Hello and welcome to the Swim Brief. I'm Chris DeSandis, and this week I am joined by the head coach of Jersey Wahoos and my friend, Paul Donovan. Paul, how are you?
SPEAKER_01I'm doing great, Chris. Always great to see you, man.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, good to see you too. We actually had to cut off just us talking normally. We would have done that for the entire time we needed to record this podcast. So I had to eventually force the issue that we should press record and start actually recording a podcast before I had to go and you had to go. It's the hardest thing. I was telling somebody earlier this week, it's the hardest thing when I record podcasts with somebody that I have a you know a strong friendship with outside of the podcast is sort of like reining in what are we actually going to talk about, you know, for a for a fixed period of time. But we have a nice little outline. Um I want to get into it with you right away because one of the things uh I I think you probably know that I I credit you with is you got me into planning. Um I think it's a strength of yours. I think it's something that you spend a lot of time thinking about, so there's a lot to discuss. Um and we're coming off an Olympic year. So I just wanted to, in more in general, as a as a as a head coach, as somebody responsible for a team, somebody responsible for uh some really high-level athletes. Um you were at Olympic trials this summer, you had an athlete go to the uh junior pan packs. Let's get into what are some of the things you're thinking about now and and reflecting on and as you're thinking and planning into the future.
SPEAKER_01I think with the with the planning piece, um, I think in my opinion, it's it's an essential uh art form uh in my coaching process anyway, um both in terms of the groups that I directly manage, but also just trying to keep uh keep a whole program on track and moving in an aligned direction. So I think you know we look at the the planning as really being a quite a wide framework with some some some endpoints in it and some starting points in it, and then just a whole lot of flexibility and freedom in between as well, because what we don't want planning to be is we don't want it to be restrictive and we don't want it to get coaches to feel constrained in expressing themselves on the side of the pool and expressing themselves when they're trying to put together practices and and content as well. So, you know, I always try to look at planning as a very big picture process, very high-level process, and um just try to give people an overall direction and give myself an overall direction. Um, so when I'm walking onto the side of the pool, uh I'm I'm organized and feel like I'm giving the kids value for their for their time and their effort.
SPEAKER_00Um let me just jump in on that point because I think there's actually a really important point there, essentially, about creativity, and this is something that I realized while I was coaching at Jersey Wahoos, is I had always resisted planning, and I think internally the thought process uh over some of my resistance was this will limit me creatively. If I plan, as you're right, it will become restrictive to me, and therefore I will take away what I consider to be one of my strengths, which is you know, that I have some kind of creativity about what to do. And what I found instead, um, where I came to eventually was that I realized that actually my most creative moments were when I had some structure around what I was doing and when I had some limitations around what I was doing. That um I had this conversation with Charlie Kennedy on the podcast. Often your best coaching innovations come when you sort of think like, you know, I've got this limitation and this limitation and this limitation. What am I going to do now? And sometimes just by planning and organizing, yeah, you do put some limitations on yourself, but within that you actually become more creative.
SPEAKER_01And I think because there are limitations in everything that we do. Yeah. The season is a set amount of time, you know, the practice is a set amount of time. Like so, even people talk about and you sit down and you try to draw on a blank canvas, you still know when you look at the canvas what size it is. It's either an AR page or it's going to be the size of you know of a bigger desk or something like that. So I think you've got to have, and I said, that that framework around what we're trying to do to give us the space to organize our thoughts. Because the other thing in today's world, and especially in coaching, because you have people that are really interested and engaged and passionate around what they do, is that there's so much information out there. And if you don't have a way of organizing that information, you you can just end up like throwing colours on the page. And sometimes that looks really nice and it works, and other times it's um it's it's not so good and can be a bit of a disaster. And my opinion is I want to walk in and give the kids value for their time, value for their commitment, value for their effort. And I think having some of those broad strokes in place keeps me in check that I'm not just um I'm just not experimenting on day in, day out. Yeah, you're moving in a in a set direction with them. Um, but really also I I think from a as a head coach, so I think that's from my personal point of view, it's to help keep my thoughts organized and moving towards our goals. And as a head coach, though, I want to keep it quite general. So you know when I'm looking at planning and I'm trying to give coaches some feedback on content and stuff like that, I'm never trying to go over 50-60% of a practice. Um I want to have the rest of the time totally free to themselves to be able to do what they feel that they need. So when we're talking about planning for a season and we look at our annual plan or we look at our weekly outlines, I'm not asking them to fill their weekly outline with 100% of content based on where we're trying to go. I'm saying, hey, can we get 40, 50, 60% of it might be general stuff that we're we're aligned on and we're moving towards, and but the rest of the time is theirs. They're the ones that see the kids, they're the ones that know them a whole lot better than I do. Um, and they should have that flexibility to do what the kids need uh in a manner that they feel good about.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01So you know that's really important in the planning process. The flip side of it is that I just don't think you can't have any planning done at all. And I just don't see that as best practice. And there are examples of world-class coaches out there um who don't need to plan, but they're they're exceptional talents, they're exceptional people. We don't want to lose them, but you know, you don't necessarily want to copy the the the one in a thousand person out there and try to be like them.
