I would like to thank the World Swimming Coaches association for allowing me to speak here today. I would like to thank Fred DeBurghgraeve. If he was more nervous than he was, he might not have won. If he got second, there would be some other coach here. The clinic is divided into two parts; the first part is the training background of Fred up to the 1993 European championships in Sheffield; the second part starts in November, 1993 and will lead us to the successful Olympic games in Atlanta. In April, 1989 I was technical director of the Flemish Swim League and as you know Belgium is divided into 3 areas. Two major areas with one being the Flemish countryside; the Dutch and the Flemish speaking part. Before that I was a full time swimming coach in Holland but because due to financial problems I decided to go back to a half-time concept, I moved to Belgium. As a technical director I am responsible for everything related to the Flemish part of the National Swimming Team.

We have two different governments. That means although we are one country we have different funding. French speaking part has one program; the Dutch speaking part has their own program. There may be a big difference in the funding as well. In fact the whole Flemish Swim League is built of 4 people. One who is responsible for everything to do with computers. There is one who has everything to do with competition swimming. It means that I am designing all the training groups from youth to senior. Then we have to make these programs to be approved by the Belgium National Committee. I organize the training camps for the youth to seniors. I organize the taking part in of hotels, inscription contract with organizers; I even type letters to swimmers. It has to be organized by me. I have all the contact with the Olympic committee in Belgium. The Flemish government has much we are going to get. Then I help coaches and clubs. We do that by visiting the clubs and helping them by organizing training camps with coaches and swimmers invited and discuss training. Lately, that task became much more important in the last 3 - 4 years (Frederick is one of those swimmers) to those swimmers. For my own coaching in swimming, I am not allowed at poolside except during training camps. My Board of Directors wants me to be independent of a club, so I am not allowed to be at poolside at a club. What can happen in Belgium a lot lately that if a swimmer makes progress, there are coaches and swimmers who feel that the level of the swimmer is too high for the coach or club. At that moment they can have assistance which can consist of planning what we do with Frederick, making the daily planning and always sent by fax. Frederick might be on the phone every week or visit every two weeks. It is a very strange situation that I work in. It is necessary I think for you to know it, otherwise it is difficult to understand the way we work. At the beginning Fred and I were together starting during the 1st week in April around 1989 during training camp in Antwerp. It is a nice story to tell about at some clinics as it is always nice to begin with nice stories. We had a group of 15 swimmers preparing for a multinational meet. It was a multinational meet with a lot of countries in Europe participating in it. We had 3 lanes and the rest of the pool was for the public, open to the public which is very common in Belgium. I was looking at the group training and suddenly saw a swimmer and said "hey that is someone from the public in." So I went to the lifeguards and told him the swimmer needs to get out of my lane; we want to train here. He went to that swimmer and said "sir, you are in the lanes of the Flemish swim team. Could you please get out! The boy said "I am on this team here." This was Frederick.

In the next training at 800 meters he had to stop. It seemed he was asthmatic and his mother didn't give him any medication as she was afraid of drug testing. It was also new for them. After training camp at the meets, Frederick went with another coach to the Finland meet. Coming back in at Brussels airport the coach asked which swimmer qualified for European Championships. That is the first time I had him in the water and he improved from 1:10 long course to 1:08 long course. The next time I hooked up with Fred for training camp in Switzerland. We went there with 10 swimmers for 3 weeks to prepare for the European Youth Championships. After the first week we had a competition and Fred won the 50 meters. In 100 meters he didn't finish and the 200 meters he didn't swim because it was too cold, too much rain. That was symbolic of the training camp. He hardly came in, did 3,000 meters and that was OK because when he came back from the European Youth Championships he progressed from 1:09 to 1:06.98 finishing 8th in the European youth championships and in 200 meters dropping 6 seconds to 2:26. Then you can see 1:06/2:26 is not a very good combination. After the summer holiday I planned a meeting with Frederick and his father who was his coach. In fact, my plan was to ask him to join the swim club in Bruges, which is only 20 kilometers from where he lived in Ruiselede. In that same club in Bruges he could still train with Stephan Mann, another famous Belgium swimmer, although slow lately. A couple of years ago, he swam the A final in the Barcelona Olympics, a 1:59 200 Backstroke. Frederick said no I want to train in my own club and swim less fast than go to another club. So, we had to find another solution because when I started talking to his father about what he was doing in training he explained to me that during training if they did sprint training they did 4 x 25's and endurance training was 14 x 25's, so I thought we might have to change something here. So we tried to discuss it and we agreed I would make the program. I would send post or - I didn't have a fax and tried to call him as much as possible; as much as my employer would allow. We started the first (1989-1990). Our main goal was to teach him how to train properly. We started with 6 training sessions per week from one to one and a half hour. We trained around 20k per week. In the beginning of season and 30km at end of season. During the school holiday we trained twice a day so we were doing maybe 40k per week. Second half of season we started with weight training.

