The Importance of Meet Process

The pandemic is to blame for many things, but from a coaching perspective the biggest loss is a near two-year break from competition. The underlying issue with that is that many of our younger athletes—and, equally importantly, their parents—have missed out on the leadership of more experienced athletes who would have demonstrated how things should be done, something that we will be looking at addressing from the get-go of the new season.

There is a paramount process that correlates to being successful in this sport. Any weekend's racing outcomes are greatly influenced by the way swimmers approach race day, the demands that parents (and themselves) place on those young aspiring athletes, expectations, attention, and overall meet "lifestyle." All of that must be stripped right back to square one, as any continuity that there once was, has slowly been left behind as senior athletes have moved onto pastures new, and a fresh coaching team has walked through the door with fresh ideas and a new strategy.

In the present-day with COVID-restricted warm up times looking increasingly likely to stick around, adequately conditioning the body before plunging in the warm-up is crucial at meets. Doing the same before diving into training is equally important and should help mitigate the risk of niggling injuries occurring… Could you be a trendsetting Pre-Pooler for the 2022-23 season?
Setting good examples for our younger athletes begins the process of getting that continuity back on track that has largely been lost in other areas during Covid. For the likes of our up and coming stars in Swim Skills B and Squaddies, its important for them to see older swimmers leading the way with the race day processes.

Whether it's the first race of the day or the last, the last portion of Race-Day sequence is crucial. Yes, after that last race, we all want to go home as soon as possible, but the process should always come first!
RACE DAY PROCESS:
• Race briefing with coach
• Marshalling
• Race
• 200 Flush
• De-brief with coach
• Light Hydrate & Nutrition (Option*)
• Swim Down (20mins)
• Light Hydrate & Nutrition (Option*)

You'll see that there isn't a place on that list for parents to voice conflicting information to their swimmers from the balcony. We understand that you want to be involved in the process, and we understand that there is a subconscious that makes you feel you need to issue advice and guidance, but please leave the coaching to the coaches. How many instructions can a young mind process before they race? If a coach asks them to execute A & B and then the parent shouts from the balcony to do X, Y & Z, how many of those instructions will actually get done? Two instructions may result in one or both being carried out (two is a push), but any more is likely to lead to confusion and ineffective results, which the coach is often left to answer for!

Consider this scenario:
The coach asks the swimmer to perform a fast transition kick out of every turn, execute 2 strokes without breathing after surfacing, as well as pushing the 3rd quarter of the race.
Just before the race, a parent leans over the balcony and shouts "I'll get you the new Mario game if you get a 2:32!"
Can a young athlete relate the first lesson to the second one? Rarely! That parent has simply delayed their child's race development until a future meet, where, unsurprisingly, the same scenario is inevitably going to play out again.
The same also applies in the training environment and for meet entries – follow the coaches lead, not your own.
The development of your child's swimming career is at the forefront of the coaching strategy - we measure ourselves by how much your athletes’ times tumble and the skills they uphold in the meantime! It’s far wiser to let them be the catalyst for the correct A & B to occur at the right time rather than confuse them with an extra X, Y, or Z and achieving none of them.

English Qualifying for the 200 Fly came for Tom Wooffindin at the Derventio March Open Meet (2:27.58 - 19/03/22) for Tom this season, dropping just under 22 seconds since the CoL New Year Meet (2:39.38 (2nd) – 08/01/22). Other than the times, what was the difference between the two swims?

During the debrief and in the week following the CoL New Year Meet, Coach and swimmer discussed Training Volume and Training Intensity. Topics that have been mentioned to others across the season and another example of that lack of continuity during the pandemic. The winner of that gold medal at the CoL meet will be doing over 36,000m of training each week. Every week. He'll be training at the right intensity too. That results in adaptations, which are physical alterations to the body that improve its capacity for quicker racing. Tom hadn’t been hitting 36,000 metres in training each week, and at the time his intensity was a little bit of a yo-yo.

