PVS Sr. Coaches Rep. Report
September 25, 2005
Submitted by: Bill Marlin

Updates for Coaches from the USAS Convention


Tuesday: I attend the LSC Leadership Seminar where a variety of topics were discussed on how to be a more effective LSC board member and how to have a more effective Board. I hope to pass along much of this information to our Board of Directors so we can be an even better BOD for our LSC.

Wednesday: I attended the Age Group Planning Committee. Things presented were…

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  1. The % of males in swimming has increased over the last several years.
    2. .
  2. The ave. # of athletes per club nationwide is up to 90 swimmers. Goal is to be 120+
    3. .
  3. Only 65% of athletes on club teams compete in meets, USA Swimming wants that # to increase.
    4. .
  4. Time standard graphs were presented by using the new swims data base, these new numbers can help LSC's develop more accurate time standards for championship meets if they choose to use them.
    5. .
  5. USA swimming would like all member clubs to fill out the Club Profile on the "club portal" on USA Swimming's web site….it takes approx. 90 minutes to fill it out.
  6. USA swimming in conjunction with USA Skiing is coming out with new Parent / coach education materials all on CD. It will replace the old USA Swimming Parent Handbook. The CD will include a parents section and a coaches section (how to work better with parents) on the same CD which will include video clips, power point presentations, slide shows and hand outs that can be printed out.

I also attended a talk put on by the educational Committee called "Novice to National…How they do it" They asked a panel of four coaches 4 questions and we listened to their answers and had an opportunity to ask them questions. The four questions were:

  1. What traits showing promise attract you? How do you identify them?
  2. What makes your club grow and how do you recruit and retain swimmers?
  3. How do you promote your age group program?
  4. How do you handle parent education?

Thursday: I attended our eastern Zone meeting at 8:00 am.

At 10:00 am I attended the Sports Medicine / Science Workshop. In this meeting three researchers reported on the "Full Body Analysis Project" that USA Swimming is helping to fund with one of their grants. They want coaches to be able to use this information on deck. Objective: To impact swimming at the highest level, and to gain an advantage at the Olympics. Strategy: Analyze and improve underwater swimming technique. Looking at: Dolphin kick, all four competitive strokes, gender, body type and body size. Technology: Fluid Dynamics 3-D computer simulation Experiments 3-D animation analysis tools.

Below is the info page from their web site www.ibe.gwu.edu

All swimming techniques in competitive swimming are primarily oriented towards two goals: maximizing thrust and minimizing drag. Two factors make these goals difficult to achieve:

  1. The water flow past a swimmer, which ultimately determines the total force on the swimmer, is highly complex and turbulent, and little regarding the dynamics of this flow is currently understood.
  2. The typical swimming stroke is generally quite complex and composed of a sequence of coordinated body motions. Variations are possible at every stage in the stroke making it difficult to determine which particular composition is optimal in terms of thrust production and drag reduction.

    3. In the past, research in swimming techniques has been limited to relatively simple experiments, theoretical modeling and videographic analysis. However, with the recent advances in computer hardware and software, techniques such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computer animation and visualization can now be brought to bear on this problem. We are working with USA Swimming to systematically addresses both of the above factors. The near term objective of this research is to produce tangible results that can impact the performance of Team-USA in the 2008 Olympics. In the long term, this research is expected to generate research and development that will greatly improve our fundamental understanding of the fluid dynamics and biomechanics of swimming and produce tools that can be used for coaching, and assessing swimmers at all levels of performance.

At 1:00 I attended USA Swimming's Club Recognition Program. In this talk Sue Anderson went over the details of:

  1. The IMX program (see hand out)
  2. The Virtual Club Championships (VCC)…(see hand out)
  3. The Club Recognition Program…(see hand out)

Sue also presented an hand out on How to Create a web account on the USA Swimming web site to use the "My USA Swimming" page….(see hand out)

The last meeting I attended on Thursday was the LSC Age Group Chairs Workshop where we discussed Alternative Meet formats to bring more "fun" into age group swimming and some ideas to present to the LSC BOD to help out.

Friday: On Friday 8:00 am, I attended another Age Group Workshop called "Paret Education: Making Parents part of the Team" The presentation was given by Sue Anderson and focused on why there is a need for parent education. Participants were urged to use the LSC web site links, meet programs, and the USA Swimming web site resources.

Participants also vies a basic parent education presentation, which is available for anyone at the club or local level to present. A future USA Swimming CD on parent education was highlighted.

USA swimming in conjunction with USA Skiing is coming out with new Parent / coach education materials all on CD. It will replace the old USA Swimming Parent Handbook. The CD will include a parents section and a coaches section (how to work better with parents) on the same CD which will include video clips, power point presentations, slide shows and hand outs that can be printed out.

At 10:00 am I attended another Sports Medicine / Science Workshop. Some initial updates were gone over that included the following:

  1. Staff Changes at USA HQ.
  2. Grants Program
  3. Network Task Forces
  4. Sports Psychology Summit in Nov. of 2005
  5. Flume has been decommissioned
  6. Some database reminders
  7. Training Plan Designer Update (should be ready in 2-3 months)
  8. E-Coach update - coaches can upload video to the web site for professional analysis
  9. Dartswim update

Main Presentation was on Variations in Freestyle and how they impact performance (You can access this article on the coaches section of the USA Swimming web site)

At 1:00 pm I attended at Coaches Caucus which was pretty useless, we met for 15 minutes, no one had any questions so we adjourned.

At 3:30 pm, I attended the second half of our Eastern Zone meeting.

At 7:00 pm we all attended the House of Delegates which adjourned around 10:00 pm.

Saturday:
House of Delegates reconvened at 8:00 on Saturday and concluded around 1:00 pm

The HOD adopted the new FINA rule to allow one dolphin kick while the body is wholly submerged on the breaststroke pullout. And they adopted the new FINA rule to allow the toes to be above the water on the backstroke start (but toes can not grip the lip of the gutter)