I think weight training is very important for swimmers and what is even more important is that the swimmer needs to like to do weight training. If he likes to do weight training he can help himself a little more and work a little harder. Everything went well during this season, in the 1990 European Youth Championships he finished 3rd in the 100 meter breaststroke at 1:05.31, something no other swimmer has ever done before. So that was the first bronze medalist. In the 200 breast he went a 2:19.88. In fact it was the first meet he shaved his head. Which now is one of the signs if he comes to a competition. If he does not shave his head, he is not ready. The other competitors knew if he shaves his head he is ready. First time he did it there, he tried to make me do the same thing. I said "well, OK." His personal best in the 200 breast stroke was 2:26. I said "if you make the cut for the world championships in Perth, I will shave my head." Now it's no big deal; but in 1990 I had a few hairs more. 2:19.50 I will shave my head I said "no way." He finished the final in 2:19.88 but died the last 5 meters. I was happy. I have never ever been happy before when one of my swimmers died the last 5 meters.

The season of 1990 - 1991 was a senior season. Our main goal was to progress as much as possible in preparation to the Olympic games in 1992 in Barcelona. I didn't know he could go. He was still doing high school so I said let's try. Therefore we had to increase the number of training sessions. So we did not have to do the big step in training during the Olympic season. It is my opinion that too many coaches and swimmers will increase their training load during the Olympic season, which often leads to too much fatigue and not the progress that they hope for. He was already qualified for the European Championships in Athens, so there was no pressure during the season to qualify for that meet. To accomplish our goal we built the swim sessions up to 10 x's per week up to 1 + hour and 2 x weight training; this gave us 12-14 hours swimming and 3 hours of weight training. Next to that we did 4 hours of training during the school holidays. Everything worked out well during the heats of the 100 breast. He qualified for the A final 1:02.99 from 1:05.31 and made the time cut for the Olympics. In the final he was slower in 1:03.24 but we didn't care much about that.

The first Olympic season for Fred in 1991-1992 we decided to continue with the same planning, doing the same training camps organized by the Olympic committee which were not during school time so automatically he would train more. Our first goal was to make the time cut for the Olympics for the 2nd time, which you must do in Belgium. You have to do the time within the Olympic year itself . We tried to do it during our winter championships. Those are always long course. The second goal of the season was to perform well during the Olympics. In the years before that he was never able to swim faster in winter than summer. He was never able to swim a lot during winter (due to school), so in summer we organized training camps so he could improve his swimming. This time he had to do it in winter. Luckily he swam 1:02.94. We felt if he could make the same progression during the winter as he had always done in the summer, he should be able to go 1:02 low and maybe make the A final. Now I am going to talk about the technique of planning. In most periods I used what I call it the old fashion way of planning, maybe it is still very good for some coaches but not for me and not the way I do it anymore. First a period of general endurance where I do only aerobic workouts combined with maintenance of power (sprint 3). We already did a lot of breaststroke during this period; it is built up from the beginning to the end of the season. 40% of kicking was done in breaststroke in 4-8 weeks. After this period came the specific endurance period, in which I always maintained aerobic workouts and added anaerobic workouts up to 3 x's per week. Finally we had a tapering off of 3 weeks.

Before I continue I need to explain that in Belgium we did work with an Olympic coach. We have a technical director on the Flemish side; we have a technical director on the French-speaking side and they were always the coaches at the main competitions, the European and World Championships, and accompanied by the coaches who had the best swimmers on the team. But because it is separate and the Olympic committee is a National committee, they said on we will have an Olympic coach. We came into the Olympic season and suddenly there was a new coach. Actually he was not a new coach. He had worked the Olympics before but he was a new coach that had to work with my swimmers. The strange thing was, he said I will not allow the club coaches to come along so in that season it was the first time Frederick had to work with someone else, doing my program. Not a very good combination. Knowing that, you can understand the following.

