Top 6 Things I Learned At The World Championships

Over the past 3 decades of coaching I have had the honor of working with a wide variety of athletes from beginners to Olympians and everything in between Laurel Liberty was a swimmer of mine from the time she was 11 until she graduated from college. Laurel was an NCAA All-American and since has followed up as a Masters National Champion. Currently she is a coach with the Lake Forest Swim Club. This fall Laurel was selected to be on staff with the USA Swimming National Team traveling to Istanbul, Turkey for the FINA Short Course World Championships.  She penned a short article that I think speaks to everyone at every level. ENJOY!!

Top 6 Things I Learned At The World Championships

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 at 4:24PM Lake Forest Swim Club | Comments Off

Top 6 Things I learned at the SC World Championships

I’m back! Good to be home . . . I loved Istanbul; it is such a neat place right on the edge of both the European and Asian continent.

I am so sorry I didn’t get to blog more but honestly we all know how busy prelim/final meets can be. Here are some of my observations on the meet; I hope they help you be better . . .

1)”Early is on time and on time is late”

This holds true in life as well as swimming but one of those things you just have to get. Doesn’t matter if you are Allison Schmitt (WR holder/Gold Medalist) or Becca Mann (Newbie to the national team) the bus will leave without you and the ready room will DQ you for being late. There are so many good reason to always plan on being 15 minutes early, everything from traffic getting to practice, forgetting a suit, or in Kathleen Hersey’s case having the FINA official discover you are not wearing an approved suit! You never want to be rushed in preparing for you race/practice; it makes it so much harder to succeed when you have shorted yourself on time.

2) Pre-race and Pre-Practice routines

So we got to Istanbul about 4 days ahead of the meet and swimmers just fell into their normal practice routine of going to the pool for AM and PM practice. Practice doesn’t start with 400 Fr though, practice starts with sit ups, pushups, stretching, and any number of other simple dryland skills, also something that I noticed this summer when we went to Moscow. You need to warm your body up before you ever begin to think about getting in the pool. Not everyone does the same thing but everyone does do something. Try it and see if you feel better in the water.

3) Ferocious walls

Races are won and lost on the walls, simple as that. I don’t think the ferociousness of these swimmers wall skills are evident when you watch them at the Olympics in a 50m pool, but in a short course pool where they go 15m underwater off EVERY wall it becomes obvious that the winners are able to do this and losers are not. It’s not simply being able kick that far or hold your breath that long but attacking with as much speed and power that you can muster EVERY wall EVERY time, in the heat of battle at finals or swimming through in prelims.

4) Team is stronger that 1

The USA relay tradition is strong, we have never lost the Men’s 4x200 Fr relay, and every athlete that gets to stand on the blocks and be part of a USA relay feels the honor and pride of being part of the US national team. It is the power of the whole team behind you as you dive into the pool. It is talked about in that way too, the coaches and athletes all know that when they get up for a race it is all of their teammates behind them too giving that extra to get the job done.

Pride in your team and teammates starts now, don’t wait for HS or college . . . .  you can do bigger and better things when you stand with your teammates then when you stand alone.

5) Race because you hate to lose, don’t race because you love to win

You might say what is the difference here and I would say go watch Ryan Lochte’s 100IM, his last individual race of the meet. He was dead tired and only had 20 minute break between the 200Bk, which he lost, and the 100IM. He was angry after the 200bk and was trying to refocus in the warm down pool, but it wasn’t until he touched 2^ndat the wall after 25fly in the IM where you can see him just dig in and say to himself “I will not lose this race”.

I spoke with Conor about his races at the meet, and he would agree that he is not in the same shape he was in during the games however when asked about how he was swimming all he said was “I hate to lose”.  That is what you need to be driven by and what will keep you going.

6) Be honest with yourself

This is a tricky concept for a lot of people.  It’s easy to say . . . “the walls are slick”, “coach didn’t taper me right”, “the kid next to me swam slow”, but these are all things that put the result of your swim on someone else. There is no one else responsible for how you swim but you.  I sat with Tom Shields for a little while between prelims and finals one day, he was getting ready to swim the final of the 50 fly and he must have watched his prelim swim on video 100 times.  He analyzed everything from his start to his turn and everything in between, noticing how if he could make a better streamline or change his arm position slightly on the turn to be faster. He knew that he was the one that had to commit to making changes to be better, there wasn’t going to be an excuse or someone to blame. He was going to be the only person in lane 4 that night swimming his heart out.

There are so many more examples of this. Many swimmers discovered that they didn’t like their outcomes and need to go home and work harder. Others realized they maybe hadn’t taken warm up seriously enough and it had affected their swim. Whatever the case maybe how you swim is a reflection of what you do to prepare for it, if you are honest with yourself you can adjust what you are doing to be better.