The Art and Importance of Planning Part 1

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Introduction

Given that most of us, if not all of us are isolating ourselves whether by choice or Executive Order. I was thinking of how to best use my time in my home. I thought that now would be a good time to plan the coming season. As I began to think about the coming fall season I thought it might be a good topic for a blog post to share my thoughts on planning with you. I hope that you will feel free to share any best practices on planning that you have picked up.

I love the headline quote by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who during World War II was the Supreme Allied Commander responsible for the planning, implementation, and carrying out of Operation Overlord. This operation became known as the Invasion of Normandy or the D-Day Invasion. This operation was the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world. General Eisenhower had to plan the invasion that would coordinate the attack using roughly 1200 planes, 5000 plus ships, and over 160,000 troops. General Eisenhower had to make plans with his supporting staff of Generals to coordinate every aspect of the invasion in order for it to be successful and ultimately bring about the defeat of Nazi Germany.

In our various responsibilities as coaches we are a lot like General Eisenhower. We have to coordinate the training, the teaching of technique, and meet scheduling to help our measure the development of our swimmers as they ultimately progress to the championship meet at the end of the season. True our swimmers are not going off to a war, but they are going to be competing at swimming meets and striving to do their best. Having a well thought out, structured, coordinated and organized seasonal plan will help create the opportunities for our swimmers to be ready to go into battle to achieve their goals.

Preparation for Writing the Plan: Understanding by Design

Before writing a plan I would high recommend that you read the book, Understanding by Design written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. You can purchase this valuable resource book on Amazon in paperback for anywhere from $18.00 to $22.00 in paperback. While this book addresses teachers and how they can effectively help their students gain understanding, which is more important than just learning. The concepts and practices Wiggins and McTighe propose are very applicable to us in coaching swimming.

In their book they identify three stages that teachers and/or curriculum designers must take into consideration before writing and designing curriculum and lesson plans. The three stages are:

Stage 1. Identify desired results for the students. Where does the teacher what the students to be at the end of the year.

Stage 2. Determine acceptable evidence of the students. In other words what constitutes, or defines what the student has come to understand and learn.

Stage 3. Plan learning experiences and instruction that demonstrates a student's progress toward the desired results.

Stage 1 Identify desired results (Characteristics)

1. What should participants hear, read, view, explore or otherwise encounter?

This knowledge is considered knowledge worth being familiar with. Information that fits within this question is the lowest priority content information that will be mentioned in the lesson, unit, or course.

2. What knowledge and skills should participants master?

The knowledge and skills at this sub-stage are considered important to know and do. The information that fits within this question could be the facts, concepts, principles, processes, strategies, and methods students should know when they leave the course.

3. What are big ideas and important understandings participants should retain?

The big ideas and important understandings are referred to as enduring understandings because these are the ideas that instructors want students to remember sometime after they’ve completed the course.

Stage 2 Determine Acceptable Evidence (Characteristics)
This is the assessment phase where the teacher will look at the instruction he/she is giving and will assess the student's understanding of the items he/she is teaching that will help the students gain a final understanding of the curriculum at the end of a given unit-the enduring understandings.

Stage 3 Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction (Key Questions)

1. What enabling knowledge and skills will the students need to perform effectively to achieve the desired results?
2. What activities will need to be taught and coached, and how should it best be taught, in light of performance goals?
3. What materials and resources are best suited to accomplish these goals?
4. Is the overall design coherent and effective?

Application to the Writing a Seasonal Plan (My Best Practices)
Here are the steps I go through in writing my seasonal plans
1. Determine where I want the TEAM, and each swimmers to be at the end of a season.
2. Determine what skills that my staff and I will need to emphasize and teach to help the swimmers get to where I what them to be at the end of the year. Included in skills are such things as techniques, and the "Processes" you want them to learn-understand-apply.
3. Determine what are the physical conditioning categories that are to be used to help prepare the swimmers to perform the skills and processes needed to achieve the ending results wanted. This includes in water training categories-Aerobic Endurance, Threshold, Speed work etc. It should also address what types of dryland exercises are to be done to enrich the swimmer's ability to progress toward the end results. It can also include things like mental strength training, and team building activities to provide support to every member of the team as THEY progress together toward the end results.
4. Determine the meets to attend that will be used as assessments, or "stepping stones" in their progress toward the end of the year meet. Each meet should be selected with a specific purpose in mind. For example by meet number on the swimmers should be able to perform underwater kicking beyond flags.
5. Determine the phases of the season, their length and the focus of each.
6. Put it on paper.