We had our winter championships and after the winter championships we were preparing for the Olympics. We had a first general period of 5 weeks of basic endurance. And during this period was a training camp of 3 weeks in France at an altitude of 1,800 meters. I was not allowed to come along. We didn't receive any feedback from our Olympic coach so I am not sure exactly how it went. The only things I knew were the results of the blood test before and after the camp. The doctor showed that there was a big increase in red blood cells. Which is the most important, I think, result from altitude training camp. It is during that time we worked at maximal strength of 4-5 repetitions @ 90% of his maximum with a lot of rest in between. 2-3 minutes rest between reps. This worked out quite well - a lot in the gym. So now we needed to transfer his strength to power in his swimming. We tried to do that in a specific period of 4 weeks. When I added the anaerobic workouts, we did those workouts twice a week, most of the time on Tuesday and Thursday because there should be 48 hours between these hard sessions. The maximum length of one of those sets was 600 meters.

In weights we went to more repetitions but still with the purpose to work heavy. We did a pyramid system 2 x 12, 10, 8, 8, 6 then 4 repetitions resting 45 seconds. Then we came to a second general endurance period of 3 weeks. The 1st week was at sea level, next 2 weeks were at altitude. As during the previous training camp, I was not allowed to join Frederick. I also felt more unhappy with this training camp because as you all know there are two ways to do altitude training camp. You do it during the season with their main goal to improve endurance base and then you come down and continue training with a better endurance base, or which is also popular, you use it to prepare for the main competition; we do an altitude camp around 3 weeks / 21 days. You come back to sea level and you are better in your performance.

Personally I don't think that is good for all the swimmers, especially the sprinters, because in altitude you are not allowed to do as much intensive work as you do at sea level. I felt we could have done more at altitude but I was not allowed to. Fred didn't have that much experience with altitude training. At that moment I was at the training camp in Germany, so I didn't see him swimming since June. Which is not the best way to prepare your swimmer to swim in the Olympics. The result was a disaster. 2-3 days before the competition he phoned me in Germany and said he didn't want to swim anymore, he didn't want to race anymore, he didn't feel comfortable.

The Olympic coach made him do all the training sessions - those on paper. He was used to doing what he felt was comfortable; if the paper said 3,000 and after 2,000 he felt really tired he would get out. I would say OK if you feel that's enough, get out; if you feel tired don't swim today. The Olympic coach didn't listen to him and made him swim everything on paper. So it was not very good.

It is nice to do opening ceremony but the 100 breaststroke was on the first day. For me that is the reason you go to the Olympic games so if the main event is on first day, you cannot do the opening ceremony. The coach felt it was necessary to tell the press and for the team it was important how good the first start was. The first swimmer swims well, the team swims well. That is not necessary. You can perform 3 days not that well then perform well. That was unnecessary pressure on Frederick who was the youngest swimmer on the team. He slipped at the start and 1st stroke he was 2 meters behind the field. He tried to catch up the first 50 out in 29.4 but died going home and he gave up the last 10 meters, finishing in 1:05.00 Not very good time to do in the Olympics. Without being very motivated he broke the Belgium record in the 200 meters with a 2:16. He swam the 400 medley relay and split a 102.7. So his form was OK. But mentally he was not OK. After the Olympics Fred was disappointed; he decided to stop swimming. He played water polo but skipped the swimming part. I kept contact with him by phone or went over to play some pool, play squash or go fishing but never talked swimming. We were very lucky in Belgium that we have television from abroad. BBC in September '92 with the British winter championships in Sheffield. Nick Gillingham won the 100 meter breaststroke in 1:02. I saw it and luckily he saw it too. He saw 1:02 short course; he called me and asked "did you see the BBC, Nick Gillingham winning the breaststroke in 1:02?" I said "yes." He said "I can do the same thing." I said "you have to start swimming again." He was going to think about it and one month later I came to Ruiselede. I said, "if you want to go on swimming you need to set your goals again. For now just go into the pool and swim and decide what you are going to do."

