Are You Coachable? Lessons from Dara Torres
by David Wendkos
david@triswimcoach.com
I once took a course in which the seminar leader, Larry, asked each person present to make a commitment to be coachable. Most of us immediately responded that we would do so. Larry then asked, “Before agreeing, don’t you think you should understand what I mean by ‘coachable’?” That seemed silly to me. Being coachable is listening to a ‘coach’, thinking about what he or she says, and then incorporating it into what we already know. At least,that was how I would have described being coachable. Larry didn’t.
Dara Torres had only swum two laps on her first day of training after a seven-year layoff when Stanford coach Richard Quick lowered a kickboard into the water to stop her. “We don’t swim like that any more,” he said. Since then, Dara Torres has made herself into a household name, or certainly more so than she ever was before her layoff. But when you go to the Olympics and bring home multiple medals in swimming, at the stereotypically “over the hill age” of41, people do tend to notice. Remember though, we aren’t talking about someone without success prior to the layoff. She had won multiple Olympic medals before her time away from swimming. It wouldn’t have been stunning for her to think, or even say, “I know how to swim, and have the resume to prove it. Just give me the sets and intervals.” But that is not what she said, and likely not what she thought. She had a coach she believed in, and she allowed herself to be coachable. So let’s get back to how Larry defines being coachable.
Being coachable is agreeing to follow the guidance of another, without questioning it, without needing to first understand why, without needing to analyze it, and without trying to adapt it. It is putting full faith in the person teaching you to show you a new way of doing something, and being open to learning it exactly that way. Trying their way, without question, for long enough to properly determine its merit. That does not mean you don’t use your brain. It simply means that for an appropriate period of time, you allow yourself to be fully guided to experience a new way of doing something. By the way, this can be really, really difficult. As people, we naturally want to understand. We want to ‘get it’. But sometimes, the best way to reach our goals is by finding a teacher we can believe in, and then following their instructions without an explanation. Understanding will come . . .later. Now, what does all of this have to do with your triathlon swim?
Swimming correctly is a surprisingly intricate process, with critical fine details.
Most of the swimming lessons that we all grew up with did not teach us these details in the proper manner, as they are understood and known today. What’s more, open water and multi-sport bring in various other complexities and details to address. At first, it may be hard for you to understand some of the things recommended to you. Drills may seem counter-intuitive. Distances and intensities may seem illogical. But in the end, you will either be open to new ways of doing things, or you will be limited to the degree your training allows you to perform given your existing technique.. . or lack thereof. Dara Torres was coachable. Dara Torres was on the podium at the Olympics when she was 41 years old. Give yourself an opportunity to be coachable this winter, and see what happens next spring.
David Wendkos lives in Annapolis, MD and has over 30 years of competitive swimming, coaching swimmers for the pool, open water, and triathlons. He can be followed on twitter at http://twitter.com/SwimMD
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I agree with some points, but I think it would be somewhat foolish for a student just sit their at their desk and never ask the professor the rational for their stated opinions,etc. How can the student learn? Unless the person is a robot and takes orders only. The order takers are the easiest to work with as no extra time is really involved. Hence, a higher profit margin. I suspect, the person whom wrote the article believes in the numbers game and may be skewed to such type coaching. As such you are going to have many styles of athletes to coach too! Some, whom love orders to be given to them and accept the knowledge given and never question a thing(robots). Then of course, I’m on the other type of spectrum of wanting to learn! Teach a person how to fish and They can eat!
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Stephen,
Thanks for responding. I am always interested to know how readers perceive my writing. In this instance, I think I may not have been as clear as I wished to be.
Just to first get this out of the way, I believe most all of my swimmers would agree, I am actually a pretty flexible coach when it comes to differing personality types. I am not looking for robots. I am however a tough coach, by choice, who demands a lot from anyone who swims for me.
I want to address two different items from your response. First, I don’t believe the analogy of a professor to a student is a good one in this instance. As I read that analogy, the professor is trying to impart the information on a specific subject matter to the student in a manner the student can understand and internalize. As a coach, my primary function is not to impart my knowledge to the swimmer. My primary function is to aid in the swimmer’s success at swimming most effectively and quickly. In this role, it is not always essential to understand why we perform an action. If I instruct you to rotate your hips more, without explaining why, and you do so, you may become a more successful swimmer, regardless of whether you understand why it aided you or not.
The second item is where I believe my more significant mis-communication occurred. I do not mean to say that a swimmer should be okay to *never* be informed of the reasoning behind their assignments. Usually, I would encourage a swimmer to ask why. I simply mean to say that there are times I want the questions to stop and the swimmer to just do as I ask and trust that I have a reason for it. Almost always, in the end, I will either show them, tell them, or it will become self-evident why I have asked them to do this or that. But sometimes in the moment, my job is to know why, and the swimmer’s job is to do it. And when the swimmer allows that to be, that is what I describe as being coachable.
Thanks so much,
David
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“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Maybe instead of asking the swimmer to be coachable, I should have asked the swimmer to have faith?
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