|
|
| FIND GUIDES
ABOUT ASCA SITES TO SEE |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Swimming
with Randy
.
It was a morning after a night rain fell cooling
the normally hot and humid Austin air that I arrived at the Circle C Ranch
Community Pool. I walked on deck at 5:45 am to find a man staring
intensely down that pool. This is exactly how I pictured Randy Reese from
the descriptions I had read in previous years and from his past swimmers
and friends, a man extremely confident and extremely focused. I introduced
myself to him, he said a quick “Hi,” and continued to stare down the
pool completely concentrated on how he was going to orchestrate the
morning’s events. The swimmers began to
come into the pool, walking out in the dark morning gathering their
equipment and their practice on single sheets of paper which they soaked
and placed on the deck behind their respective lanes. As soon as Randy
began to describe the first set the focus of the athletes turned directly
to their coach for they knew the displeasure that they would experience if
they didn’t. Randy gave his instructions and quickly shouted “We are
going on the 45 minutes,” which was 2 minutes from the time on the
clock. Each swimmer entered the water on time for once again it was an
obvious expectation that no one was going to challenge. This was my introduction
to the Circle C Swim Club, which has grown from a seven member team to a
team of 175 and one of the premier clubs in the world coached by one of
the premier coaches in the world. I spent the next week with Randy on deck
for 8 hours each day (Randy stayed on deck 9¼
hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays) in the hot Austin sun. At the end of the week I
spent with Randy, we traveled
to a meet at SMU in Dallas where we watched a great deal of swimming and a
prize fight on TV that Saturday evening, Gatti vs Ward III. Watching the
fight with Randy can sum up the time and what I learned about his views on
swimming and life. As we were watching one of the warm-up bouts
between two heavy weights, Randy articulated how he felt about boxers and
boxing in general, “I’ll tell ya something, this is the toughest sport
there is. No sport tougher. These guys are the toughest SOBs in sport.
Don’t ya think?” “No argument from me, Randy.” “Head to head, they have to kick the crap out
of each other. It’s not like swimming if they let up they will hurt
more. If a swimmer backs down they will only hurt less, there is no sport
tougher, these guys are big time.” This would sum up how Randy feels people need to
approach things in their life and swimming if they are to be successful:
plain and simple they need to be “tough SOBs.” “Matt
Cetlinski, now there was one tough swimmer, he left his heart in the lane
after every set, gave you everything off of every wall; he was big
time.” Randy has a simple philosophy when it comes to swimming fast and
achieving athletic potential: you have to learn how to be tough. The practices and the way that Randy plans, are
based on the premise that you can teach people to be tough. One of the
most consistent pieces of equipment that Randy uses in his training is
kicking and swimming with shoes. His philosophy of perseverance and
toughness comes out when he describes why he does this training, “The
shoes just kicks the crap out of them, you really have to bust your butt,
get the feet kicking large and fast to get going. Everyone can make one
minute per fifty that is about perseverance and toughness; they just need
to learn to get it out of themselves.” He not only sells this philosophy to the athletes
but he is up front with the parents in the club that this is something
that each athlete needs if they are going to reach their potential in the
sport. Randy is extremely upfront with the parents and they respect that.
As his brother Eddie expresses, “When you get old you can say what you
want to parents as long as you say it nicely.
Randy is at a point where he can say what he wants however he
wants.” In a discussion with one of the parents of an athlete whose
attitude he described to the boy in the morning as “Your attitude is as
bad as I think I have ever seen anyone’s,” he expressed. “He just
needs to bust his butt for three weeks, go through a lot of pain and once
he gets through it he will feel the same paces that he thought were hard
as easy; he just needs to be tougher.” Back to the main event
now where ESPN is showing highlights from Gatti vs Ward I and II. “These
little guys have skill. This is the toughest sport in the world. You have
to be an athlete to do this. “Absolutely these guys need to be quick and
are so skilled. I love watching the little guys fight (maybe because I’m
little),” I responded. “I’ll tell you something - these guys are big
time.” Skill and technical efficiency are two things
that are at the core of Randy’s philosophy of swimming.
He believes that the best performers will most often be the best
technically as well. Through his personal experience he has seen that the
best pick up on technique the quickest, which is a huge sign of their
potential. “Tracy Caulkins was just amazing with it. You would tell her
to put her hand in this way or that way and it would be done the first
time. She would stay with the change consistently until we figured out if
it worked.” The major aspect of
Circle Cs’ technical training is the use of stroke drills. Randy
believes that you must change technique through drills and that there must
be a large focus put on specific drills. “To truly teach technique you
must use drills a lot and consistently.” Randy will most often use a
variation of drills in all of his workouts. The most common way that he
uses these drills is to mix them with swims so that the athletes take the
time to implement the changes that he is trying to make through each
drill. As Gatti and Ward were
battling in the first half of the fight using creativity and skill, my
mind switched to some of the creative thoughts on teaching technique Randy
shared with me through the time I had spent with him. “Do you think if
you were able to turn the lights off in the pool and use glow sticks so
the swimmers could see the wall but nothing else, that their feel for the
water would improve?” When it comes to teaching technique this is only
one example of how Randy has a large tendency to think outside the box and
do what ever it will take to make sure that the swimmers are going to
learn how to do things right. It
is now in the seventh round of the fight.
