Mini Clinic

Tonight I changed the pace of things at practice a wee bit for the girls. This is a week that we are doing a bit less swimming as there is an intense 2 days of games in Regina for all our 16U and 18U players on the weekend. To make interesting use of the week I am focussing on a few individual skills that I want sharply focused for our team play.

That may seem odd, focus on individual skill as we prepare to play as a team. Not really, if you think it through. Last month we played some games at these same age groups and while the girls had skills to execute specific game strategies they did not bring these skills to the pool. That meant that what I asked to have them do was left blank and no execution according to team talks.

Here is a photo of part of the action tonight. I had the girls divided into 4 groups; A) lead by Heather, working on Driving, B) lead by Breda, working on controlling the ball under pressure and C) lead by Shae, working on how to get the ball from the other team (ie steals, blocks). This was hands on experience, right when they need it. Shae's group is not visible in the photo and neither are the goalies who were the 4th group and got most of my attention at this practice.


Heather played on the national team for 3 years and was a pro in the Italian women's league two years ago (Serie A). When playing pro she was drawing 5 or 6 exclusions per game with her driving so it was good to have the young players up close to that instruction in the water. Breda is about to play her first season with Cal in the NCAA after many years on the national team and having been a Jr Team captain in the past. Few players anywhere are more comfortable on the ball than she is. Shae was just named top 18U defender at the Senior Womens National Team League - CSL. She lead that league in blocked shots most of the season and had plenty of steals from much bigger and more experienced women.

This was pretty popular with the girls and will be repeated Wednesday. This will reinforce the lessons taught that were new information and it will give the overview to some 14U players who will be joining us in preparation for their play this weekend. I am really curious to see how this is applied at our games since it is just a small mental and physical adjustment to take their play to a much, much higher level.

Land Work for Water Polo

Tonight we had a busy practice deck at the pool since the city had allowed an NLS guard training session to go in our regular land exercise area. This meant I was able to catch a few quick photos of some of the work our strength coach, Satoru, is doing with the players. Usually I am dealing with water sessions and Satoru is in another area of the building with an opposite gender doing land work.

These pictures are a sample of what happens when an educated strength coach (Masters in Exercise Physiology/Phys Ed) studies the program of a professional strength coach with a water polo background (Mike Reid) and is given free reign by a professional water polo coach who is a colleague (me). Satoru is never put off course by limitations of his environment, he just modifies exercises. A good example are the "pulling" exercises he introduced today to cover for the lack of chin up bars at the public pool we use (ie 2 50m pools, 2 weight rooms but only 1 small chin bar available to sports to use).

Partner Towel Pull

resistance is adjusted based on strength of partner

This second picture is a pairing of sisters that would otherwise be an exercise done with similar size and strength of partners. However, when a young teen who plays in net is given the chance to work with her big sister who is a top NCAA goalie, home for US Thanksgiving, we can make exceptions to many normal training procedures. And, we happily do so.

Partner Towel Pull #2

another version that engages muscle groups in a little different way

This third picture is not really replacing any chin up exercises but adding variety to squats. We do lots of squat work with the players, and have done for years, but now it is stepped up as Satoru modifies and challenges in new ways. The buckets are filled with water, not much, just enough to add interest. This is variable and certainly much cheaper than spending $40.-80.00 each for half dozen different weights of kettle bells.

Doing a squat with a gallon or two of swishing water is also quite good for the abs as they fight to stabilize the weight as the players move. Learning to do this with a modifiable weight is interesting to the players and it is novel, so holds interest in a phase of training that keeps them thinking. Pretty much exactly what we look for when working with teens.

Squat with Weight
Plastic pails with various amounts of water

There are also some rope pulling exercises being developed that allow strength gains through a very broad range of motion. This is a really important sport specific type of strength work that could not be properly addressed in a weight room on a machine.

