What Is Your Shape

We are in one of those reflective phases of our coaching career; one where we are working on the mental construct of how to approach getting our athletes to make necessary changes in their preparedness. We find it helpful to keep things simple as we work the process.

Without being too simplistic, we have boiled down the game to three phases: body, mind and spirit. Each athlete on our team knows what we mean by these three components. We have discussed it at some length over the recent week or so, in meetings and individually in some cases as time permits.

Sports often make reference to "being in shape". Yet it can (and indeed does) mean more than simply challenging yourself in workouts. The word "SHAPE" encompasses a great deal if you expand your mind to accept its implications.

For example, a highly respected coach stated after the ban on tech suits was instituted that each swimmer now needed to "build their own Blue 70". Talk about shape!

So we wonder:

What is your shape - in body, mind and spirit?

What would happen if you did something each day to improve the shape of your body?

What would happen to you, if you did something each day to improve the shape of your mind?

What would happen to your teammates (and by extension you) if you did something each day to improve the shape of your spirit?

The physical, the mental, the emotional...each has value. When you put them together you become unstoppable, quite literally.

This concept is clearly not for everyone, since there are an enormous number of people on the planet who are easily stopped.

Is there anything stopping you?

Really?

What is amazing and simultaneously energizing is that with a well-placed word or teaching moment, we coaches can actually make a difference in our athletes' lives. This is what makes our profession so riveting and compelling.

Risk Taking

Wow! Everywhere we turn we find articles and mentions of the value of risk taking. The latest to come across our bow wave is an article in the San Francisco Chronicle with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He states that the five "core values" of his firm are:

Focus on Impact; Move Fast; Be Bold; Be Open; Build Social Value.

Under his comment about being bold..."Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that's changing so quickly, you're guaranteed to fail if you don't take any risks. We have another saying: 'the riskiest thing to do is to take no risks.' We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time."

We read a recently submitted goal sheet from one of our swimmers. The main theme was embarrassment. The swimmer was concerned that if "I fail, I will be embarrassed. Everyone will see my failure." Our response to that was 1- without taking a chance you will never know where you are in the development curve of your career (life etc.) and 2 - it is time to "get over yourself". Not that many people are actually watching you. They are too busy watching themselves.

It is interesting to watch youngsters (and oldsters) wanting to test their limits (risk taking) while simultaneously being concerned about their "rating" (how well they think they are measuring up to peer review).

As coaches, one of our main responsibilities is to free our athletes from this "judgment" process. A little more of "living in the present" goes a long way to future successes.

Continuing From Last Week...

All kinds of interesting things have happened this week, which is just the way we like it!

Our swimmer who was the focus of our discussions last week spoke to the team in our weekly meeting discussing the emotions and reactions that she/he had after the experience of “bailing” in the 100 freestyle event. Apology was made and accepted and we are all moving forward with an increased awareness of what is needed to excel at this sport, indeed at any activity of our choice.

We had a frank and open discussion with the Dad involved and learned that there is a lot of pressure at home to get good grades and hit the proverbial “4.0”. In the swim as soon as the swimmer figured out it wasn’t going to be a 4.0 the plug was pulled and therein lays the problem.

We have just finished a lengthy and what some would call an arduous state wide examination on the Fundamentals of Coaching. Putting aside our personal biases, one of several things that caught our eye was the discussion of how different folks view success.

The point made was that some look at it through an “ego” driven viewpoint whereas others a “task” perspective. The athlete who views his/her participation in sport from the “ego” side is preoccupied with the adequacy of their abilities compared to others and is focused on the outcome of the contest. The athlete who looks at her/his participation in sport from the “task” viewpoint feels successful when they gain skill knowledge. They try hard to perform to the best of their abilities, experience personal improvement and are focused on what they are doing at the moment.

As coaches, we are clearer now on our swimmer from last week who waved the white flag in the 100 free. It is a mark of an athlete who is more ego driven than task driven.

It is critical, in our viewpoint, that all coaches – from developmental to the elite level – understand that task/process orientation is much more likely to achieve greater results than simple ego/result orientation. Yes, every athlete and coach has a goal in mind. The more sustainable path is through the process…in our occasionally humble opinion!

Two Basic Questions

It is a pretty exciting weekend for mid-June. We are at the Santa Clara International Grand Prix meet here in California. In addition to many of the stars of US Swimming there are racers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, South Korea and Mexico. Many of the big names from the US contingent – Dana Vollmer, Natalie Coughlin, Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte to name a few – are using this meet as a tune up for the World Championships being held July 24-31, 2011, Shanghai, China.

We wondered what we would do if one of those swimmers came to our pool for a week or two to train? What could we offer that would be meaningful to them? How could we be effective as a coach to such an accomplished athlete?

The first thing we would do would be to ask them two questions. The first is “What is the one thing you haven’t done in the training pool that would make a difference in your racing?” The second is, “Knowing yourself as well as you do, how would you coach a competitor to out race you in your best event?”