SPEAKER_00I also think I also think when you look like I mean, somebody that I've talked about on this podcast, people have always said, like, oh, Eddie Reese shows up and he, you know, when he coaches practice, he just makes it up on the spot. I think that when you look, you're just taking a snapshot, what you miss, I don't even think it's necessarily a matter of just amazing talent, although he's an amazingly talented coach, obviously, but it that snapshot also obscures how much actual planning and work goes into being able to spontaneously come up with practice. Like it's not that he just like, you know, looks at the at the wind blowing and goes, ah, now I know what set's going to happen. Like he has thought about that stuff for a long time before that practice started. He has thought about what he wants to do. So he has planned. Even though it looks spontaneous and it appears spontaneous in a snapshot. Um, I think that a lot of people, and I I I I've I guess another insight that I had coaching at Wahoos is was when I realized that there's actually a really strong link between planning and positivity. That it is very easy to fall into a sort of a negativity trap if you don't plan. Um because trying to be optimistic in adverse situations takes preparation ahead of time. If you're in a reactive state, you're reactive sort of is always going to trend pessimistic, negative, oh, there's a huge problem, what am I gonna do? Kind of thinking. Um, whereas, you know, if you had that preparation, oh, I I I sort of foresaw that a situation like this would come, and here's what I'm gonna do. And you can actually be thoughtful and take the action that you want to in tough situations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I know I couldn't agree more. I think it sends you on deck, ready to ready to coach, not just ready to train.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're gonna talk more about that later. But so give me, give me your now that we've we've we've generalized around planning, what are your high-level uh things? You're sort of, I mean, I guess you're taking observations um from last year or even the last sort of Olympic cycle and thinking about how does that affect how I'm going to coach this coming year.
SPEAKER_01For sure. And I think look, uh all these things are you know, you try to move things forward organically based on your experiences with your own team and what you can learn um for from from going to meets and different experiences like that. And the thing that is just blowing my mind uh every time I go to a swim meet, um, especially at the national level, is how high the level of skill in age group athletes, I suppose high school athletes, is um and it's moving down, you'll see the same thing. Because I've always been of the opinion that at the high performance end of the sport, so we call it the international or in the US at the national level of the sport, at the top end, the level of skill is going to be one of, if not the defining factor uh between guys who win it and guys who don't. Um and that below that level, the the actually the level of work could be the defining factor because you could outwork your competitors. But at the top level, everybody's working hard, everybody's doing roughly the same, and it's gonna be their level of skill, um, not their level of talent, not the same thing. Skill and talent is is not you know bestowed on on people, skill is something you work on and you can improve. So what we're seeing happen is that that differentiating factor is moving down through the age groups now, and because the level of work is so high and consistent um across the country, uh, in so many places, um we are now seeing the differentiating factor is being the level of skill, and it is so competitive that that level of skill has been elevated up to what we used to see at the at the collegiate and national or international level, and particularly around like underwater um travel, um even between distance per stroke, and the idea you um you can see people taking fewer strokes and going faster at a younger age. It's not just tempo and and revs driven. Um, people are taking less strokes and and the breathing patterns. Like people are taking fewer breaths, they're doing things like our you know, people always remember the guys like um Albert Subertz and Caleb Dressel and Joseph Schooling, all starting not to breathe on the last 25 of a hundred-yard fly and it's blowing people's mind. I've seen it done, I've seen it done at the high school level now. People are doing that level of skill. Um so what comes back to me is how do I help the athletes at Wahoos appreciate the need to be more skillful and build that into our into our planning and into our into our daily content and into our coaching, um, so that we are helping them move their level of skill forward. Because what I'm about to say, I'll say from my absolutely biased perspective, but the the kids work so hard. Yeah, really happy with the level of work they put in. They're amazing, they do they do great things, they're brilliant. But I look at our program and uh at the national level and down below, and I say, I is our level of skill matched up um uh with with the best in the country, and I think our best kids, yes. But but as as a as a like on a level base average throughout the program, I think it's something that we can help help the kids with do more. Because that's what I see when I go to these meets, is just how these kids are.
SPEAKER_00And I would I I would say to anyone, I mean, I'm the type of nerd that you you've gotten some text messages from me with old YouTube videos. I love watching anything, any old swimming race that there is possible, you know, a viewable video of, no matter how grainy, no matter how poor the quality, you know, somebody's VHS tape transferred 18 times and then put digitized and put on the internet. I'll watch it. And it is, you don't have to go back that far to see a startling skill difference. Like anybody who's watching this, go watch the 2004 Olympics and then side by side it with 2024. You'll be shocked. I mean, that world-class swimmers in 2004 are doing some stuff that you would not see at an elite, I would say like at an elite age group level in 2024. That's how much the skill has moved. I I I totally agree on that point.
SPEAKER_01Um if you give like some, and it's the same thing. If you if you look on on Swim Swam is doing some reviews and some reports on the results from the from the Paris Olympics, and quite often the headline is you know, Leanne Marshon won the race through his underwaters. There was one Kate Douglas, the difference between Kate Douglas and um the South African girl who I won't try to pronounce her name out of absolute respect to getting it wrong. Um, but you know, the difference was in it was in the pullouts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you know, straight away at that top level, it's reinforcing the fact that the difference between gold and silver, or between meddling and not meddling, or getting into a final and not getting into a final, is in their level of skill because everybody's working hard. You you can skim that cat a million different ways, but everybody's working hard. So, what is the differentiating factor? It's their level of skill. So it's holding true at the international level, and I think what what I'm seeing is that it's the best high school or age group athletes are all operating at such a high level. Thomas Heilman is a great example, amazing young man. Um, I've heard nothing but amazing things around his work ethic and and how committed he is to his process. But look, his level of skill is just so far ahead of everybody else. Um, and Maximus Simpson the same way, um uh at a life side, their level of skill. He's taken fewer strokes on breaststroke than anyone else in that that I am at his age group. So he is competitive on a level of skill with Schenkas and Carson Foster, like he's in their ballpark, he's not quite there, but he's separated himself out in terms of his level of skill um from the rest of his peer group. And so that's I think the challenge uh at the club level is to try to empower the athletes to value it uh uh and to work on those details and to build it into what they do.
SPEAKER_00So so what are you gonna do? Because I mean, I as you're saying that that part, I mean, just looking at at Wahoos, and again, it's been a couple years, but if I look back, um one of the things that I would tell people about why the team has historically been so successful is I do think that there, you know, I think institutional knowledge is a thing. There are there are there is knowledge that is just in a place and that people sort of pick up unknowingly. And one of those pieces of institutional knowledge that's just since I've encountered it, been there at Wahoos is people are very hard-nosed. There is a high-level work ethic, just the average level of sort of commitment and drive to train hard in the sport of swimming is is well above, it's just well above average. Um so you have that, right? You have that as a strength, a relative strength. Maybe that can make the skill component look like that it's not as strong relative to that. And I guess when I think about what you're going to change, you don't want to do anything to lose that strength of having people be hard-nosed and want to train hard and and push themselves um to keep leveling up their training, but you want to bring something new in. So, how do you approach that?
