in contention for a National title very soon, even if Eddie Reese doesn't retire. 

Want advice on how to put your coaching staff together for a competitive advantage? Looking for a college job and want someone to give you an edge? Write me. 

It's Our Responsibility to Make FINA Additions Work

Last week, FINA addressed a longtime wrong in the swimming world, adding the women's 1500 to the program (as well as a men's 800 and a mixed relay). But it seems many in the swimming community were less than satisfied. "Where are the 50s?" they cried.

Since then I've seen a lot of squabbling about the change. There seems to be broad consensus that adding a women's 1500 is a really good thing, especially since the original reason for it not existing was so blatantly misogynistic that it was very embarrassing to still have on the books.

Two major criticisms have emerged. One is that the distance events are not in of themselves additive to the growth of swimming, particularly pro swimming in between Olympics. The second is that the 50s would be. I think both these arguments miss the point.

Let's take distance races, for example. American audiences are never shown 800s or 1500s in their entirety on broadcast TV. I've seen worse sins in Europe, where many meets go to the extreme of droning pop music over races 200 and above. They seem to have given up on developing any true fandom with this strategy.

Why do they cut away from distance races? Because Americans find them boring. Do you know what else Americans find boring? 1-0 Soccer matches. The rest of the world, however, has managed to find them absolutely thrilling. 

We have a responsibility to educate and bring in new fans to our sport in both distance and sprint swimming. Sports are no fun when you don't know what is going on. Which is why whenever possible you should have an announcer at your meet, especially for the distance races, to give context to the people watching.

The 50s are marginally more exciting to an uneducated audience, and you can count me among the many who would love to see them on the Olympic stage. But the quick splash and dash nature only papers over the same problem we have with growing our sport- even some people who should be top fans of swimming have little context for what happens during a fifty. 

Swimming's biggest problem right now is that we are not an inclusive sport. We make many decisions without empathy for wide swaths of people involved (or potential people involved) that haven't been fully converted to rabid fandom. If we want a true professional sport, we're going to need a lot more than me and some other bloggers in the basement to do it. 

The Joy of Swimming By Yourself

I swim by myself*. That's not very remarkable. After all, plenty of people show up to the pool, put their heads down and plod back and forth on the black line. Many of them are not competitive swimmers, they are the "recreational" swimmers that drive many "competitors" to practices. Also, swimming with other people can be fun and motivating.

For many people though, doing workouts on your own can make or break whether you continue to compete. Better yet, there are a lot of reasons why swimming on your own can be even better than being on a team. Let's talk about them:

1. You do a workout just for you- Every time you add another variable to a given workout (another person), it becomes more and more challenging to fit that workout to the swimmers to it.

2. You swim on your own time- I've heard rumor that people are busy these days. Sometimes even the most well made schedule of practices can mean that you sacrifice going to the pool because it just doesn't fit. When you swim by yourself, you swim on your own time when it works for you.

3. You are an introvert- For introverts, the socialization at large group team practices can really be draining and distracting from the energy you need to workout. Especially if you use training to "recharge" from other activities, a solo swim can be an incredible time to not have to talk to other people.

4. Swimming by yourself is infinitely better than not swimming- If there is any other immovable object stopping you from swimming by yourself, get in the pool alone. A lot of people who want to swim consistently don't because they beat themselves up over a 30 minute swim by themselves not being "good enough". Hogwash.

Today I started my day by going to my local pool for a swim. It was refreshing for both my mind and body, and I left with a feeling of accomplishment. Another day at the pool is a good day.

Want help training for competitive swimming by yourself? Write me.

A Frustrating Listen: What Comes First

Yesterday, I took a listen to the Gutter Lane podcast's return. Zac Adams, the host, had one of the most well-regarded coaches in the country on. Todd DeSorbo has received a lot of well-deserved praise for his outstanding work with sprinters at NC State.

But I couldn't help but get frustrated very early on in the podcast. As both men admitted, they were recording just after the funeral of Jason Turcotte, a coach admired by so many in the swimming community. The issue of work-life balance in swimming could not be more topical at the moment.

Adams tried to engage DeSorbo on the topic. Surely, on a staff with multiple coaches at the age where they have young children, they must have discovered some secret sauce for work life balance. If they have we didn't hear it.

Instead, DeSorbo demurred (all that follows are not direct quotes and paraphrasing:.. "I could certainly do better, we could certainly do better" he said. "Our goal is to outwork everyone" was almost a defensive response to any suggestion that they were taking less time to do an outstanding job. Finally, I heard the same old tired story I've heard a hundred times before "my/our wives are very understanding".

I'm sorry, but screw that. I got angrier and angrier the more I listened to the podcast. DeSorbo had plenty to say about recruiting, training sprinters and the professional career of Cullen Jones. Family? We'll figure that out later. I totally understand that many people would like DeSorbo to "stick to swimming", but it clearly seemed like Adams knew something really great about how they do things at NC State but never got DeSorbo to get it out.

As pretty much everyone knows, "we'll figure that out later" almost always turns into "never". It shouldn't be a pre-requisite to high level success in the swimming world that your spouse just "knows how it is" and accepts a lesser standard from you.

