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I.                    Courage to change.

A.     In the 1950’s and 1960, the guys that were training with Doc Counsilman asked him not to tell anyone how they were training and what they were doing.

1.      Doc said, “I’ll tell them what we are doing, but by the time I tell them, we’ll be doing something else.”

B.     Tiger Woods completely recreated his game even when he was the most successful golfer on the tour.

C.     Are we being as successful as we can be?  Are you being as successful as you can be?

D.     It is Coach Quick’s dream that we be much better than we have ever been.

1.      We should win the majority of the races at the Olympics.

2.      If we don’t win each race, we should place a very close second.

3.      We should be able to do this because we have the greatest number of athletes and the best resources of any team in the world.

E.      When one sets the World Record and can see that there is still room to improve – that is exciting!

F.      What do we need to change to be fully achieving?

1.      This talk is incomplete because this is an open-ended question.

II.                 What prevents change?

A.     Laziness – it is assumed that no one in this room is lazy.

B.     Fear.

1.      I was relatively successful doing it this way last year. What if I change and am not successful.

2.      Misty Hyman took the leadership and the risk to change her racing technique and take fewer underwater dolphin kicks.

a)      Be a leader in change for your athletes, they are looking for it from you.

C.     There is no such thing as easy success.

1.      If you are looking for a change to make things easier, you are becoming easier to beat.

2.      Extraordinary performance is a result of extraordinary effort!

D.     Do not change everything at once – it makes it too hard to measure the factors involved in success.

E.      Do not do the same things two years in a row.

1.      What if every swimmer could have 3% - 7% improvement every year.

F.      Seek the advice of experts in and out of the sport.

1.      Look for expertise.

2.      Coach Quick fundraised to bring a support staff to the Sydney Olympics.

3.      You cannot know everything about everything.

4.      You don’t know what you don’t know until you ask a lot of questions.

5.      Get excited about change.

III.               Training and Change.

A.     One coach found that one year, one-a-day workouts for 3 to 3 ½ hours helped the boys get stronger and the girls get leaner.

B.     Janet Evans used to do three-a-day workouts, 3 or 4 times per week.

C.     In 1968, George Haines trained his swimmers 3 times a day, 3 days per week. 

1.      Coach Haines placed 14 swimmers on the Olympic Team that year.

2.      In 1972, Coach Haines suggested the training plan of 3 times a day, 3 days per week to his swimmers again and everyone wanted to do it.

D.     Evaluate what you are doing.  Experiment with different schedules.

E.      Write, e-mail, talk to Genadijus Sokolovas at USA Swimming.

1.      His concepts apply to all swimmers.

2.      Ask about parametric training that incorporates a logical progression of training from week to week and year to year.

F.      Strength and conditioning training.

1.      Technique is so important.

2.      There are posture characteristics that are detrimental to high velocity swimming.

3.      Pay attention to dryland training so swimmers can avoid bad posture habits.

4.      Pilates and gymnastics.

5.      Games and dryland of David Salo are successful for his team.

6.      Athletes can hire their own personal trainer.

7.      “The more guy like girls can become, the better they’ll be.”  Female swimmers need to be physically fit, with low body fat.  They need to be strong and powerful.

8.      Change routine every 6 – 8 weeks.

9.      Holding maximum weight (250 lbs. for a female) as a way to stimulate better lifting.

10.  There are many different ways to train.

IV.              Technique.

A.     The more a swimmer increased his or her velocity, the more important it is for him or her to decrease resistance.

B.     When visiting teams, Coach Quick sees a sell-out on technique in training.

C.     Swimmers are working hard, but their coach is letting them go on technique.

D.     Flawed technique with great effort is not useful in a race.

E.      Mike Barrowman.

1.      Training 20 x 200 Breast.

2.      After the 14^th 200, Josef Nagy made him start over because he messed up on his technique.

F.      If you are truly training technique, then it must be part of your training ALL of the time.

G.     Use perfect technique in hard, fast sets when you are giving all you can physically.

1.      Stroke rate versus distance per cycle.

a)      Ed Moses knows his ideal rates and distances.

b)      Misty Hyman knows her ideal rates and distances.