SPEAKER_01You never want to lose your strengths. And there's no point addressing a weakness if it's gonna cause you to decrease in something you're already successful at.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Um, so uh but you could do that.
SPEAKER_00Like somebody could go come in and go, we can need to level up the skill of this team, and then all of a sudden, every day for two hours you're doing drills and you get to November, which you would never do. I know you already made the phase. I know you would never do this, but like that can that thinking can take over some time, and there's a spectrum to that that I think also you want to avoid.
SPEAKER_01So sure. So I think with the training stuff, it's it's adding in some some some simple um guidance to them about maybe it's taking a kick count, um maybe it's it's focusing on a stroke count uh or focusing on a breathing pattern. And I think we'd actually done uh you know with with the with the national team last year, you know, we we kind of do quality, uh you know, you know, training um twice a week. And I think we had done a much better job of communicating to the kids that it wasn't just we're like we were at the stage where we didn't have kids couldn't keep going faster. Um, like you know, there's a limit to how fast you can go and practice. So it was saying, right, we're we're not going this fast consistently in our races, so why is that? So maybe talk to them about you know, using we talk about a lot about leveling up your skills as fatigue kicks in, yeah, exactly, and using that to maintain, or even if you go a little bit slower and you're fatigued, if your level of skill starts to level up, that differential will will fade off over time as you get more experience and you get more reps in. So I think we had done this quite well on some of that quality stuff um last season, and getting them you know, with their kick count that they wanted to do in a race, and getting them to value that and using it as a tool to measure success in those sets. Because if the clock is the only way they're gonna feel successful, that's what they're gonna look to. Because you know the kids want to be successful, and as they should. So we try to give them a couple of other simple measures that could also um be used as points of success for them, and maybe try to take that back out into other parts of our training as well. Um, and a huge part is you we got warm-up and swim down, and you know, a phrase I'd stolen off another coach was let's you know, if we warm up correctly, if we start practice correctly, the chances of us staying correct are exponentially higher. And if we finish practice off correctly and a swim down, the likelihood of the next practice starting correctly is also exponentially higher. Um so and I use an example in our age group program, um they warm up 1050s on 50, free back every single day and have done for 35 years. So institutional knowledge and institutional rep.
SPEAKER_001050s is a piece of institutional knowledge at Wahoo's.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, uh you do the math on it, you know, 500 yards a day, they're swimming six days a week, 3,000 yards a week. Say we've got 40 normal weeks in a year, it's 120,000 yards a year. It is roughly around one month of practice for them, three to four weeks of practice for them spent on just warming up. Imagine if we gave them some tools and some feedback to utilize that ginormous amount of time better. And some of them will, and some of them won't, and some of them will do it more consistently than others, but it only takes one. All we need As one person to do this for it to be an incredibly positive exercise. So there's an example of ways that we were trying to do it without interrupting the flow and positivity of what we have going on in a daily basis across our groups.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. What what's what else are you thinking about? I mean, it's more on the uh on the high performance level.
SPEAKER_01In terms of changes in in programming. Well, I think that that that skill is a huge piece of it, you know, at the national level, and being able to give the kids simple um and metrics to work on. I I think from my point of view, my my own internal reflections on last year was that I didn't do a good enough job for the kids um uh around breaststroke and and planning and periodizing and coaching and teaching it. Was and still is our weak stroke and for our medley swimmers, so it impacts our our medley swims, and and we have kids that are really good at breaststroke, and uh I felt um I didn't give them my best. You know, I tried last year, but but it didn't have the outcome that I wanted. Um so I really tried to use the the summertime, and you know, I've been to a couple of conferences and clinics over the past couple of weeks to use that opportunity to stand back and reflect on how we're delivering it and how we're organizing it, and the you know, the opportunities we're giving them to be successful. Like if we look at Audrey Um Dervo in that 400 IM at Olympic Trials, um you know, she's she's a national level flying backstroker. Um she's really good freestyler, she is a really good breaststroker, she's been 112 long course under breaststroke, she's been 105, 100. I think she's been 105, maybe 106.0 yards under breaststroke, but implementing it into the IM after the other two strokes hasn't seen that progress maybe that we've made and the individual stroke show up enough. Um so so that's been something from a performance point of view that I'm I'm conscious of and been been reflective of to try to help those kids that it is their primary stroke, try to do a better job of planning it and periodizing it. So, like so specifically for an example, I you know, we were at the Ask a Clinic um uh a couple of weeks ago in Orlando, and Jan Albrich spoke. Um famous, I'm gonna say Dutch, but maybe he's from Belgium, I'm not too sure.
SPEAKER_00I think he's Dutch, yeah. I think he's Dutch, I think you're right.