At the time of CoL meet, Tom wasn’t alone with this, so what’s led to these drastic drops in time?
- Your body will physically change over the course of a few months to get stronger, fitter, and quicker if you train regularly in terms of weekly volume (don't miss sessions), using the intensity suggested by your coach. For those with short-term plans, a caution that it takes 8 to 12 weeks of consistent training to force such transformations, which is why it's important to attend all of your sessions. If you miss too many sessions, such adjustments are probably not going to happen at all.
- Train at the volume/intensity anticipated of an athlete your age, and you'll see similar adaptations. Allowing those sessions to slide behind will cause you to develop at the level of a competitor who is at least a year younger than you, which will cause you to fall short of the top athletes in your age group. We don't make up these rules, it's nature's way, it's sports science.
But what do those adaptations look like?
Well, if you were a body builder who worked hard in the gym, you would be able to see such adaptations in plain sight—big, popping muscles everywhere. However, swimmers really aren't bodybuilders, and young swimmers develop aerobically first (the right way for young athletes). These types of adaptations will enable the likes Emily England-Hall, who achieved a great medal haul at the recent Hull Meet, go on to bigger achievements in the future, all happening invisibly inside the body.

So, what happens inside?
• Increased Blood Volume
• Increased Cardiac Output (heart strength)
• Increased Myoglobin (muscle fuel stores)
• Increased Mitochondria (muscle power stations)
• Increased quantity of Capillaries (fuel delivery network)
• Improved Oxygen Consumption (fuel efficiency)
• Muscle Fibre Stimulation (application of strength and speed)
• Neuromuscular Coordination (learning movements)

We achieve the best results for each of those by attending the recommended number of sessions regularly each week. Of course, every athlete starts from a different place (so never compare your development to anybody else's) but stick to the recommended number of sessions for your age to develop YOUR adaptations.

Athletes that start along that route early enough, like Autumn Swain who joined us recently at age 7, should be able to float around at top of their age group and keep moving up the ranks to do good things in the future. The optimal age to enter Swim Skills B or Swim Skills A is between 8 and 10 years old. After that, you fall further and further behind in the race of adaptation.
So, if training triggers adaptations, but those adaptations only result in a new and improved body after two or three months of work, how often can we expect to see PB's?

Young athletes frequently expect huge personal bests when competing, but they don't need to. For the immediate term, the pandemic has made that issue worse. Due to the lack of race practice, our young swimmers are still discovering their maximum speed, so it is not surprising that our season PB% currently sits at 98.9%.

When it comes to PBs, they should never steal the show comparative to good race skills and race development. By concentrating on skills and technique rather than raising a fuss over timings, you may aid the coaches in helping your swimmers. Swimmers have no control over the clock, but they may choose how many fly kicks they execute off the walls, whether or not they breathe during the first stroke, and whether or not they keep their heads down during the last 5 metres. Concentrate on and perfect the controllables (the process). The PB’s will appear after your body is prepared or once you've made enough wise decisions.

A recent victim of this was Backstroker Faye Harper, who consistently qualifies at both Yorkshire and NERs in all distances of the stroke. Over the past month or two, Coach Harvey has worked closely with Faye to improve the rotation and hand entry on her backstroke, which should resultantly improve how early her catch underneath the water can begin; leading to an increase in efficiency and power. During the recent Sheffield Summer Meet, the new skills Faye had picked up were clear to see, with her stroke count reduced by 4 strokes over the 100m distance, vastly improved rotation, and an earlier catch. Of course, though, being 0.40 outside PB resulted in a frowning Faye, even though progress as clear as day! A great example of when where a Neuromuscular adaptation hasn’t quite been fully embedded (2/3 of the way through), but the new skills are coming through – Trust the process!

The right way for parents to be engaged in this process on competition day is to avoid communication with the athlete until after the swim down, and then ask the athlete about what they accomplished in response to Coach's instructions. Follow the athlete's lead, reiterate the coach's points, and learn alongside your athlete.

Before concluding, I’d just like to emphasise the 7th point on the Meet Process List:
SWIM DOWN
o Don't put your athlete in a scenario where they have to choose between disobeying you (as a parent) or their coach!
o Please adjust your expectations for leaving the Competition in accordance with the Meet Process – they need to finish it, even if it’s the final event of the day.
o If they attempt to flee without doing so, we will catch them and send them back!
o Parents who have instructed their children to leave early at the conclusion are causing friction between the swimmer and coach.