RESL Championships 2013

For a meet that almost did not happen, I can say that in the end we made it work. It certainly was not the best Championships we have attended, the organization felt a bit shaky as if we put it together at the last minute. Oh wait, we did put this meet together at the last minute! On Saturday the pool was really cold (76 degrees), the backstroke flags were rarely at 15 feet unless there was no wind ... and we did get a nice fog generated breeze for most of the weekend. And to add to the confusion, the lane numbers did not match the actual numbers tiled on the pool side generating quite a bit of confusion for swimmers, coaches and officials.

Yet, the meet happened, and the swimmers raced and in the end it was all worth it.

55 swimmers participated in this year’s Championships in San Pablo competing in a total of 340 races. 66% best times over the weekend was the worst performance in the last 5 years, even though 95% of our swimmers posted at least one best time. Although we had the second most number of swimmers entered in the meet ever, we had more inexperienced swimmers participating resulting in the most number of disqualifications (25) since I have been keeping track of this. In the end we finish 5th, just 56 points behind 4th and 111 points behind 3rd.

24 swimmers improved their time standard with a total of 31 new "B" times, 27 new “A” times, 4 “JO” times and 4 “FW” times.

7 team records were broken, Congratulations to Coco Berkenfield (12) who broke 3 records in the 50 and 100 back as well as the 50 free, crowning a superb weekend where she improved her best time in all of her events. Congratulations to Sophia Bell (8) who is showing great potentials for such a young swimmer. She broke 3 records as well in the 25 back, 25 fly and 100 IM bringing her total number of team records for the season to 12! Last but not least, congratulations to Isabella Salmi (18) who posted one more record in the 100 free before leaving for college in the fall.

I also should mention the fact that 2 or our swimmers received the high point award in their respective age groups: Ian Chow-Ise (15-16) and Coco Berkenfield (11-12).

I have posted the results (Swimmer / Meet) on the website and the ribbons are filed in the team folders. You can stop by the pool anytime during business hours and the lifeguards will be happy to bring the folders out for you.

Special thank you to all the families for doing their part in helping run the meet. Thank you to all the parents who participated in the Friday morning breakfasts at Drake over the summer, who again helped put together a great Doughnut Breakfast and a team dinner, who were generous enough to give great gifts for the coaches, who take the time to give me feedback on the team, who counsel and assist me when needed. Again, thank you all for giving us the opportunity to work with your children.

Marc

Perfect Practice: Getting the Most of Your Training

 

By Dr. Alan Goldberg//Sport Psychologist, Competitivedge.com

Races are won and lost, long before your meets

Most serious swimmers put in the same amount of time training each and every week. Why is it that only a select few of these athletes will end up getting more out of their practices, and as a result, improve faster and go further in the sport than the majority of their teammates? The answer has to do with HOW they practice.

It's the QUALITY of your training that always counts, not the QUANTITY

Diligently making every practice, each week and putting in all that required yardage by itself will not make you a champion. What will always help you take your swimming to the next level is the quality of your work. Simply put, what you put into your training is key. For example, if you go through those long brutal sets distracted, slowing down when things get hard, wishing you were elsewhere, or focusing on how much you hate this set, then this kind of “dead yardage” training will always hold you back when it comes to race time.

However, if you train smart and you focus on all the little details while you're swimming, if you make sure your stroke is correct, you're working on integrating the changes your coach has suggested, your turns are precise, and you push yourself to keep going hard when you don't want to anymore, then you will find that you get far more out of your practices and race faster when it counts!

“PERFECT PRACTICE” IS TRAINING MENTALLY, PHYSICALLY and EMOTIONALLY

This is the highest quality that you can train at.

