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May 18, 2021
Can't Coach It III- The Feel for the Water Part I
The feel for the water. Often spoken about with great reverence by coaches around the world, the idea of feel for the water is as central...
May 11, 2021
Learning From Gamblers
As coaches, we love information and we love data. More is better, and the more we have the more confident we are in our decision-making...
May 4, 2021
Coaching Belief
‘Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.’ -Henry Ford Clearly, this is no less true in swimming. Swimmers don’t...
Apr 27, 2021
Building Capacities and Developing Skills
Successful coaching requires navigating and solving complex problems. There are so many variables that go into each performance, and...
Apr 20, 2021
A Finishing Touch
Gary Hall Junior and Anthony Ervin both won two Olympic Gold Medals by a combined 2/100th of a second. They tied each other for their...
Apr 13, 2021
Tuning In
As time is the ultimate arbiter of performance, practice environments necessarily focus almost exclusively on time. From the time it...
Apr 6, 2021
Better Competition Warm-Ups
Swimmers and coaches put a lot of time, energy, and work into achieving better performances through training. Literally years of effort...
Mar 30, 2021
Plan D Training Part III
In part I, the concept of Plan D training was introduced. In short, swimmers are going to get injured and we need to have options for...
Mar 23, 2021
Plan D Training Part II
Swimmers get injured. Whether these injuries occur because of bad luck or bad training, they happen. It's at this point, good coaches...
Mar 16, 2021
Plan D Training Part I
Sometimes training mistakes are made and the consequences must be dealt with. Sometimes everything is done right, then a swimmer gets...
Mar 9, 2021
Can't Coach It II- Dolphin Kicking Part II
The premise of the ‘Can’t Coach It’ series is that there are some skills that aren’t going to be impacted by words. You can’t really...
Mar 2, 2021
Can’t Coach It II- Dolphin Kicking Part I
Some skills are critical to performance yet resist improvement, particularly through coach-led initiatives. We often describe...
Feb 23, 2021
Save the Season Part II
In part I, we introduced the idea of ‘saving a season’, and the idea that the decision-making process for helping a swimmer turn around a...
Feb 16, 2021
Save the Season Part I
Sometimes, it’s just not going well. A swimmer isn’t progressing, they seem to be struggling, or they might even seem to be regressing....
Feb 9, 2021
Learning or Performing? Part II
In part I, we explored the differences between learning environments and racing environments. The following characteristics can describe...
Feb 2, 2021
Learning or Performing? Part I
There are two productive forms of training, learning and performing, and they are both critical for developing competition day...
Jan 26, 2021
Knowing Nothing
Ignorance is not bliss. For the coach, it can be incredibly frustrating. This is particularly true when you believe you SHOULD have all...
Jan 19, 2021
An Ode to Kicking Part VIII
In the first 7 parts of this series on kicking, we’ve covered a lot of different topics with kicking, investigating the nuances that may...
Jan 12, 2021
An Ode to Kicking Part VII
In part VI, we looked at the nature of kicking skill. In this article, we’re going to learn how to put that kicking skill to use for...
Jan 5, 2021
An Ode to Kicking Part VI
We’ve explored the rationale for including kick training, and we examined ideas for improving the fitness of the legs here. Of course,...
Dec 29, 2020
An Ode to Kicking Part V
In parts III and IV, we looked at the situations where improving kicking performance could improve swimming performance. We also looked...
Dec 22, 2020
An Ode To Kicking Part IV
In part III, we examined the situations where faster kicking abilities result in faster swimming performance, as well as the situations...
Dec 15, 2020
An Ode To Kicking Part III
In part II, we explored the ways swimmers can kick faster. In this article, we’re going to explore what determines if improvements in...
Dec 8, 2020
An Ode To Kicking Part II
In part I, we started our exploration of kicking and introduced the idea that one of the most important functions of kicking is to...
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