Gatti is continuing to dominate, despite hitting Ward in the hip
with a right hook during the third round re-breaking his hand. Randy
inquires, “What do you think, is it age or fitness that is not allowing
this guy to take advantage of Gatti’s broken hand and win the fight?” “Hard
to say, Randy. To me it looks
like the fitness is the major factor, but his age might have something to
do with it.” “Yeah,
probably fitness. These guys
are the toughest athletes out there. You have to be fit to be in this
sport, a real athlete.” One
of the things you realize when spending any amount of time with the group
of Circle C athletes during their training is that they are one fit group.
Randy believes in working hard and being fit, including endurance, speed
and strength. When
you ask him how he plans practices, his response is “I usually write out
a whole bunch of stuff and than realize how hard it is and tone it down.
It usually comes out to a point where they still think it is really
hard.” It is incredible to see the intensity that the athletes train
with day in and out. Randy judges the training by its’ intensity, since
he feels volume can be looked at in many different ways, dependent on what
components a coach feels important (kick, drill, swim etc...). Since he
feels that the amount of rest in a practice is a better indicator of
volume, intensity is what he uses to determine the training overload each
day. Randy uses this sustained intensity to build the endurance base which
he believes is required in all swimming events. To develop strength and
speed Randy uses a lot of creativity in his planning. One example of this
is how he uses pulleys and shoes. Power workouts using this equipment are
done two to three times a week in a short course yards pool set up. He
uses both shoes and pulleys to develop both strength endurance and raw
power by covering distances from 25s to 200s. Dryland training at Circle C is limited by their
lack of facilities such as a weight room and storage for equipment. For
this reason the dryland is based on simple muscular endurance that has a
mix of weights, abs, medicine balls and jumps. By having his dryland set
up this way Randy also avoids one of the problems he sees with lifting
heavy more than once a week. “When you lift heavy more than once a week,
they start getting too big and too sore to swim properly.” These
endurance based dryland workouts take between 40-45 minutes and are
performed before each afternoon practice. Once the fight concluded, Gatti had beaten Ward
by a unanimous decision in a fight that the announcers felt would go down
as another great showdown in the history books. “What did you think of the fight?” I asked
Randy. “I didn’t think it
was that good. I don’t know what the announcers are talking about. It
wasn’t that good, but man this is the toughest sport there is.” Expectations
are always high when you are around Randy. From doing sets correctly and
taking pride in one’s work to expecting himself to get off his butt and
get in better shape, Randy expects the highest level of effort from
everyone around him day in and day out. Communicating
these expectations in a formal way through team meetings is the
best way that Randy feels you can get your point across, “I need to get
back to having meetings again to explain my expectations and let them know
where we are going. We need to do this at least once every two weeks so
that the team can create an environment where everyone is buying in.” One
of the things that many great coaches have been able to do is to convey
high expectations on a daily basis and be extremely hard on their
athletes, while at the same time letting the athletes know how much they
care. “Once a swimmer swims with Randy for 6 months they will lay on the
railroad tracks for him. They will complain about him and his ways, but
they will understand how much he cares and go to the wall for him. ”This
is how his brother Eddie describes the relationships Randy forms with his
athletes. He does not smile much and very rarely, if ever, is he satisfied
with performance, but it is evident in his interactions with the athletes
that they know how much he cares. Upon leaving Austin, I
came to the pool once again at 5:45 am to thank Randy for taking the time
to share his thoughts and experiences with me. Once we said our good-byes
he went back to the same spot where I
had first seen him at the end of the deck on a dark and hot Austin
morning, staring down the pool, contemplating how to make the group of
swimmers in the water the most fit, most skilled and toughest athletes in
the world.
Randy’s
Favorite Stroke Drills:
- One arm
- Spin Drill
- Two up one down
- Br pull with free
kick
- Catch up with stick Power
Workout Example:
6 x (4 x 50 @ 1:10 #4 max weight)
1) Kick
2) Kick with fins
3) Swim
4) Swim with paddles
5) Swim with fins
6) Swim with fins + paddles b) Shoes
3 x 4 x 25 Kick Fly or Back @ 40
2 x 50 Kick @ 1:00 Free)
4 x 100 @ 2:00 as fast as possible
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 1998-1999 American Swimming Coaches Association. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