The vast majority of swimmers just train PHYSICALLY

• Attend most if not all practices
• Usually make most sets
• Do dryland and weight training
• Concentration is not always on what they're doing
• Oftentimes wish practice was over or they were elsewhere 

A much smaller percentage of swimmers train both PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY

• Attend all practices, dryland and weights
• Concentrate very carefully on what they're doing while they're doing it
• Conscientious about stroke technique, starts and turns
• Make a point to integrate corrections from coaches into work 

A select few athletes use “perfect practice” and train PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY

• Attend all practices, dryland and weights
• Focus very carefully on what they're doing while they're doing it
• Conscientious about stroke technique, starts and turns
• Integrate corrections from coaches into training
• Love to swim and want to be at practice
• Have an emotionally compelling, BIG goal in their mind whenever they train (That is, they regularly ask themselves, ”How is what I'm doing right now, going to help me get to my goal?”) 

FIND AN EMOTIONALLY COMPELLING REASON TO TRAIN

Swimming is a very difficult sport to do well. Ultimate success involves a huge time commitment, sacrifice and almost continuous, year-round training and the discipline to regularly push yourself outside your comfort zone. To become a champion, you must learn to tolerate a tremendous amount of pain and discomfort. In order to do this every day, you need very powerful motivation. This motivation will always come to you from your personal reasons for swimming. Swimming is much too hard a sport to do for others, i.e. your parents or coaches. The motivation for working hard must come from inside of you. You have to have a compelling, personal reason to regularly train hard. You will go much further as a swimmer and have far more success when you make a commitment to using “perfect practice” whenever you train.

This means that at any given moment in training, when the going gets rough and a part of you wants to back down, you have to be able to ask yourself WHY you're doing what you're doing and how it will get you that much closer to your goals. When you can connect with your emotional reasons for swimming, it becomes far easier to ride out the storms of fatigue, boredom and doubt that regularly roll in over the course of a season.

A must for all parents!

Parent Education Video and Worksheet By David Benzel, Growing Champions for Life We are excited to bring you the Positive Parent Video for this week. In this video, Not All Praise is Created Equal, you will learn how to deliver the kind of praise that generates greater effort and harder work. Some feedback actually inhibits your child's progress. Please click here to watch Not All Praise is Ceated Equal and complete your weekly Game Plan page so you can develop the skills for providing the best possible kinds of praise. Watch your inbox for next week's video and exercise. David Benzel Growing Champions for Life, Inc. Author of 'From Chump to Champ' 800-616-1193

Jon sums up quite well what being on a team is all about.

Nine Ways To Be A Great Team Member

By Jon Gordon

I recently shared a tweet about ways to be a great team member and was surprised to see that it was my most re-tweeted tweet ever. It occurred to me that deep down inside we all know we can’t do it alone. We know that Super Bowls are not won by individuals. They are won by a collection of individuals who make a great team. It’s the same with work and life. We are better together when we are surrounded by great team members. In this spirit I want to share 9 ways to be a great team member.

1. Set the Example – Instead of worrying about the lack of performance, productivity and commitment of others you simply decide to set the example and show your team members what hard work, passion and commitment looks like. Focus on being your best every day. (Tweet This) When you do this you’ll raise the standards and performance of everyone around you.

2. Use Your Strengths to Help the Team – The most powerful way you can contribute to your team is to use your gifts and talents to contribute to the team’s vision and goals. Without your effort, focus, talent and growth the team won’t accomplish its mission. This means you have an obligation to improve so you can improve your team. You are meant to develop your strengths to make a stronger team. Be selfish by developing you and unselfish by making sure your strengths serve the team.

3. Share Positive Contagious Energy – Research shows emotions are contagious and each day you are infecting your team with either positive energy or negative energy. You can be a germ or a big dose a Vitamin C. When you share positive energy you infectiously enhance the mood, morale and performance of your team. Remember, negativity is toxic. Energy Vampires sabotage teams and complaining is like vomiting. Afterwards you feel better but everyone around you feels sick.