2.      Boomer and posture.

a)      Make sure the body is not in the way of propulsion.

b)      Posture, bodyline, balance in the water all needed before one thinks about propelling the body through the water. 

c)      Coach from the inside out.

V.                 Be more scientific.

A.     Not easy.

B.     Science is limited.

1.      It can only measure what it can measure.

C.     Use USA Swimming resources.

D.     Look outside of the sport.

VI.              Nutrition.

A.     We live in a fast food time of life.

B.     Our food is processed, even our “natural” food.

C.     Cutting edge nutrition is needed for cutting edge athletes.

D.     Young kids can get away with poor nutrition, but it catches up with them and creates bad habits.

VII.            Psychology of Excellence in Performance.

A.     If you want to change and drop times, then you must believe in these changes.

B.     Work on the psychology that “I must change.”

C.     Eddie Reese predicted extraordinary times from his swimmers and most of them did it!

D.     You must believe that there are no limitations!

E.      Psychologist Richard Diana.

1.      The differences between knowing, awareness, and thinking.

2.      Original state = full potential = relaxed and flowing.

3.      Learned state = not optimum = uptight and unfocussed.

4.      Misty Hyman at the Olympics needed to get to the original state to swim her best.

a)      Plan on things going wrong and dealing with them well.

b)      Misty took control of her day (the day of finals in the 200 Fly).

c)      She won the gold medal by swimming in her original state.

5.      Success and change starts with you and your beliefs.

6.      There is a happy medium between too much pressure and high expectations.

7.      Ask for excellence from your swimmers and you will get it.

VIII.         Governing of the sport.

A.     Coaches need to take more responsibility.

1.      You care more than the people who are voting.

2.      We seldom vote for excellence on our teams.

3.      People normally vote toward mediocrity.

B.     Get involved at the local or national level.

C.     Think about sport as a family.

1.      Battle to save men’s collegiate swimming.

2.      If any part of the swimming family is hurt, we are all hurt.

3.      Get involved with this problem at the grass roots level.

IX.              Be like Misty Hyman – Look to change for success.

Questions

1.)  How do you approach change and teambuilding?

Coach Quick said that he uses his seniors for leadership.  When he is recruiting, he tells the recruits how they are training this year but that they may train differently next year.  Coach Quick focuses on technique plus base conditioning.  He pairs his athletes to teach technique.  Athletes need to work together to get better.  They achieved this on the Olympic team.

REAL CONFIDENCE is helping your opponent be the best that they can be.

Team building happens every day.  An Australian visitor to Coach Quick’s team noted that the women were really pulling for one another.  They shared in each other’s goals and were able to feel a part of each other’s successes.

2.)  How do you approach change from an educational approach?

Establish a philosophy and change.  Change for improvement.  Change will come naturally, have your receptors for change out there.  Bob Cooley is a great resource for meridian resistance training.  Dara Torres had done no swimming for seven years.  She was a fitness nut and never went out of shape.  She was open to technique changes.  She gained 17 lbs. of muscle and lost body fat.  She is a very intense individual.

3.)  Can you explain posture improvements?

Example from the audience.  When this woman is standing up normally and relaxed, there is give in the spine when Coach Quick pushes on her spine.  Then he had her lay tall in her back on the floor, pressing her back into the ground with her feet on the floor and her knees pointing to the sky.  With her belly button and ribs tucked in, she released her legs onto the floor without using the hip flexors and maintaining contact with the floor with her back.  Coach Quick asked her to stay center focused.  She was to do the same thing as she moved her arms overhead to streamline.  Then, Coach Quick had her stand up and model that posture while standing and she had less give in her spine when he pressed on her head.  Seek a body tension of 4 or 5 (on a scale of 1-10) that looks like a military perfect 10.