Finding the Right Correction

In a world where showing your knowledge, touting your experience, and proving your worth seems to be expected for success in a leadership role, it can be an attractive tactic to bombard your athletes with an overwhelmingly long run-on sentence of corrections before, during, and after your athletes' performance. After all, the benchmark is perfection! This is artistic swimming!

But what if I told you that a long stream of corrections can actually be counter-productive? What we need are some simple principles to guide how we effectively correct our athletes, keeping us and our athletes sane during the sometimes stressful moments of training. As the season gets rolling, you find the routine tightening up, and corrections are tuning into the finer details, here are some “corrections for correcting” to keep things effective…

TRIAGE  

In other words, cue or correct what is most important. Now, before we get into a philosophical discussion on what are THE MOST important aspects of artistic swimming, I will rephrase; cue the things that will give your athletes the biggest bang for their buck. Sometimes these corrections will not give them anything that day. It may take hours and hours of practice before they will see/feel the results of this correction, but this is, in turn, the correction that will be most important for them. Of course, this is always dependent on your situation. If you are in the middle of competition warm-up and looking to triage a train wreck 12/under barracuda, it is never a bad idea to remind your athlete to point their feet and squeeze their legs together, which is arguably THE MOST important correction at that moment. ☺

ONE CUE AT A TIME

How many of us get caught up in correcting multiple things at once? (I am DEFINITELY guilty of thIs!) Once a correction has been given and properly corrected, try giving your athlete three repetitions to repeat the successful correction before adding an additional cue to think about. This may sound time-consuming, but if you are stuck in the ‘my athletes don’t make their corrections’ mindset or find yourself wondering why the corrections ‘just don’t stick!’ this would be a great one for you to try! You may find this feels like it takes more time, but in actuality will save you time, headaches, and lots of frustration on both your and your athletes’ parts.

ENJOY THE JOURNEY

Although it may feel like your next swim through, competition, or hybrid repetition carries as much weight as the Olympic medal round, remember the purpose of your current practice and the objective of your athletes in front of you; to enjoy the water, better their fitness, improve their skills, maybe win some medals along the way, compete in artistic swimming in college or on the National Team level, et cetera.  As coaches, you may feel the pressure (and relay that pressure to your athletes) for them to achieve perfect or correct movement in that specific moment.  I urge you to focus on the journey towards perfect or correctness rather than the actual correct or perfect movement.  This can also help to increase the motivation of athletes as they achieve small wins rather than focusing on how they miss the bar each practice.

LESS IS MORE

In honor of this point, I’ll keep it brief. ;) 

“Keep it short. Keep it sweet. Keep it powerful.”

Having prolonged corrections just gives your athletes a good reason to block out the sound of your voice.  Using short phrases, words, or two to three words together max would be ideal to assist your athletes with their focus, without bombarding them with excess. In artistic swimming, practices can last hours upon hours. No need to waste precious pool time with lengthy corrections!

What if your correction requires more than a few words, you ask? This is why you should develop a unique language or dictionary for your team and practice environments!

DEVELOP A DICTIONARY

As the coach and leader of your group, you can choose words that resonate with your athletes giving them a visual or feeling in the body that will enhance their ability to implement corrections. For example, my 12/Under athletes know that anytime I say “Rainbows” I am referring to our goal height to achieve on our body boosts. We developed this word as part of our dictionary while working on a drill to increase their boost height.  Now it is almost magical when I can use one word and instantly see the increase in body boost height!  Don’t be shy to start or continue developing your team dictionary, almost like a secret language only your team will understand!

DON’T BE AFRAID TO HIT PAUSE

Too many of us have those practices where you correct and correct, repeat and repeat, only to have your athlete finish the practice, cap off, out the door without fixing or making progress on anything.  Yes, they hear you say, “flat helicopters” every time they do a helicopter, and sure, they are thinking about it, but never really fix it, or perhaps they’re not able to apply the correction at that moment.  This is where YOU come in!  Will it slow your progress to stop the practice? Will you lose momentum when you slow things down and break apart that hybrid to assure your athletes are hitting the proper positions? Sure it will…for the day. Will this also make your overall performance better? ABSOLUTELY! Don’t forget the power of breaking things down, pausing, and even stopping to help your athletes attain what you are asking them to focus on.

At the end of the day, you are responsible for creating an environment conducive to learning and progress. As you assess the culture of your team, the progress of your athletes, and the way your team responds to correction, remember that you are the one who sets the tone. Keep corrections concise and clear, filter through all the many things to focus on what’s most valuable in the moment, and don’t forget to enjoy the journey along with your athletes. With a benchmark of perfection, artistic swimming can become a grueling cycle of endless corrections—synchronization, extension, height, alignment, performance—the list goes on, but following these basic correction principles can keep your practices on track and your athletes motivated and improving!

*Sometimes even coaches need coaching! As a coach, I try to always pursue learning something new. I learned about these principles from CrossFit coach Gabriel Perez here.