The Power of a Great Kick

Hi again!  I'm back after a bit of a break....

This video is so inspiring:  Zheng Tao of China, kicking 100m (long course) in 1:13.56, dolphin and flutter from a strong core body, no arms flip turn, starting from his teeth and finishing on his head.

If you can duplicate this, you will know you have developed a great kick.

Learn to do the Back to Breast Crossover Turn

The crossover turn is a sideways flip turn.  An earlier blog post featured videos of this turn done by Eric Shanteau and a slo-mo step by step video.

Ariana Kukors is the 200IM world record holder.  She and the other Olympians are using this turn for back to breast.  We introduced this turn several years ago at the swim club and the high school and while many were intrigued by its efficiency and beauty, no one has persistently practiced it enough to use it in racing.  It is faster than the traditional open turn by at least .3 seconds, about the same difference as the freestyle flip turn is faster than an open turn at the wall.   All of us do freestyle flip turns.  We learned to do it by practicing it over and over.  Same with this IM turn.  Anyone can do this turn with enough practice.

Yoga for swimmers

Yoga is a lifelong practice to train the mind, body and soul. It is easiest to discipline the body, so Yoga often begins with physical yoga poses (Asanas). Next is control of the breath (Pranayama). And most difficult is control of the mind (Meditation).

 Flexibility, core strength and focus are vital to optimal performance as a swimmer, and all three of these areas are addressed and improved through yoga.  Swimming involves bending, stretching, twisting and extending, involving the psoas, obliques, rectus and traversus abdominus, and the erector spinae muscles.

 Flexibility: There's an ongoing debate about static(holding) vs. active(moving) stretching and I think it's good to do active stretching to limber up off the bus or before race warmup and static after racing to loosen tight muscles.  Young swimmers who have such limited range of motion that they can't comfortably grab the front of the block while doing starts, or whose stroke technique is compromised because they can't streamline with their arms over their head would seriously discover huge improvements in their speed if they devoted even a small amount of time to flexibility training.  For us older swimmers, spinal flexibility is key to maintaining joy and energy in motion. "You're only as young as your back!"  Like many things, it can feel hard in the beginning, but the more you do it, the better it feels.

 Core Strength:  Standing yoga postures require balance to stand steady and strong. This balance comes from the core, and rooting through the legs and feet into the earth.  Swimmers need to achieve balance with a fluidly moving environment, finding an anchor and leverage through the core of the body.  "Whole body swimming", connecting through the whole body through the core takes core strength in the front, side and back of the body core.

 Mental Focus: One of the principle foundations of any yoga practice is an attention to and an awareness of the breath. Focus on the breath is used to help deepen the stretch felt in some postures. For swimmers, this focus can be used in stressful (i.e., pre-race) situations to bring attention back to something simple and controllable.

(Shiva Rea, Baron Baptiste, Rodney Yee are 3 of my favorite yoga teachers who have inspired me over the years I have been doing yoga.   The 3 videos posted here are a small sample of the beauty and joy they share.  Enjoy!)

Cheating to Win

South African Cameron Van der Burgh from South Africa set the world record for the 100m breaststroke (58.46) at the London Olympics in 2012.   Watch the whole race here (starts around 3:00)
Go watch it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g7oRASpJO0

When he returned home to South Africa, he admitted to the press that he had cheated by adding in dolphin kicks at the start (3 dolphin kicks with the pullouts) and finish (1 dolphin kick into the final wall to finish).

There's a video of the dolphin into the finish:  http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/World/31435.asp

Here's a video showing the current legal breaststroke pullout with the 2 options of timing on the dolphin kick, early and late.

 "It's got to the sort of point where if you're not doing it you're falling behind or your giving yourself a disadvantage so everyone's pushing the rules and pushing the boundaries, so if you're not doing it, you're not trying hard enough," van der Burgh told the Sydney Morning Herald. He added that "99 percent" of the swimmers are taking advantage of the rule allowing dolphin kicks by adding more at the start or implementing them where not allowed.

"If you're not doing it, you're falling behind.  It's not obviously -- shall we say -- the moral thing to do, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my personal performance and four years of hard work for someone that is willing to do it and get away with it," van der Burgh said in the article.

What do you think?

Should we tell kids that this is happening and show them what Olympians are doing, including the techniques for cheating?

Is a discussion useful on the ethics and morals in competing?