Summary and Final Thoughts

To summarize this lengthy post here are a few ideas to consider as you plan. I think it is important that the plan reflects the Head Coach's philosophy. If a Head Coach does not have a defined philosophy that needs to be decided upon, written and/or communicated to the staff. It is the responsibility of the Head Coach to gather around him/her assistant coaches who will buy into and support that philosophy. I believe it is important that the Head Coach put on paper his/her plan for the staff to follow. He/She must communicate the desired end results to the staff. However, all coaches need to be involved in the creation, publication and implementation of the finalized plan so that as a program the end desired end results can be achieved. I recommend gathering together in a planning meeting, somewhere that has a large whiteboard, or chalkboard so that the dates of the season can be written and every aspect of the plan calendared. The Head Coach must conduct, and lead this meeting. The staff then plans together the phases of the season, the meets to attend. Every aspect of the season needs to be calendared to help the TEAM, staff and swimmers arrive at the end results. When the final plan is agreed upon the individual coaches can develop a plan for their respective groups and then each coach publish and communicate the goals and plans to the TEAM and swimmers.

I love this saying, "If you fail to plan. You plan to fail". I believe this is a true statement however trite and over used it may be. I believe in planning seasons and especially in planning for multiple years. One time I listened to one of our country's National Team Coaches, I do not recall who it was at this time other than I took his advise to heart. That advise was that as coaches we needed to have a four year plan based on the Olympic Cycle. After hearing this I thought, four year plan you have got to be kidding. However I thought I would try it. So for the 2004-2008 and then again 2008-2012 I actually put together a four year plan for the group of Senior level swimmers I was coaching. During both cycles there were two athletes from our club who qualified for the Olympic Trials. Planning works! Do it!

Recommended Reading

Understanding by Design, written by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. Published by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Alexandria, Virginia.

The Swim Coaching Bible Volume II. Edited by Dick Hannula and Nort Thornton, Chapter 8 Planning for Success pp 85-121. Chapter written by Coach Stephan Widmer.

Next Week's post Part 2 Ideas on the Nuts and Bolts of Planning and Implementation

What a Taper is and What a Taper is Not

Introductory Note

In no way am I an expert on this subject for like many coaches the Peak Performance Phase, also known as the Taper Phase, is not an exact science. So here you will find a brief article written about my opinion about the Peak Performance Phase. Please feel free to comment and express your opinion as I believe that your sharing helps me to learn and grow.

Peak Performance Phase

For this blog post, which I admit should have been done in January, I want to share my opinion about what taper is and what it is not. In reading the many books about coaching swimming the taper is probably the least understood and the most tricky to deal with and get right for everyone at the same time. A good example of this is the time I once had a team of 20 swimmers who had qualified for Sectionals the previous winter.

After the Sectional meet in March, I was very excited for the Summer Long Course Sectionals because i just knew we were going to have a great meet and see qualifiers for the next level meets at the summer sectionals in Oregon. After a two week break in early April we began in earnest to prepare for Long Course Sectionals. During this time I kept a meticulous roll. However by early June the attendance for all practice sessions was less than ideal. The person with the best attendance was at 80% with most of the Sectional qualifiers at 50 to 60%. A few were in the 20s. I called a special team meeting to discuss the swimmer's attendance. As a teacher and head club coach I fully understand the need to miss practice sessions for AP tests, end of year concerts,family responsibilities and so on. However to have a team wide attendance percentage in the 50% range was not acceptable. So I made a decision and announced that given their level of commitment there would not be a "taper" this summer because I felt they would have nothing to taper off of. So for this particular summer we literally swam through every meet. For Sectionals I gave them three days rest-two days before we traveled and the day of travel. We arrived in Gresham, Oregon ready to swim and do our best to compete. My only expectation was that we would do our best given that we had not had a "taper" phase in our training plan.

At this Sectionals something happened that I did not expect in that we had people making second swims and life time bests all throughout the event list. We even managed to have a team member hit an Olympic Trials qualifying time. At this point it was the best total performance by any of the teams I had coached. To my surprise, the next week we were back in Utah and competed at the State long Course Meet and the swimmers where even better, most of them posting times that were faster than they had been at sea level the previous week. I was really impressed by the swimmer's performances and was left scratching my head, wondering how did this happen? After the meet, which we were able to take first place, several coaches congratulated me on the way to young people performed. I jokingly said to one coach if they are going to swim that way on a no "taper" I will never run another taper.

