COACHING ERRORS?

Over the years coaching swimming and track athletics around the world I have made some pretty catastrophic coaching mistakes. Finally, I decided to address the problem by going back to school and earning a Level 5 American Swim Coaches Association certificate and picking up the phone and asking, master coaches, Arch Jelley and Arthur Lydiard for help.

The decision to get help pointed to one major personality weakness. Arch said it clearly but with some regard for my sensitive ego. Arthur said it clearly with no regard for my sensitive coaching ego. I was pushing too hard. Over and over again they told me to ease back – do not push so hard. They both said the same thing – it’s training not straining.

The two best examples of my early ineptitude were with Alison’s training prior to flying to New Zealand to run in what was then the hugely popular Pan Am Track Series. And the second was in the final stages of Toni Jeffs preparation for the Barcelona Olympic Games. Here is what happened.

Alison was about to leave our home in Scotland to fly to Australia for the first of the track series meets. She was running very well. But that was not good enough for me. I decided she needed one last really fast training session. And so, on a freezing cold night in mid-winter Scotland we went to the track to run a session of 4x400m with a 400m jog between each fast run. The rules, I said, were that each fast 400m had to be run in well under 60 seconds. And Alison did it. Two 58s, one 57 and one 59, that I growled about. In the conditions with snow on the track it was brilliant running.

And do you know what? Through the next three months in Australia and New Zealand Alison never ran as well again. She had left it all behind in Scotland. That is all it takes to tip a fast runner over the edge and lose an entire season’s work. The only solution was to come back to Scotland and begin some 18k easy aerobic runs around Gleneagles golf course – to put right the damage done by me on a training track three months earlier.

Clearly though the lesson had not been learned. A few years later I was preparing Toni Jeffs to swim in the 50m and 100m freestyle at the Barcelona Olympic Games. Toni was swimming well. She had just placed third in what was then the World Short Course Championships. A bronze medal or better at Barcelona was a real possibility.

A week before flying to Spain I decided Toni needed one more hard training session, in Wellington’s Freyberg Pool. She should swim a main set of 10x66m with 66m easy swim in between each fast swim. Each fast swim had to be below 40 seconds – that’s 60 seconds 100m pace.  All the swims were from a push, no dive.

Toni got through the set brilliantly – 36s and 37s all the way through. And in Barcelona her 3rd in the World Championships ended as 27th in the Olympic Games. I had done the same thing again. I’d pushed too hard in training. Toni’s best swim that season wasn’t at the Olympic Games. It was in Freyberg Pool on a Saturday night with only the lifeguard there to watch.

After a training camp in Canet, Toni was so drained by the time we got to Barcelona, she would faint and fall off her chair eating dinner. She would throw-up after training. How she managed 27th in the Games was incredible. In a way, swimming as well as she did was probably one of her better swims. Certainly, her most courageous. And it was all squarely my fault. Her best had been left in the training pool.

I do not want what I am about to say to be misunderstood. I certainly do not want to give the impression that I know best or of pompously telling coaches how they should coach. Rather my purpose is to discuss what seems to have been a problem. Two years ago, Swimming New Zealand handed back to New Zealand coaches responsibility for preparing national teams – a good decision. Open discussion of problems is one way of maximizing that opportunity.

This most recent European trip seems to have highlighted a problem swimming personal best times (PBs). From 253 swims at Mare Nostrum only 18 (7.1%) were PBs. That is a poor PB performance especially when you consider that 6 of the 18 PBs came from one swimmer (Godwin). At the time of writing this blog, with one day to go, the World Championship team (I have included Eyad even though he swims for the World Refugee Team. But New Zealand is his home, and he has had the same travel experience as the rest of the New Zealand swimmers) has swum 29 individual swims (that includes 3 relay starts) with only 4 PBs (13.8%).

Three of the PBs were not exactly swum by two “typical” New Zealanders. Two were swum by Eyad (100%), who is in Budapest as a member of the FINA Refugee Team. The other by, Carter Swift who was born in New Zealand before his family moved to Australia where Swift learned to swim. He competed on the Arizona State swim team and currently lives and is coached by Michael Phelps’ old coach, Bob Bowman, in the United States. He is a good and welcome addition to New Zealand swimming, but as I say, not exactly typical. The fourth PB was swum by Eve Thomas in the 800m heats. Thomas lives and trains in Australia    

So, why did the New Zealand based team swim no PBs, and how can we improve?   

