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Respect and Appreciation. By John Leonard, Head Coach, SwimFast Nothing is more important to the Coaching Staff at SwimFast, than teaching Life Skills to young people. Swimming well, swimming fast, is nothing compared to the importance of fulfilling our societal obligation to help parents raise good people. In my professional life, I am blessed to spend enormous amounts of time with highly successful people in the worlds of athletics, business, academics, media, and science and medicine. One of my most profound observations is that accomplished people share one trait in...
Swimming: culture matters OMAHA — Matt Grevers had just come off a dominating win in the 100 backstroke here at the U.S. swim Trials. It was late at night. He was walking across the bridge that connects CenturyLink Arena to the Hilton Omaha and he was walking slowly, very slowly, because about every 10 feet a gaggle of girls was asking for autographs and photos. He was signing and posing and he could not have been more gracious, even when the girls gave way to a grown man who asked...
Here’s a Wonderful Idea for Every Team….. By John Leonard, ASCA From the Netflix Corporation…..”We develop people by giving them the opportunity to develop themselves, by surrounding them with stunning colleagues and giving them big challenges to work on.” Mediocore colleagues or unchallenging work is what kills progress of a person’s skill set. This speaks to the culture of teams. Good teams are made up of people who work hard to develop their skills; people to whom good must be made better and better made best. In the process, they...
One of the more challenging swimming skills to teach our children is that the hands MUST sweep wider than the elbows before turning in and down and accelerating back to the center line. MANY of our children have the hands inside the line of the elbows when they pull. PLEASE, parents, print this photo and show your athletes how an elite swimmer at the international level, pulls correctly. Many thanks. JL
How to Attend A Swim Meet By John Leonard A lot of “things” go into having a successful and happy swim meet experience. This article explores a number of those “things”. Pre-Meet Things to Cover: 1. Coach tells team and parents where, when meet is. 2. Coach tells team what events they are entered in. 3. Parents make sure: (if a 12 and under swimmer….a 13 and over should do this “on their own”, it’s an important part of maturing. ) A) Swimmer is on time for warmup. (10 minutes...
Parents…”So, you want to offer your child the opportunity to be a world-class athlete….” By John Leonard If the above sentence doesn’t scare the bejeezus out of you as a coach reading it, good for you! The fact is, a number of parents DO, without being raging lunatics, wish to offer their child the best possible chance to be a great athlete….in the same way that they’d like to offer them the chance to attend the most prestigious University, visit the best doctors, be a world-class musician or artist, etc....
Pre and Post Race Conversations with Athlete By john Leonard If you’ve been to swim meets, you will have noticed that both before a race and immediately after a race, the coach speaks with your child. This is an important part of the race experience. Before the race, the purpose is to remind the child of the singular thing that the coach wants the child to concentrate on in that race. Or, in the words of famous Coach Confucious, “he who chases two rabbits, catches neither”. The purpose of the...
Training Versus Learning By john Leonard Last week I was speaking to a young coach who had just taken a new job. His specific problem was that the coach that was there before he was, had everyone “training hard” and had done a great job of selling that concept. Everyone from 8 and unders to seniors was pounding the yardage daily. The new coach wanted to spend 6 weeks or so concentrating on skills development, because in the first few days on the job, he noticed that many of the...