At the end of January he decided he wanted to compete again. 1st year only one time a day. No pressure; he was still afraid of the pressure. Then we will see what will happen. This is the last piece of the first part. 1992-1993 began in February. We split the season into 2 parts. The period of 15 weeks he needed to qualify for European Championships in Sheffield, England. Because he didn't swim fast in the Olympics he only swam 345 kilometers which is only an average of 23 kilometers per week, which is not a lot as you can imagine. It resulted in 1:03.24 in the South of France which was the cut for the European Championships. He finished high school at that point and we decided to do double training during the school holiday. And in the second period to prepare for Sheffield which was in 9 weeks, we were able to swim 270 kilometers - 30km per week. The result of the European Championships were almost the best thing to happen to him. You see he broke his personal best of 1:02.54 in the 100 and 2:16.4 in the 200 and more importantly finished 4th in the 100 meter, only 4/100ths behind the Russian swimmer. That made him so sick so he said "I never want to be beat by .04 again so I am going to do everything I possibly can. To never to lose again in this distance." So we started the second part of his career and I felt this is a very important turning point.

In the second part I will try to give more details to our planning on how many kilometers and kinds of sets we did. I will give you several examples of training sets and times he did during Olympic season. First I will go through the other seasons with the overhead projector. He decided never to do training camps anymore after the Olympic season. He had continued to do those until the last Olympic season, when he said as soon as I leave home to do a training camp the stress starts to come again. If I stay home during my training session, I go home, throw my back into the corner and do my fishing, play pool or do something else. If you are in the training camp you have to focus on swimming all the time. Everyone is there for swimming. He didn't want to do that anymore, so after the 92 Olympics he decided not to do training camps anymore. He did two training camps the last season. Those were to get used to the trips to the States. That was the main important thing. But, the Olympic committee still had the same principle that there was no Olympic coach, even in 96, but there was an Olympic coach in charge for that moment.

Okay, we started the 93-94 season which was going to be very long. I still feel he was able to go 1:02 in the Olympics 92 so his improvement I think was based on a lot of work done in the season before and since he has been in the water all the time playing water polo and cycling, being active in sport, his basic endurance has not dropped that much. So he could still do the same thing. He started playing water polo in October which would have been 2-3 months out of the water. He started playing water polo 2-3 x's per week. He started competition water polo so he was in the water 3 x's per week; he was also doing light weights. One of the problems with being a fax coach (what I call myself) is you don't see your swimmer; every time you see your swimmer he seems to be swimming differently because he is always in a different place of training. So I tried to make only very small and minor adjustments. Otherwise it would upset him too much with his technique during the season. Only had little things in perspective of 3-4 years. Since I felt that his failure at the Olympics was not due to technique, I did not start immediately changing his technique.

So the 93-94 season was a long season because of the world championships in Rome in September, 1994. His previous season which was a short one we decided to have after the Europeans because he was only swimming 23 weeks and then focus on 3 goals for the next season. First was a competition at the end of December where he could win some nice prize money which is very important for a swimmer. There were also the world championships in Palma. Second goal was the Lucere trophy meet in Belgium in May and the world championships in Rome in September.

The first meet was in Spain, we had 18 weeks to prepare for this competition after a 2 week break with 9 swimming sessions per week. These were right between 1 hour and 15 minutes and 1 hour and 30 minutes. Beside that we spent a lot of time cycling and doing weights. He was doing a lot of cycling; the first 8 weeks he could do 200km per week just to give him a basic endurance. He swam 482km - averaging 27km per week. Most of his work was aerobic to build a good base for the rest of the season. The first 6 weeks of weight training we did a general program 4 x 10's repetition with enough rest. Try to go heavier every week. That was our goal. The following 4 weeks we worked on maximal strength with 5 x 5 repetitions with 2 + minutes rest then we went to strength endurance to 25 reps with 20 seconds rest. The result of this period was satisfying. He did not only swim fast in Spain but he broke the record in the 50 meters and more important he beat Karoly Guttler, the Hungarian swimmer who had just broken the world record in Sheffield, for the first time in his career. This gave us a lot of confidence to work even harder because we saw that we were closing the gap. The second was the meet on May 22. This period we increased our training sessions to 11. Not only the number of sessions increased but the length of session extended up to two hours. This meant that we had 20 hours per week in the pool. The 19 weeks we had we swum 850 kilometers which was a lot more than we did before, which averaged 45 kilometers per week. The result was a new Belgium record in the 100 meter breaststroke. During that period there was another important thing that happened. In the world cup meet in Paris, Frederick did not compete there but I was there with other swimmers.

