My age group swimmers are competing in the Florida Gold Coast swimming championships this weekend, and it is gratifying to see that the hard work put into technique and training has paid off. Nico, our top 12 year old boy, won the 400 meter free in 4:35.06, a solid swim coming on the heels of his spectacular 9:19 800 meter free from a couple weeks ago. Maggie, our best 10 year old swimmer, knocked 11 seconds off her personal best to finish third in the 400 meter free with a 5:18.5. It's not really fair to compare open water swimming to pool swimming, but by comparison Maggie's time beat that of every male save one from this morning's 400 meter swim in the Key Biscayne sprint triathlon.
I bring this up because I think it's important for me as a swimming coach to help my adult clients (the bulk of whom are triathletes) understand what fast swimming is. They understand that elite marathon runners can rip off 5 minute mile after 5 minute mile. They appreciate how fast world class cyclists ascend the French Alps. But most have no real reference point for fast swimming. And while I don't expect they will approach Nico's performance level on 3-4 hours of swimming per week, I think it's fair to point out that he's a very young boy who's only been swimming a couple of years. One of the reasons he achieves at such a high level is because we coaches EXPECT our athletes to achieve at these levels. We don't shy away from high expectations, and we don't baby them. We were pretty blunt with Nico: If you want to break the Gold Coast record in the 400 free, this is how fast you have to train. (He didn't break the record, by the way: it is held by a young man who used to swim on my team in Plantation, FL, currently a junior at the University of Florida, with a time of 4:26). It is almost universal that teachers with high expectations produce students who are high achievers. The same goes for coaching.
Why is it helpful for triathletes who bang out an 8 minute 400 meter free to see what the age group swimmers are doing? Simply put, it shows them how much room there is to improve. Just scrolling through triathlon results I can see why an athlete might be content with an 8 minute swim: it's better than what most people do. But that level of "better" sets the bar pretty low. I believe my triathletes are capable of much more. That doesn't mean intimidate them by throwing unattainable performances in their faces. Quite the opposite: the times these kids post are not unattainable. They are typical. Nico didn't receive a standing ovation for his win, and Maggie will not be written up in the local paper as some kind of swimming prodigy. In fact, Nico's teammates were more impressed with his new Droid phone than they were with his swimming.
I have pretty high expectations for the WAY that I want my adult clients to swim: with ease, with efficiency, with skill. I want them to understand what they're doing and own the strategies for making continuous improvement on their own. But nearly all of them came to me with specific performance objectives: they want to swim 2.4 miles under an hour, or knock off those :30 seconds that will put them on the podium in their next age group race. I'm thankful that they came to me with goals. Now I want them to have 'big hairy goals' that have a bit of hair. And then we can talk about a roadmap for getting there.
If you've managed to read this far, can you share with me your personal best for 400 meters, as well as your 'big hairy goal' for the same distance? Or, if you have similar objectives for other distances (1500 meter Olympic tri swim), where do you stand with that--personal best versus personal goal? What's your plan for achieving it?
Gary
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written by Terry Laughlin, August 02, 2010
In 1980 two 12 y.o. boys I was coaching - Jeff Utsch and Patrick Brundage - swam 400m times nearly identical to Nico. Jeff went 4:36 and Patrick 4:38. Two years later, at 14, Jeff broke the USAS 13-14 record for 800m, swimming it in 8:24. His 400m time of 4:07 was one second short of the national age group record for that event but fastest in the counry that year. Patrick was again slightly slower, but had turned 15 by that time - with times still very quick for a 15 y.o. far short of physical maturity.(And by the way, both Jeff and Patrick, now 42 years old and living in Tucson and Phoenix respectively, still swim Masters and are nearly as fast now as they were at 14.)
While nearly everyone associated with the team was impressed and pleased by those times back then, no one was particularly surprised. That's because, as Gary writes, there was an expectation that they would swim that fast because it proceed naturally from the swimming they did every day in practice. And their fast practice swims were aided by the environment at practice. They were fortunate to train with a fair number of swimmers who were a bit faster, so they simply followed those faster swimmers up and down the pool each day, gaining speed as they did. If there had been no one to lead the way, they would have had a much more difficult time getting there.
Knowing that times as fast as Nico's are possible should inspire a greater sense of possibility in anyone, even someone who may have just recently celebrated their first sub-10min 400m. It should make a sub-9 and sub-8-approaching-7 400m seem more doable. But the really transforming goals are the MEDGs - E.G. Today I will do a quiet Mail Slot entry more consistently than ever before.
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Do you use TI methodology with them? How many hard workouts do they do per week? Are the "easy" workouts more focused on technique?
My 400 time is a little over 7 minutes. My turns are really slow--even as my pace and SPL improve, my times don't decrease by much because of that. That's my next project.
I began working on speed in March; before that I was only focusing on technique and endurance. Slow, steady progress really adds up. Times that used to seem humanly impossible seem within reach. I do 1-2 hard practices per week, maybe one really slow, technique-focused practice, and the rest at a cruise pace with more focus on distance. My big hairy goal is to do a marathon swim.