SPEAKER_01And uh uh excise physiologist, you know, incredibly smart man, um, and a huge amount of swimming knowledge as well. But me, I listen intently to his plan of periodization because I felt walking away from it, it was something that tweaked with me about the breaststroke is that maybe there's a way we can model, and I'm big on modeling our training, um so it's so that it is organized because we have a lot of moving parts. So that was something I took away and looking at his kind of three key sets a week and and and how he plans and splits them up as something that we're going to try and implement for for the kids who are more breaststroke-oriented and also who are looking to use the breaststroke is a key piece of their uh I am as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The Swim Brief podcast is brought to you by Chris DeSantis Coaching. Being a coach is isolating. You know that saying that it's lonely at the top? Well, for many coaches, that's reality. Being a coach means everyone has an opinion on what you're doing. It takes work to filter out the noise and make the best decisions. You need to be able to think through plans, ideas, and problems proactively. At Chris DeSantis Coaching, I fill that gap for coaches. I'll help you turn every rocky moment into a slingshot and provide the support you need to be at your best. You deserve to have someone in your corner, and everyone on your team will benefit. If you want an expert to have your back in your coaching career, go to ChrisDoach.com right now and fill out a contact form. You'll get an hour of my time at no cost to you. You don't have to go alone any longer. Back to the podcast Yeah, you you say modeling, and and what it inspires me to do is a bit of a segue to another part of this podcast that we're going to discuss. But I, you know, sooner or later I'm probably gonna have Andrew Sheaf on this podcast. And one of the things uh I've had a chance to talk with him a few times off the podcast, and one of the things he said that really resonated uh with me, and this is really sort of my uh riff off of some of what he's saying is you actually, you know, people think about developing skills, right? And their their model probably for somebody who's good at developing skills is somebody who's really skilled in teaching, right? A coach who's really skilled in teaching. I don't actually don't think that you have to be good at teaching to level up people's skills. If you put them in the right environment to level up their skills, like they can make a ton of progress without you necessarily being anything better than average at teaching. So there's actually even within, it's uh it's a sort of like a distinction within skill instruction that I don't think a lot of people think about. And I think it goes to another thing that we were gonna discuss on this podcast as I'm I'm looking ahead, the difference between training and coaching. I mean, some some part of this we've been discussing, and and you know, you've got athletes that are working incredibly hard. Of course, it's important to plan what the practices are gonna look like, move these variables right, make sure that you always have giving the right stimulus to athletes to progress their fitness and get them up to another level. But I think people, and the reason one of the reasons I don't talk so much about what kind of sets people are doing on these on this podcast is I think people tend to obsess over that end of it, the training end of it. When in reality, that part, I don't mean to, I don't mean to sound arrogant. That part is easy. The hard part is getting human beings to do it. That's coaching, convincing somebody, you know, hey, this thing, you should go do it. And by the way, it's gonna be very challenging, it's gonna be painful at times, it's going to, you know, test your will and your um mental fortitude and everything that you have, um, but you should absolutely do it. Like that part of it uh is extremely hard. I mean, what what do you when you think about the distinction between coaching and training? Um what do you see there?
SPEAKER_01They're they're two totally separate things. Um and you sometimes we get caught in the tr in the trap as fans, and this is not just in swimming in in loads of sports, where you see a team win, you know, that person must be an amazing coach. Yeah, and sometimes that that is true, hopefully, most of the time it's true. Um, but some of the time, maybe that person is just an amazing trainer. Because to me, a coach, and I'm very passionate and protective of that word, that means a lot to me. Um like a coach is someone that that inspires people to do things that they didn't think were possible. It's a relationship-based uh connection and that you make with the people, and it does not involve writing sets or it doesn't involve coming up with plays in football. Um it is it is totally about the relationships that you can build between um you and and another person or other people or other groups, um, and that's what coaching is. Coaching is valuing people as human beings, valuing them as people and performers, and trying to get them to show their best within whatever dynamic they they find themselves in in their life. Um, that's being a good coach. Being a good trainer is someone that can do all the other organizational stuff, all the other technical stuff, all the other physiological stuff, and and put a good plan in place. But that doesn't necessarily mean that doing all that means that you're doing a good job coaching. It might mean that you're doing a good job of getting people to swim fast. Yeah, because good trainers can um result in fast swimming, and likewise good coaches can result in fast swimming, like both can exist in isolation. However, if I had a choice around what to be, if I could only be one, give me being a good coach every day of the week. Yeah, because then I'm I'm helping people. You know, I mean we we've seen this in swimming, we've seen in other sports that win at all costs, um, mindset and attitude. And there is a time and a place where maybe you need to go to that well for a period of time um with certain people, but again, we talk about frameworks and and all the rest of it. I just don't think that's a good framework to have in life in our profession. Um so I'd much rather uh be on the side where you know, like our our goal at Wahoos is that every person who's a member of our team has the most positive experience of their lives, and we believe to do that they have to be happy and successful. You didn't say you have to be happy or successful. Yeah, and now that doesn't mean at every moment along the journey they're experiencing both things in unison. That's not possible. However, ultimately, with with time and space that they look back on it, and that they are their that is their feelings and and their experience of being a part of it, is that they were both happy and successful along the way. Um and I think sometimes, especially at that, and we're not talking about high performance stuff. I said I think in the higher up the food, looks looks like that level of skill acquisition becomes a defining factor. One of the other defining factors in ultimate success at the top end of anything is your willingness to do what's not possible.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, your willingness to do what I mean, you yourself just at some point on along the process to getting there go, no, I can't. I cannot do that. I can't.