Is it really cheating or is it just smart?  After all, when Kitajima first added a dolphin kick in 2004, the rules were changed to allow it after that.  Is the allowing of multiple dolphin kicks in breaststroke just part of the evolution of a stroke?

How does a world record feel to you if you deliberately cheated?  

"Less talking, more doing"

Brevity in the Art of Coaching

Can you teach something without describing it too much?

Can you introduce an idea in 30 seconds (a few sentences), then let people try it?

When they return, what questions would you ask them?

Listen.

What feedback could you give?

What "feed-forward" remarks could you make?

Challenge:  Coaches speak fewer words than the athletes.

SMILE :)

Katie Francis, a 6th grader in Oklahoma, has sold a record 18,107 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies this year.

Wow, that's a lot of thin mints and samosas.

"What's the secret to selling cookies?"

"Smiling."

SMILING  more is the One Thing we could all do more. 

Did you know that smiling reduces stress, increases longevity, helps others view you as more attractive and competent, and since others will instinctively mimic your smile, you will give whoever you smile at the same personal benefits?  

Children smile a lot and maybe that's why a lot of us feel happier around children.  Did you know children smile an average of 400 times a day?  Happy adults smile 40-50 times a day and the average of us only smile 20 times a day.  

I just learned how to include links into my text and use my webcam to post a photo (can you tell?!).
The links in this blog are articles or books.  

If you aren't into reading, check out this 7 minute TED talk by Ron Gutman on Smiling.

Other things we talked about at the most recent Coaches Training session:

1.       Good to Great:  

      What makes a good coach?  What makes a great coach?  What’s the difference?

2.      Energy:  How do you consciously communicate the energy you bring as a coach?

(Body language, facial expression, voice, words... Yes, Smile!  And use swimmers' Names)

3.      Focus on ONE thing… each comment, each set, each practice. 

4.      Feed forward

5.      Brevity:  :30 optimal length of comments.  “Speak less, do more”

6.      Art of asking questions in coaching:  use the 5Ws (who what where when why and how).  Practice asking better questions so swimmers can discover and think on their own.

7.      Structure of a workout:  Review (success), New challenge (stress and stretch), Finish with success again, Fun, End with a smile

8.      Have empathy with learners:  What does it feel like to do something for the first time?  When as the last time you did that?  What could you do to challenge yourself by doing something for the first time? 

Swim drills:

1.      Position II:  set up catch slowly and push, aim for stable head and lead arm, sent it forward,  all energy in pull is forward

2.      Breathing:  quicker and earlier

3.      Effective kicking:  What is happening with kicks that hit?  Ideas for correcting it (rotate less, engage core, encourage constant steady narrow kick)

4.      Butter flutter to fly:  fly arms and flutter K to full fly stroke with dolphin

Focus words:  great body line, tempo, rhythm, balance, length, press chest and reach, breathe low, drive forward

5.      Breast and fly turn:  begins with a backwards somersault done by using abs to draw knees up into a tight ball and roll backward.  Can you do a backwards somersault from a forward float?

Breathe Deep

It's the winter Championship Season.  High school boys last weekend and age group state championships this weekend.  Our athletes have prepared, trained, put in the time, the yards, tapered, rested and are ready to race.

What's my final piece of advice?  Let's go back to the most basic of the basics:

Breathe.  Deep.  Take in oxygen.  Find relaxed inner concentration.

That can be a last minute reminder before an athlete races, to take in oxygen, calm their minds.
Or, breath work can be part of a beautiful, conscious, lifelong practice, with many benefits for our overall health, including improving athletic performance.  I encourage you to research yourself and try it, see how it makes you feel.

There are many deep breathing videos on youtube, many of them with swamis and yogis demonstrating alternate nostril breathing techniques and such.  I've picked two to show you:  one on the basics of breathing, and one with a cool swami talking about more of the metaphysical benefits of having a pranayama practice.  

Books I read this season and really liked are:

Take a Deep Breath (by Loehr & Migdow)

Conscious Breathing, breathwork for health, stress relief and personal mastery ( by Gay Hendricks)

Ways to Better Breathing (by Carola Speads)

Jumpstart your Metabolism, how to lose weight by changing the way you breathe (by Pam Grout)

Freestyle: "swim with your whole body"

How do we develop a smooth efficient whole body stroke? 

 I think of fish, who shimmer effortlessly through water using their core bodies, using their tails and fins for balance and direction changes. 