I always had the impression that a combination of weight training and swimming was still not the right one. I did not find a lot of literature about that. And I still feel that there is room for a lot of improvement. During the meet in Paris. I met Erik DeBruin who is the coach of Michelle Smith; he just started coaching her. For those who do not know he used to be a very good discus thrower for Holland. He was 3rd at the world championships in Tokyo in 91. I thought if he is in swimming now, the guy must know something about weight training. If anyone has to know anything about weight training it is a discus thrower; so I went to him and asked him what his opinion was the combination of swimming and weight training. He said "our coaches are behind track and field coaches a lot in training principles. Track and field coaches are working in a lot shorter cycles which makes it easier to combine weights and running or field events. He explained to me that he was working in cycles of six weeks. I will show you a sheet; this is the last cycle we did before the Olympics. The main principle of the 6 week cycles is actually the principle of super compensation and we try to avoid adaptation. Erik felt, as I do now, that as soon as a body starts adapting to a type of training you lose the effect of training. The body says "hey I know this training" and starts adapting, losing effect. Instead of having 100% training, you have 90%, maybe 80% or less. What we tried to do in shorter cycles.

The first two weeks the main training accent is basic endurance (EN1), a lot of yardage at a low intensity. In fact if Frederick or any swimmer of mine trained, we did not have the clock on. We just swim by feeling this is extensive. Not going fast and the pulse rate is about 120 beats per minute, not higher, it stayed very low. In weights endurance strength II. What we did was 5x's one minute with 30 seconds rest and within a minute you had to do 30 repetitions. I do not know if you have ever done weight training yourself but you must try it once. I assure you it is the most demanding for all of weight training. I have seen body builders laugh at us and they try it with 1 minute bench press 20 kilos and they cannot do it. They could not stretch out their arms. After 2 or 3 weeks you can make it longer if you want. 3 is the Max for me. We drop down into a recovery week and in a recovery week we did half of what we normally did. In the 1st session we dropped from 90 to 40 kilometers per week so the body is rested for the next period to come and the next period is 2 to 3 weeks and the last cycle before the Olympics, it was a 3 week period. But intensive workouts mean that not only is endurance going up to a much higher level (endurance 2 [EN2] and endurance 3 [EN3]), but also the anaerobic work, sprint 2 lactate tolerance sets; then we had a 3 week taper. In any recovery week in weights, we did 3 x 30 seconds with 30 seconds rest.

We had to take the same weight as during 5 x 1 minute so it was a lot easier for him. In the intensive weeks, we did 3 x's 6 reps as heavy as possible with 3 minutes rest in between. During the intensive weeks, we only did one exercise for big muscle groups in which we 2 or 3 exercises for each muscle group in the first week. The last week of the 6 week cycle we called a sprint week or power week. We were doing half the yardage we usually do. In every training session was a sprint set. A lactate, short 10-15 meters could be lactate and 1 and 2 so we could swim 25, 35 or 50 meters. Then we started again with the endurance weeks. Then we followed the principle of progression and did a second cycle. You should do more long sets than in the first training cycle or your total yardage should be longer or instead of 2 weeks you can do 3 weeks. Same thing for the intensive weeks. It has to be more intensive so that means swimming faster sets which can be longer which means more intensive as well. You can give more rest in a set so they have to swim faster. You can make the period a little longer. The sprint week is the same as before. I feel that you do not have to do more than 2 complete cycles to have a swimmer fit for competition. 15 weeks is more than enough to have a swimmer fit.

If you are going longer it is very difficult for a swimmer to be motivated. One of my biggest problems is I find nothing is more boring for a coach than swimming a 7,000 meter set and all very easy with nothing to watch but technique and if the swimmer is well disciplined; I find it very boring. I think it is very boring for a swimmer as well; he likes to go fast; he doesn't like to go slow. You have to limit it to 2-3 weeks because it is very easy for a swimmer to do just 2 weeks of endurance if you have a week of 90km. If you tell a swimmer you are going 90km, he will say "that's a lot coach; do we really have to do that?" I will say "It's only for 2 weeks." They feel more comfortable and say "OK, in 2 weeks it is finished." They know they have done a good job. Same thing for the intensive weeks. "OK, we are going to work hard, but it is only for 3 weeks. And they know how much effort they must put in and still finish the 3 weeks. And one of your swimmers might become sick and they know what kind of training sessions they have missed. You say OK, he was sick during the 5th week. That means we have missed one week of intensive work.

