ISOSC Journal

I highly recommend checking out the first issue of the International Society of Swim Coaches Journal, here.  It is free and features an article by myself (selfless plug!) on shoulder rehabilitation.  Expand your swimming mind education, to learn new concepts and concrete old ones (at least the good ones).


GJohn

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Friday Interview with Russell Payne

1) Please introduce yourself to the readers (how you started in the profession, 

education, credentials, experience, etc.).

I am a professional, post-graduate swimmer at the Santa Clara Swim Club. I started 

swimming about 20 years ago in Colorado. In college, I swam for the University of Minnesota, 

winning 2 Big Ten Championships and was elected captain my senior year. After I graduated, 

I spent a year in southern Spain teaching English and training. It was a really cool experience, 
swimming in a different country, that served to whet my appetite for more training. After I 
returned form overseas, I settled in Charlotte, North Carolina for a 

year where I got a chance to train at the Olympic Center of Excellence set up at SwimMAC. 

While there I tweaked my strokes and picked up some great racing experience around the 

US, Italy, and Canada.

2) What is the weirdest training you've done throughout your career? 

While I was training at SwimMAC, we trained a few times a week at the Johnson C Smith 

University pool. We all called it the "Mad Scientists Laboratory." The pool had a custom built 

power-rack-like MACRack on one wall, climbing ropes hanging from the ceiling over the pool, 

and hooks all over the bottom and sides of the pool that we could hook cords and ropes to. 

All this was used for some crazy circuit workouts that included some of the following 

stations:

-Climb a rope to the ceiling, do 10 pull-ups on the rafters, drop into the pool and sprint to 

the other side

-Attach yourself to a stretch cord attached to the bottom of the deep end and vertical kick 

(survival kick - keep head above water until you can't anymore)

-Swim Breaststroke with a stretch cord attached to the ceiling

3) What aspects in each stroke are you currently working to improve?

Fly - I spent a lot of time over the past few years working on my butterfly, and have cleaned 

up my stroke. I am now focusing on my IM, so I have been working on stretching out my fly; 

making it more efficient without losing too much of my front-end speed.

Back - My backstroke is in a bit of an overhaul right now, but my main focus is on cleaning up

 my catch at the top of my stroke. I am moving form a bent-wrist catch to one that is more 

like a freestyle catch.

Breast - I am trying to stretch my stroke out front; add a little more to my glide phase.

Free - Endurance, Endurance, Endurance.

4) What is the strongest part of your swimming?  What is the weakest part of your

swimming?

 Over the past 2 years, i have been doing quite a bit of sprint training, so the first half of my

events are feeling very good and very strong. 

On the other side of that same coin, my freestyle has always been the weakest part on my 

IM, and a focus on finishing my races has driven a change in my training philosophy, both in 

and out of the pool.

5) What is your current training philosophy pertaining to yourself?

I am trying to stretch my endurance so I can finish my races strong. This will require a greater

 focus on cardio training than I have ever had, and will also require that I do more 

distance-oriented workouts in the pool. To help support this, I am doing a lot of recovery: 

Ice baths, stretching and foam rollers have all been making themselves a part of my life 

again.

6) How do you utilize dryland in your current program?  What do you perform and what

are your goals with your program?

At this point I am on a dryland program that will not interfere too much with my swimming. I

lift three times a week, focusing more on reps than weight; and especially blasting the core.

 On top of that, I am trying to mix it up with different cardio exercises. So far I have been 

running a few times a week and jumping rope. I am also looking to utilize pilates and/or yoga

 to work on my core and balance.

7) Do you control your diet for your training?  If so, what are you manipulating or trying

to achieve?

I am going to sound like a hippie here, but I do control my diet by trying to eat whole, 

unprocessed foods whenever I can. That ends up being a lot of brown rice, whole wheat 

pasta, beans, fresh vegetables and chicken. I really like to cook, so I try out a lot of recipes 

and cook quite a bit of my food from scratch.