SPEAKER_01And the and the best people find a way, right? And that's how what teaches everybody else how to raise the bar. Um so in in isolation, you can go down that training path and push it with with with certain individuals. Again, you as a coach will know those people and know how far you can push it. But like we we look at some of the the life challenges that high performers face with, um and maybe for them it was worth it because the payoff is so large. Maybe not, I don't know. But you know what? It's not alright for it's not alright for everybody. So I think being a good coach and being a good trainer are are separate things. I said coaching is all about the relationships, and as a coach, it's all about giving the people that we work with the confidence and inspiration and motivation that they can do it. That's what coaching is, and training is is is all the other stuff the physio in our sport, the physiological stuff, the technical stuff, the tactical stuff. That's training, and I think that's really important too. I'm trying to do both. Um, and I think sometimes when we look though, and who we look up to in like not I'm not talking about the swimming community, although it exists in that, I'm talking in the wider performance community. Sometimes we look up at people that maybe have neglected um the values that go into being a really good coach. But that doesn't mean they weren't really good at training people to swim fast.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I I have so many reflections on that. I mean, one of the things that I'm thinking about, and it's a story that I've probably told too many times on this podcast, but um, when I was coaching in Denmark, I had the experience of getting on one of these international teams, and you know, as I was talking with um Kyle Gahler about, you know, you end up uh being responsible for swimmers that you didn't train all the way through the year. And I one thing that I will never forget is I had an athlete, and we wanted to, you know, put her second on a relay, an athlete that I was responsible for training that I hadn't trained through the year, wanted to put her second on a relay, and she said, I've never practiced a relay start. And so, you know, uh, I had to try to teach her a relay start at the meet, and part of me instinctually was reflecting and thinking, like, what's wrong with her coach that she's never practiced a relay start? Now, it's possible maybe they did practice a relay start. I'm always open to that. But the other thing that I had to consider was here was an athlete that was otherwise extremely well prepared to be at the meet, and by the way, probably the happiest, seeming like the happiest to be swimming at a high level of performance. And I started, you know, just like the way I work, I started observing the coach more, and I could just see that was an atmosphere created on his team, that he was not a guy who was going to come in and like wow you and show you, oh, here, like look at my workouts, look at, you know, look at what we're doing here. And but he had he had created those relationships to athletes where if he had somebody with some talent, they were so excited and so motivated to get to a high level of performance. Um, and I think there's a really important distinction there. There's another conversation I was, I was, I was thinking about as as you were talking all the way through that. And I think it has to do with maybe an evolution, one that I'm pretty interested in. And I'm gonna talk about some high-level athletes that I don't know very much about. So, you know, everybody's gonna have to excuse if I over-generalize in some sense. But I think we're we're in a bit of a transition point in terms of some of the mental side of the sport. When I look at somebody like um Michael Phelps, I think very much the model in mentality was, and this is not a criticism of Bob Bowman for everybody who thinks I'm always criticizing other coaches. Um, it's just he had a bit of like, okay, this is it's really hard to be up here. I'll deal with it later. And that's been like he's come out of retirement, he's really dealing with what's going on, and like, you know, he's become an advocate for therapy and all these amazing things. The next stage of this was we had athletes that got up, and while they were at an elite level, they sort of checked like, is my process for getting up here functional? You know, so you had athletes taking a year or more off, Caleb Dressel, Christoph Malak, Adam Peady. And I'm hoping that where we get to, the sort of, you know, the final stage of evolution here is it becomes more and more incorporated into what you're talking about, the coaching side of it, that yeah, we're trying to build people up to a high performance level, and we can never um we can never eliminate risk from that. But at the same time, we are planning for what it's going to mean, and not and not in a reactive space like, oh my gosh, you know, I got to a high performance level and like everything hit me like a freight train, that we have more athletes that are that are prepared to get up to that. And I think coaches, that's gonna be coaches and coaching that's gonna make that difference 100%.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think the the other thing I think we gotta be careful, like the other side of it is if we analyze everything at specific moments, of course we're gonna find things that don't look good. Yeah, and I think we should never judge environments, situations, and people uh at their worst and say, well, that must be the way it is all the time. Again, maybe there is an instance where it is, but again, I'm a I'm a glass half-full guy, and I'm thinking it's probably not always like that. Like if you come in here, you'll see some horrible days, and you'll see some not good interactions um between between myself and uh other coaches or other kids because we all have those moments where we're we're where we're not perfect. Um, so I think being very careful when we analyze these things, you we don't judge people at their worst moment and say, well, that that moment and that time and that long career, they were they were really, really bad. So that must be a bad environment. I think sometimes you got to take a step back and look at where it ends up or where it spent the majority of its time, and that's probably a better reflection um of it overall. So you know, I'm always careful you don't want to look at people at the worst and looking for people. But I also think what you're saying about that evolution is is true. I think people are more open. Um, like again, a generational thing, our parents wouldn't have been as as open to discussing some of the problems in life as as as we would be. And certainly that the like I find the the generation of kids in coaching now to be just they're so much better at communicating the their feelings and where they're at. And I don't think you know that's not just because we're better coaches. My coaches growing up, some of them were really amazing. Yeah, some of them weren't, and you know, and some of them were just okay, that's normal. I think it's just become more acceptable in social discourse to be a bit more open on these things.
SPEAKER_00So if I look at the evolution of that into into Yeah, the opportunity is more there than it ever was. You're absolutely right about that.
SPEAKER_01And but I think if you look at these kind of as swimming moves into like a a third a third Olympics for people is now not abnormal for these high performing people. It would have been very rare to see people go to a third Olympics, you know, 20 years ago. So I think I wonder if that that that no when no one's done it before, no one knows the path, and people are always reacting and trying to figure it out. Now that people know it's a possibility, I I think coaches as they build those relationships with athletes will will plan that in a little bit better and we'll see people not have to step away. I think the reason we saw so many people step away was because it was so new, so unknown. And I'm sure being a professional swimmer is it's not like being a professional football player, you know, from a financial and and life point of view, like they're dealing with a lot of fears and a lot of concerns. And I think the the co the swimming community will figure that bit out, and I'd like to think that we won't see as many people have to stay away for like negative reasons because they're not doing well. Um like that's I hope that's I don't see that being the path going forward over the next, you know, if we look into LA and look into the Australian games in 2032, I think we'll have figured it out a little bit better because we'll have had a few a few runs around it and we'll have learned the lessons from from some great people that have had to go through some hard times to figure it out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I mean you you know you you bring up Phelps as completely unprecedented. I mean, he went to five Olympics. So, like um we I don't know uh how many times we're gonna see that ever after. We definitely didn't see it at that anywhere near that level before. I mean, Mark Spitz essentially was the standard before that. Um and he sort of struggled, struggled um relative to his seven Olympic uh gold in in one Olympics, and then he'd had the seven-one, and then he was done. He was done. He didn't really even try to continue on a world-class stage after that. So you're absolutely I think you make a great point about the fact that somebody's got to just like try it to find out where the pitfalls are. And they're they're like, you know, they're really kind of like a brave explorer just just sailing off, not knowing whether the world is flat and they're gonna fall off on the other end. Um, and then the rest of us, they've charted a course, and the rest of us know, okay, up here, you know, there's uh there's some whirlpools and there's a bad current over there, and you got to look out for that, right? But somebody, somebody needs to do it first. Um and I think you're right about that. And I I even I heard some people, you know, they they you say judge don't judge people on their worst moment. I mean, I um there was a discussion of Mark Schubert right off the top, and I know I'm well known for uh leveling a lot of criticisms at Mark Schubert, and people are like, well, why didn't you you know dig in more on the Mark Schubert stuff? I go, you know, somebody was sharing with me a really positive interaction they had with Mark Schubert. Maturity in my life is I believe that he had many positive interactions with many people. I've highlighted some that I don't think were very positive, but I am that doesn't mean I'm not open to the fact that um that a lot of people, you know, are are quite fond of him as a coach or fond of something that um maybe a limited interaction like that that they they had with him. That's how it goes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, two things can be true at once.