A coach can tell if he is strong enough not to have to do the intensive week again or you feel as a coach he needs another week of intensive work and you add it. It is also for me easy to correct the planning if something doesn't work the way you want it and that can always happen. So, this is our 6 week cycle as we started using after our meet in Bastogne. I will come back to the 6 week cycle. I stopped with altitude training after the Olympics. Part of the reason was I had to work 2-3 weeks on very intensive in the last weeks. I felt we could do better and more anaerobic workouts at sea level.

You have to understand that I began coaching Frederick in 89 and in 96 I have him swim 10 x 400 breaststroke. It is not my advice for your breaststrokers. I built it up over 7 years. He was able to do that because we were in the water a lot. I can tell you we did 60% breaststroke and you have to see the history of that before you can say that is a lot or not a lot. I use this key to show the last cycle before the Olympics on July 21. The first cycle I did 3 weeks of endurance, 3 weeks of intensive work. In the second cycle I did 2 weeks of endurance, 3 weeks of intensive because I felt in the 100 meter breaststroke you need more intensive work than in the 200, 400, or 800. The second cycle had 3 weeks of intensive cycles and one week of sprint. I always ask my swimmers to swim comfortably and that can mean sometimes they swim with a pulse rate of 120 and sometimes at a pulse rate of 140. They have to feel it. I tell them if your arms feel too heavy you are swimming too fast. That varies a lot from day to day. If you did weights before work, you are swimming slower than before and your heart rate will be lower.

I would say if the maximum heart rate is about 220, you are swimming at 100 beats below max. Frederick never did lactic acid testing; but with all my other swimmers we did lactic testing and there we saw the place we held on to during the endurance week which was also the place we worked to have for basic endurance. We had lactic acid measurements for Fred during competition where he reached 20 which is incredibly high in breaststroke. The main accent is endurance. I always put 2-3 alactic sprints in it and what we started adding in the latest cycle was some lactic production sets. If you want to do that you want to be sure your swimmers is still fit at the end of the week of doing 90km. It will not be very effective but it's always the main principle; even in the intensive weeks not all training is intensive but the main principle is. In this system I would not advise you to do altitude training. It is too intensive.

After Bastogne we started with the 6 week cycles for the world championships in Rome. We had first cycle where we swam 218km and a second cycle we swam 310km and 65km when tapering off. Later on you can see more training yardage results. The results were very good as he made a big impression. He won the bronze medal. There were 3 or 4 swimmers within .05 of each other. He qualified 8th for the final but he won the bronze medal from lane 8, not lucky lane 6, but lane 8 is lucky sometimes too. After Norbert Rozsa & Karoly Guttler he swam 1:01.79. I think for the Australians, Phil Rogers was 4th at 1:01.80. It was the first medal ever won by a swimmer in Belgium at the World Championships, so Belgium was very proud of Fred. 94-95 season started on November the first. We had two important goals. Try to do the same planning and amount of training as the coming Olympic season. As I explained before, I think too many people only work hard in the Olympic season. The second was to try to beat the Hungarians at the European Championships. Since we started pretty late in the season we had to plan a minor taper for the winter championships which are in February and a big taper for an international meet in Edinburgh. After that, he got a two week break and another 2 cycles for the Europeans. At this stage I will only give you some numbers of the season and none of the details with the next season which are almost the same.

The first part of the season we swam 645 kilometers in 15 weeks which averages 43 kilometers / week. Weekly average first season 25 to 35 to 40 to 50 kilometers on the last two seasons. During the first period he swam 1:01.90 in the winter championships long course. Then we had 8 weeks till Edinburgh where he swam 372 kilometers which averaged 46 kilometers per week. The result was a little bit faster 1:01.88 in Edinburgh which is not the fastest pool in the world. There were coaches who told me if he could go 1:01.8 in Edinburgh, he could go a lot faster. The time was satisfying as well as the victory over Norbert Rozsa, who was also prepared for the meet, coming from a 3 month training camp in the states. He swam a 1:02.22; so we were very happy to beat him. At that moment we knew beating Guttler in Spain and Rozsa in Edinburgh that we could become #1. In the 3rd and final part we had 16 weeks to go 2 cycles. In the first cycle we did 3 endurance weeks followed by 2 intensive weeks. The same in the Olympic season. After this one sprint meet. One week and a week of recovery we swam in Monaco. The second cycle we did 2 endurance weeks and 3 intensive weeks and one sprint week with 3 weeks tapering off. The 2 cycles together made him swim 955 kilometers which is an average of 60 kilometers/week. Total was 2,000 kilometers. The result was European Champion 1:01.12. Second best time ever swum and 200 meters 2:14.01. So finally we arrive at the Olympic season. The training is all short course. He is the only top swimmer in the club. He trains alone. He finished high school in 1993. You can see our yardage. He swam up to 3 times per day; otherwise we could not have done that many kilometers. His first session was 5:30-7:30; second session was 12:30 - 1:30 with weights and 7:00 - 8:15 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Friday. Wednesday was 2 sessions with weight training. Thursday 2 swimming sessions. Saturday 2 swimming sessions. He could train on Sundays; but if he missed training he did it on Sunday mornings. So, he wanted to be sure to be at every training session.