As coaches, we have a higher calling. We talk about coaching people first and athletes second. We need to walk our talk. Our athletes need to see us leading healthy complete lives. They need to see us putting our families first, and asking our work to understand that.

The coaches that look up to us need to see that the path to the top is not paved that way.

I have to imagine DeSorbo's family life is better than it sounded. If this post makes me sound angry at him, I'm not. I'm angry at the culture he describes, but for him I feel great sadness. Having met Todd many times, I've found him to be a kind and humorous. I have no doubt that he loves his family very much. 

When people are dying, no one thinks to themselves "I wish I'd worked more". But you can bet they do think "I wish I'd spent more time with my family". I truly believe that you don't have to change your measures of success to live that way. I think there's an even higher level of athletic success we can find when we as coaches start living a healthy, full life. 

The Pessimism Trap

Over the last weekend I had the pleasure or presenting on the skill of optimism to swimmers at the Midwestern Elite IMX Camp. It's a tough conversation to have with anyone, but especially young athletes. Why? Because pessimism can be a performance enhancer for young athletes.

First, let's back up and define both terms. By optimism and pessimism I am talking about explanatory style. Explanatory style is the way you explain events to yourself. Pessimistic explanatory style involves taking good events and depersonalizing them while making them seem specific and unlikely to happen again. Let me give you an example.

Let's say you had an athlete that broke through and qualified for Sectionals for the first time. A pessimistic athlete might explain it themselves the following way:

"It was so easy" (It had little to do with my effort to create the result)

"I was really feeling good in the water" (It was specific and not pervasive)

"I had the swim of my life" (Once in a lifetime events are by nature not likely to happen again).

Some coaches might find those statements to be "positive" or even praiseworthy. While most coaches wouldn't encourage all of those statements, pessimistic young athletes have a certain false humility that can be tempting for coaches to encourage. They are "tough on themselves" and "accountable". They don't "rest on their laurels". I say false humility because humility is also a term we misunderstand in sports contexts.

The core of humility is putting yourself on an equal plane with others and recognizing that in the words of the late, great, Chris Peterson "other people matter". Humility is not dismissing your own personal role in the positive events that take place in your life.

Young athletes often succeed with pessimism for a couple reasons. One is pessimism can work as a motivator in the short term. Sometimes we call it "staying hungry" in sports. The second is that younger people are in many ways nearly as emotionally resilient as they are physically.

This morning, my three year old transitioned from crying to singing happily within about three minutes. Teenagers are known for their "mood swings", which are really an evolving emotional resiliency. Adults are far more "steady". This is when pessimism's positives for athletic performance get overwhelmed by the damage it does.

The motivation that pessimism creates is not enough to overcome the downward spirals of pessimistic thinking. The older an athlete gets, the harder time they have pulling out of these spirals. Eventually, they are left "burned out" or worse.

It's incumbent on us as coaches to teach optimism as a skill for the long term development of athletes (and people). Otherwise, we are sacrificing long term life success for very short term athletic success.

Want to learn more about how to up your mental game? Write me!

Step Outside Your Swimming Bubble

This past weekend I traveled to Fremont, Nebraska, for the first Midwestern Swimming IMX Elite Camp. It was my third trip to the cornhusker state, the last two being for Olympic trials in 2008 and 2012. This time I was leaving the enclave of big city Omaha for "real" Nebraska.

I grew up in one of the smaller swimming communities in the US. Over the last decade plus I've had the chance to explore the swimming world. I haven't nearly gotten to it all, but I can't recommend this strongly enough: if you get the chance to meet people far away from where you are, take it!

Stepping into middle America, it was easy to see why the US is the world's greatest swimming power. It wouldn't be hard to come up with a list of excuses for American failure. Instead everywhere you look there are thriving pockets.

What I saw in Nebraska made me feel more hope for the future of our sport. For all the talk of "kids these days" and the associated problems, I saw great strength in the young people in and out of the water.

Much is made in coaching circles about how there are "many ways up the mountain", and that's true I guess. But I think it often misses the point. Young people are exceptional at adapting to many different kinds of training and stimuli, finding a way to take imperfect coaching and make great results.

As the weekend wrapped up, that great promise was on display. We did a start session at the end of the weekend. Ten repetitions for each swimmer over thirty minutes, and there was measurable improvement all around. Coaching is a hell of a drug.

Do you want to supercharge your team's or your own swimming? Write me!

Chris DeSantis Coaching and Pro Swim Workouts

Today, I'm really happy to announce Chris DeSantis Coaching's first partnership. I'll be working with Pro Swim Workouts, beginning with a podcast, to continue to my mission of providing better conversations around swimming.

The partnership grew out of a conversation with Nico Messer of Pro Swim Workouts shortly after I revived the Swim Brief podcast. Nico saw a gap in the swimming podcast world. When he presented it to me, I agreed wholeheartedly, and we agreed to try and fill that gap together.

Don't let me get too far ahead of myself. Why Pro Swim Workouts? Because I believe that Pro Swim Workouts walks the walk when it comes to making the swimming world better. It spreads knowledge, including the type of practical stuff (workouts from top coaches) that you used to have to fly, book a hotel and sit through hours of a conference to see.

