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EDUCATION FOR SWIMMERS AND PARENTS
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AUGUST 2010 HSA 1 Year Goals
HSA 5 Year Goals
HSA 10 year goals
JUNE 2010 Keeping in Shape It is the end of the academic year and most high school and college sports are winding down. In addition, student athletes are finishing up their academic obligations and are preparing for the transition to “summer” mode. This mode may include taking summer classes, working at a summer job, vacationing with family, and/or, in the case of a graduating senior, preparing for the next career step (either college or job). For athletes who will continue to compete in the fall, it is standard procedure to also include a physical conditioning program as part of the summer activities. Most of us have experienced the effects of taking an extended time off from exercise. In one study (Graves et al., 1988), participants who stopped training for 12 weeks lost 68% of the strength they had gained during a 10 to 18 week training program. Those participants who, instead, switched to a maintenance program consisting of regular but fewer training days per week maintained their strength gains. Thus, the benefits of maintaining physical conditioning during the off-season should be obvious: less time spent focusing on getting back into shape and more time spent improving your physical skills when official practice resumes. Mental skills are no different from physical skills and the “use it or lose it” principle applies as well. Elements that will help you stay in good mental shape during the offseason include assessing or reassessing your mental skills strengths and weaknesses, goal reviewing and resetting, and adopting a productive mindset. This is also a great time to review any goals you set for the recently completed competitive season. As you review your goals, make sure to mark through any that were met. Highlight any that were not met. Your unmet goals and low-rated skills can form the foundation of your off-season goals. You can also add others that you (or your coach) think are important. Make sure to write down your goals and review them regularly throughout the off-season. If you meet a goal, mark through it. This shows that you are progressing. If you are not seeing progress, it may mean that a particular goal is either too hard or too easy. Changing to goals of more moderate difficulty will help push you to improve. Adopting a productive mindset includes making the correct choices, putting in the effort, and making a commitment to both of these. Making the correct choices means keeping your goals in mind and acting in a way that helps you meet them. It may mean saying “no” to something that might be enjoyable in the short term but will either not help you meet your goals or, even worse, might move you farther away from meeting your goals. This includes sticking to a diet, avoiding substance abuse, and adhering to a practice schedule, including resting when appropriate. Effort is one aspect of your life over which you have a lot of control over. A key question to ask yourself to determine if you are putting forth the appropriate effort is, “Are you practicing like you want to play, even during the off-season?” Finally, you have put in the effort to set up an off-season physical and mental training program. Being committed refers to having the will and determination to follow through with the program. It is up to you, and only you, to follow through. Performance Enhancement News can be downloaded at no charge at: www.monciersportpsychology.com. MAY 2010 SUMMER SWIMMING AND HSA As many of you know, we are quickly approaching the end of school, summer league swimming getting started, and HSA's long course schedule going into full affect. I have had a few people ask me recently about the balance between summer league and HSA's long course season, the coaching staff's philosophy on what is best for each swimmer during this time, and the risk of burnout in younger swimmers continuing to swim throughout the year. To me, it makes the most sense to start with the last of those questions. The idea of "burnout" in swimmers, or athletes in general for that matter, is a concern for every coach and parent with athletes participating in any sport. Over my career, I have found that "burnout" happens for one singular reason, and that is the level of fun in the sport dissipates. The reasons for this are many, but there are some common themes that can be avoided through coach/ athlete/ parent communication. One of the most common reasons this happens in specifically swimming, is moving swimmers through the program's groups to quickly, and thus topping out the swimmers amount of work available in the program at too early an age. The best scenario for each swimmer is to progress through the groups at a rate that continuously allows them to add both practice time and age appropriate training methods to their routine, thus keeping training fresh. This also allows each athlete to form strong social bonds with swimmers of similar age, and keeps each swimmer in an appropriate maturity level. HSA's current group set-up and coach controlled group advancement has been put into place to create and maintain this process. The addition of work over time is also put into place to help avoid another cause of the fun loss. Many swimmers will experience short time "plateaus" in their career, and typically the cause for these can range from stroke changes being made, growth and body changes, older swimmers times in between rested meets, etc. Most plateaus are followed by a large improvement in the swimmer's times as the limiting factors are removed. However, the plateau that the gradual addition of work over time avoids is the long term plateau. These plateaus are long term because the swimmer can no longer do any more work than they already do within the program, and because of that they can no longer get much faster. The frustration created through this is one of the most common occurrences of burnout in older swimmers. The other common cause of "burnout" in swimmers is not having enough control of their swimming careers. As swimmers careers begin, both coaches and parents need to be involved guides in teaching children how to be athletes/ swimmers. This is very similar to the "give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for the rest of his