Swimming Ideas Podast

What are the 3 things to streamline?

What common problems do these commands/goals/specific words correct:

By doing all 3 things, it addresses almost every single bad habit in streamlines.

Why do we do it at all? Why do we do it with beginners?

Streamline is the most efficient and best way to move through the water. Every stroke moves from streamline into movement. It is the easiest horizontal motion we can do. It is the starting point. The base.

With beginners we are less strict with the 3 goals, and they can do it on the surface. We still enforce the looking down. We encourage the squeezed ears, and the locked thumb..

As we progress through levels we initiate the

Level 1 and Parent Tot.

Our primary focus is going underwater.

When you can go underwater then you can do everything.

The only thing you can do without going underwater is supported activities (being physically held up at surface) and backstroke.

One must learn how to go underwater. They should learn how to react when submerging, how to hold breath, blow bubbles, and not to panic when not able to breathe underwater.

We do that by repeatedly giving opportunities to go underwater to the participant. We build into almost every activity some chance to put the face in.

Examples:

Level 1 testable skills:

Can you teach level 2 and level 3 in the same class? What about 1 and 2?

We go into some in-depth discussion on what each level requirements are, and how you can integrate them into one class.

Is it ideal?

Why even have levels in the first place?

Example of last class taught: level 2/3 and how I taught the class to each individual.

The beauty of short and long distance skill work, and why the short distance cheat sheet is a framework of success.

General Short distance framework:

3 x [something] + [something else]

How we use it in swim lessons and how we use it at swim practice.

What is it:

Position 11 is:

 Go here for a free preview:

http://www.swimminglessonsideas.com/position11free

How do we do it in lessons?

In Level 2:

How do we use it at swim team?

http://www.swimmingscience.net/2012/02/external-vs-internal-focus-for-optimal.html

Swimingscience.net posted an article about External and internal focus for optimal learning.

Basically: external focus is better. Using golf, darts, and balancing a board, researchers have shown that when you focus your attention on doing SOMETHING to something, you get better results.

This applies to swimming lessons because it gives us an insight into how we frame our language to get the best results.

Why do we say:

"Squeeze your ears, Look down, lock your thumb.

"Keep your arm straight, look down, and stay on the surface

Are these effective? Or are these internal cues.

Swimming and moving in the water is a highly personal thing and we often think about telling someone to do something by guiding their body. We assume they are attempting to move their body in a certain way, and they are!, but it may be more effective to give them a target, instead of giving a path.

Perhaps this is why "11, Y, scoop and Reach" is so effective.  It isn't a "reach your arms up, keep them straight, sweep out, then shoot forward quickly." It is instead, providing a visual target, or an external cue that swimmers need to externally achieve by moving their bodies toward!

How can we use our language as swim instructors and coaches to use these external cues.

We tried it at swim practice

"zombie" and pull during freestyle

We drew these on the board.

We tried it in swim lessons:

It really works well when you do two benches facing each other:

Specific swim lesson activity

Locked doors, headaches, and intellectual need | Affording Play

http://flip.it/9Moov

Mathematics, and how to teach both old and new math, and how to program.

The concept of the "locked door, and the key."

I have a door that is locked. How do I get through it? You use a key. How do you respond when you are presented with another locked door the next time? You search for the key.

We want to teach our swimmers to have the keys to their success :)

Introduce a "problem" and then offer a series of solutions to solve that "problem"

You can swim like an Olympian some day. We can get you there. Here is a video that shows you what it looks like.

https://youtu.be/SONx52cyltI

Watch the video, then attempt to swim like this.

Can't swim exactly like an Olympian? We can get you there:

Do these drills:

Head Lead Balance with Rotation

One arm only Free

6 kick switch: 3 strokes free, then 6 kicks on your side. We do 18 kicks on side usually then 3 strokes.

Now swim Freestyle again and attempt to swim like Olympian

These drills should help you swim better.

Introduce your locked doors before you offer the solutions.

In swimming: define where you want to go, and then offer solutions to how you get there.

Position 11:  3 things that you need to focus on to do it well:

Problem? How do you do position 11 well? You do those three things.

(we talk about position 11 in our first podcast: SIP 001)

Problem: Position 11 is really difficult!!! How can we make it easier?

** Why do we do position 11 at all during swimming? Every stroke moves through position 11. Freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly. Each arm stroke of every competitive stroke at some point moves through position 11.

Layers of problems, and offering multiple actionable solutions to fix them.

How do we provide self directed motivated learning in swimming? One of the steps of How to be an effective swimming lesson instructor is to inspire and motivate our swimmers to want to get better themselves; to be internally motivated.

You can find the website post about this game here: http://swimminglessonsideas.com/2015/06/02/swimming-game-100-point-swim/

We played this game about 10 times in the last few months. I have played it with swimming lessons with more advanced abilities and with our developmental swim team. For our pre-competitive group, who have mostly been swimming on the team for more than 1 year, it was an excellent great game. I found there to be a high level of engagement, reception to improved quality and of highest importance a huge boost in peer learning. The swimmers helped each other improve using language I would use as a coach on each other. In every instance of this game, there was at least one group that would band together and help each other out.

