Hello and welcome to the swim brief. Doing something a little bit different this week. One of the reasons for that is I'm going to a swim meet later in the week. So the normal time that uh Joel and I have to record this podcast is just not available to us. And we didn't really have enough time to prepare to react to stuff that was happening in the news. But probably what we like to talk about more on this podcast, more than anything, is the art of coaching, the culture around coaching. And I'm going to do that today. I'm going to actually reference a post I've made on my Instagram, which you'll hear me plug at the end of the podcast, but I'll do it here once again, Christy underscore coach on Instagram. And I'm going to talk a little bit about sort of steps in coaching evolution. And I have a way that I evaluate myself as a coach, both in a macro sense, like you know, overall in the really big picture, but also in the micro sense in each individual coaching relationship that I have. And I think it's really a useful tool if you're a coach out there who is trying to think about, you know, sort of what stage you are at in this evolution. Um, and you're going to, no matter how experienced you are or how good you are, um, you're going to find yourself in, depending on the environment, the situation, the context that you're in, or even uh the piece of what you know that you're trying to share, that this is going to change. So it's a really interesting matrix for looking through that stuff, you know, and I describe it a bit on Instagram, but like how how in depth can I get, right, in the course of six pictures that you might scroll through in 60 to 90 seconds or however long our attention spans are on that website. And this podcast gives me the opportunity to talk about things a little bit more in-depth, right? To to get a layer deeper. And I think a lot of the people that listen to it enjoy getting another layer deeper. So I'm going to take the opportunity to do that. Um, so there's five steps that I have in this hierarchy that I use to evaluate myself as a coach. And like I said, it is useful for me both in a macro big picture sense and a micro sense. So as I'm going through these, I'm going to talk about some of those micro examples, and I'm also going to talk about some of those examples that are sort of like the history of me as I look back on myself as a coach. So, what's step one as I see it for people that coach? Well, I think that many of us at the outset of coaching, when we are novice coaching or we are novices in a subject matter that we might be starting to coach, uh, the first thing that we can get pretty good at is finding flaws. Right? So I can remember when I was making that sort of, or sort of my brain was making that transition because I was I was already transitioning into coach mode even while I was still an athlete. And uh, you know, as an athlete, you you take a lot of feedback from coaches, they they tell you um sort of what's going on, and and you're you're very naturally drawn to what you're doing wrong and trying to fix it. Um and I think that's a totally normal uh mindset to have, especially as an athlete. And I'm always, even though I know what I'm about to tell you, I'm always surprised by how much athletes have internalized that I've told them that they're doing wrong. Okay. So it's very normal then that when you start to look outwards and think of yourself maybe as a coach, that you can see like, oh, this person is is you know crossing over their head when they're swimming freestyle and you shouldn't do that, you know, and I'm gonna let them know because they probably don't even know they're doing that wrong. And you may even have some perception like that this is coaching. You let people know what they're doing wrong because then they figure it out and they can they can change it. And I think it's important to note that for any of these steps, depending on the context of the person on the other end, that that might actually work. Like I think that um as you get down in the hierarchy, what you're doing is going to be way more likely to work. But it's not that that's you know, step one here doesn't work. Um it's just that your chances of it working, I think, are way, way less. Because just letting people know what it is you observe them doing wrong, um, in many, many cases doesn't lead to the ultimate outcome that you're trying to get when you're coaching somebody, which is to help them change the way they're doing things for the better. Right? I I think uh that it can in fact oftentimes have a counterproductive driving force because people, as I referenced earlier, can start to tunnel vision on their flaws, they can start to internalize I'm messing up all the time, they can focus on the fact that they're messing up, as I say in quotes, all the time, and it's not particularly motivating in the long term towards changing something. And if they continue to get that feedback over and over, yeah, you're still messing it up, you're still messing it up, they they can start to learn a bit of helplessness, like, well, I've been trying to change, but it's not working, so maybe I just can't. Um that that's step one, finding flaws. And I think I I just I just probably painted a negative picture of it, but I one last important thing I want to say about finding flaws before I move on to step two is it is actually really important to be able to um find flaws in systems or behaviors because it's very hard to know what you're trying to change without without that knowledge. So it's not it's it's definitely not useless, it's an important part of the process, but in my perception, it is step one. Okay? Step two. Right, charting the path forward. This um is where you, as a coach, you take it beyond, hey, here's what I observe you doing wrong, and you start to give translate that into some sort of vision for the person that you're coaching. Like, what if we went this path? Right? What if um what if we changed your behavior in this direction? What if we