AIQ

Most coaches are going to tell you they love to work with intelligent athletes, but most athletes will tell you that the competitors they fear most would flunk a CAT scan in search of brain activity.  Why the seeming discrepancy?

Well, in the case of the coach, I think it comes down to a simple matter of communication.  Who would you rather spend a 22-hour bus ride to Florida with?  Egbert who brought the complete boxed set of “Arrested Development” with him and wants to analyze the influence of “Monty Python” on that TV show’s writing?  Or Dortmund who’s been reading the same comic book for the last 275 miles – upside down? 

Intelligent athletes are usually a dream to work with in practice situations.  Maybe they ask a lot of questions but as long as you can drum up a reasonable answer, they’ll buy in and work hard.  Toss in a research journal article with graphs to back up your answer, and they’ll work even harder.

But, as most coaches know, when it comes to competition, that’s where things get a little dicey.  Egbert might have a sky-high IQ which is useful in the classroom but does him no dang good in a race.  In races, it’s AIQ – Athletic Intelligence Quotient – that counts and a lot of very intelligent athletes don’t have a very high one.

In college, I’ll admit that I was an athlete with a solidly average AIQ.  But I knew enough to know that the competitors who had trouble blinking both eyes at the same time were the ones I should take most seriously.  And I studied them zealously, hoping to figure out what was different – besides the blinking thing.  I can’t say as that I ever did figure it out.  Some things you’re just born with – or without, as the case may be.

You see someone like Egbert – or me -- gets to the starting blocks.  His brain has been rifling through the 3,578,913 different scenarios he has calculated could unfold during the upcoming race.  He’s scanning his mental hard drive for his competitors’ previous best times.  There’s a penny on the bottom of lane 5 and it’s really, really bugging him.  He steps up to the blocks and the race is already over because, bottom line, Egbert’s brain doesn’t have an off switch.

Dortmund, on the other hand, steps up to the blocks.  He doesn’t have an off switch either, but that’s because he also doesn’t have an on switch.  Or at least no one’s ever found one.  Dortmund can’t spell the word “scenario,” let alone envision one.  And the only way he’d notice his competitors is if they walked up in high heels and blew him air kisses.  All you do with Dortmund is tell him to go as fast as he can and, chances are, he will.  Dortmund’s AIQ is through the roof. 

Thankfully Mr. Coach, like most coaches, has learned how to work with the full spectrum of AIQs.  You distract the Egberts with shiny mental objects (i.e., math equations) and you enjoy the Dortmunds for what they are. 

And if anyone ever figures out exactly what that is, please tell me.

Lane Matters

Aristotle was onto something when he started categorizing the hoo-ha out of every living and non-living thing. It’s only human nature to assign ourselves categories and if you need proof of that, all you have to do is look at a swim practice. The urge to sort themselves out by lane is primal with swimmers. You have these nice little slots to put yourselves in, so naturally you put some effort into deciding who goes in what slot and why.

Now, granted, most of the time it’s the coaches who decide who goes where. But for warmups, warmdowns and less structured workouts where you can choose your own lanemates, this is serious stuff. It’s like picking a fraternity or a sorority, except the workouts make it seem like the hazing never ends.

Lane selection can be competitive, sometimes even judgmental, and a certain type of prejudice called “lane-ism” can develop. I know of some high-school teams in the area who get rather hoity-toity about who gets shunted to the outside, slower lanes. To be a “Lane Sixer,” in one team’s lexicon, is a terrible thing. I don’t know, but if I were them I’d be afraid of the kids in those outside lanes. I’ve usually found the outside-lane dwellers to be intelligent and sarcastic. Show me a bright smart aleck who has found a reason to work hard at a sport they never win at, and I’ll show you someone who’s going to be signing Lane Three’s paychecks some day.

But with Mr. Coach’s teams, I’ve noticed that the swimmers mostly sort themselves out by communication patterns. Gloomy whiners (the “Eeyores, ” we call them) like to whine to each other. Dumb-joke specialists flock together and are ignored by the lanes on either side. Chirpy Pollyanna types are happiest together and no-nonsense masochists (often your distance swimmers) are unhappiest together. And Mr. Coach has identified a subspecies he calls the “Meek Tweezlies” who go wherever the Alpha Males or Females in their lives tell them to go.

Many lanemates develop bonds outside the pool as well. One group of Lane Four swimmers, past and present, will go out to dinner at local restaurants together and apparently are quite strict about not letting non-Lane-Four types dine with them on these occasions. Another recent group dubbed themselves “Lane Fun” and they’ve been quite aggressive with the recruiting. But that’s OK because they help each other create a happy water home.

