What Swimmers need to Hear

During the middle of the season and during hard training, athletes can be a little fragile.  Make sure you are letting your athletes hear what they need to hear.

1.  I think that the athlete needs to hear that their contributions are valuable to the team.  I am not talking about performance.  I complimented two of my swimmers this past weekend, one for her enthusiasm which was contagious, and one for her leadership among the freshmen.  I could tell they appreciated the words and it sent a message that they were contributing to the overall success of the team

2.  I think that the athlete needs to hear that their hard work is going to pay off.  Make sure your athletes understand the practices, and the process.  Teach them the value of being a student-athlete and also try to tie it to more than just athletic success.  Right now, my team is in the middle of a very busy part of the semester and each practice they make, and each test they pass, is another step in learning how to succeed in a busy world.

3.  I think the athlete needs to hear that the coach cares.  Show enthusiasm on a daily basis on deck, stand during practice, walk around and talk to the whole team.  Athletes work hard for a coach that cares and has the fire. 


At Calvin we also listen to the Word of God and we read Psalm 100 to start our week.  Reading from Psalms is a great way to go into November and prepare for Thanksgiving.  Enjoy

Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving grateful praise.

¹ Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.
²     Worship the Lord with gladness;
    come before him with joyful songs.
³ Know that the Lord is God.
    It is he who made us, and we are his^[a];
    we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
    and his courts with praise;
    give thanks to him and praise his name.
⁵ For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;
    his faithfulness continues through all generations.

Turn Goals into Behaviors

At Calvin College we are on our fall break or "reading reacess" as we call it here and this afternoon we are going to take some time to talk about how the season is going, prepare for what I believe are the toughest 3 weeks of the season in terms of how much is going on at the same time with academics and athletics, and more importantly, turn our goals into successful behaviors.

In my experience in coaching and as an athlete, I believe there comes a point in the season or training schedule, where those time goals don't carry as much meaning as they did during the first week of the season.  There is too much going on right now as the semester is in full swing, deadlines are becoming closer, training is increasing, and the end product is hard to imagine at the moment.

This is the point in the season, where it is important to take your goals and turn them into successful behaviors. 

Swimming fast takes many things to come together as does getting good grades.  Have your athletes step back and think about what an A student should look like and how they behave.  There should be a certain amount of time in the library, there should be a certain level of participation in class, there should be a certain level of relationship built with the professor, and so on.  The same can be said with swimming.  A 20 point freestyler has certain things they need to accomplish on a weekly basis, there is a level of intensity in the weight room, attention to detail in practice, good reps on starts and turns and the list goes on. 

Have your athletes focus on the behaviors it takes to be a successful individual.  If they can execute those behaviors through the middle of their season, when the end of the season or semester comes around, and when their goals become more relevant again,, they will be well on their way to a successful season and semester.


A good devotion we had the other week, was how few promises God makes.  Their are no guarantees in life, which is hard to accept sometimes.  The one big promise that God does make is that He will be with us, God will be our strength, whatever comes our way.

Psalm 46:7
The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Skill Building

I have been doing Yoga with my swimmers for 15 minutes on Monday-Wed-Fri this year as part of our dynamic stretching routine.  At the end of last week, which was 4 weeks into our season, I was amazed at how far the team had come.  The first week, there were athletes losing their balance, the posture and body lines were very poor, and their flexibility was below average.  After four weeks, we saw drastic improvements in all those area's and have started taking on new, more challenging poses.

As I was watching my team, I had a "what if" moment.  What if, we could improve our stroke technique in the same amount of time, and why don't we?   First, I think the athletes are thinking differently about yoga than they are about their stroke technique.  During our 15 minute yoga sessions, the mind was focused on learning the poses, figuring out how to balance, trying to perfect the body lines required in yoga and trying to figure out the puzzle as Daniel Coyle talks about in his book, "The Talent Code."

I don't think the mind is in the same place when we do stroke technique as much as it should.  How many times do we give sets of 50's drill/swim or 75's Kick/Drill/Swim, and watch our swimmers just go through the motions of one arm butterfly while just making the sendoff, and enjoying not having to work hard.  I think in order build stroke technique, we need to think about it a little differently and set it up more creatively for our athletes.

Starting last week, I am going to devote 30 minutes of stroke technique at least once a week and I am going to give myself different rules.

1.  It is not allowed to be part of warmup or warmdown.
2.  No sendoff's. (15 X 50 @ 1:00 drill swim does not cut it).
3.   It is going to be valued just as much as the main set.
4.  I am going to be high energy, high attention.