SPEAKER_00The Swim Brief Podcast is brought to you by Chris DeSantis Coaching. Are you tired of not competing at your best? I've worked with countless athletes who felt that their mind was limiting them on race day. As a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, I have a unique approach. Instead of fixing what's wrong, I help athletes build an entirely new framework from the ground up, and I do it in as little as 12 weeks. I teach them how to make their active mind something that helps them. The work that I do stays with athletes long after we finish. Those that work with me get permanent results that go beyond their sports career. They not only bust through their current plateau, but learn what to do when the next one comes. If you know an athlete that could benefit from a complete rebuild of their approach, fill out a contact form at ChrisDcoach.com. Let's find out what they're truly capable of. Back to the podcast. You're an ASCA board member and you talked about uh seeing Jan Ulbret there. Um you also had a chance to go to a coaching conference in Ireland recently. Between the two others, um, just for the audience at home, maybe who didn't get a chance to go to one or the other. And you know, if you're a coach in America or anywhere, I guess you could you could come to Asuka next year. I don't know uh if the Irish one is open to anybody. But like, okay, well, great. Maybe I'll come next year. Um I spent 12 hours in Ireland this summer at a great time. Um give us a give us a highlight uh uh or some some things that are sticking with you out of out of either of those.
SPEAKER_01Well, I I think um like look from a from a you know coaching point of view, you know, being in a lucky position to be able to go to events like that and reflect and and take a step back and listen and learn and reflect some more, um, is you know, I feel very lucky to be able to do those things. I think one of the things I felt um at the ASCAT clinic was, and it was kind of a follow-on actually from from what I felt from my experience at trials um this summer, was just the the sense of community uh within within the coaching uh uh community was just it was just amazing. It was such a positive uh environment to be in. Um and getting to spend time with like you're getting to spend time with amazing people. Like these are all people are the top of their game for a reason. Um so I feel very lucky to do that anyway. But the the atmosphere around it was just from my personal point of view, was just um very relaxed because these are pressurized, right? The trials is a pressurized environment, the clinic not so much, um, but just the the sense of community and and positivity around those things were just something that that stuck with me. They made them very enjoyable experiences, and um and I think the learnings that you can take when to go to any event quite often are in the informal um settings, and if the informal settings are you know they have a good vibe and a good feel to them, I think you're gonna get more out of people. People will talk a little bit more, share a little bit more, be a little bit more open in what they're saying. So they're very high level. I I thought that was something all summer long that was um that was great. And I've been here six years, I didn't always feel that way. So maybe maybe it's I've been here a little bit longer and I'm a little bit more comfortable. I think that's a part of it. I don't think that's the only part to it. No, um, I I think so so that that was something that that I really enjoyed and I think allowed people to take um a little bit more away from it. Um on the actual content side, um what I really enjoyed, and look, I am you know full disclosure, I am a board member of Ask, and I've I've openly said it's a really important organization um uh in my life and has been for 20 years. Um, but I felt um at the clinic this year, I found a nice balance of information being shared. Um so, like a couple of talks that I really enjoyed and was able to take something away from. We had Michael Bowle uh come in from Australia, um, who's one of the best coaches in the world. You can never say there's a best coach in the world, you can say one of the best coaches. He's right.
SPEAKER_00But he's definitely he's he's uh he's up there, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and um he was able to, you know, he shared a lot of specific information uh Kayleigh McKeown, uh who you know, who he was working with in the run-up to Paris, and just how fast she was swimming in practice. Like we talked about you know how we do things in practice planning. It was mind-blowing to see how fast she was swimming in practice. She was regularly putting a suit on and going 57s for 100 backstroke long course um in practice, and not just once in a set, like repeatable excellence at this level.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, people say, well, what are you gonna get out of that? I don't have an athlete that can go 57, 100 backstroke. But if you have an athlete that's going 107, 100 backstroke and you've never seen him go faster than 115 in practice, I think you can take away from it. I can I can demand and challenge the athlete that I work with to perform at a higher relevant level of performance day in, day out.
SPEAKER_00So that's the thing. Yeah, you know what I take a yeah. You know what I take away from it too is I think so many of us, I I know I've done this so many times in my career. Maybe you have an athlete that um is going 107 all the time in practice, and then your mentality goes, well, when we go to a meet, they should be going 105. So you're you're constantly disappointed. But it's hard to be disappointed when it's Kaylee McEwen and she's winning the Olympics. But maybe, maybe, just maybe, if you're already suiting up and creating the conditions right for swimming fast in practice, you should be around your best time, you know, and it's just a matter of can you put together just as good, if not a slightly better, race on race day.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and instead of that other mentality of like somehow, you know, being at a a meet is so much of a better opportunity for swimming fast.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like um Michael Bowell spoke about um uh an old Bill Sweetham uh quote that they used in Australia quite often, which was I'm gonna try to get this right, is the Olympic Games is trying to get a predictable performance in an unpredictable environment. So maybe they're the I don't know this, but by repeatedly doing world-class swims in practice, they were increasing the likelihood of her delivering at least a world-class swim in the unpredictable, emotional and and physical.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a nice controlled environment. You can really control what's happening there. So if anything, you should be able to swim fast there.