 If we can first balance on our sides, flutter kicking, head looking down, leading arm at 45 degrees, relaxed and weightless, ready to "catch", and we get our other arm ready to slice into the next stroke, high shoulder and high hip all snap all together with the last flick of our kick into a balanced position on the other side. That's what this drill on the video is helping a swimmer to feel.

 

Breaststroke: Underwater pullouts and swimming

Where do you put the dolphin kick in the underwater pullout?
How big a kick do you take?
What do you do with your arms and hands to sneak them forward after the kick?
While swimming, how quickly do you get your kick around and back into streamline?
How wide is your pull?  How wide is your kick?
How do you draw your feet up (toes in?  toes out?) before the whip?

Watch Kosuke Kitajima at real speed in this first video.  See the underwater swimming at about :30

 

In this next video, watch a swimmer who puts the dolphin kick at the end of the pullout out armpull in the beginning of the video.  Kitajima slow motion follows, who puts the dolphin kick at the beginning of the armpull.

Err on the side of FUN

We coaches come to practice with the goal that swimmers learn something, and we tend to talk too much in our attempt to teach.  However, with young swimmers especially, we should remember that if we err on the side of practice being more "fun", the kids will return, and we will get another chance to teach them some more.  Less talking, more doing.  That's my goal this season.

About 8 years ago, a high school girl complained to me "Swimming isn't any fun. All you want to do is win."  First of all, she said this when I caught her hiding in the locker room when she should have been at morning practice.  Second, it has never been true that all I cared about was winning.  (And third, this swimmer has since matured and would probably be appalled at herself if she heard this story again.)

Actually, winning IS fun.  And so is trying your best and improving and learning.  And doing it with your friends on a team.  And getting in shape.  And doing different things every day.  The USA Swimming Parent Swimposium presentation at the November HOD (see the link to this off the landerswimclub.org website) has a list of what kids say makes swimming fun for them:

• Being with friends
• Coach compliments and encourages me
• Being known as a good swimmer
• Winning races
• Getting in shape
• Varied workouts
• Relays where team comes together
• Feelings of accomplishment
• Cheering for each other/coming together as a team
• Trying to improve my times; Being on a team

Often, when kids leave swimming, they return to it later.  We want kids to get the fundamentals of swimming, and we also want them to experience a wide range of physical and athletic activities, from dance and gymnastics to baseball, soccer, football, basketball, wrestling, skiing, volleyball, track, rodeo, music, drama, scouts, camping, bowling... so many other choices to explore!  So often, we see kids who swam with us when they were young, go off to do other things, and then come back to swimming successfully in middle school and high school.

Here's another interesting list from the symposium presentation.  We can do our best to make things fun, and kids and families may still choose other activities.

Why Kids Quit?
1. Takes Too Much Time 18%
2. Coach Was Negative 15%
3. Enjoy Other Activities More 15%
4. Swimming Was Boring 9%
5. Lack Of Fun 8%
6. Parents’ Emphasis On Winning 6%

What's the best mistake you made this week?

Mistakes can be the source of great learning.
We often think of "mistakes" as bad, and something to be avoided, or hidden, but I think of them as useful indicators of things I have yet to learn, or get better at, or understand.
Ideally, we live and work in environments where mistakes are ok to make, and there is space to talk about them, share them, analyze them, and become wiser from them.  Ideally, we aren't shamed or fearful or punished for them.   Let's try to make new and different mistakes.  If we find ourselves making the same mistake over and over, we just haven't yet learned the lesson that the mistake is trying to teach us.

This week, my best mistake was losing emotional control and yelling at a swimmer.
Again.
I got angry and yelled at a swimmer who consistently irritates me when he acts in unsafe ways and is disrespectful to his teammates.  I've tried many approaches in the last few years I've worked with him.... I ignore him, I talk to him, use logic, humor, positive and negative consequences.  Nothing has worked, and we repeat our pattern, he misbehaves, I yell at him.
Now, I am not a yeller.  I don't like myself when I yell.  first, it doesn't do any good, and second, it just reinforces what this swimmer wants from everyone, negative attention.  So, after I caught myself making this mistake again, I see that the true solution is to examine myself closer (why does this person trigger me so often?) and to shift my perspective to be grateful for this opportunity to really understand something, about both of us, but mainly about me.

"The troublemakers in your life are your best teachers."  (Pema Chodron)






"Do not wish that your problems get smaller or go away, rather wish that your ability to deal with the problems expands."