We did a general IM Set when we played the game:

4 x 50

4 stroke Fly then Fly kick the rest / Backstroke x 25

1st 25 is 4 strokes fly swim then Fly kick the rest of the length. Second 25 is backstroke swim.

4 x 50

Backstroke / Breaststroke x 25

Back down, breast back. Work on streamlines and open turns.

4 x 50

Breaststroke / Freestyle x 25

Do underwater pullouts, long glides, 2 hand touches, and good streamlines. Turn head to the side when breathing.

We offered the following reward for winners: 5 minutes to do whatever they wanted to do at the end of practice. The winning team could choose as a group what the whole team would do for the last 5 minutes of practice: game, set, anything.

The losing teams had to do either 100 free kick or 10 sit-ups and 10 push-ups.

What I liked and what I didn't  like about it :

Good: Effective at first  engaged everyone as a group in each lane 

Okay: High quality swimming faltered as the game went on 

Bad: Easy to really punish people which is not good for self esteem

Bad: Can single people out

Good and Bad: Coaches are extremely subjective when dealing out point subtractions. It is really easy to arbitrarily single out swimmers and punish them.  Be careful. On the good side, it is easy to manipulate the points to make it a close game and more fun. Or to reward favorites, which can also be dangerous.

Good: Can be fun and team building 

You can create great games like this when you get the book, "How to Create Fun and Effective Swim Games."  Find that book on amazon now! How to create fun and effective swim games: Invent your own swim games on the fly following this tested formula

Coach I work with talking about job history, philosophy of coaching

Fixed mindset, change mindset

Work hard and you will fail

Coach's role: games? No. Respect. Yelling doesn't earn it. Don't be feared.

Expectation of hard work and care.

Clarify and reword what head coach doesn’t address or explain well.

What makes a good swimmer? 

Instill and teach your swimmers to have a change mindset. They're going to fail. It will happen. How can we mentally and physically prepare them for that reality, and give them tools they need to do well. 

Constantly evaluate what swimmers are doing in the water and provide opportunities to recognize, adjust, and create new habits that lead to time and swimming success.

Create personal connection to inspire. Connection to swimmer to allow them to feel safe to say when they don't understand.

A good coach fosters a change mindset and provides the culture and environment that reinforces it. 

Hard work doesn't always = success. Real world lessons. Hard work doesn't always mean swimming success.  Coach effort. Coach excellence and get to failure and train that.

How to balance focus on times as rewards and effort.

How did I arrive at it?

Podcast: Art of Charm http://theartofcharm.com/

http://theartofcharm.com/podcast-episodes/tony-stubblebine-ruthless-meditation-episode-446/

What exactly am I talking about?

Encouraging swimmers to "think" about swimming as they do it

Promote "attempts"

Promote awareness of what you're doing, acknowledge difference and attempt change.

How does this connect to meditation:

Not stillness

Acknowledgement: Breathe with eyes closed, focus on breathing. When you become aware of yourself thinking of something else, make a note "Hey, I'm thinking of something not my breathing. Then go BACK to thinking about breath.

Same with swimming. I'm attempting what the coach said to focus on, I'm attempting to do something. When you realize you're NOT doing that. Think, "ahah! I'm not doing that." Then, attempt to return to focusing on what the goal is.

Appropriate for all ages? No.

Used more in a swim team or pre-swim team setting where you can hold the attention for longer. No harm in attempting it with younger swimmers, but games and play is better for beginners, or those between 3-7.

What do you think? Have you done it?

We have an arch or a theme for our swim team right now, a macrocycle if you're familiar with it. That theme is "Balance, Line, and Posture" and how that fits into swimming. Our goal is to be mindful and aware of those three things throughout our practices.

We did this set at practice:

Side Glide:

What are the benefits? Are there even good examples of side glide that effectively teach freestyle breathing?

If you can do a streamline, do that first, then roll over on your side, put your top hand on your hip, and stack your hips. Rotate your hips and your shoulder to lean on your side. Breathe, and then put your face in the water and do it again.

The idea, is that you rotate your body to breathe which later on in swimming is generally the goal: connect your hips and your arms as they move on freestyle to have the best swimming. You should breathe by connecting your head rotation to the side with your hips. Breathe when your hips rotate.

Side glide is a good tool to use to teach safety only: learn how to breathe the easiest? Or quickly while staying at the surface when you have no understanding of swimming freestyle well.

Negatives:

Our goal is to teach swimming well. #1 focus is to have a safe swimming, and have all our swimmers get in a pool or water of any type and be competent enough to swim at will and then exit the water. We want all participants to be able to leave the water on their own. To survive. Side glide will teach someone to struggle to breathe and maybe survive for a little while longer, but it does not teach how to swim freestyle well. With Swimming Ideas, we want to teach swimming well, and when you can swim well, you are comfortable enough and strong enough to get to the side quickly well, and to struggle well enough to save y