um you're basically uh at a broad, broad sense, inviting them to envision a world where their behavior or whatever they're doing is different. And um instead of just telling them what they're doing wrong, you're painting the picture of a world where they are different, right? And so whereas that the big distinction here that I see is whereas flaw feedback, flaw-based feedback, is always by nature backwards looking. You're always talking about what happened in the past, right? You're telling them you just did, even if like it's almost instantaneous, you're just telling them you just did this, and I and I here's what I saw. The next step, and I think a crucial step in coaching is to offer some sort of forward-looking feedback and vision, right? So that you're actually painting a picture of what might happen in the future or a direction that things could go in the future so people know where to go, right? Because again, you don't really want them very focused on what it is they're doing wrong, you want them focused on what they are actually trying to do, not what they're trying not to do. Right? It's like the classic example that I use a lot when I travel around to talk to coaches and teams. I go, you know, telling people what their flaws is is very similar to saying to somebody, I want you to try your hardest not to think about a white bear. Right? And uh even as I said that to you, if this is an audio medium, I bet you're finding it extremely difficult not to think about a white bear. Well, if I tell you you're crossing over in freestyle, you're crossing over in freestyle, you're crossing over in freestyle, well, guess what your mind's gonna be focused on? That you're crossing over in freestyle, right? Um, giving some sort of feedback and saying, you know, um, I think you can learn to swim freestyle better. Because I'm trying not to bleed into the third category because I do see a distinction between the two of them. Like before you get into the real nitty-gritty of the knowledge that you want them to have, you've got to sort of like you've gotta sort of um prep them to receive that knowledge, right? Like people may take you at face value that something is uh a flaw, but I see as a sort of necessary second step to getting someone to change, preparing them for like what is possible, right? Um, in terms of them changing themselves. And then you're gonna tell them how to do it, right? So step three is transmitting knowledge. Um so many coaches that I know, and if you if you spend enough time around them and the athletes that they coach, they know so many things that if their athletes knew it, really knew it, and and had you know steps four to five in place as well, they would improve so much. I think most coaching relationships have a sort of imbalance, which is good. That's the that's you know, like your coach should know more about what it is uh you can do to improve than you. That's um that's to me an important part of the coach, is that um they are they have a lot of ways forward for you, right? They may be focusing on one when there's a lot of value to focusing on one at a time, so that your attention and focus is not divided and and you know trying to accomplish a lot of different things when it takes, especially at the outset of learning something, when it takes a lot of intentional effort to do it, it takes a lot of um executive function, uh, to borrow another term that I've used a lot when you're when you're picking up a new habit. You have to be conscious of what you're doing because if you if you stay in the um, I'm just gonna sort of like let my brain do what it do its thing, right? It's just gonna keep doing what it's always been, what it's got grooved in there. It's gonna take the path of least resistance and continue doing the papers. So coming all the way back to coaches have a lot of knowledge. Now, I I made also a Instagram video that I uploaded. Um, it will have gone up on Tuesday morning, the the 13th. Um, and there's a really whole other sort of more in-depth conversation to be had about this, but um the gist of that video, which I had to get down to a minute for Instagram, was that coaches are, in my opinion, bilingual. Um and I'm I'm speaking specifically about uh athletic coaches in this context, but I think if you think long and or if I thought long and hard enough about it, I would uh probably cross it over to any number of other coaching applications. And what I mean by bilingual is remember, in the beginning, what they're transmitting in terms of like, for instance, finding flaws or um maybe even charting a vision might be, or charting a path forward, might be what something looks like because that is the sensory information that uh that we draw the most from as coaches. We watch other people do athletic movements. And um, I'm sure I can you can probably think of some sports, and actually I don't want to totally discount this in the in the case of swimming, where yes, what you hear might be important, right? But but I would argue that the vast majority of sensory information that we are trying to translate into a form for athletes to use is visual. It's what we see. Now, the reason I say bilingual and and and reference translating is if you just tell an athlete what you see, that's that's like it is like speaking a different language because the sensory they don't see themselves. They are not able to see themselves. You are giving them sensory information that is not particularly useful. Now you can get let them see themselves, right? I'm feeling the iPad crowd here. Um and I I'm I'm in the iPad crowd. Like I show people themselves, and um I think one of the reasons why uh probably that works so well is because it is athletes will very naturally translate that themselves, and many athletes can translate your visual like feedback into they they can translate it without you having to. Don't get me wrong, like I said at the beginning, athletes can just like flip the switch at any step of this. And anybody who's had experience, I guess