8) What projects are you working on in and outside the pool?

Lately i have been working on getting my name out there. This is mostly centered on my blog,

 RussellPayne.org. I have also recently been featured on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com. 

Beyond that, I am about to start a part-time job to help support myself and my swimming. I

am also pursuing some different companies that I can team up with to help me pursue my 

dream.

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Are swimmers training efficiently?

Once a swimmer has obtained a stroke specialty (freestyle sprinter, butterflyer etc.), is IM and off stroke training important? These off strokes can be beneficial in working different muscle groups, but is this necessary or are coaches too afraid to decrease yardage and time in the pool? If you have your older, specialized swimmers do you perform this training? If so, do you have a good reason or because it has been done in the past.  

GJohn

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Body Rotation and Kicking

Body part dissociation is essential for optimal body awareness and force generation. One difficulty I commonly see in freestyle swimmers is dissociation with freestyle kick and hip/trunk rotation. Often times, athletes have an over active rectus femoris (quad) muscle firing during every down kick and during hip/trunk rotation. I feel this is due to poor dissociation between the rectus femoris and the abdominal muscles. The rectus femoris acts as a trunk flexor, but I feel proper dissociation between a freestyle down kick and core rotation is essential. If the rectus femoris is always firing, the athlete can not properly up kick and if the athlete is not rotating, they may not know how to roll their trunk without this muscle. If the rectus femoris is firing all the time (during rotation and down kick) you will often see an athlete stop their kicking during their hip/trunk rotation.

Improvements in this flaw can be made by performing core exercises where the abdominals are maximally firing with the hip flexors turning on and off. I commonly prescribe marching with the pelvis maximally posteriorly rotated.

Have the athlete place their hand palm down under the small of their low back. Without the athlete using their legs, have them maximally flatten their back, increasing the pressure into their hand. While holding this position, have the athlete raise one knee to their chest. While maintaining this back position and hip position, have the raise the second leg to their chest (this is the tough part). Then have them ascend one leg to the ground then the other, while holding the same pressure on their hand behind the small of their low back.

GJohn

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Jazzercise For Swimmers?

Many young athletes lack body awareness and coordination. Luckily, out of water balance and coordination does not always influence swimming ability, but all great athletes have superior body awareness, joint dissociation and proprioception (one's ability to know where their joint lies in space). Improving these aspects as a youth are crucial to improve an athlete's biomechanics to transfer into a prosperous swimming career. For example, if you have a squirly 9 year old girl who can touch her knees standing straight up and walks around like she has nails in the back of her shoes, I'd bet an autographed Manute Bol basketball card she has poor body awareness and is not a stellar swimmer.

Improving body awareness can be accomplished, but comes easier to others. Luckily body awareness can be improved through various modes of dryland. I'm commonly asked if swimmers should do yoga, jazzercise, piloxing, boot camps, pilates, resistance training, etc. I feel these are great modes to improve body awareness, if the athlete is performing the techniques correctly and is not being overtrained, especially during the competitive season. Also, it is important that the swimmers enjoys the specific mode of dryland, again individualization is crucial to success.  

GJohn

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Coaches need Different Tricks up Their Sleeve

One of the largest problems I notice with swim coaches is their lack of flexibility. Often times, a coach will provide the same workout to a whole team. This approach should be used rarely, as each swimmer has different strengths and weaknesses. These strengths and weaknesses need to be addressed, unfortunately providing a one size fit all program does not address these areas. A coach needs to have different tricks up their sleeves to address different swimmers. Having a one size fit all approach only fits a coach in a world of clones and even though Dolly the sheep occurred a while ago, I'm not seeing any body doubles of myself (one of my deepest desires...) walking around...yet, so ditch the cookie cutter approach and individualize aspects of training.  

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Friday Interview with Bob Groseth

1) Please introduce yourself to the readers (how you started in the profession, education, credentials, experience, etc.).

