I am one of those coaches that just wants to keep learning about every little thing that I can possibly learn about with regard to the world of competitive swimming. That’s, truly, what I love about holding interviews with other coaches and swimmers; I have the unique opportunity to pick their brains on swimming specific information. However, I also take my car rides into work and listen to auditory publications, and in doing so heard one of the best quotes about accomplishments:
Millions of small daily achievements lead to major life accomplishments
Think about it for a second. Every great swimmer has a set performance plan, but it’s not just to get to the Olympics or to a Division I school on a scholarship. Instead, their swim career is broken down into smaller achievements. Take a look at how we can best help out swimmers achieve those major life accomplishments:
- Establish Goals — Talk with your swimmers (especially if they are at that competitive age), and try to discuss what they want their major swimming accomplishment to be. Remember that this will range from one swimmer to the next. After that is developed, create yearly goals that will help you achieve that major accomplishment. Next, establish monthly goals that will help measure immediate success points. Finally, discuss weekly achievement goals as well as determine daily achievements. Break things down as much as possible, and take the time with your swimmers. Not only will you help them, but you will also help yourself when it comes to planning your seasons.
- Establish Plans — Take what you learned from the goal conversations and apply that to a practical performance plan. Plan out your yardage for each month of each season to accomplish the overall goal at hand. Break that down into the hourly yardages each week, and define the test sets that you will utilize to help measure the weekly goals established. Finally, tentatively plan out a certain number of meets (large and small) to truly measure race results of your achievements. Remember, 1 minute of planning will save 5 work.
- Establish Purpose — Not everything will go to plan everyday, and not everyone will accomplish their overall goal in their estimated time. However, if you are able to establish a purpose to everything that you (and your swimmer) do on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis it will be significantly easier to guide your athlete to their promised land. In other words, put a purpose to the set they are swimming (and make that purpose clear), put a purpose to the yardage and intensities that they are swimming, and provide them with a stated purpose at meets. Challenge them to better themselves and continuously push the envelope to ensure they have the best opportunity to reach their fullest potential.
These may seem like very easy and basic ideas, but they are ideas that (and I think we can all agree) are forgotten or pushed to the wayside for immediate gratification. In swimming, coaches, parents, and athletes need to understand that their is a hierarchy of achievements and in order to have one major accomplishment there needs to be a series of smaller achievements.
And, as always, feel free to leave your comments below if you want to add or critique!
