Maybe instead of asking the swimmer to be coachable, I should have asked the swimmer to have faith?

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

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!