Set up a simple progression that includes the body position, the long or short axis rotation, and how the kick and arms go along with it.  You can add/subtract paddles and fins or any other creative equipment that you have.  Coach the set just like you would coach your favorite main set.  After one week, I like the results!

It takes good technique to swim fast!

Friday Morning Kick Set #2

Another great Friday morning Kick Set by the team, we started with a set that played off of our Kick set from last week where we did a simple set of 10 X 100 @ 2:00, holding the fastest time possible.

Warmup was a Kick/Swim set of about 1000 yards


4 X 25 @ 45 (22 or better)
3 X 100 Kick @ 1:30
4 X 25 @ 45 (22 or better)
3 X 100 Kick @ 1:40
4 X 25 @ 45 (22 or better)
3 X 100 Kick @ 1:50
4 X 25 @ 45 (22 or better)
3 X 100 Kick @ 2:00
*the goal for the 25's was to always give them a chance to reset their speed, tempo, and effort.
*the goal was to hold the 100's faster than last week, and as the rest increased, each round of 100's gets faster.

EZ-moderate swim set to allowed the legs to recover a little.

2 rounds of 6 minutes kick, 2nd round with fins.  I wanted to focus on short powerful efforts the got their velocity up much faster than their 100's.  We did 30 seconds of cruise speed, then a 15 second build to max velocity.  I blew the whistle at 15 to go, 10 to go, 5 to go, and then a long whistle to let them know the max effort was over.  I was really pleased with the results.  I chose to add fins on the 2nd round to allow them to feel more speed, but also add resistance to their kick tempo.

With the Breastrokers, we did 30 seconds of horizontal egg beater, then 15 AO BR Kick.

Some things to have your team think about while they do this is to see if they can get 25 yards in that 15 seconds of power, watch to see how many kicks they can get in during the last 5 seconds.  If you want a 6 beat kick and your tempo is 1.0 that's 30 flutter kicks in the last 5 seconds.  Not EZ.

Enjoy, let me know how well it worked for you, or if you added any twists.

Dryland Development

Dryland or cross training for those who aren't swimmers has always been a big part of my practices as long as I have been coaching.  I have had great results and am always continuing look for ways to be better.  I think in order to have a dryland program that really helps your team, you need to be patient, commit to it, and you have to allow time for the routine to develop.  I think there are 3 stages of dryland.

1.  Effort:  If you are just trying to build aerobic capacity, it doesn't have to all be in the pool, you can substitute many things that can be just as good as 10 X 100.  The important thing is to find something that works with your facility, the team can have fun with, and everyone will work hard and sweat a little. I think too often coaches start with a routine that is too complicated or expect too much out of their athletes, or expect their team to have elite athletic coordination right away.  Find some space like a football field, track, parking lot, or park and just create laps, make the team run different ways, forward, backward, skipping, shuffling, big jumps, little jumps. Your number one priority is to create a great team effort.  If you can get a great effort out of your team, you are well on your way.


2.  Muscles:  Once you develop the team effort, now you can start getting a little more specific in the routines, and you can start targeting swimming muscles and core muscles.  Usually this takes a little more discipline and maturity out of your athletes.  I have witnessed many teams performing sub par ab routines, med balls, and weight sessions because they didn't establish the effort first.  Make sure you are starting with routines that are easy to grasp and match your teams athletic ability.  Start teaching a little more about why we are targeting these muscles and how they will apply to their swimming speed and injury prevention.  If you can get to this step with a good effort, you will start seeing even better results in the water.  Teaching basic Squats, Lunges, Pullups, Pushups and med ball work  is appropriate here.

3.  Connection:  The final stage is the when the athlete can take the effort and the muscles and then make the connection to how they move in the water.  Again the routines will become more complex, and it will take even more discipline from the athlete to do the routine correctly.  Once the athlete can grasp the connection to how the movement and resistance correlate to their events, the sky is the limit as to how far the coach and athlete can get.  This is when you start adding olympic lifts, complex routines, advanced med ball routines, and power sessions.  Be creative, but you need the effort and muscle first!

Don't get ahead of yourself.  There are so many cool things you can find on youtube that you want to try with your team, but sometimes your athletes are not ready for them yet, and you will set them up for failure.  Keep it simple, start with effort, then get muscle specific, and then connect the movement.