Well, from everything I’ve read New Zealand seems to have had an overtraining problem. For example –

  • Sickness
  • Not swimming PBs
  • Scratching from events
  • Short tempers
  • Slower times later in the meet

All classic symptoms of overtraining – just what I did with Alison in Scotland and Toni in Wellington. Here are two emails I sent to Eyad before and during the pre-championship training camp.

“As a result of watching your swims in Mare Nostrum I think it is important for you to do some more steady recovery swimming at the training camp. It has been a very long racing season leading up to the LC Nationals and then extended out twice more with Mare Nostrum and the World Champs. There is only so much blood to wring out of a stone. I think you will definitely swim better in Budapest by changing the emphasis in the camp from even more speed/anaerobic sets to easy recovery aerobic swimming with a short speed up just before Budapest.”

And a week later.

“Well done on a first recovery week at the camp. That has been very worthwhile. Make sure you do the same thing this week. Swim easy. Keep the tiger in the tank for one more week. Even if others are sprinting in their training, do not be tempted to follow. Hold back until next week. Remember that old, but true, quote – It takes very little to sharpen a fit body.”

Arch Jelley said the same thing to me before Eyad began this trip.

“Remember on a tour like Mare Nostrum and the World Championships there is seldom any reason to do speed training. The races will provide more than enough speed training”.

But what does easy training mean? Well set out below is a copy of what Eyad swam in the first week at the pre-Championship training camp.

Date Training AM Kms Training PM Kms
Mon 30/5 Drive to Barcelona. Fly to Vienna 0 Drive to Barcelona. Fly to Vienna 0
Tue 31/5 Training Camp OFF Sleep in and have an easy morning to relax   0 Training Camp  WU 400/4×100/4×50 swim  MS  400/4×100/4×50 pull  400/4×100/4×50 with fins 3
Wed 1/6 Training Camp OFF Sleep in and have an easy morning to relax   0 Training Camp  WU 400/4×100/4×50  PS  3 x 200 IM with fins done as 25m swim 25m easy kick 4 x 50 easy DPS all fly MS 1 x 1000 easy swim free 1 x 1000 easy swim done as 50 fly 50 free 1×1000 with fins swim IM – 250m each stroke 4.8
Thur 2/6 Training Camp  WU 400/4×100/4×50  MS 1000 easy swim with fins  MS 500 kick no fins       2.5 Training Camp  WU 400/4×100/4×50  PS  4 x 100 IM easy  3 x (2×25 fly + 50 breast + 100 free + 50 back + 2×25 fly) Your rest all the way through. Easy effort. MS All done as easy effort 4 x 150 Breast – Kick 100. + Pull 50. 3 x 100 Freestyle – Aim for 8 strokes per 25m or 20 per 50m  2 x 75 Backstroke – done as 25m easy back + 25m double-arm back + 25 easy back 1 x 50 Fly – done easy with fins MS 100 warm down 3.5
Fri 3/6 Training Camp  WU 400/4×100/4×50  MS 1000 easy swim with fins  MS 500 kick no fins 2.5 Training Camp WU 400/4×100/4×50 MS 1000 easy swim with fins done as 25 free 25 fly MS 500 kick no fins 2.5
Sat 4/6 Training Camp OFF Sleep in and have an easy morning to relax 0 Training Camp 40 x 100 on 1.45 easy 4
Sun 5/6 Training Camp OFF 0 Training Camp OFF 0

By anybody’s standards that’s a pretty easy week. And it worked. In Budapest Eyad swam a 2.8% personal best in the 50m fly and a 0.01 second improvement in the 100 fly.  

In other words, are New Zealand’s coaches trying too hard? I suspect that may be the case. If it is true, there is nothing wrong with making the error. It is easy to do. But it may be worth trying an easier approach. Next time leave the stopwatch, calculator and laptop at the hotel. Enjoy European coffee, and croissants and hot olives soaked in melted butter. Chat with the locals while your swimmer does a set of easy aerobic swims. I bet PB times will follow.

Certainly, pay no attention to stupid internet advice to “harden up”. That will only make the PB problem worse. When I first sought out the guidance of Arch Jelley and Arthur Lydiard, I frequently hung up the phone thinking both men were getting old. They were going soft. I always did what they said but my heart still clung onto the harden up thought. Gradually though as swimmer after swimmer swam better the penny dropped. The advice of Arch and Arthur was right. European coffee, and croissants and hot olives soaked in melted butter was the way to go – take it easy, works

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