this is another interjection I want to put in here, because I've coached some pretty high-level athletes over the years. One of the things that lulls you or can that can can lull you into some complacency with coaching really high-level athletes, is many of them will make lasting changes without you having to get down this step of evolution whatsoever. Like you can just tell them what they're doing wrong and they'll fix it. And it's amazing, right? I there's gotta be some people listening to this who know exactly what I'm talking about, right? You just and then you wanna you know on some level, you you you can go on to other athletes you're coaching and go, like, well, why you know it must be something wrong with you because I coached this other person and I just told them what they were doing wrong and they fixed it the first time I told them, right? Instead of thinking like maybe it has to do more with me as a coach and the fact that I haven't really like gotten to the highest level that I can get to. So at this stage of transmitting knowledge, and really to me, I think the athlete is sensorily like they are feeling their way through it. I know so many swim coaches, and I'm one of them, who get driven crazy by coaching at a swim meet. You talk to an athlete right after the race and go, well, that didn't feel good. And you go, it doesn't matter, you know, like you want to scream as loud as you possibly can. It doesn't matter how you feel, right? Because we all know intrinsically that you can feel terrible and swim really well, or you can feel great and not swim well. Like that that that those there's really not a strong causal relationship between those two things. But I always have to remind myself that is the information that the athletes have to bring back to us. Like that is what they experienced. So they're just telling you what happened. They're not sitting back like you are analytically, you know, from 30 feet away watching themselves swim. They are in there um, you know, thrashing through the water, and the sensory experience of that is the is is the really the information that they have to draw on for that relationship. And by the way, there's a whole other conversation to be had about those post-race conversations that I will eventually get to on a podcast. So if you want to be even more effective in your coaching, I would suggest that you you have to figure out a way to translate what it is you see into sensory information that an athlete might be able to go, okay, that's what it feels like to change this thing. Right? I'll give it like a great basic example from this board of swimming. Is there are so so many swimmers that have no idea, I've coached too many of them where their hands are entering the water when after a recovery on backstroke. So they got their arm above their head, and so, so, so, so, so many of them, right, enter, cross over their body, they throw themselves completely out of alignment, and they think that they're just putting their arm straight from their shoulder in the water. That's what they feel, right? So we we might say something like uh, you know, like enter at 10 and 2 on a clock, if any of them have actually still seen an analog clock live in the world and know how to tell time, right? But but essentially, what the basic example is there, you're you're telling them that actually, even though their brain is going, I'm I'm putting my arm in straight, they're not. That's what you see, and therefore, putting their arm in where you want them to, on this clean line from the shoulders, so everything's connected through to the body, is going to feel like they are way out wide, sort of laterally from themselves. Right? Okay, so that's an example of transmitting, translating knowledge. Now, if you've done all three, right, you've you're if you've accomplished all three with them, right? Maybe it works. Um, maybe still, in my opinion, somebody that you coach might need help motivating towards action. I think we can all think about examples in our lives where we know exactly what it is we should do to improve. Somebody has impressed that upon us, or we have you know sought that knowledge out, we have learned it, we know, we've maybe even tried it to the extent that we like know, we we really like 100%, we know what to do. We know what it is to do. But we're not doing it. We are struggling at the stage of motivating ourselves to do it. Now, this is a fascinating stage because as I get into stage five, I will talk about like sort of a real potential pitfall of this because I see, I've seen in my own career, and then I've seen in the observations of coaches I talked to, and I talked to so many coaches per week, and I can't help but talk about this kind of stuff. This um that are the these coaches are amazing motivators, they're amazing at motivating people and getting them to do something differently. And that's a really important skill, right? So people may, like I said, people may know exactly what it is you want them to do. They may know, they may have translated it in a way where they like they really know it. And yet it is exceedingly hard for them to just do it. Do it, and because, at least partially, because of what I referenced earlier, because doing something new always, especially at the outset, takes a lot of conscious thought and effort, and that is limited within the human brain. We only have so much attention and focus that we can give. So um, and many of us, myself included, have um some funky wiring in terms of how well we can direct ourselves towards changing something that we're about to do. So it can be really useful to have somebody, a coach on the other end, who can apply uh like a stimulus to us that will just like really just like motivate you there. Now, I think um again, there's a whole nother conversation to be had about this. I I and um and uh I I'm not gonna get into it here. I mean, fear is incredibly motivating. I think that's one of the reasons why we have some uh really tough habits in the sport, uh in