4. Know and Live the Magic Ratio – High performing teams have more positive interactions than negative interactions. 3:1 is the ratio to remember. Teams that experience interactions at a ratio equal or greater than 3:1 are more productive and higher performing than those with a ratio of less than 3:1. Teams that have a ratio of 2:1, 1:1 or more negative interactions than positive interactions become stagnant and unproductive. This means you can be a great team member by being a 3 to 1’er. Create more positive interactions. Praise more. Encourage more. Appreciate more. Smile more. High-five more. Recognize more. Energize more. Read more about this at www.FeedthePositiveDog.com

5. Put the Team First – Great team players always put the team first. They work hard for the team. They develop themselves for the team. They serve the team. Their motto is whatever it takes to make the team better. They don’t take credit. They give credit to the team. To be a great team member your ego must be subservient to the mission and purpose of the team. It’s a challenge to keep our ego in check. It’s something most of us struggle with because we have our own goals and desires. But if we monitor our ego and put the team first we’ll make the team better and our servant approach will make us better.

6. Build Relationships – Relationships are the foundation upon which winning teams are built and great team members take the time to connect, communicate and care to build strong bonds and relationships with all their team members. You can be the smartest person in the room but if you don’t connect with others you will fail as a team member. (Tweet This) It’s important to take the time to get to know your team members. Listen to them. Eat with them. Learn about them. Know what inspires them and show them you care about them.

7. Trust and Be Trusted – You can’t have a strong team without strong relationships. And you can’t have strong relationships without trust. Great team members trust their teammates and most of all their team members trust them. Trust is earned through integrity, consistency, honesty, transparency, vulnerability and dependability. If you can’t be trusted you can’t be a great team member. Trust is everything. (Tweet This)

8. Hold Them Accountable – Sometimes our team members fall short of the team’s expectations. Sometimes they make mistakes. Sometimes they need a little tough love. Great team members hold each other accountable. They push, challenge and stretch each other to be their best. Don’t be afraid to hold your team members accountable. But remember to be effective you must built trust and a relationship with your team members. If they know you care about them, they will allow you to challenge them and hold them accountable. Tough love works when love comes first. Love tough. (Tweet This)

9. Be Humble – Great team members are humble. They are willing to learn, improve and get better. They are open to their team member’s feedback and suggestions and don’t let their ego get in the way of their growth or the team’s growth. I learned the power of being humble in my marriage. My wife had some criticism for me one day and instead of being defensive and prideful, I simply said, “Make me better. I’m open. Tell me how I can improve.” Saying this diffused the tension and the conversation was a game changer. If we’re not humble we won’t allow ourselves to be held accountable. We won’t grow. We won’t build strong relationships and we won’t put the team first. There’s tremendous power in humility that makes us and our team better.
© Jon Gordon

Embrasse the stress training throws at you.

"You're Missing the Point!" "It's about making it hard, not about making it easier."

By John Leonard

Our friends the Australians have an expression...to be "gobsmacked". Heaven only knows the derivation, but the picture I have in my mind is getting literally "smacked in the face with a fish". Sort of a stunning and "attention riveting event." One night during Christmas Vacation training, one of the nice young men on our team, (I'll call him Benito) did something that led to my exclamation at the top of this article.  He's a good young man, and he was simply responding to the prevailing ethic of our society, which is to constantly seek to make things "easier". In the process, he lost track of a critical lesson and a great opportunity. It resulted in my rather loudly and strongly making my point above. We'd finished about 6 K of water work in 90 minutes and were proceeding to our 30 minutes of dryland work on a cool Florida evening, with a decent chill in the air.  My first instruction was about some med ball throws. Following that, it was "3 sets Med ball situps, ½ twist, 100 with 30 seconds rest." So far, all is well. Benito moves into the situp phase well enough and does his first set. Around that time, another athlete has to leave....tossing her med ball into the bin....Benito, who is about 30 situps into his second hundred, hops up, and grabs the just discarded ball, which, I immediately note is 4 pounds LIGHTER.  "BENITO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THIS IS A SET OF 100!" "Coach, I wanted this other ball....." (as explanation for stopping in mid-set, which he knows is a team no-no) "WHY? THIS IS A SET OF 100!" "Coach, this ball has handles and its lighter." Now revert to the top of the page for my next comments. I then stopped the whole group and gathered them around me...."guys, why are we here?" (various answers) "we'd better all be here with the intent to get better." (various nods, affirmations, and some blank stares....) "to get better, we Need to Do Whatever Is HARDER, Not what is easier, yes?" Lights go on in most eyes, most heads nod. Notably, not ALL heads nod. I went on to explain that sport, done correctly is counter-culture. The prevailing culture around us values and esteems "making things easier". It's EVERYWHERE in our world.  And it is EXACTLY what keeps us from being our best. As aspiring athletes, and coaches, we need to SEEK OUT that which is harder, more uncomfortable, more demanding. Not look for the lighter ball with handles. Benito got it. As soon as I said "back to work", he found the biggest, nastiest med-ball he could find WITHOUT handles, and restarted his second set of 100. The majority of the rest of the athletes did likewise. When you point it out to them...."they know".  But I found myself wondering, if a COACH didn't point it out to them, would they ever get it on their own? I think that's why we describe it as "counter-culture." Each of my athletes has heard and "understood" the expression "get comfortable with being uncomfortable" if you want to get better. They can all intellectually explain it. But on a cool Florida night when they were tired, most could not see the application "on their own." A wonderful lesson for me as well as for my athletes.

