Sink or Swim? How to Produce Annual Improvement

written by John Strong, Niagara County Community College

This year the USA Swimming National Championships were held the week of June 25 – 29 in Indianapolis, IN. Many swimmers, some more widely known than others, all put forth their finest effort to try and capture their best performance ever and a chance to compete on the US National Team at the World Championships.

Like many sports, in swimming you can have your top performance but still fall short of beating your opponents. However, you must reach a time standard in order to reach the National Championships in the first place. This established standard is a goal all swimmers can aspire to in their training, when they begin to understand how they measure up across the national swimming spectrum (I wish they had one of these standards for my drop shot). If indeed a swimmer is to consider him/herself an 'elite' swimmer, they should be able to set these time standards as goals, and work to improve their times annually in order to accomplish these goals at the peak of their swimming primes.

In 1999 USA Swimming initiated the Olympic Trials Project. This project was established because, "Continued success at the international level is one of the primary goals of USA Swimming. To achieve this goal, it is critical to understand the factors that relate to success in swimming. One means of learning about success is to study the characteristics or qualities of successful individuals; to profile our elite swimmers."¹

To this end, the study went about gathering data including the age, age started swimming, age started swimming year-round, average hours spent swimming per week, average dryland training hours per week, average number of workouts per week, average yardage per week, and percentage of improvement from previous year (PIFPY) of their elite swimmers. The conclusions related to this data may not be widely known, but revealed some interesting findings that possibly conflict with traditional training methods.

One area of particular interest was the seemingly minor contribution of dryland training time to performance when statically correlated (more than 4.5 hr/wk for females and males, produced no positive effect on their PIFPY¹). The study found that the high volume of training in these elite athletes (more than 60000 yd/wk for females and almost 62000 yd/wk for males) had little effect (and in some cases was a detriment) on their PIFPY¹. The results of these findings were not what this author, or many others in the traditional swimming world, would have anticipated. Rather than helping elite swimmers, traditional practices like dryland training and hours of continuous lap swimming seem to be almost holding our swimmers back.

I would like to tell you that this changed the minds and practices of coaches at every level, but sadly I cannot.

Readers of this article will be heartened to know that there are alternatives to 'the same old training' in competitive swimming that have proven to produce performance improvements greater than current traditional methods. One such methodology can be found in a protocol published by Termin and Pendergast in 2000². This training program was created from the systematic physiological and biomechanical measurements collected over a 4 year time period on the same population of swimmers. The parameters of this training method correlate positively to the improvement of the 18 to 22 year age group over that time period.

Using an intelligently crafted training model, Coach Budd Termin's University at Buffalo swimmers realized annually improved 100-yd performances of 2%, 4%, 2%, and 2% (10% total) over the four years. In contrast, the progress realized in the Olympic Trials Project documented the improvement of female sprinters to be 0.06% from 1999 to 2000 and 0.48% in male sprinters over the same period. Perhaps the answers to, "how can I improve practice?" are more readily available than some of the 'traditionalists' in the swimming world appear ready to accept.

I couldn't help but notice, after stumbling upon this phenomenon in swimming, that this is not an isolated issue. These same 'traditionalist' views weigh down the progression of a great many disciplines within the Physical Activity spectrum. From sport to the education of physical literacy, I find time and again that there are far too many complacent folks in positions of power and influence that ignore data and the changing tides of the day in favor of blindly sticking with 'traditional practice'; A League of Their Own, 42 and Moneyball immediately come to mind.

But I'm probably not telling any readers of this article something new, so what I'd rather focus on is how to move forward in spite of these archaic mindsets. Last year I suggested a Fab Five list of suggestions to help educators feel intrinsically motivated. This year I'd like to provide a Big Three (as a nod to the world champion Miami Heat) list of suggestions to help educators feel like they are moving with the times:

Always be working on something - Typically when I walk down the hallway co-workers and students alike will greet me with a, "Hello" or "How's it going?" Clearly neither of these really requires much thought for a response. However, when someone actually wants to engage me they might say, "So what are you up to?" This is now an opportunity that I relish because it's a kind of barometer for me. If my first inclination is to say, "Oh you know, the usual…" then I'm really not extending myself outside of comfortable parameters. If I have the time and inclination to say, "Well actually I'm working on…" then I see that I'm excited about what I'm working on and how it's allowing me to grow.

If you're always working on something new (reading a new book or study, sitting on a new board or committee, writing a new grant or article, researching for personal growth or publication, or even trying a new technique of some kind) you are always able to say that you are pushing the limits of your personal and professional envelope; probably the easiest barometer of whether or not you're moving with the times.

Check your files - At the end of the summer when you are prepping your office/work space for the upcoming year, check your files (e-files or hard copies). If the files you pull out resemble each other from year to year with some minor, or even major, 'tweaks' and 'improvements' then you're probably used to the idea that, like the telephone, every model can be improved upon.

However, if every file looks like the one before it, and is identical to the materials that you're going to use again this year, it might be time to upgrade your rotary phone to the new iphone 5! There's certainly an unlikely chance that you will be able to produce this dramatic shift overnight or independently; so have patience and seek assistance. Most folks that are used to upgrading are also used to helping others do the same, and will appreciate being approached for the sake of communal improvement.

Take a look around - There are many ways we as professionals can see what other professionals are doing. Google and YouTube are two simple online tools that can validate what you are doing at practice or in the classroom, or provide examples of how things are changing and suggestions on how to improve upon older theories. Perhaps you have a membership in a related professional organization.

Despite what I wrote about USA Swimming above, I understand that making large scale change is a difficult thing. No organization with a population over 100, and governing board worth their salt, can move as nimbly as a speed boat; rather, most are forced to 'come about' like a battleship. However, there are many cases (AAHPERD and its many subsidiaries quickly come to mind) where our professional organizations are already looking at how the profession can and should move forward.

Since there's nothing like the real thing, consider going into your community to view some new techniques locally. If you look at what other teams are doing that is different than what you're currently practicing, begin by weighing what appears to be the pros and cons of that idea. Perhaps just this simple exercise alone will lead you to think of ways in which your own practice is becoming obsolete.

There is currently a program that is gaining momentum in the world of physical education in North America. Health Optimizing Physical Education, or HOPE³, is featured in this year's Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (JOPERD); part 1 of the article describing this new curriculum appears in the April '13 edition and part 2 in the May/June ’13 edition. You could perceivably hit all three of my suggestions by looking into and implementing this program in your professional future.

First you would have to research the practice (starting with the JOPERD articles would be simple enough). Then you could move on to see how other educators across the country are implementing this cutting edge program (either by contacting the authors directly, mmetzler@gsu.edu, or by searching in your community for support). And finally, you would walk around on a daily basis knowing that you definitely had something going on! It's a big undertaking, but change often is. If you embrace it rather than fear it, it may allow you the peace of mind you have silently been searching for. Good luck!

¹Sokolovas, G. (2000). Demographic information. In The Olympic Trials Project (Chapter 1, pg. 9). Colorado Springs, CO:        United States Swimming.

²Termin, B., & Pendergast, D. R. (2000). Training using the stroke frequency-velocity relationship to combine biomechanical and       metabolic paradigms. Journal of Swimming Research, 14, 9-17.

³Metzler, M. W., McKenzie, T. L., van der Mars, H, Barrett-Williams, S. L., Ellis, R.

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