Keeping Things Simple

Following up on what we wrote about last week, looking to make changes in how we approach our season, it occurs to us that we can make substantive changes but still keep things simple.

This occurred to us as we mused about why a very fast swimmer on our team decided to try his talents on the football field this fall, his freshman year in high school. We certainly don’t ever want to be in charge of another person's life and yet it made us think, "Why isn't swimming, especially on our team, compelling enough to make such a decision a foregone conclusion?"

We said we were not thrilled but we support him. We will welcome him back in mid-November and he knows he will need to earn his spot in our SR 1 training group. We said, "We love coaching you but we can only coach you when you come to the pool. That's where we hang pretty much every day," pretty simple.

Whichever path it is you choose please remember the old adage "work works," pretty simple.

Eddie Reese says do 3 things in freestyle; 1 - put your fingers in the pool in front of your shoulder pointed in the direction you wish to follow then 2 - point your fingertips to the bottom of the pool as quickly as you can and finally 3 - when you recover, point your fingers at the lane line, pretty simple.

In this month's Swimming World Magazine there is a discussion on hypoxic training. University of Arizona Coach Rick DeMont says, "The secret is to just keep moving," pretty simple.

It seems to us that as coaches we oftentimes try to justify our programming and changes we make to it by giving complex detailed explanations. We are not so sure that is necessary or valuable. Someone once said about investing that if you cannot hear the pitch and understand it in 5 minutes, take a pass. Might be worth adapting to how we present our program.

10x100/1:15 is indeed different than 10x100/1:45. Make the explanation simple and you have a better than average chance of having the ears connect to the brain and the set getting done with the correct intention you had in mind.

What do you think?