High School - Manager - of HS team - semi assistant coach in summer

College - went to IU to be manager because of Doc. Only manager 1st year and got to do some coaching because Doc had no assistant and 3 team managers had graduated the year before.

1st coaching job - Fenwick High School - Park District of Oak Park

College - actually got job at Cincinnati because I was a good Water Polo coach and got noticed by Cincinnati Marlin coaches when UC coach was retiring.

 

After I graduated from IU - I was encouraged to go to Graduate School. I interviewed serveral coaches who had gone that route and asked them "Did going to Graduate School make you a better coach" - most answered "No" so I went right into HS coaching. Not sure that is the best decision today

 

I have been - Chairman of Central AAU Swimming(before USA Swimming)

President elect CSCAA - Executive Director CSCAA(currently)

 

Coach  - High School - 7 years (5 time National Catholic Champions)

College - U of Cincinnati - 3 years, Tulane 1 year - Iowa State - 10 years - Northwestern 20 years

 

 I am currently the Executive Director of CSCAA and am volunteer coaching at Northwestern for both the Men's and Women's teams

2) What process do you take when you analyze a potential recruits stroke?  Are you looking for specific items or taking a gross overview?

Times achieved - potential for improvement(training background - lift weights? - growth potential - other sports? - swimmer or athlete? - coachability

3) What is the strangest item in training you've tried that worked?  

6 ft long 1X4 to improve streamlining

4) Do you coach arms behind head or arms against ears streamline and why?

Against ears - one piece - better flow around the head - less disruption of flow - less frontal resistance(flow drag)

5) You've been involved in collegiate coaching for a while, starting at IU as a student-assistant, what recommendations would you give to someone wanting to be involved in collegiate coaching?

Don't know if my path would work today. I didn't start out wanting to be a college coach. My goal was to be a HS and Club coach. 

6) What is your view on resistance training and dryland for swimmers?  If you want, you can break it down for sprinters and distance swimmers or body types.

Resistance training should be a combination of weights, med balls, dryland and resistance in water(cords, buckets, parachutes, tubes, snorkel(lungs are muscles too)

7) How do you learn new things regarding to swimming and coaching?  Do you read books, blogs, websites, go to conferences, etc.?

Ask questions, read books about training for other sports - listen to what others are doing. Try out your own ideas. If you aren't doing something new every year you've stopped learning - your athletes will suffer. You need to be selling your training ideas.

8) What projects are you working on now or should we anticipate in the

future

Currently trying to get the CSCAA on it's feet financially and organizationally. Look for more working Committees especially ones to educate coaches on how to protect their programs, their jobs and the reputation of Swimming and Swimming coaches in the Community

Take care,

John

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Story Time

I've been researching and reading about neuroregulation and minimum effective dose training.  I was emailed a story from Bob Groseth the head coach of Northwestern:

 After the 1964 Olympic trials a training camp was held before traveling to Japan. "Doc" Counsilman and Peter Daland were the coaches for the Men's team. Two of the backstrokers who made the team Jed Graef and Thompson Mann swam for "Mr A" Bob Alexander in New Jersey. "Mr A" had a unique training plan. He had basically three workouts that were done the whole season. There workouts were about 1500 to 2500 yards/meters. Remember this was at a time when training yardages were exploding. The instructions for the workouts were that they had to be done at a specific speed. If you were unable to achieve that marker you stopped. If successful and still "feeling good" you did the workout twice.