We believe that honest answers to those two questions would be a great start to the week. Each of us knows – regardless of the level at which we participate – what we are avoiding in the training pool that we already know would help us. Each of us also is very familiar with the chinks in our armor. Properly motivated, every single person on the planet could stop avoiding what they know is keeping them from being more successful. Each of us also knows how we need to shore up our game.

Have a great week – in and out of the pool!

What a Gem

We hope you find this enlightening as well as entertaining. This is how it feels to be "right there." Annie captures this very private moment exquisitely. Enjoy!

Last Stand on Land; By Annie Chandler

Exceeding Expectations

We have been re-reading Tony Jeary’s book Strategic Acceleration in an effort to impart to our swimmers how to identify what he calls “highly leveraged activities”.

He refers to “the strategic acceleration tripod” which works to achieve superior results faster. The three legs of the tripod are clarity, focus and execution. He defines clarity as “knowing what you really want”. Focus is “about avoiding distractions and learning to identify the high leverage activities that significantly move the results needle.”

While all three are equally important in that your chances of success go down dramatically when you lack one or more of them, execution is where you spend the bulk of your time. Execution is the “doing” and that is where we spend the majority of our time and effort. As such it is important to consider the impact of exceeding expectations.

Jeary points out that he has learned “a lot about meeting and exceeding expectations, and one of the things I’ve learned is that it’s not complicated or hard to understand. Expectations are met when things happen the way people expect them to happen. However, expectations are exceeded when positive things happen that people do not expect.”

He goes on, “I want to be very clear about why exceeding expectations is the strategic mind-set that leads to the creation of superior results. Exceeding expectations is a strategic way of thinking based on the fact that we ultimately become and do what we think. The mind is the engine of action, and action produces results.”

We have our swimmers regularly consider the power of goals on their actions. When a swimmer tells us that they want to swim in college, we ask them to consider if their training supports their declared intention. It is a way for us to help keep their focus in a world busy with homework, social and athletic pursuits. What we are attempting to do – and we are having a pretty darned good measure of success with it – is get them to understand that their thought process leads to their actions.

And if they want to get there faster then they need to consider the concept of exceeding their level of expectation. To use Jeary’s words, coaching becomes the following in our eyes: “To persuade others to exceed expectations requires us to be able to persuade them to think differently about what they do and how they do it.”

On our set Saturday after discussing this concept with them we asked them to exceed their expectations as they trained. Many did just that and as a result swam faster and tougher as the challenge rose the deeper we got into the set. We have our first meet next week and we are asking them to do the same thing there, regardless of how they feel due to heavy training. We feel confident that most will respond to the challenge!

Choosing the Correct Word

As coaches we often see our primary role as teachers. As such, we strive to use precise words when describing what we want our swimmers to do. The clearer the picture we create with our words the better chance we have of getting the desired result.

With this in mind consider the two words "bold" and "reckless" as they appply to competing. When we consult our trusty dictionary the word "bold" is defined as, "not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff; courageous and daring: a bold hero; necessitating courage and daring; challenging: a bold adventure; beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action; imaginative: Einstein was a bold mathematician. a difficult problem needing a bold answer."

"Reckless" on the other hand is defined as, "utterly unconcerned about the consequences of some action; without caution; careless."

When we have a big meet approaching we ask our swimmers to consider the difference between being bold and being reckless as it pertains to their upcoming race. We all have seen swimmers who want something to badly that they will do almost anything to achieve it. They go out so fast, swimming furiously in hopes that they will swim the time they are after. Or if racing a certain individual they throw all caution to the wind and swim like a "madman (woman)" in a desperate attempt to finish in front of their competition.

At some point all of us need to consider being bold, whether a coach or a swimmer. This is much different than being reckless. Reckless is "without caution; careless". Careless swimming doesn't get what you want. Bold swimming will often push you into a new arena opening up opportunities which you may have only dreamed were possible.

The same goes for training. Train boldly and you will reap magnificent rewards. Train recklessly and you will get injured. So, give this a go and let us know how it works for you!

Mind Over Matter

Athletes tend to simplify things that they perceive relate to their performance. Many coaches and keen observers like to think that an athlete needs to be "tougher" to improve. Getting "tougher" is usually broken into the separate components of the body and the mind. Want to get faster? Train harder; it's that simple. Want to get to the top? Get your head together; that's the key.

Well. It is true that you need to train as diligently as possible; hopefully that capacity improves daily. It is also true that if your state of mind is centered, if you are focused and able to perform while distracted by any number of stimuli, you stand a much greater chance of success. However, there is more going on than meets the eye.

One of our swimmers came across a fascinating article on this subject written by two sports psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Education. Drs John Bartholomew and Esbelle Jowers write clearly and succinctly on this subject. Included in the article is a really good Q&A with Olympian Garrett Weber-Gale.

We hope you find this helpful. Let us know what you think!

Don't Even Think About It: Athlete’s mental toughness as important as physical strength