Upon returning to coaching in 2014, I found out quickly how very few of my swimmers even bothered with the clock. Whether they left, accurately or not, 5 or 10 seconds behind the person ahead of them, they had no clue of the interval and even less of their times. They just followed along who ever was ahead of them. Most of the time, only the lane leaders could follow the intervals.
In my days as an athlete, I had noticed that sometimes the people at the back of the lanes had no clue of what we were doing or even of what they were doing. However, as I recall, it wasn’t the norm as it seemed to be in my situation at hand.
Reading the clock accurately gives the swimmer the ability to follow his/her performance in a set, to read his/her splits and times. It also permits the swimmer to do the coach’s practice. Without following the prescribed, times, efforts levels, intervals, the practice is a practice but not the one written by the coach!
As this wasn’t motivation at all to tackle the challenge of getting my swimmers to learn to swim with the clock, there are less obvious benefits which make the development of this skill even more pressing.
Swimmers who swim with the clock, the ones who follow intervals and read their times accurately have more fun swimming because they are more present, more involved. While they swim and focus on the requirements set by the coach, they also keep track of the number of repeats, they calculate the next interval, the percentage of the set they’ve done and of how much remains. They keep track of their splits and their times for everything they do. When we know what we’re doing, we enjoy ourselves more. When we enjoy something, we keep doing it and we usually get better at it!
Besides, to my knowledge, the higher the level of swimming, the less likely swimmers are to be clueless with the clock.
Sold on the value of this skill (it makes them better swimmers, they have more fun and stay longer in the sport), I decided to invest the required time to teach my athletes step-by-step how to swim with the clock.
Understanding their reluctance in working with the clock emanated, for most of them, from a low self-image in the department of anything related to math, I had to break down the skill into very little ones that wouldn’t challenge their self-image.
After a while I came up with an idea. I divided the “swimming with the clock” skill into three levels each containing 3 steps.
Level One: learning to follow intervals
The first step at this level was simply to look at the clock before leaving and when touching the wall at the end of the repeat. No need to read anything, just as long as you look, when you leave and when you arrive.
The second step was to learn the 10 seconds interval between swimmers. Swimmers who had difficulties respecting accurately the space between swimmers, often had to count out loud after the swimmer ahead of them had left the wall.
In the third step we did sets specifically designed to teach reading intervals. Repeats on 1 minute would be done, the next time the set would be on 55 seconds. It didn’t matter if the set was kick or pull or a drill, as long as it was identified as the set to learn to read interval.
Level Two: reading times at the end of repeats.
The first step at this level was also to look at the clock when you leave the wall and arrive. It’s just not possible to swim with the clock without looking at it. Such a simple thing to do, yet for many swimmers, they need to be reminded over and over to look at the clock. If no one ever takes the time to remind them, they’ll never do it of their own. However once they start looking at the clock, the rest is easy.
The second step is to call out the number you see on the clock when you touch the wall. You don’t need to do the calculation. If you touched on the red 25, just say that out loud. If they don’t have to do the math, they feel confident they can do at least that much. When they’ve done at least that much for long enough they get to the next step naturally without too much coaxing from the coach.
The third step is calling out your time when you touch the wall.
Level Three: reading one’s splits while swimming.
The first step for this is looking at the clock either before or after turns. Like in level two, the first step is the hardest. To help a swimmer at this level the coach must check if the swimmers are looking at the clock and patiently give the proper reminders as needed.
The second step is to say out loud when touching the wall, your time on the first 50 and your final time. It doesn’t take long after they start being able to do this that they reach the third step.
The last step is reading one’s splits accurately while swimming.
Breaking it down this way completely demystified the whole clock reading to the swimmers. They could tell the level they each individually were at and see what they needed to do to reach the next step, the next level.
Using this approach to actively teach my athletes to “swim with the clock” really made a difference in how soon and how many of my young athletes would reach the third step of the third level.
I’m sure it can work for you and your athlete as well.
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