       After making the team(Mann in the 100 and Graef in the 200) Doc and Peter wanted to show Mann and Graef how out of shape they were. They did a timed 400 meter back against the other backstrokers of the team Bob Bennett and I believe Chuck Bittick  both from SC. Doc of course had trained Tom Stock who was the World Record holder but failed to make the team due to illness. Both Doc and Peter were convince that Bittick and Bennett would destroy these two woefully under trained athletes. The results turned out to be just the opposite. Mann and Graef dominated the two SC swimmers even though they had never done a repeat of more than 150. "Doc" loved to tell this story on himself and was even at that time questioning the explosion in distance training for 100 and 200 athletes. Now almost 50 years later the training tool remains a blunt instrument 

This is a great story and as Bob states this training tool is still a blunt instrument.  I'm currently doing some anecdotal research on myself regarding minimum effective dose in swimming.  I am starting a base training phase of swimming for 15 minutes five times a week.  Following this base training phase I will engage in purely sprint training (5-10 repetitions of 10-40 meters on five minutes rest) five times a week.  In conjunction I will be performing strength and power lifting 3 times a week, containing two main exercises and only a total of 6 lifts per exercise.  This strength training will also contain large volumes of rest.  I have begun the experiment today and will be swimming a few meets this spring and summer, concentrating on the 50, 100 and 200 freestyle.  Experimentation time has begun!

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Weekly Round-up

Should one train strengths or weaknesses, by Howard Grey. Read here.

What is periodization and should you do it? Read here.

Chris DeSantis to write a book? Read here.

Need some variation? Ben Bruno demonstrates 5 inverted row variations here.

Want to work the glutes harder? Read here.

In season lifting information, read here.

Read about genes and their importance in athletics and body building here. 

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American Sprinters

The results at world championship the American sprint events was abysmal at best. Here are a few examples, look for yourself:

Men's 50m Breaststroke

50m Brasse Hommes

1 4 SILVA Felipe BRA 0.65 25.95 CR

2 5 VAN DER BURGH Cameron RSA 0.61 26.03 0.08

3 8 HETLAND Aleksander NOR 0.64 26.29 0.34

4 1 SCHOEMAN Roland Mark RSA 0.64 26.41 0.46

5 2 ALEXANDROV Mihail USA 0.68 26.44 0.49

6 3 VAN AGGELE Robin NED 0.68 26.50 0.55

7 7 TRIZNOV Aleksandr RUS 0.68 26.71 0.76

6 SCOZZOLI Fabio ITA DS

Women's 50m Freestyle

50m Nage Libre Femmes

1 4 KROMOWIDJOJO Ranomi NED 0.72 23.37

2 6 SCHREUDER Hinkelien NED 0.71 23.81 0.44

3 5 VANDERPOOL­WALLACE Arianna BAH 0.57 24.04 0.67

4 2 HARDY Jessica USA 0.70 24.09 0.72

5 1 ALJAND Triin EST 0.67 24.16 0.79

6 3 LI Zhesi CHN 0.72 24.18 0.81

7 8 POON Victoria CAN 0.75 24.19 0.82

8 7 BRANDT Dorothea GER 0.68 24.21 0.8

I mean, this is embarrassing. The USA won one event (women's 50 breast) by a swimmer I wouldn't qualify as a sprinter! Americans currently have 1 LCM world records (women's 50 breast).

This is going to address overtraining in swimming and if you don't believe most programs overtrain spriners, skip this article.

How someone can train 5000 yards a day for a 50 yard race blows my mind. Oftentimes 5000 is a minimum volume for sprinters. Seriously, look at college swimming the most valuable swimmers are sprinters, why not cater towards these events? American sprint freestyles are acceptable, but Americans prevent many athletes from reaching their true sprint potential (especially in strokes) by scaring away kids with great anaerobic potential secondary to high yardage or one dimensional training philosophies. It is embarrassing! Why would any sport push away some of the most explosive, athletic athletes because they have difficulties swimming practices which the main set contains distances 8x their best race? Imagine if Usain Bolt only did mile repeat training throughout his career. Do you think he would hold the current WRs? I feel he would be in Jamaica trying to find 3 buddies for a bobsled team, or he would be relaxing instead of wasting his fast twitch muscles running endurance races!