life," philosophy. As their careers progress, both coaches and parents become more and more the gentle guides to the swimmer. They must take control and make the important decisions for their careers. Sometimes they make the right choices, and sometimes they make the wrong choices. Our job as coaches and parents is to congratulate them on the good choices, and guide them through the woods and back to the path when they make the wrong choice. If we as coaches and parents wrench control from them too much, the swimmer feels like they have lost control and rebels against the sport, which in the end is also a form of "burnout." In the end, avoiding burnout for each swimmer is an individual battle/ journey that we must go through with each of them. The best advice I can give is that if the swimmer is having fun, burnout is not a problem. Our job as coaches and parents is to make sure the short term fun continues for the length of their careers by looking out for the pitfalls that can occur, and by communicating with each other and the athletes. With all of that said, the coaching staff's philosophy on long course swimming is this. We believe it is essential to becoming a great swimmer. The importance of swimming long course with us increases as each swimmer gets older and more committed, to the point that it is expected out of all groups blue and above. With the red and white groups, we think that the instruction that each swimmer gets at our practices is far and above what the typical summer league practice offers. With that being said, we also recognize the importance of summer league swimming. More than any other area in swimming, summer league swimming provides a unique experience for each swimmer. At an early age, summer league provides the opportunity to race in a meet setting every week, continue to learn what it means to be part of a team, and also provides a social outlet with neighborhood and school friends that do not ordinarily swim during the school year. As swimmer's get older these things continue to hold true, but they must also be balanced with the need to train at a higher level than summer league practices can provide in order to be competitive on a regional and national level. As swimmer's reach the top levels of our program, many of them are provided with the opportunity to become coaches of these teams. This is also an essential step in many swimmers' development, as they learn things about the sport from a different perspective. This also must be done with the understanding that a balance must be struck between their coaching duties and their need to be training at their peak levels. Finally, the balance of summer league vs. long course becomes an individual one that each family and swimmer must make. You have to weigh the commitment level of your swimmer, the "fun" factor for each, financial responsibilities, and the ultimate goals of each swimmer. With those factors under consideration, realize there are three basic options. The first is to just swim with HSA. The second, and the one that is most common, is to do some sort of combination of the two. The third is just to swim summer league and return to HSA in the fall. I hope this helps many of you with the "long course question". If any of you have questions about any of this, I would be glad to field any that you might have. Matt Webber APRIL 2010 Finishing How many times have you either coached or played for a team that came from behind late to win a game? Coaches often refer to this as “finishing well.” On the other hand, teams that have a lead late in the game and yet fail to win are often said to have “failed to finish.” Another example of failing to finish in basketball is a player who makes a great defensive play to steal the ball and then misses a layup. Finishing well is related to several mental skills including goal setting, attention management, effort, and self-talk. We will look at how each impacts the act of “finishing.” Goal Setting In the case of finishing, goal setting helps the athlete/team to “finish well” by directing the athlete’s or team’s actions, just like a game plan does. Keeping your goals in mind will help you remember what is important to attend to. Attention Management The most effective way for an athlete to learn to direct his or her full attention to what they are doing during a competition is to do this during practice. It is extremely easy to focus on a mistake made in the past. It is also extremely easy to focus on the action you are supposed to do next before you finish what you are currently doing, such as running before you catch the ball in football. I suggest focusing on what is important at the moment during practice in order to improve your ability to manage your attention during a game. See the October 2009 newsletter for more information about managing attention. Now, I obviously cannot read minds but while watching the SEC basketball final, it looked to me like the Mississippi State players were simply waiting around for Kentucky to lose during the final seconds of the game. Kentucky, on the other hand, seemed to recognize that the game was not over yet and acted to do what they could to stay in the game. Effort Self-Talk In conclusion, the recipe for “finishing well” includes being aware of your goals for the activity in which you are involved, being fully attentive to what is important while being involved in that activity, putting in your full effort while being involved in that activity, and using your self-talk productively. Finishing well does not guarantee wins, but it does mean that you have done all you can to perform successfully! Performance Enhancement News can be downloaded at no charge at: www.monciersportpsychology.com. DECEMBER 2009 On “Doing Less”...a Story Posted: May 11, 2009 By John Leonard Once upon a time, in a swimming pool in the far north, near the arctic circle in upstate New York, I learned a lesson. There was a lane we called “the national team”. Some of these 8 or 9 bodies had national cuts and others just aspired to have the national cuts, and were close. They all thought they were special. They came early, they stayed later, they were “the National Team”. They weren’t the only ones I had in the pool during this time, and I moved from group to group, so periodically, I’d pass them by and say something like “Nice Job. You guys are working hard, keep it up, Good Work”. They improved when they went to swim meets and swam faster and faster. One day as I walked past, I heard Beaver Dee say to Robin Butler, “hey, cut me some slack here, slow down, I can’t go that hard right now.” (for purposes of full disclosure, Beaver is a male, Robin a female) Robin looked at him in a quizzical way, and went hard again. I ignored it and walked away. The next day, I walked past, said “good job, Good work, makin’progress”. Beaver and two other male swimmers didn’t look me in the eye. Later in that practice, I heard Jerry say, “Robin, I’m dyin’ here, give me a break hey?” and heard Beaver chime in, “Yeah, no need to go this hard”. And a third male say “Crap Robin, you’re makin’ us all work too hard to keep up with you!”