The planning of the Olympic season in effect started already. I always start with the goals we have for our season. I feel if you don't have goals as a swimmer you can't swim very good. The planning began in Vienna after European Championships. We were asked if we wanted to try to set the world record in a 25 meter pool in Bastogne. The prize was a nice car. I was wondering what we were going to do with the pressure if you break a world record a couple months before the Olympics; he would be the favored. Do we really want to be the favored? We decided to do it. First of all after the beating of the Hungarians, he was already a favorite. Second point we were to say "OK leaving August 21." We wanted to break the world record on February 17th. We had to plan accurately. If we could do that for the winter championships it would give us confidence to work for the summer. That was the main reason for the world record in Bastogne. We announced it to everyone who wanted to know it. There were over 60 people of press, which is a lot in Belgium, and 4 or 5 television crews. It was a very small pool 800-900 people. It was a big show. Luckily, he broke the world record of 59.02. I think he still could go faster. We started training late, the first of November. In 3 months he had to be ready for the world record.

What you see is how I plan my season. First thing is what training do I have for every swimmer. Second, what is my main training accent. If I know the main program I fill in the training sessions per day, and tell him what is the main purpose of the training session. As you can see, the first week only 2 x's per day. Endurance I on Tuesday. Then I am able to explain more specifically what to do in those periods. When I go to the next endurance period I can see clearly what I have done in the previous endurance period; so I know from the principle of progression that in the 6 week cycle we are swimming a lot. If I need to do more, instead of 2 trainings a day we increase the number of times we train to 2 x's swimming, 1 x weight training. Next day, we have endurance I, power training, power lactic. So I continue to make my plan with this as my base. When I start a season this takes me 3 weeks. I feel if I plan very carefully it will only take me 45 minutes per week to plan the weekly program. Because I already know what he has to do, we adjust when he misses training. Then I already know what he misses so I can easily adjust it. You see we have first cycle of 6 weeks.

The second part was 11 weeks which included a 3 week taper. The number of training sessions always progresses. If you want to make progress, you can make 3,000 per hour, then I know for the next time I will do more, always writing down my intentions for the next endurance cycle. He never did anything about his diet. He just ate normal Belgium food. Especially French fries which are very popular in Belgium. We did nothing special about food. I just told him to eat more because he was burning more. If he started October 23 and we do 6 weeks of endurance until first week of December and then we'll do 4 weeks of specific endurance with a lot of hard work, until the first of January then taper down 3 weeks. This was one big cycle. Erik always told me training is like fooling a body. When the body says "I know this one," start doing another thing. That is very effective in this kind of cycle.

The Speedo Meet is a meet in Belgium which is long course. He swam a 1:03.5. Then we went to the US Open in Auburn; prior to that we had a little training camp. We conducted that training camp in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. We had a couple of competitions in March. He got some good money, just going there to race. Same for the meet in Antwerp. In the middle of the endurance I period he did 90 kilometers. During that week 85 kilometers. He swam a 1:01.40 season best at that time during his endurance training. It also gives me the impression his 1:00.60 at the Olympics was not his peak performance. You can see we do a lot of training in EN1 and EN2 and EN3.

I am sure you all know what we mean by that. Endurance 1 is low endurance. Endurance 2 is a bit more intensive and endurance 3 is endurance work that you cannot do that long; maybe 2,000 - 2,500 if you are really tough. I can show you an example of a set we did during those periods for example: 8 x (4 x 100) 2 free, 2 breaststroke, 2 free, 2 breaststroke starting on 1:20 on breast averaging 1:12. Which was fast at that time I thought. Warm-up is always pull, swim, kick. Always the same. In the endurance periods we would have a swimming set from 3,500 meters depending on the period we were in and at least 50% of that set was in breaststroke and there are some days he did 70-80% of that set breaststroke. In breaststroke we did and still do a lot of pulling with paddles and fins, which makes him incredibly strong . We were doing 1,500-2,000 meters this way. The motor in breaststroke is always the kick; so we kicked 1,000-1,500 meters each session; especially in the endurance phase. We train the kick in every phase.