Pro Swim Workouts puts money in the hands of swim coaches in exchange for their valuable work, and I like that. It also gives that valuable work to beginning coaches who so desperately need it. Now, we want to take a conversation into a dynamic format. Each podcast will feature a discussion of workouts, addressing all the questions you might have as a coach (or swimmer) about a given workout.

What is the point of this workout? Why should I do it? How do you implement the workout the best way possible? How does this workout fit into the greater context of a week, month, cycle or season?

These are the kind of questions we'll try answer. and we don't pretend to know everything. This is a podcast for people who want to hear an intelligent conversation about swimming training, and although we can't deny that we'll bring our own biases to the table, we're also going to work hard to not treat training like religion. Part of the journey will be trying to figure out how workouts neither Nico or I would ever use ourselves can work for other coaches.

The podcast will start with a bi-weekly format, with room to increase depending on demand. So get ready to join in the conversation with us and talk some workouts.

What Good Announcing Can Do For Your Meet

Sports announcing is something people love to hate. All the major American sports have announcers, and while we love to pick on their mistakes, they add a lot of value to a sporting event.

In swimming, the most famous announcers are two men: Rowdy Gaines and Sam Kendricks. Gaines is the color commentator on all major international competitions, as well as the NCAA championships (for broadcasts). Kendricks is lesser known outside of swimming but legendary within it for memorizing names, pronunciations and his relentless energy.

Gaines gets a lot of crap (undeserved) for the way he talks about Olympic races. He's doing what he's asked to do, which is to make swimming appeal to an audience that is possibly turning into the first swim meet they have ever seen. 

(Confession: I met Rowdy Gaines in person once and if you have the same chance you will be so overwhelmed by what a nice man he is you will struggle to ever say a critical word about him the rest of your life).

All of this is beside the point. Rather than criticizing Gaines, or Kendricks, lets focus on the hundreds, nay thousands, of swim meets that drone on without any announcing to help. Here are several ways good announcing can help your swim meet:

1. CONTEXT! You know what's exciting? Two swimmers trying to break 6:00 min for the first time in the 500. Many of the swimmers and parents and anybody else that may have wandered by a swim meet will not know this? An announcers job is to get you involved from the first stroke- tell the story of what's happening in the water.

I used to find soccer horribly boring. Why? Because I didn't understand anything about the sport. I spent half a season "coaching" soccer at the start of my career, and my enjoyment went up exponentially having context for all of the things I saw happening on the field.

2. Energy- Again, many exciting things happen at a swim meet. People will not instinctually recognize them. They need leadership- someone with a microphone that is energized at the appropriate times.

No one likes to listen to somebody who is raving like a maniac non-stop, but the appropriate energy and love for what is happening in a swimming pool is infectious (and we need more of it)

3. Building fans- The general state of swimming fandom is sorry. Ask young swimmers to name who was in the Olympics even a year later and you will face a struggle.

This is not young swimmers' faults. We need to build fandom in swimming from the ground up. Swimmers and everyone else in attendance in swim meet need to be educated from the grassroots up. We have such an easy sport to understand on some levels (people race each other and someone wins). It's not a huge leap to explain enough of the bigger details to people to make swimming interesting.

The responsibility for good atmosphere at swim meets should not rest on coaches and volunteers alone. Meet organizers should consider adding quality announcing to the benefit of all involved.

Interested in having an energetic, experiences announcer at your next meet? 

It's Lonely at The Top: Head Coach's Dilemma

Becoming a head coach is sort of like becoming a parent. All of the work you to up to that point doesn't really translate to the job that you suddenly have. Where once you could rest easy that someone else was steering the ship, you now lay awake at night either fretting about or actively navigating around icebergs.

Being a head coach is lonely, and most coaches don't get a lot of warning for that. Swim coaching can be a lonely profession overall, with a strange schedule compounding a weird tribalism. When you're coming up the ranks you often have the benefit of working on a "staff", so at least you have some peers to share the experience with.

Head coaches don't often have peers. All of a sudden, all the assistant coaches are going out for a beer after the meet without you. More than socially isolating, the challenge of continuing your coaching development when you become a head coach is the real nut to crack.

Swim coaching relies on an apprenticeship model. You learn from the coaches you work with. When you start out, you may have many other "peer" coaches as well as a coach above you. Head coaches have few peers, certainly rarely within their own team, certainly no daily teacher above them. 

One possible solution is to work cooperatively with other head coaches in your area. Your results may vary- in many cases your peers at this level may fail to see the value in improving a competitor coach. Another solution is to attend clinics and talks, but these sort of one-off experiences don't provide the ongoing experiential learning so many coaches crave.

Hiring a coach consultant for continuing education is the best of both worlds. You get a peer, someone who can help you get better (and by that virtue make your whole team better) whose only vested interest is your improvement. You also get the consistency and continued support over a length of time to actually fully develop. 

Are you coach feeling isolated that wants to up your coaching game? Write me for a free consulation. 

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

The Resilient Swimmer Test

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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.