Thinking of becoming a TI Coach

Hi Coaches,

First off let me apologize if I am putting this question in the wrong topic forum. I figured it would be the best place to do so.

So, here it goes, I've been a TI practitioner since 2008. I had the good fortune to be in a workshop with Coach Dave Cameron and Coach Fiona Laughlin. Although I was raw at the time, I kept refining my skills and low and behold I noticed that all those hours of drills paid off. Not only that, but others at the pool and open water noticed too. It wasn't uncommon for someone to comment on my stroke and ask how to get faster with more efficienct. The short answer was always: "Take a TI course and it'll change your life." But at times I would show them basics like Superman glide, explaining the need to have your head in a neutral position etc.

Well as time went on I would come online to the forums and think about taking the TI coach's certification 1.0 course but I would always talk myself out of it. Not sure why I did that but I did. Then one day I got the sad news that Terry had passed away of prostate cancer. I recently was diagnosed with that same form and fortunately found it in time, had my prostate removed and am now cancer free!

During the time when I was active on this forum, I would converse with Terry about my desire to teach children and adults of color how to swim. The drowning rates in Black and Brown communities is three times that of Whites and I felt that before I could market swimming as a sport, it needed to be seen as a life skill. Terry was in total agreement with me. He emphasized that I take the TI coaching course and target my work with these marginalized communities. In fact, he told me this in person when we met face-to-face on one of his trips out to California to teach, and I hosted him at The South End Rowing Club.

That's been over 8 years ago and yet I still haven't taken the course. But now I have decided that the time is right. I have made a decision to get certified in 2019! The reason for this is that I need to raise the money to do so, but I want to fulfill my desire to teach TI swimming and be a part of the bigger community of this amazing movement. My questions to you all are the following:

1. Are you happy with your chose to become a TI coach?
2. What did you find the most challenging about becoming a coach?
3. Are there other coaches that work with marginalized groups and what has been your success and or frustration?

finally...

4. Am I crazy to ask these sorts of questions and and have the desire to become a TI coach?

Please all coaches are welcome to respond. I values all your input.

Keep Swimming,
Naji

That is an interesting idea especially if you live in a place that is not too harshly regulated.

Here in France to train somebody or team, leaving the required and necessary security training, you need, among other prerequisites, to have spend close to 1000 hours more or less bound with the "french federation of swimming" which pretty much close the teaching market to alternative approach to swimming.

As for working with kids it has lots of prerequisites everywhere pretty much, not trivial.

Best luck.

[WFEGb]

Hello Naji,

will try to answer your questions. The answers are highly individual/personal, so hopefully they are what you hoped to get...

1. Are you happy with your chose to become a TI coach?

Only a clear YES is possible. I was a teacher (an engineer before) nearly my whole working life, and loved it. Becoming a TI-Coach was targeted to my retirement, to have to teach a very worthy thing afterward. The difference teaching TI against maths and physics often is, my TI-students really want to learn swimming (better)... And as a teacher my pupils and students were aged from ten up to the early twenties. Now my youngest stundent is 10years and my oldest 81years. Simply great!

2. What did you find the most challenging about becoming a coach?

Most challenging for me still is to get my impatience with myself (only) into a Kaizen way of improvement...

3. Are there other coaches that work with marginalized groups and what has been your success and or frustration?

No special experience with this and with groups in general. My coach-lessons are mostly individual oriented in the TI-way to step in direction to the individual goals, sometimes a married couple, which is a bit difficult, because the women is always some steps ahead... and her husband doesn't like it so much...

4. Am I crazy to ask these sorts of questions and and have the desire to become a TI coach?

No! What does you make to think this way? Last but not least you have to set your own goals and deal with your hopes.

I still feel as a continueing TI-Student, like to participate in TI-workshops and TI-weeks as a hybrid TI-Student-Coach. What I like most: Really all students and (master-)coaches I met around TI are so sympathic that only this is worth to deal with TI more deeply. And having met Terry in person was a very happy coincidence in my life.

Similar to liolio I've to say, here in Hamburg its nearly impossible to coach TI regularly :-( Here is a company owning all public pools. They don't have any interest in TI but pushing their own coaches and courses. They do not give a chance to rent a lane or a half one one. And sometimes the lifeguards become nearly impolite when I'm in the water with a student, because they appeal to the pool-rules that foreign coaching is strictly forbidden. (We then tell them the coaching is just matter of friendship..) Also strictly forbidden in all pools is taking a video, so an important part of TI-Coaching is cut off :-(

And if you'll find a way to coach TI regularly, have in mind: Its not the preferred way to become rich with money, but...

Hope becoming a TI-Coach will be the right, satisfying and joyful way for you.

Best regards,
Werner

[CoachBobM]

Originally Posted by Naji

1. Are you happy with your chose to become a TI coach?

Yes. Even if I had to stop doing swim coaching tomorrow, I would still have a lot of happy, satisfied memories from my time as a TI coach.

Having said that, I should share with you a riddle that has circulated in swim coaching circles:

Q: What do you call a swim coach who drives a Cadillac?
A: Car thief.

The reason I'm happy with my choice to become a TI coach is because I enjoy swim coaching - not because it has made me rich. If you enjoy enabling people to achieve their swimming goals and awakening them to new possibilities they never even considered, that's what is likely to make you satisfied as a TI coach.

2. What did you find the most challenging about becoming a coach?

Finding a place to do it. It's not too bad in the summer because there are a lot of outdoor facilities that become available, but for most of the year, in my area, outdoor facilities are closed, and indoor facilities tend to be heavily booked, often regard TI coaches as competition for whatever swim instruction their facility is already offering, and sometimes charge unbelievably high rental fees. Some TI coaches (including Terry) have had Endless Pools installed in their homes, but my place is too small for that (unless I gave up having a living room) and I'm not even sure the regulations in my community would allow it.

3. Are there other coaches that work with marginalized groups and what has been your success and or frustration?

I've had swimmers of all races as students at one time or another, but I haven't specifically targeted marginalized communities. Your biggest obstacles may be (1) finding a place to do it that is within reach for them (if swimming isn't a big thing in their community, there may not be any usable pools - it's a matter of supply and demand), and (2) selling them on the sport of swimming as a possibility for them (in my area, for example, nearly every pool, lake, and watering hole seems to have a summer swim team for the kids, and the fact that it's available automatically creates an interest in the sport, but in areas where this is not the case, people may not even consider swimming as a possible activity for them).

4. Am I crazy to ask these sorts of questions and and have the desire to become a TI coach?

No crazier than the rest of us! ;-)

Hope this helps!


Bob

A big thank you to all three of you for getting back too me. I have had the desire to be a swim coach for yeas and I am total believer in the TI method. In fact, I was speaking to a friend yesterday about swimming and I realized it is one of the rare activities that i do that I can talk about or hear someone speak about that never bores me LOL! Of course there are others, but swimming is such a joy even on the days when I am frustrated at least I know how to trouble shoot the frustration :-)

Keep Swimming!
Naji