Overall I feel youth training can scare true sprinters away from the sport. This is embarrassing and sad, as some of the top athletes are discouraged to continue the sport because they are told they are weak or don't have proper mental toughness for swimming. This needs to stop and practices need to cater towards the athletes' strengths. If you have a powerful swimmer, who dies long and hard with repeat 500s, CHANGE THEIR TRAINING PROGRAM!

GJohn

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Butterfly Breathing

Many swimming races come down to hundredths of seconds. How could anyone forget the Cavic vs. Phelps battle. Phelps' won by .01 or in scientific terms, a hummingbird's heartbeat. Cavic's biggest deterrant was lifting his head at the finish, similar to a breath.
Often times, out on a Saturday night, typically at a concert, I will think to myself, how much does breathing influence butterfly? Specifically, how does breathing effect arm and leg coordination? Thankfully a team of researcher's in France had a similar thought (except they probably thought of this at techno club in capri pants).

Every swim coach knows breathing inhibits butterfly velocity, but some swimmers are influenced more than other with breathing. Sometimes Phelps' breathes every stroke during butterfly without a hiccup, while a 9-10 age group swimmer will drown and require an exercise belt to keep his hips on the surface. For this reason, I question the applicability of the study, but I still find it interesting. The researcher's broke down the technique of 12 elite swimmers into four phases “T1 (hands ’ entry in the water / high point of first kick), T2 (beginning of the hands ’ backward movement / low point of first kick), T3 (hands ’arrival in a vertical plane to the shoulders / highpoint of second kick) and T4 (hands ’ release from the water / low point of second kick).”

The results showed the swimmers had an 4.3% increase in total time gap (sum of T1-4 mentioned above). The researcher's stated “This was due to the shorter downward leg kick and longer arm catch and upward leg kick that led to longer glide time.”


To conclude, the study had no mind blowing, ah-ha conclusions. However, it is cool to say to your kids, “hey re-run, limit the breathing, it is slowing your stroke down approximately 4%”.

Gjohn

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Weekly Round-up

Sports

1. Post swimming nutrition, read here.
2. Creatine monohydrate consumption in athletes, read here.
3. Power braclets have no science to back their claims read here.
4. Five ways to build a breakthrough triathlon season, read here.
5. Open water is growing, read here.
6. Swimsense, a new monitoring system for swimming, read here.
7. What to expect for 2011 in swimming, read here.
8. How to improve athlete acceleration, read here.

9. Speed during training and anthropometric measures in relation to race performance by male and female open-water ultra-endurance swimmers, abstract here.

10. Aging performance for masters records in athletics, swimming, rowing, cycling, triathlon, and weightlifting abstract here.

11. Does breathing disturb coordination in butterfly? Read abstract

Resistance Training

1. Prowler Training, read here.
2. Low intensity vascular restriction resistance training as beneficial as high intensity resistance training? Read abstract here.

GJohn

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Interview Friday-Matthew Emmert

1) Please introduce yourself to the readers (how you started in the profession, education, credentials, experience, etc.).
My name is Matt Emmert and I’m currently a graduate assistant swimming coach with Texas Christian University.  Collegiately I swam at the University of Rhode Island, where I also began my coaching career with the Rams Swimming Club during my Junior season.  While at URI, I pretty much majored in swimming with a minor in History.  I’m a self-proclaimed swim geek who is constantly studying the sport and looking for new ways to be innovative with training & technique.  At TCU I’m involved with all aspects of the program, but primarily work with the Sprinters.  Along with my coaching duties, I’m pursuing a Masters of Liberal Arts degree.  Similar to my history degree, Liberal Arts has a broad range of subjects, but allows me the freedom to focus most of my time on coaching.  Professionally I’m an ASCA level 4 certified coach in a hot pursuit to obtain my level 5 certification!  