The only type of lane you don’t like to see form is a Loveboat Lane because that always ends up being more like a Titanic Lane. Nothing sinks an aquatic romance faster than sloppy kickboard skills and fart bubbles. So if your coach tells you that you can’t swim with your GF or BF, just say thank you and go find yourself another lane. You’ve got plenty of options.

The Virtues of Slowing Down

Well, while we’re waiting for the Channeling Peace swim to get cranking (read the latest surprising news in the entry below; I’ll keep you posted here and you’re also welcome to join the Channeling Peace Initiative Facebook group), I thought it might be fun to pay attention to what’s been happening in the world of pool swimming.

As anyone who’s been following the FINA World Championships (of swimming, diving, water polo, synchronized swimming, open-water swimming and synchronized underwater ice hockey) in Rome knows, FINA -- swimming’s organizing body – has decided that the high-tech suits which have enabled the rewriting of the record books over the last two years will be banned as of Jan. 1, 2010.

It’s been an interesting two years, watching the suits creep into the world of competitive swimming. Mr. Coach was dismayed and opposed to them from the start when Speedo rolled out its LZR suit in February 2008. (Me too.) He called it when he said the LZR suits and every polyurethanic abomination that followed would quickly make their way into even age-group meets, would create more entry barriers with their exorbitant costs for underprivileged athletes and financially-strapped college teams, and would undermine the integrity of the sport because the suits made folly of basic technique and training wisdom. When he asked the other coaches in his collegiate conference to forgo the suits earlier this year, all he got was a chorus of crickets and one long-winded email dissertation from one coach that could be summed up in one sentence: The ship had left the harbor, so wave bye-bye.

Guess what? Last week the ship returned to harbor. Somebody must have discovered it had a rudder. So while the braying of Internet haters (nearly all of whom are suit lovers) will likely continue for a while, I hope the rest of the swim world embraces this return to pure swimming with positivity. I’ve always maintained that swimming, like running and wrestling, is one of the only pure sports, where all you really need to do it is your body. (That’s not to say other sports are impure. I just find this detail interesting.)

But there will be one significant obstacle that athletes will have to surmount now -- and I’m sure it will yield a couple hundred studies to be published in the "Journal of All Things Exercise Physiological and Polysyllabic" -- and that is: How will athletes deal now with going slower? How will they learn to accept slower times when they’re working just as hard, if not harder, than ever before?

To which I say: Welcome to my world! I know ALL about working hard and going slower. Actually anyone who’s ever gotten older (studies prove this happens to about 99.9 percent of the population) knows what it’s like to work hard and go slower.

It happens and somehow you find new goals and redirect your mind (and body) to them. That’s what these elite athletes are going to have to do as they kiss their personal records goodbye. They can organize the numbers however they want: pre-suit, during-suit, post-suit, whatever it takes. The sooner they let go of those during-suit numbers, the sooner they’ll get used to feeling – and enjoying -- the pure water on their bodies again.

Movin' On

Most people probably assume that a coach would rather die than see a single athlete give up the sport that he or she coaches. Not true. There’s a natural lifespan to most athletic careers. Of course some have a very long lifespan. Take U.S. swimmer Yoshi Oyakawa, the 1952 Olympic gold medalist in the 100-meter backstroke. Just this past March, after aging up to the 75-79 age group, he swam the 50-yard backstroke in 33.37 seconds. If I didn’t have such good self esteem, hearing that would make me want to quit swimming and take up golf. He’s unbelievable.

A more normal competitive lifespan sees athletes through age-group, then high school and maybe even college and beyond with the competitions. But not always. Sometimes the lifespan is shorter, but you always hope that the primary reason someone decides to move on from a particular sport is because they found something else that excited them more in life. Take our daughter, for example. Blessed with equal dollops of talent for swimming and ballet, we knew she’d eventually have to make a choice as to which one she’d pursue. Little Miss Coach was a very good backstroker as a youngster. After one particularly good meet, when she sliced her way down a 50-meter pool into the 10-and-under national rankings that year, I said to her, “Holy cow, honey, what did you do different this time that it looked so fast?” She grinned and said, “I did it to the Radetzky March.”


That’s when we realized her days in swimming were numbered. (Even better was when I told one of her ballet teachers about her humming Johann Strauss’s Radetzky March to herself during that race, and he replied, “Well, yes, of course. She was harnessing her creative energy to resolve the challenge she had been presented with.” Seriously, that is exactly what he said. When she complains now about some of the fluffernutters teaching and directing her, I just hum the Radetzky March.)

Sometimes college athletes take a break, maybe for studies abroad or to act in a university play. Sometimes they return to swimming, but often they simply move on. Fortunately, though, they move on with happy memories of their time in the sport. And they probably still get in the pool every now and then.