SPEAKER_01So that was mind-blowing, just the the consistency of quality that that was able to do. So that was kind of a high performance training takeaway that I thought was relevant. We also had like I one of my favorite talks was we got to hear Abby Lou on the on the last day.
SPEAKER_00She's amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. But it was different. I've heard Abby talk a couple of times, and her story is so so authentic and so unique and and it's quite moving and inspirational when you listen to her talk. But she actually did a great talk just around her the like basically long-term athlete development throughout her program, what the different levels were doing along the way, and seeing that progression. I think for again from a club point, it was much more of a planning talk and a content talk than it was a coaching talk. So it's more training. Michael's talk was very much about training. Uh Abby's talk was more um around the club side of it as well, as opposed to a coaching talk. Um, so from a training club point of view, I I really enjoyed seeing what another high-level consistent club does. Um, and a coach that has been successful now in a couple of places as well. Um so it's that was great. So I think you know you're going from the high performance end of training down to the club relevant age of training. And then on the first day to meet Carol Capitani did an amazing talk, amazing coaching talk. Didn't talk about training. She talked about coaching, she talked about relationships, she talked about uh how they plan to build relationships and the interactions that they have, and um, and it was it was amazing and hearing her talk about that and the thought that goes into the opportunities they create to build connectivity uh with the women that they work with. So, again, we're going from you know a high performance training talk into a club-based training talk into just a coaching talk, which is applicable across the spectrum. Coaching is coaching, building is coaching with the people we work with. So, my kind of takeaway, and then you know the the swim nerd in me, you just sprinkle the cherries, and you know, on top when you have Jan Albrecht and get up and talk talk in in detail around his experiences and and and learnings um in his career and where he's currently at with his thinking on planning periodization and and and training. So it was I thought there was a great range um of topics uh being spoken about um at it. So that made it enjoyable, but really I felt the the atmosphere around the place. And I like I've been there was my 10th um world clinic. Um my first I went to my first one in 2004, maybe it was my ninth, ninth or tenth. Um and uh it was there's been ones that you've gone to where there hasn't been that relaxed life, it's been really formal and very and that used to amaze me at the time. I'm not saying that was bad, I really had a great experience at them. Um, but there was just a different feel to it and a bit more sense of community and and and connection uh going on around the place. So that was that that was really, really nice. Um when I went back to to Dublin, to to Ireland, it was the uh the inaugural Irish Swim Coach Association um conference. They had Andy Manley, who is the director of swimming at Loughborough University, who um was Daniel Within's coach, who won Ireland's let's call it Ireland's first Olympic gold medal uh in Swiss.
SPEAKER_00I I'm with you there.
SPEAKER_01If I've forgotten any other gold medals that happened in the past, my apologies. Um mine must have just slipped.
SPEAKER_00Sure, we must have slipped past it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, but here hearing Andy talk about you know the program at Loughborough, and again, he he did a talk on training uh around Daniel. There was it was interesting coming off Jan Albrecht's talk. Jan Albrecht spoke not to you that's not going to bore anybody listening to this. Um Jan Albrecht.
SPEAKER_00No, if you've made it this far in the podcast, you're definitely not bored.
SPEAKER_01He spoke about like the 80-20 split, like 80% of your time, uh kind of in that uh lower level aerobic zone and 20% of your time and the more diminishing returns, quality um efforts when he's planning training. And he took it a step further and he said, They work with Jan. And he said, We actually found with Daniel that a 90-10 split works better. Wow. And I'm on there thinking, like, that's that's amazing. Like they're like you're telling us all that you took one of the smartest people's models in the world and you adapted it to fit the athlete you are working with today.
SPEAKER_00And honestly, in a counterintuitive, I guess my intuition with a higher level athlete would be that you can do a greater percentage of quality work, and that that is what differentiates them, that they have a greater capacity to take on some of this higher quality work. And you can probably get lost in it as a coach, too, because it's so much fun to watch somebody who's a high performer do high quality work, but he went in the other direction. That's fascinating.
SPEAKER_01And they're working and they're you know they're testing these things along the way, and maybe it's part of his journey. Who maybe he goes the other way? Who knows? That's what we're gonna have to explore. The other thing that I took away from listening to Andy after after hearing Jan Albrecht talk was that um when they talk about the um the lower intensity efforts, they weren't swimming slow. Um, and that's again relevant to the athlete that you're working with, but you know, you're talking about Daniel at his white pace, you know, swimming 101s, 102 long course meters under freestyle. That's that's the slowest pace when when they're in that type of specified training, and so like it's not slow swimming, and I think you know, because when Jan gets up and talks, he's talking purely from a theory point of view. He does work with coaches and athletes, but he's not responsible to them, so he's not sharing that specific data point. So to go from one to the other, and they hear Andy specifically break it down and highlight the fact that hey, we're not talking about slow swimming here.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01For all these guys talking about you have to go fast all the time. Daniel is going fast, it's just relative to Daniel.
SPEAKER_00And the band is narrow, right? So because it that there's less difference between where his white pace is, for instance, and where maybe some of his other paces are than you than you might find in a more novice swimmer, right? Where that stuff's gonna be very spread out.