2) How do you analyze a swimmer's stroke? Do you have a checklist, look for particular items, etc.?
Stroke analysis is probably one of my favorite aspects of the coaching profession.  I don’t have a formal checklist to evaluate strokes, but I do have a core base of fundamentals I’ll look for in order to improve an athlete’s stroke.  When working with athletes it’s very important for me to have an open line of communication with them.  I talk a lot about “feel” in regards to stroke analysis.  It doesn’t always have to “feel” good, but in order for us to improve their technique it’s important for me to know what it “feels” like to them.  It’s on a case by case basis, but generally I’m trying to get them to be more efficient through a variety of ways depending on the athletes current stroke.  Majority of the times, I find I’m working to get the athlete more relaxed which allows them to feel a faster tempo with less effort.  Generally this will have a positive effect on their distance per stroke.  Here at TCU we try to do as much video analysis as we can.  It is highly beneficial for athletes to do filming and get the immediate feedback, but can be very time consuming and logistically difficult in implement into a training program.  As a golf instructor once told me: “Feel & Real are 2 completely different things”, which totally sums up my golf swing.  Swimmers may feel like they’re swimming one way, but how they really are swimming can be completely different.  

3) How do you include dryland into your training and how do you increase and decrease throughout the season?
This could be a complex answer for our program as a whole, so I’ll just address specifically what our Sprinters do.  They’ll lift 3x mornings per week.  We’ll swim for 45mins, then lift from 6:30-7:30 on Mon & Wed, Friday mornings they’ll just lift.  Our strength coach does an amazing job of swimming specific exercises.  He’s constantly looking for newer exercises that could be specific towards swimming strength, but also injury prevention.  We do a lot of shoulder strengthening/stability work.  Below is a pic of one of my favorite exerecises he calls slide-board push-ups.  This swimmer has actually evolved to doing them suspended from blast straps.

4) What aspect of coaching do you feel you can improve?
As I alluded to earlier, I think film review, study, & analysis is an area I’d like to find more time to implement into our program.  Some football coaches would argue that film has had one of, if not the greatest impact on changing their sport.  I think in swimming, because we’re working in another element (Water), film review could have as significant impact in revolutionizing the sport if utilized more effectively.  

5) How many new things do you add to training annually? I have a rule not to add more than one thing, to know if it works, do you have a similar thought process?
As a sprint coach I’m constantly looking for new ways to engage & excite my athletes.  Swimming can be an extremely mundane and boring sport especially for swimmers, so I’m always trying to throw something new & different at my athletes, while at the same time keeping it within the confines of my seasonal plan.  The level of athletes I’m working with at TCU, allows me to experiment a little more than what I did at the club level.  Though when I do introduce something new, I try to see it through so the athletes can see improvement, and I can evaluate if it was beneficial to try again or find another way to tweak it.  I’m a big fan of resistance training in the water (i.e. power tower, bands, shoes, etc.)   Any toy I can use to break the sport up, I’ll try to find a way to implement it in our program.

6) How much "evidence based" training do you use compared to an anecdotal based approach?
I’d say my seasonal planning is based more on evidence and research, but the actual weekly & day to day coaching becomes more anecdotal.  I’ll use my plan as a reference for what I’d like to accomplish each week and each practice, but I’m not afraid to completely shift gears based on evaluations from meet or practices.  That’s probably another one of my favorite aspects to coaching, is trying to come up with new & creative sets that break away from the traditional mind-numbing sets, but also have a purpose.  Not matter if it’s an evidence based workout or one of my most “outside-the-box” type sets, I think it’s imperative that the athletes know what the purpose of the workout is.  Without them knowing the objectives & reasons behind the workout they might as well just swim 2 hours straight.  I stress that constantly to my athletes:  Swim with a Purpose!