Since this time I have tried to stop using the word "Taper" because of what the swimmers think a taper is. I have tried to educate the swimmers to think of the taper more as a peak performance period. I will explain later why I have stopped using the term taper and changed to using the phrase "Peak Performance". The topic of this blog is "What a Taper is, and What a Taper is Not." The actual idea for this blog is not mine as I first heard about the topic from my coach and mentor Dick Hannula coach founder of the Tacoma Swim Club, and his good friend Nort Thornton, It was Coach Thornton of the University of California, Berkeley who published a paper to his swimmers by this same name and Dick added to it for his swimmers.

What a Taper Is

Generally speaking, in their planning most coaches will use the last three or four weeks of a given season to use as a taper period. Here are a few thoughts from the ideas and thoughts from both of these two great coach's. A taper is:

1. A time period of decreasing workloads in an effort to maximize muscular adaptation
2. A time period of increasing strength and endurance
3. A time period of fine tuning the swimmer's focus on mechanics, meet and race preparation.
4. A time period of increased focus on three "R's" of swimming-rest, rehearsal and relaxation in order to reduce psychological, emotional and mental stress on the swimmers.
5. A time period of peak performance

What a Taper Is Not

Every swimmer looks forward to the "taper" period because of the euphoric feelings they have given the above items about what a taper is. However, many swimmers have a misconception of what a taper is. Here are five things that a taper is not. A taper is not:

1. A period of no work.
2. A period of no intensity.
3. A period of no yardage.
4. A period of absolute rest.
5. A period to play.

Explanation and Discussion

When I first began coaching I never worried about a"taper" too much because I was coaching all the swimmers who were 10 and under. It was not until I began to coach older age groupers, 12 and up that I first began to plan a "taper".  At this formative point in my career I realized I needed help. So I read, wrote letters, there was no such thing as email at this time, made phone calls to coaches I admired, and spoke with other coaches at meets to get their opinions and advice. Of course I believe experience has been my greatest teacher. I believe you can take all the written words you read, and all the words of advise you are given. Then you should go through those words and apply them in your coaching. In the long run it is this application of advice that will help you learn. I have learned more from the application of advise, the implementation of the plan and an evaluation of the results than just through sheer reading and personal contact. Here are the things I have learned through experience:

1. Each season must be well thought out and planned. The season should be divided up into phases based on the swimmer's gender, age, maturation, and skill level. This means that in many cases you will need to have plans that are flexible and varied to take into consideration the individual needs of the swimmers.
2. Swimmers need to be educated on what exactly a taper is and what it is going to look like in the plan. There are far too many swimmers who have a wrapped understanding of what a taper actually is. For this reason when I have written my seasonal plans I like to use the same wording as Coach Hannula-"Peak Performance" Phase. I have found using this phrase has helped the swimmers come to understand that during the last ten days to five weeks of a given seasonal plan we will be working to "peak" our physical, technical and mental skills for maximum performances at the championship meet.
3. The Peak Performance phase must be well planned and flexible enough to address the individual variations among the swimmers.
4. The Peak Performance phase needs to prepare the swimmers for any competitive situation they may face. The swimmers must be prepared for the events they will swim, the meet environment, and all aspect of the championship format. While it is challenging to simulate the environment of the given pool that the championship meet is to be held at the coach can prepare the athletes for their events. I really like what Coach Bill Sweetenham recommends in his book, Championship Swim Training. Coach Sweetenham recommends that swimmers be given sets that would allow the swimmers to use the exact timing, stroke rate and tempo, walls (turning) that they would for each segment of their races. In these "race pace" sets or swims the swimmer should think of these sets as a "dress rehearsal" for the championship event.
5.  The Peak Performance phase needs to bring the entire team together for a common cause-performances at the highest levels possible for all team members. The Peak Performance Phase should bring the team together with everyone understanding they need to sheer, encourage and compete to achieve their individual goals and the team goals. This phase should bring the teams long preparation to a single focus point for maximum performance.

Recommended Reading

I have found the following books to be particularly helpful in learning about how to plan and implement an effective peak performance phase.

Championship Swim Training, by Bill Sweetenham and John Atkinson
Science of Swimming Faster, by Scott Riewald and Scott Rodeo
The Swim Coaching Bible-Volumes I and II, Edited by Dick Hannula and Nort Thornton