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Breeze · 07-23-2014, 03:34 PM

Brett Update

If you’ve been reading along, you may have deduced that Brett had a real tough Long Course season. He was making huge improvements with his strokes in short course and he was looking forward to long course, where he typically performs better. However, for a number of reasons that didn’t occur…probably the biggest impact was his injured knee. However, I believe he also suffered from a loss of focus – or maybe a focus on the wrong things…

One major impact was the fact that Bailey worked her way up in practice to the point she was in Brett’s lane. Which is not a good thing, as history has shown us (I’m pretty sure this was discussed way back when the kids were at SwimAtlanta together). This caused Brett to focus on staying ahead of her, regardless of how he achieved it…so he would cheat in fly, grab the lane line occasionally in back, etc. This created a mindset that didn’t lend itself to improvement.

Following Stu Hixon, Brett and I had a long conversation. We talked about his goals, and if he thought any were still achievable. He admitted that he felt like any chance he had of swimming in college was already gone. I figured he felt that way, so before the conversation I did some research, and I found a division 1 swimmer (breaststroker), at a school that has a decent swim team that had times very similar to Brett’s when they were the same age. I explained to him that he may never get as good as the person I found, but it does show that he could improve significantly over the next few years. I convinced him that he may improve enough to swim in college, maybe Division 1, maybe Division 2, but it isn’t going to happen if he’s cheating at practice. He agreed, and we talked about what he should be doing…which is moving to the back of the line, and really focusing on the parts of his strokes he knows he needs to improve on.

After the conversation, Brett’s practices were totally different. He’s been working hard on cleaning up his kick in freestyle so his feet don’t hit each other. He’s been working on keeping his legs extended and kicking from the hip in both the free and back. In addition, he’s stopped doing 1 arm fly, and stopped pulling on the lane lines. His form looks better, his kick looks better, now he has to ingrain these new changes and learn to generate more propulsion from them.

Unfortunately, all these changes haven’t addressed the lack of improvement in his breaststroke. He’s really flat-lined in this stroke for a while now, and given that he has grown substantially, he should be generating a more powerful pull and kick. The coach has stated that his timing is off a bit (again potentially from growing), so I did some research to find an article on the timing of the breaststroke kick…(I’ve provided a link if you are interesting in reading the article - it is very short by the way…http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsA...=4246&mid=8712)

To give you an overview, the article is written by a coach, and he does a great job of explaining how his film study lead to a completely new understanding of how the stroke works. What struck me when I read the article was the inclusion of terminology I’ve heard Brett use, specifically the phrase “kicking the hands forward”. The coach commented on how this action made sense to him for years, until he looked closer. Now the best way to do the stroke – The arms pull while their legs are streamlined, and the legs kick while their upper body is streamlined (there are some images in the article to help illustrate this change).

Brett has embraced this new timing, and has been working on it the last few days. Honestly, this isn’t the best time to try and make a change of this significance, but as he said when we discussed it, “I’m not supposed to win anything at GRPA anyway…if I swim poorly due to the change, nothing is lost.” The flipside of this is that the reduced drag associated with the new stroke might actually cause him to improve his times. I’ve watched him do the new stroke, and I’m amazed at how quickly he’s picked it up. I figured the millions of strokes he’s taken with his old form would be harder to erase, but so far so good. My suspicions are that when he actually starts racing this new stroke he will revert back to his old stroke. I hope not…I hope he sticks with the new stroke, and shows some improvement. I really think it could build momentum heading into short course in the fall.

07-23-2014, 03:34 PM	#460
Breeze Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Northern Suburbs of ATL	Brett Update If you’ve been reading along, you may have deduced that Brett had a real tough Long Course season. He was making huge improvements with his strokes in short course and he was looking forward to long course, where he typically performs better. However, for a number of reasons that didn’t occur…probably the biggest impact was his injured knee. However, I believe he also suffered from a loss of focus – or maybe a focus on the wrong things… One major impact was the fact that Bailey worked her way up in practice to the point she was in Brett’s lane. Which is not a good thing, as history has shown us (I’m pretty sure this was discussed way back when the kids were at SwimAtlanta together). This caused Brett to focus on staying ahead of her, regardless of how he achieved it…so he would cheat in fly, grab the lane line occasionally in back, etc. This created a mindset that didn’t lend itself to improvement. Following Stu Hixon, Brett and I had a long conversation. We talked about his goals, and if he thought any were still achievable. He admitted that he felt like any chance he had of swimming in college was already gone. I figured he felt that way, so before the conversation I did some research, and I found a division 1 swimmer (breaststroker), at a school that has a decent swim team that had times very similar to Brett’s when they were the same age. I explained to him that he may never get as good as the person I found, but it does show that he could improve significantly over the next few years. I convinced him that he may improve enough to swim in college, maybe Division 1, maybe Division 2, but it isn’t going to happen if he’s cheating at practice. He agreed, and we talked about what he should be doing…which is moving to the back of the line, and really focusing on the parts of his strokes he knows he needs to improve on. After the conversation, Brett’s practices were totally different. He’s been working hard on cleaning up his kick in freestyle so his feet don’t hit each other. He’s been working on keeping his legs extended and kicking from the hip in both the free and back. In addition, he’s stopped doing 1 arm fly, and stopped pulling on the lane lines. His form looks better, his kick looks better, now he has to ingrain these new changes and learn to generate more propulsion from them. Unfortunately, all these changes haven’t addressed the lack of improvement in his breaststroke. He’s really flat-lined in this stroke for a while now, and given that he has grown substantially, he should be generating a more powerful pull and kick. The coach has stated that his timing is off a bit (again potentially from growing), so I did some research to find an article on the timing of the breaststroke kick…(I’ve provided a link if you are interesting in reading the article - it is very short by the way…http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsA...=4246&mid=8712) To give you an overview, the article is written by a coach, and he does a great job of explaining how his film study lead to a completely new understanding of how the stroke works. What struck me when I read the article was the inclusion of terminology I’ve heard Brett use, specifically the phrase “kicking the hands forward”. The coach commented on how this action made sense to him for years, until he looked closer. Now the best way to do the stroke – The arms pull while their legs are streamlined, and the legs kick while their upper body is streamlined (there are some images in the article to help illustrate this change). Brett has embraced this new timing, and has been working on it the last few days. Honestly, this isn’t the best time to try and make a change of this significance, but as he said when we discussed it, “I’m not supposed to win anything at GRPA anyway…if I swim poorly due to the change, nothing is lost.” The flipside of this is that the reduced drag associated with the new stroke might actually cause him to improve his times. I’ve watched him do the new stroke, and I’m amazed at how quickly he’s picked it up. I figured the millions of strokes he’s taken with his old form would be harder to erase, but so far so good. My suspicions are that when he actually starts racing this new stroke he will revert back to his old stroke. I hope not…I hope he sticks with the new stroke, and shows some improvement. I really think it could build momentum heading into short course in the fall. Last edited by Breeze : 07-23-2014 at 03:36 PM.