7) How do you decrease an athletes stress level at a big meet?
In practice I stress the mental aspect as much as the physical.  I’m constantly talking to our athletes about rehearsing the same mental routine they’ll use at all meets.  It’s just as important for them to practice their “Mental Game” as it is to practice their strokes.   In just about everything we’re doing, I try to give my athletes a setting or an environment to get in them in the right frame of mind to rehearse their mental routine into the physical rehearsal.  In relation to your blog post today, I feel swimmers who are self-sufficient will have more confidence and less stress at a big meet as well.  They all have different personalities & physical traits, which means they’ll probably need to warm-up & prepare differently.  The more we can practice their mental & physical routines prior to big meets, the better I feel they’re on auto-pilot when we’re there.  On many of our race pace/quality sets, I’ll leave the warm-up/warm-down up to them in an effort to rehearse that, as we get closer towards taper they’re completely on their own.  Once we get to a meet, I just try to get them to focus on their ROUTINE they’ve rehearsed.  This instills confidence and eliminates them focusing on things outside of their control.

8) What projects are you working on now or should we anticipate in the future
My appointment as a Graduate Assistant at TCU will conclude once I finish my masters program in May 2011, so I’m currently not sure what the future holds for me or where my next coaching adventure will take me.  I’ve really enjoyed coaching at the collegiate level and would like to continue here if possible.  As for the immediate future, we’re hoping to win another Mountain West regular season championship with our Men, have a few more Male & Female Conference Champions, and qualify more swimmers for NCAA’s!

Thanks Matthew

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Neurotraining

In accordance with auto-regulation and performing perfect repetitions, a lot of sprint running programs are catering towards “perfect” mechanics with maximum velocity. For example, an elite track athlete I know, will perform only short distance sprints as training, like 10x50 meter sprints @5:00. However, he uses auto-regulation as well, meaning, if he does not make a specific time on his 50 meter sprint (based off his best 100 meter time) he does not complete anymore rounds. This type of training is suppose to provide correct neurological sprint information to the central nervous system, forcing optimal muscle contraction during running to equate to racing. This theory is seldom, potentially never used in swimming, but the idea makes sense.

Imagine a training program which after a base training phase, only has the athletes perform sprints of 25-85% the distance of the swimmers main event. I'm intrigued if anyone has experimented with this minimum of training and has been successful. However, I can imagine it working well as I have seen amazing results with providing the body correct neuromuscular information, similar to only performing sprint swimming. Combine this training, with heavy low repetition (2-3), low volume (3 rounds), low exercise (4-5 movements) resistance training and I'm curious to see if power and strength can be optimized.

What do you think?

GJohn

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Auto-Regulation

Auto-regulation is a term commonly used in resistance training. Auto-regulation is the idea of adapting the program or practice day-to-day depending on the an athlete's daily performance. This requires enormous self efficacy, experience and maturity as the swimmer is best at auto-regulation.

For swimming, I feel auto-regulation can be used more appropriately during test sets. For instance, if a practice is planned for 10x37.5 @5:00 and athlete A is holding his goal time throughout the set, but athlete B only holds their goal time for the first 3 rounds. Should you stop athlete A at only 10 attempts and should you have athlete B perform 7 sub-optimal attempts? Assuming the goal times are equally challenging, auto-regulation would have athlete A perform extra rounds, to optimize their excellent practice. Athlete B should typically perform only 4 rounds, giving them a chance to make their goal time after one failed attempt, but not repeatedly enforcing incorrect movement patterns.

What do you think of auto-regulation? Read a little more on the subject here:

GJohn

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"Buying" into the Program

One aspect that separates great from average coaches is having athletes “buy” into the program.I'm not discussing financially, instead having the athletes believe in the program.  If you think of every great coach, they carry a reputation that instills confidence in their swimmers. The best way to have athletes buy into the program is previous success and experience. Unfortunately, obtaining these two areas typically takes years, however there are a few methods to gain the swimmers confidence.

Confidence, passion and knowledge are essential to have anyone buy into the swimming program. Similar to selling any product or idea these traits are essential to have anyone believe in your program. Bringing these traits to every workout can get a swimmer to trust the program, even if you don't have a monumental reputation.  

GJohn

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