the sporting world, because um in a in a less enlightened era, we we you know have applied plenty of fear to motivate people to do things. I I do I don't um particularly believe in that, right? I think um because there's a sort of a corrosive effect of that over time of keeping people in these sort of endemic fear states, and and it's just not very kind or good um on a basic human level. Um so you know uh this is also a stage where you may find yourself drawing back on step two on that sort of positive path forward and uh continuing to sort of get the person in the head space of envisioning what is next and you know, like looking at that target, right? So that and and you be the person that keeps like putting it back at the front of their frame of whatever they're looking through. You just keep, you know, you keep saying the words that get them to go, okay, yeah. Sorry, no, no, this is what I'm I I decided I wanted to do this, and I'm trying to do this, and I believe that this is leading to this outcome. Now, as I said, there is a big potential pitfall here, and I see it quite a bit in coaching, and I've fallen into it more times than I want to admit, is you can be good so good at motivating change for people that they um that they don't really make it to step five, which is I I always reference, I almost wanted to title the slide for it, the learning how to fish stage. Right? So um I I said I almost titled it because I said you're gonna put this fish analogy in there, and like you haven't developed it at all. And people are reading this in 60 seconds and they're gonna go, what is he talking about? Right? Acknowledge that most people's brain don't really um make connections in the same way that you do, especially since you're inside. Um, but I'll make it here. I think you know, like step four as a coach is really to me like feeding people that are hungry. You're you're you're you're making them a meal, but you're not teaching them how to feed themselves, I think in most cases. You are you are nourishing them with motivation. You are you are providing this external source of motivation, and that is good, and that is like amazing, and that is what makes so many coaches amazing, but even better is if you're simultaneously teaching them how to motivate change within themselves, because what that allows is, for instance, that if you go back to some earlier steps, you can have them devoting attention and focus to self-improvement, basically self-improvement projects, and you get more of your attention to be forward-looking as a coach. You can lay out more track essentially in front of them. This becomes really important. The better athlete, and by better athlete, I mean sort of more improving athlete that you have because it is a challenge. Like, if I reference to you know, some of these um really, really high-level athletes I've coached where you can get to step one and they will change something. Well, like you need to be ready for what's next, because they um they are in most cases actually pretty demanding in a good way. They want to, they like, they they're like, okay, what's next? I I want to keep getting better, right? What do we what are we doing now? And unless you have as yourself, like, because we again we all have limited attention and focus, unless you have some attention remaining to be that forward-looking, to be uh planning globally for them, then you're not gonna be fully prepared in your best way to give them that next step. And as I said, I think the examples uh I at the outset I said I was gonna you know talk about macro and micro, and I think I gave a lot of micro examples on on a macro um level, I would say, you know, I I think I use this to evaluate all sorts of different like sort of subject areas or even even within subject areas, evaluate myself because some stuff I've been teaching it for so long, I have a lot easier time getting to step five because I'm so comfortable through the first few steps, right? It's so natural, like I do it without even thinking about it, right? I I I um I sort of intervene and I um chart chart that path forward. I like I I know exactly what to say, that it it makes sense to them pretty quickly. And and then other subject areas I can see that I either don't have enough reps teaching it, or I don't know it well enough, probably some combination of both, that it's very hard for me to get beyond step one. And to me, that just like in evaluating myself, that's just a way of knowing, okay, I gotta keep work, I gotta keep working on this. Because I know that if if I work on it for long enough and hard enough, it'll get easier to get through the first few steps, and that's gonna make me more effective for the people that I'm coaching. So that was like a half-hour deep dive on a tool that I use to evaluate myself. And I use this also um when I'm coaching other people, um and and in when I'm coaching coaches, um, which is something I'm really passionate about. I hope that you enjoyed listening to it. I hope you go check out my Instagram, Christy underscorch coach. Um, you can find the same content for the time being. Also on Facebook, Chris DeSantis Coaching. On Facebook, it's wildly more popular than my Instagram for whatever reason, probably because it's got a lot of um uh more followers from over the years. Um, I had a presence there for a long time. This will be uploaded to um the uh Christopher DeSantis YouTube channel. This will be uploaded as a uh podcast on the swim brief. You can find on iTunes and Spotify. Hope you guys all have a great week. Um comment below. Talk about how you evaluate yourselves if you're coaching. How do you, you know, how do you sort of structurally break down the steps of teaching somebody something that you know that they're gonna change in themselves? I find this stuff endlessly interesting, as you can tell. So I'd love to hear from you. Um and otherwise, uh Joel and I should be back with another podcast for you before Christmas hits. Um, so thanks for listening, and I'll see you then.