. Robin slapped her hands on the water with frustration, gave up, stepped aside and moved to the middle of the lane to let Jerry lead. Our nationals Sucked. I learned from this that we can be two kinds of people....the kind that encourages everyone around us to work hard and achieve more, or we can be the kind that says “we don’t have to work that hard to achieve more”. We each of us have both people within us. And everyone who has ever coached or ever swum or ever competed knows this is the truth. If just one person backs off, it lets the next weakest person do likewise. Its a disease, and it spreads fast. After that lesson, I always paid attention to the “lane talk” in workouts. And I’d talk to my teams about how to encourage each other to be achievers and how no one person in the group can achieve more than the group aspires to achieve. The group has got to get it right, and none can have the attitude that says “we don’t have to work that hard”. And if they didn’t want to be their personal best selves, they didn’t want to train with me. They could train somewhere else and float through with some other coach. Life, and this sport, does not reward those who “float through”...it rewards those that enjoy the work for its own sake. I would say for awhile that I was “amazed” at how much satisfaction the swimmers took from encouraging each other to do more than they thought was possible. Now, I look back and know it was not amazing at all. It was normal. Because, you see, we can all chose to be the person who says “lets do less” or the person who says “lets swim faster”. And once the team decides to only accept the positive input, there is nothing amazing about it. Its normal. Since 1974, that experience left an indelible mark on me. It marked me with the knowledge that just one person who thinks they can “do less” can ruin a team, or a group, or an office, because we all have the capacity to sink, or to rise to leadership. Think about that when your team is swimming up and down that lane. DECEMBER 2009 A is for Anxiety from usaswimming.org Why do I have anxiety? Changing the Perceived Threat Physically Relaxing Therefore For more information contact: 412-432-3777; kimballac@upmc.edu About Aimee C. Kimball, PhD: Dr. Aimee C. Kimball is the Director of Mental Training at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Sports Medicine. She received a PhD from the University of Tennessee where she specialized in sport psychology. She is an Association for the Advancement of Applied Sport Psychology Certified Consultant, and is a member of the American Psychological Association, the United States Olympic Committee’s Sport Psychology Registry, the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Network, and the NCAA Speakers Bureau. As a Mental Training Consultant, Dr. Kimball has worked with professional, collegiate, high school, recreational, and youth athletes in a variety of sports, and assists the Pittsburgh Steelers in analyzing potential draft picks. She has been a featured speaker at conferences across the nation and has appeared in Men’s Health Magazine, Runner’s World, Athletic Management Magazine, various local and national newspapers, and has appeared on ESPN, NPR, and news broadcasts across the country. She is a Clinical Faculty member in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Orthopaedics and an adjunct faulty member in the Sports Marketing Department at Duquesne University. Currently, Dr. Kimball works with athletes and other performers to assist them in achieving success in sport and life. NOVEMBER 2009 HSA PARENT EDUCATION: NUTRITION AND INJURY PREVENTION FOR SWIMMERS Follow-up Nutrition Information: Tammy Beasley, RD, LD, CEDSN: Consultant, speaker, adjunct professor, author, spinning instructor, registered dietitian and Huntsville, Alabama native Tammy Beasley brings years of qualified experience to her work. She has been recognized by numerous awards and honors for her work in the fields of wellness, nutrition and eating disorders. Her unique perspective on wellness, resulting from over 20 years of consulting for eating disorders and sports medicine, has helped her create the Rev It Up Fitness program. Following her graduation with high honors from Auburn University in 1984 with a BS in Nutrition and Foods and a dietetic internship in 1985 with the University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB), Tammy has been associated with some of the top health and wellness facilities in Alabama (UAB, Sportslife, Total Wellness Center, PRSM) and South Florida (Baptist Hospital of Miami, WellStyles). She currently teaches sports nutrition at the University of Alabama in Huntsville through the Health and Physical Education Department. Auburn University College of Human Sciences recently appointed Tammy to the Board of Advisors for the Department of Nutrition and Food Science. Contact Info: tammy@revitupfitness.com Gwen Murphy: Gwen graduated from the University of Maryland in 1985 and Emory University in 1989 with a Masters of Physical Therapy degree. Gwen is Board-Certified as an Orthopaedic Specialist by the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties and the American Physical Therapy Association. She is credentialed in the McKenzie Method, Mechanical Diagnosis, and Therapy of the Spine in 1997. Gwen’s continuing education courses include Mechanical Assessment and Treatment of the Post-Op Lumbar Spine, Mulligan NAGS, SNAGS, McConnell Patella Taping, Sara Meeks, Osteoporosis, Back Education Training, as well as numerous other orthopaedic courses. Gwen’s hobbies include running, coaching, and teaching children. Contact Info: www.nesintherapy.com |
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