Got up this morning at 6 in the A.M. to go watch some of Arkansas’ national junior team, headed by their coach, Paul Blair, and two other helpers. I think he was on some Olympic coaching association, at one point. He’s legendary around. They have invaded the Olympic size outside pool we have here in Little Rock, and practice from 6-8 in the morning, come back and go at it again from 2-4, I believe.
I thought I would go see what this was all about and spy if any of the kids were doing any “FQS” and other techniques I had been wasting my time with for a whole year, from books and tapes.
I had never seen an organized high level swim practice. I know many of you engage yourselves in those in your masters leagues, or you have kids your own, or maybe you did this in college. I was anticipating to see a sort of loud, football coach, yelling away, somebody with a bullhorn, stomping around, but this was not the case.
There was about 18-20 kids, ranging from 11-18 or so, tops in the state. He had the lanes going from slow to fast across the pool, filled with kids, regardless of sex and age.
The thing that amazed me was, first of all, how in the hell he kept track of everybody’s times, as they came in. I can keep track of whether one kid was coming under a 5 minute time for a 400 meter interval, but not 18 of them, which have gone off staggered. I had a hard enough time figuring out what lap they were on, they were all going so fast. A good wasp or horsefly chasing me around at the pool would just knock me out of a swim coaching job.
“I almost got stung by a wasp. Lost count.”
“Hey guys, sorry, what lap are you on?”
But not this guy.
Maybe you could say, if they all went off in 15 second waves, you could say, whether somebody didn’t make the interval or not, but coming up with individual times, for everyone, must be only possible by technology, I guess, its on the watch, he uses. But somehow he did, and he did it, occassionally while talking to fans and parents. I’m not sure if he had 3 watches in his pocket.
“Joe…4:32…Sean 4:30…Anne…4:36…Will…4:46…” and so on.
Then, 15 seconds later, he’d say, this next one is going to be faster, want a 4 in 4:40, 5 second rest:
“And go…”
“And go…John”
“And go…Sean”
“Third lane you are going off in 30 seconds, a 4 on 4:45, and go again after 5 seconds.”
Then he or one of his helpers would walk quickly down the other end of the pool during some of the “anaerobic intervals” waving his arms like he was in the middle of a car snarl up, waving traffic around.
Nobody was yelling.
No football coach thing here.
The interesting thing about the intervals, was the unpredictability of them, in rest and in times. Then slow, then back to a faster interval than faster than the last fastest. You never really knew what was going to be up, next after you hit the wall. But it must work, never to know, what you will have to do next. For me, I do 10 100 meters going off at 1:45. I pretty much know, I’m going to have 10-15 seconds after the first 2 or 3 100 meter intervals, after that maybe five seconds, 4 seconds, and right on it up to the 10th, I might just not make it. With these kids, it would be akin to stopping me after my first one and say, “Okay, Booth, we are going to do the next 100 in 1:20, five seconds rest.” Then, I get through, probably about ready to die, “do this next one in 2:00.” Then, do the next one in 1:18 or something.
What the hell? Deliver me from this torture. I would rather know when I’m going to die before I jump in the pool, you know.
Total Immersion and FQS.
I saw none of it. None. Out of the 20 kids, maybe 2 were FQS, and I was right on top of them watching for sequence in entry and pulling on both arms. There was no TI looking strokes.
In fact, the coach, if he yelled anything would tell them, “increase your stroke count,” “increase your stroke count.” “John, you need to increase your stroke count.”
Other than that, there was simply no stroke instruction. I never heard or witnessed the coach trying to correct a swimming stroke flaw. It was all doing your swims on the interval times.
Everyone one of them, except for one, breathed bilaterally. And it wasn’t regular bilateral. It was obviouis to me that if they needed to breath on the right side, they breathed on the right side, or if they needed to breath on the left side, and they were on their left side, they breathed on the left. It didn’t matter which side they had to breath. When they needed to breath, they didn’t get hung up on, “I have to breath on my right side now, because I last breathed on my left.” That’s not how they bilaterally breathed.
Other things. There was one boy who was rather fast, I thought, and he had a quite magnificent open turn. If any of you don’t want to do flip turns, I can point you to this kid, who was right up with the best flip turners doing an open turn. The open turn didn’t bother the coach.
At the end of the practice, good kids. But it wasn’t like, “hey don’t you just love swimming. This is the greatest exercise and sport in the world…”
I wonder if any of them, will like swimming when they are 30 or 40. I went back in my mind to being a junior tennis player, at those ages going through that,and eventually playing in college. I actually hate that shit now, and will not pick up a racket.