John Leonard is the Director of the Americans Swimming Coaches Association and a active swimming coach.

We are as good as our word.

When you tell someone you're going to do something, you do it!.

By Jackson Leonard

Our swim club learned a lesson last week that is worth sharing. John is a great 13 year old boy who has recently found enjoyment in chopping wood and hauling water. It took four months, but he is no longer the stereotypical 12 year old boy and is now a real young person who is loving training  (vs swimming) and has taken completely to hard work. Occasionally he says something that reminds me he is barely 13, but for the most part, he's becoming a great guy.  Two Fridays ago, we finished practice with 25's underwater dolphin kick with fins. I made a point to say we were going to make all of them NO BREATH. Immediately before we left, John asked if he could go without fins. I hesitated, unsure if he actually could make it the whole way, never mind no breath. I nodded though, and said, "Only if you make ALL of them, underwater, no breath, on interval."   John accepted these conditions. 13 under waters into the set, John realized how tough the set really was and how uncomfortable he was. He asked, "May I put my fins on to finish?" I said, "No. You told me you would finish them without fins. This is a lesson that applies to everything, not just swimming- if you tell someone you are going to do something, you do it. Period. Do you understand?" He nodded reluctantly and went on his way, uncomfortable for the rest of practice. I went home disheartened and unsure if he had received the message. (He had...) Rose is a 12 year old girl in the group, who is conscientious, hard working, and good person. She has normal insecurities and concerns about her swimming, but overcomes them most of the time. A week and a half before our Mile Meet, her parents take her to Georgia on a family trip. She doesn't swim while away. Her first practice back, she goes 90x100@1:25 with the group and averages 1:09's (very good for her). Three days later at the Mile Meet, she is nowhere to be found, even though she signed up and told me she was going to be there only days earlier. I went home disappointed she hadn't swam it; it is likely her best event. Monday, after the Mile Meet, during warm up with everyone at the wall, I quietly asked Rose why she wasn't at the Mile Meet. "Because I didn't think I was ready to swim it," was her reply. As a coach, a million irate thoughts raced through my head- as if it was up to her to decide if she was ready to race well! Before I could get a word out, thankfully, John cut in and said- quite forcefully- "You said you were going to be there Rose, you should have been. When you tell someone you're going to do something, you do it!" and quickly dipped underwater. I was momentarily stupefied and just nodded and said, "He's right."  I have been growing more and more worried about how the group will swim at Champs. But if John's reply is any indication of how the group is growing and learning, I'll be okay with anything. As I remind the AG coaches in our weekly meeting (partially to remind myself)- we need to be infinitely more interested in the swimmers as human beings than as athletes.

Jackson Leonard is a full time age group coach in the SouthEast.   I like this little story, a little disturbed by the 90 x 100s on 1'25 though, I hope they only do this once a year! Marc