SPEAKER_01100%. So that that was great to get back and and listen to to Andy talk anyway, but it was particularly good coming off the back of having heard uh Jan talk. And then the the other thing that was amazing at the the Irish coaches uh conference was there was uh my old boss uh from when I worked back in Trojan Swim Club in Ireland, is um guy named Barrett McCarthy, who is uh now a lecturer in sports science and and sport wellness and all this stuff is is life as me. He's still a swim coach and a really good one, but he also has that, you know, he's gone back and he's done a PhD since I worked with him 20 years ago. Um, he did a great talk in the last day, which was talking about, and the phrase that really stuck with me, I've used it so many times in the past few days, is the coaches are performers too. So we did a great talk where he's talking about you know these strategic plans, everyone's talking about the athletes are the performers. His point was, well, coaches are performers also, and what is the plan within these strategic plans to develop the coaches as high performers, also. And if that was real interesting, was typically what would happen, maybe not everywhere, but I can speak from experience, is that when the performance of the athlete is not at the level that people would want, the coaches are the reason that that has not happened. They are to blame for the for the poor performance. So what are what is the the bigger picture the NGBs and the coaching associations doing to move coaches as at an individual level forward as high performing individuals as well. And at the moment, this strategy is kind of like they'll do it themselves. Or they won't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think you're I think you're just making me think uh in so many situations, coaches are are more or less by default planned as a kind of expendable resource. You know, like we'll just see if he works, and if not, we'll swap him out for a new coach, right? And that's that's not a good, especially given the current climate, that's a terrible strategy because coaching is really hurting um for people that are just interested in doing the work in a way that um hasn't always been true, even in you know my 20-ish year career. Um I've I've witnessed that change. I've witnessed a change even in myself and my own willingness at times. Um and being thoughtful about okay, how do we take the people that are already interested in doing this? And what if we thought about them uh developmentally about how to how to get them? Yeah, I think that I've never thought about it from a performance standpoint, but yeah, to to perform.
SPEAKER_01And the idea concept being that you know, when a soccer coach goes on to the sideline during a match, their temperament and their decision-making process has to be in a really good space. So, what what's what's their mindset when they're going into that situation? I mean, a coach is walking into the Olympic village or we're walking into national championships or Olympic trials or the local junior meet. What's what's our state of mind? What's our level of preparedness to give the kids what they need in that moment? Which generally speaking is is calmness, uh, organization and positivity. Um but are we ready to meet them with that? Or are we going in at a heightened level of stress because we're already under pressure because we care about the kids and we want them to do well. But what are the other things that are stressing us out that might lead to our poor performance? And you know, so that was one of the other things that that that Earl spoke about was the coaches are people too. So coaches are performers too, and coaches are people too, and I think it ties into the two tie in together because I think his his research into this would be seen that just like you said, that coaches at some would say at a certain level, I'd say at every level, are viewed as being changeable, interchangeable, and dispensable. Not in every situation, but but in a lot of them out there across sports, that is, is the mindset that's you know so he had done some research on uh on this and and um had some very, very scary trends he was seeing about coach wellness, uh, and and uh and health of of individual coaches out there. Um it was interesting, one of his feedbacks was that the data was largely built around males because he couldn't find any females to get a big enough sample size to which in itself, as he said, that's its own study within itself to go on from it. But it was just interesting, we know these trends we're seeing, or we're seeing them globally, um, and none of them are entirely positive. So I you know I found it quite interesting listening to Earl or at the same time quite alarming.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, quite alarming. I mean, uh and I I I guess my last point on it, and I I think about the work that I do, and um one of the things that I try to put a lot of emphasis on, I mean, you talked about it. I I uh you have these moments at practice where you go, okay, if you walked in and judged me at my worst at practice, you know, you could say, like, oh gosh, like that that's not good, that's not a good situation. And I I know um that I have made a lot of mistakes as a coach, and if people judged me off my worst reactions, and what I find myself more interested in um more than anything, is yeah, how do we actually train as coaches to make to move that breaking point, right? Because when we're all when we all break and we're at our worst, we lose our patience, we're we're not nowhere near our our best as a coach. So it's just in the same way as you look at an athlete, right? They're they get tired, their skills break down, and all of a sudden they're just kind of swinging their arms around. For us, you know, how do we actually train to move that point so that um it has a higher threshold? And I don't think that there's been a lot of thought about that when you know there's been a lot of reaction. Um, I'm somebody, of course, who's who's spent a lot of time covering abuse in sports, but almost all the thinking and action about that has been in react. How do we, you know, build like a better punishment system on the other end? Right? You know, to disincentivize this instead of like how do we push the threshold of um where coaches are not reaching a breaking point where they're at their worst?
SPEAKER_01I I'm gonna uh tie it back in and wrap it up with this, but we were just talking about ASCA, is that I I think that's the space that the you know ASCA as a leading representative coaching body in the world for professional swim coaches, that's where it needs to go. Because in my experience, nobody else is gonna do it, no one else is gonna do it. Um it's it's because nobody else cares enough about the profession of coaching and of the people that are currently in our profession of coaching than other coaches, and so you know when we look at the the American Swim Coach Association, that's our challenge and that's our our space that we have to move into. How do we be the organization that advocates for coaches and supports coaches and not just supports them in terms of giving them certification and giving them educational opportunities? There's a whole other world of education that goes around how you look after yourself, how you regulate your emotions, how you manage time, how you deal with stress and parents and spouses and children and all those things. And I think if we're gonna protect the future um of high-level coaching, um, that's the space that that Ask as an organization and other representative coaching bodies across the world need to move into because no one's gonna do it for us.
SPEAKER_00No. Uh what a place to end on. Uh, had no idea we were gonna get there by the end, but uh it's been amazing. I know you have to go very soon. We've got a little extra long on this podcast. For everybody listening, first off, thank you for listening. If you want to reach out to me um for any reason, the podcast, my work coaching, you can um email me at swimbriefpodcast at gmail.com. You can go to christycoach.com, you can fill out a contact form. Um you can go on Instagram, Christy underscore coach. I don't know, Paul. Do you have any things that you want to plug on the end of this? I always feel like I need to ask people.
SPEAKER_01I most certainly do not.
SPEAKER_00Go go guys, go follow Jersey Wahoos and see what's going on at Jersey Wahoos. Um and uh and follow, follow the team. Cheer for them. Um thank you, Paul. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and I'll see you guys again next week.