There are some coaches who say "I only kick intensive." I do endurance kicking, high speed kicking, resistance kicking and aerobic kicking. Our goal was to swim fast in Atlanta and everything worked. That came along was aerobic training. Try to do anaerobic training and that's what we did in competition; try to swim as fast as you can; if it's 1:02 that's fine; if it's 1:03 that's fine too. We didn't care much about it. 29th of April to May 5th was a power week. We started off with endurance 2 training. The swimmer had Sunday off. I feel you shouldn't do sprinting on Monday if you are trying to feel comfortable in the water again. Then Tuesday morning we had an alactic sprint and I had 8 sets that could be up to 3 sets of 8 x 17 + meters; 4 x 4 x 15 meters. We had an underwater set in which you had to do 2 strong pulls underwater always at the 50. 6 x 25 you can vary a lot, 2 x 15, 2 x 7 +, 2 x 20, 2 x 22 +; you can make many variations. I always try to do different sets during the week.

Later on the alactic sprint set always was longer than 10 seconds, so longer than 25. Also, why only ask for 25 or 50 meters? I had him do 35 meters. Because if you are doing breaststroke you are making stroke underwater off turn you are almost at 35 meters; or I ask him to do set without stroke underwater he would do - 6 x 25, 2 x 35, 2 x 50 Because the final training camp before the Olympics was also in Tuscaloosa, we wanted to go there and see the hotel, see the pool and how to drive and not to drive wrongly. Then we went to the US open in Auburn. He went 1:02.21 or something like that and was swimmer of the meet after only 6 weeks of training. Then we had competition in France, short course, swimming a 1:00.44.

Normally, I don't like to do a lot of competition in tapering off periods especially not before a big competition. I always feel that the swimmer should be hungry for a competition. If you do too many you become too accustomed to it. You go to the pool knowing what to do and it is always the same. I feel the swimmer should be hungry. At the European Championships he did have obligations to the Flemish swimming league. They are paying me and I am his coach. He did have obligations to our National Federation. They organize the winter championships and we had to go to those meets. But we didn't swim that much; maybe 1 event and most of the time not all out. Well we just stuck to the kind of work as planned during the week. If we plan during endurance II an AM session, we do endurance I. Do not worry about the time of day. Just follow the plan. If it is a sprint week or a power week, we do sprinting the AM; it is not that difficult to do in the AM. We just stick to the plan, or do 4 x 35 or 4 x 25. The max was 50 meters with that type training; so another alactic sprint set was 20 meters, 25 meters.

What we do is alactic maximum effort of 10 seconds; if you sprint 10 seconds you should have at least 45 seconds rest; maybe 10 x 50. He would go 20 fast / 30 easy @1:15. That made sure we were sprinting alactic. We did use, in the intensive weeks, heart rate in sprinting. If you sprint alactic you should sprint less than 10 seconds.

If I do a set it is always the amount of sets and repetitions that is important. I am not sure how much that is during the week. 16 is impossible; max is 12 and then do something else rather than do 12 again. Never do 16 because I think you lose concentration. If you lose concentration you are not sprinting 100% and are not very effective. He doesn't like the 200 meters; but shocked everyone by doing 2:14.01 at the Europeans. And that was because he was next to the Russian. He was only one length behind him. He said it's only one length maybe I can catch him and he did. That made him the favorite for the 200 in the Olympics. He might not do Mike Barrowman's time but he should be able to swim fast. I remember doing a very tough lactate tolerance set of 8 x 125 meters @ 4 minutes, 25 meters easy after every 125. His average was 1:22/1:23 for 125 short course that meant 1:03/1:04 every time. In that set. I was convinced his body was able to swim 2:11/2:12 ; but he wasn't interested anymore.

Q. (inaudible)

A. We just did regular exercises in weights because we did not use a swim bench because we were swimming a lot in the water. We are not running because we are swimming so much. We are not doing anything special in dryland training.

Q. (inaudible)