Dryland

We are 3 weeks into our season so far, and I am very pleased with how our dryland is working.  Our goal is to get fit, understand the way we move in the water, and create strength that promotes injury free swimming and power in the water.

Monday through Friday after we Warmup with some dynamic stretches.  We rotate each of our groups through 3 different routines.

1.  Yoga - trust me, I am no Yoga guru, but it is not hard to learn and teach some basic moves and poses that will help your team.  So far we have mastered the sunrise salutations, the warrior poses and the crescent poses.  This is about 15 minutes, and it really stretches them out, and the team has really embraced it.  Depending on how humid it is in your pool, it could double as "hot" yoga.


2.  Med Balls - we have 10 different moves we do with a partner which can probably be found in most med ball programs.  I just pick out the ones I think translate the best to how we move in the water.  We are at 40 reps per minute and we are working our way up to go reps per minute.

3.  Boxing - This is new to us this year, and our team really enjoys this.  The HR is way up, the rotation and use of the core is excellent.  Some practice gloves and sparring pads are all it takes.  About 15 minutes and the team is sweating buckets.

In the weight room on Tues/Thur. we lift a little more traditionally, however on Saturday's I use a crossfit workout that I adapted for my men's team, and it has been working really well.  We use low to moderate weight and aim for reps,  We are in groups of 3, it is very competitive, and only 21 minutes total.  We use the deadlift, Burpee's, and Squats, although you could choose any 3 exercises you want for your team.  Just set up the weights and go straight through.  Everyone does two minute intervals, then 1 minute, then 30 seconds.  The rest is built in.  See the spreadsheet below.

 For the women's team, I am always looking for ways to build a little more power.  On Saturday's, the women have been riding spinning bikes, targeting their power output with various strategies, and we have been doing power cleans with 40 lb. med balls.  This has worked great, they do a power clean with the ball starting on the floor, and then finish with a push press as they use the legs to throw the ball as far as they can.  This has been fun and a little less intimidating than the bar.

2 min 2 2 2 2 2 Athlete 1 BackSquat Rest Burpee Rest Deadlift Rest Athlete 2 Burpee Rest Deadlift Rest Backsquat Rest Athlete 3 Rest BackSquat Rest Burpee Rest Deadlift 1 min 1 1 1 1 1 Athlete 1 BackSquat Rest Burpee Rest Deadlift Rest Athlete 2 Burpee Rest Deadlift Rest Backsquat Rest Athlete 3 Rest BackSquat Rest Burpee Rest Deadlift 30 sec 30- 30 30 30 30 Athlete 1 BackSquat Rest Burpee Rest Deadlift Rest Athlete 2 Burpee Rest Deadlift Rest Backsquat Rest Athlete 3 Rest BackSquat Rest Burpee Rest Deadlift
If you have any great new idea's send them my way, as I am always looking for creative ways for my team to learn how to move better.

Where does the fire come from?

It is funny how God puts things in your life just at the right time.  Being a college professor and coach, I am always talking with students about the future, goals, careers, and visions.  With that, there are a lot of students that don't have direction, they don't have that fire, and they are desperately trying to find it.  I have recently come across some good books and a sermon that all point us in the same direction.  The fire, comes from passion, which comes from wisdom, which comes from understanding.

The first book I have been reading is The Divne Conspiracy by Dallas Willard.  He talks about the common posters that read "All I ever need to know about life, I have learned in kindergarten."  He explains that while some of this is true, this will lead us down the wrong path and our poster should read something like, "I don't know what I need to know and must devote my full attention to finding out."  In other words, we should seek wisdom and understanding and not be satisfied with the cliff notes.  Tell your student athletes to learn all they can, they will have a better chance to find that fire.

The second book I have been reading is The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  He has an entry in his blog about following ones' passion.  He talks about how we walk around trying to "follow our passion."  Instead Daniel Coyle states that Passion grows along side us. He says, "The early years of any pursuit are filled with struggle and difficulty. The love of a craft grows alongside our skills."  Again, the common theme is, the more you know, the better your skill, the bigger your fire will be.


Finally, I heard an excellent sermon on Wisdom using Proverbs 4 as the text.  Here is the text:

Proverbs 4: 5-9 Get wisdom, get understanding; do not forget my words or swerve from them. Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Esteem her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you. She will set a garland of grace on your head and present you with a crown of splendor.

These books have given me insight for myself, and my athletes have been influenced as well, as we go through the season and life, trying to find that fire.  Give your team fire buy getting them to embrace their education, advance their skills, and understand more of God's world.