What you don’t want to see are the kids who give it up because they burned out and now hate the sport. Usually when you encounter athletes like that, there’s a rabid adult right behind them – either a parent or a coach -- who made them feel like a failure for not achieving specific goals. And it’s not just limited to swimming either. We’ve seen this kind of self-loathing, adult-induced burnout in all kinds of sports, ballet and music. You want to take all the fun and future out of an activity for kids? Saddle them with adults’ ambitions on their way to those finish lines or curtain calls.

But if you want them to enjoy the journey, then step back and be amazed as they move on.

Are You There, God? It’s Me in Last Place

When I competed at track in college, I had a teammate who was very religious. Now I’ve been a church-goer all my life, so having a very religious teammate wasn’t, in and of itself, a big deal. Besides, the school I went to was a Catholic university, so a quick Sign-of-the-Cross before or after a race wasn’t unusual for anyone.

But this teammate was religious in a way that took that whole "Spread the Word" thing a little more seriously than most. Beth liked to hang out near the finish lines of races, hand out prayer cards and invite people to her Wednesday-night prayer meetings. But she didn’t hand the cards and invitations out to the runners who won. Beth was smart: She went after the folks who came in last, or close to it. That’s because she knew there’s nothing like getting your butt kicked hard to make a lifestyle change that doesn’t generate lactic acid seem more attractive.

Mr. Coach’s school is affiliated with the Methodist church, but they attract people of many different faiths to the school. I’ve modified more than one dinner menu for religious or philosophical reasons, and that’s cool. Food is a great way to learn more about how and why other people live their lives the way they do.

So Mr. Coach runs a swim team with plenty of room for spirituality on it. The only time he gets nervous, though, is when a kid suddenly discovers God (or any kind of Higher Power) in the middle of a season that hasn’t been going so well. It has been Mr. Coach’s experience that mid-season conversions rarely take – although if a kid is eating right, sleeping right, showing up for all the practices, getting good grades and then decides to start speaking in tongues, then that’s a spiritual awakening he can live with. But finding religion while short-cutting around the earthly obligations usually means somebody is just looking for the on-ramp to Miracle Highway.

Which reminds me of my fourth-grade teacher, Sister Caroline Mary. Before every test, Sister Caroline Mary would have our class repeat a prayer that she dictated to us.

"Dear God...," she said.

"Dear God...," my classmates and I repeated.

"I pray that I...,"

"I pray that I...,"

"Get what I deserve on this test."

Sister Caroline Mary would have made a great coach.

Final Exams

We have now hit the time of year best characterized by the phrase "mens insana in corpore sano." (For those of you keeping score in English, that’s Latin for "an unsound mind in a sound body.")

You see there is nothing that is more of a momentum stopper in a college swim season than final exams. In fact, I suspect that most college coaches would rather face an entire team with microscopic flu germs spewing out every orifice than even one pre-med major with AN ANATOMY FINAL ON TUESDAY, AN ORGANIC CHEM FINAL ON WEDNESDAY AND, OH MY GAWD, A 15-PAGE PAPER ON ECONOMIC TURMOIL IN CENTRAL EUROPE DURING THE GORBACHEV ERA DUE ON FRIDAY MORNING. You can send a sick kid home to bed. The only thing you can do with an hysterical Academic All-American is shoot him.

Keeping kids swimming through finals is as much an art as a science, not unlike a taper. To do this, Mr. Coach employs a variety of tools. One is the Ziploc workout. He actually got the idea for this from a high-school swimmer he once coached: She used to occasionally show up for workouts with a gallon-size Ziploc baggie and a sheaf of notes she needed to study. The notes went in the Ziploc and, during kick sets, she studied. (No small surprise, she ended up going to – and swimming for – the Air Force Academy and is now working for a branch of the government which, if we identified it or her, we’d have to send you a virus to kill your computer.) Nowadays, Mr. Coach will occasionally throw a Ziploc workout at his swimmers, just to calm their study-hungry nerves.

Seeing as how it’s also the holiday time of the year in December, Mr. Coach also will attempt to distract his athletes with holiday-themed workouts. You’ve got your "12 Lanes of Christmas Kicking," your "8 Rounds of Hanukkah Drills," your "7 Sets of Kwanzaa Descends," or the "Eid al-Fitr Mile for Time" (when Ramadan falls in December). He also plugs in a few strings of festive lights and decorates a battered, 3-foot-tall, fake-pine tree with abandoned and broken goggles.

But, for the most part, final-exam time is just maintenance time. Time to maintain swimming, maintain good health, maintain academic eligibility and, most importantly, maintain that tenuous grip on sanity. So Mr. Coach keeps them in shape – both physically and mentally – by simply keeping them in the water.

And, when all else fails, he just hands out candy canes.

Giving It 95 Percent

As I venture into more masters’ swim meets, I have come up with a race strategy unlike any I have ever utilized in my athletic life – to give it 95 percent. And so far, it’s working.

Mr. Coach understands and endorses this strategy. As he so helpfully expressed it when I presented him with my 95-Percent Strategy theory, "When you haven’t grown up doing something, it’s easy to try too hard. It takes 1-2 years for you to learn how to do something new correctly." (I restrained myself from pointing out that it only took me four hours to correctly get from childless to motherhood, but that’s mostly because that whole "voluntary versus involuntary muscle action" discussion would have been so 1993.)

Little Mr. Coach is not so supportive of the 95-Percent Strategy. The first time he heard me mention it, he stepped back (as if expecting the lightning bolt to arrive any second) and gasped, "WHY wouldn’t you give it 100 percent?!" (Mind you, this is the kid who, when I told him, "We just want you to have fun, honey, whether you come in first or last," snarled, "WHY would you want me to come in last?!" One of Little Mr. Coach’s other nicknames is "Mr. Literal.")

But Little Mr. Coach has grown up swimming so he’s learned, without having to really think about it, how one doles out the adrenalin, endorphins and oxygen and comes up with a performance that is an honest reflection of one’s fitness level.

I dive in and it’s like a symphony goes off in my head. The treble line goes something like, "Was that too deep? Too shallow? Wiggle-butt, wiggle-butt, wiggle-butt, crap, I’m running out of air, where’s the surf–, crap, there’s the surface, smooth, rotate, smooth, rotate, keep it smooth, crap, there’s the wall, flip!" and so on. And the bass line just goes something like, "KICK! KICK! KICK!"

The goal of course is to get to the point where it’s all instinctual, where I can blank out and enter that lovely "out-of-body" state I so often enjoyed in track races, where I did know what the heck I was doing and was therefore able to forget what the heck I was doing and get 100 percent out of my body.

Until then, however, I’ll be giving it 95 percent and taking 100 percent of whatever I can get.

Two Types of Coaches

I believe there are two types of coaches. One type is the "screamer" who provides motivation for those who are unable or perhaps unwilling to provide it for themselves. The other type seems to be most effective in working with those athletes who don’t respond well to the motivation offered by the screamers. You could perhaps call this type of coach the "swimmer whisperer," if you want to be trendy, but in reality I just call this type the "non-screamer."

Mr. Coach is this latter type of coach. He is, after all, the type of person who, on the rare occasion that he uses a curse word, will use it by spelling it out (fortunately he has me as a resource if he ever needs to know how to pronounce one).

He also has only lost his temper once with his athletes and it’s a story that those who lived it tell to this day.

Once upon a time, some of the student-athletes he had swimming for him were on a 200-yard freestyle relay that was close to qualifying for nationals. Early on in the conference meet, they just missed the cut, so Mr. Coach decided to have them try again with a time-trial swim between the prelim and final sessions on the meet’s last day. The game plan was they’d go back to the hotel after prelims, get their rest and then return for time trials before finals began. Mr. Coach meanwhile was stuck at the pool all day because the never-ending heats of the mile also took place that day between prelims and finals. So he was relying on the student-athletes to get themselves back in time.

Well, as the expression goes in kindergarten, the relay members "made a bad choice" and decided not to return in time for the time trials. And, as they sauntered into the natatorium, they compounded the badness of their bad choice by laughing it off.

This is how Mr. Coach responded: He set down his clipboard, walked past the bad choice-makers, past the starting blocks, past the diving well, and over to the other side of the natatorium where, in full view of the team, he sat down on a bench. He said nothing. He did nothing. He simply sat.

The whole team watched him. At first they chattered excitedly about what he was going to do to the bad choice-makers when he returned. But the longer he sat, the less they had to say. By the time he stood up, about 15 minutes later, the team was grim and silent, and some of the freshmen were hyperventilating. By then also, the bad choice-makers had apologized to everyone, penned their wills on the backs of meet programs, called their parents to tell them they loved them, and then sat down to await their fates.

So Mr. Coach stood up from the bench where he had been sitting. He walked slowly past the diving well, past the starting blocks, and returned to his on-deck post where he picked up the clipboard he had set down. He consulted it to see who was swimming next, then took out his stopwatch to get the splits.

Later that day, the same quartet of bad choice-makers had to swim in the finals of the 400-yard freestyle relay, an event in which they were not close to making a national cut. But on that day, they did make the cut.

As Mr. Coach later recalled proudly, "They really pulled it out of their you-know-whats."

(I would have said the same thing – just a little differently.)