I hope to be posting more of a regular blog soon but have been very busy with club program activities and doing some book proof reading that I had not planned on but am quite enjoying.

brief update

I've gone way too long without blogging, sorry if you are a regular reader. I have been swamped with other things and had my fill of water polo reading/writing in other areas. There are 2 events for my club teams in November, the first two weekends, so that takes some additional planning. This is an exciting time, but hectic.

Something interesting happened this week that was unusual and interesting so I want to write about that briefly. I was approached by the Head Coach of the largest swim club on the prairies and asked if I would lead his top swimmers through a practice session to give them an idea of what sorts of things water polo players do at practice. These are good swimmers, very good, all with national times and members of Canada Games teams etc. I am not going to waste any time explaining how to move forward or fast, they have a firm grasp of that!

It's interesting to think of what to teach a group of teenage swimmers who don't know water polo. These aren't California kids who have grown up doing both sports, no hybrids here. This is a carefully selected group of highly specialized individuals; for them vertical is for land, horizontal is for water. That will give me focus, I'll stay away from swimming other than to bend a few elbows on front crawl and teach direction change without a wall. Otherwise we will focus on moving with a ball, with a partner or working vertically.

Maybe I will write about how this goes once it is done, I could be surprised by what they show me. Having seen them play a bit of pretend water polo I know they are not masters of passing and shooting - an hour of instruction won't likely change that. However, they may pick up the movement more quickly than I anticipate so that will be interesting.

Cross Training follow up

In my previous blog I talked about cooperative LTAD planning between sports. It may have sounded like I was anti-swimming, that is not the case. It's just an easy example that comes up year after year. Truth be told, when Bushido was started as a club we named it "Bushido Aquatic Club" not Bushido Water Polo. It was our intent to offer water polo, synchro and speed swimming cooperatively. We did that with water polo and synchro for many years but gave up when the synchro community could not be convinced to support high performance sport.

There was a pretty good reason why we didn't offer speed swimming with the other sports. It was not allowed by the provincial governing body. In order to have formed a club at the time, and joined the organization, they would have to approve where we trained. Since our water polo and synchro clubs were training at the same huge facility we were going to offer all programs there. But, there was already a swim club there and they had the right to keep every other club out of that facility. So we could not join the swimming association and offer cooperative programs, side by side with athletes spending parts of practice on different sports.

Maybe things have changed now, it doesn't matter though, we are not going down that path. But that is too bad as we have some great examples of young kids that have done the 2 sports and excelled at both. Last spring I wrote about a provincial 12&U water polo championship where a young guy from our club demonstrated his 10 month development in the final game on a super breakaway, going a distance he could not have swum 6 months earlier. That was a success from a combined swim and polo season. His speed swimming allowed him strength to showcase his ball skills, awareness and competitive nature. We had taught him to change direction, handle a ball, jump & move vertically and to be aware of dynamic movement. Swimming had taught him to move quickly over a large area without stress. The 2 sports helped each other develop this player. However, it was a parent that juggled the schedules, not a master design of a multi sport club.

I didn't fully understand when I was a teenager how much my sport activities complimented one another throughout the year. Now that I know something about athlete development I can see the relationship between the training I did as a competitive dingy sailor in summers and the water polo and swimming I did in the other 3 seasons. Sailing developed core strength in hiking and trapeze work, grip strength in sail trimming (adjustments by pulling a rope against wind tension) and leg strength in hiking and various squat position movements when maneuvering the boat. There was definitely no plan in that sport development, just chance connection. I'd love to have more control over the progress and success of the players I work with in the 21st century. That is why I write (and read) about these topics now.

Planning, Co-operation & LTAD

This is the time of the season when everything is busy and much of what lies ahead is being settled. Players are registering and starting the practice routine while parents are sorting out car pools, meal plans and budgets. Families digest what we are asking in terms of training and they sort out conflicts. As a club we develop athletes under the principles of Long Term Athlete Development and, as much as possible, in line with what Water Polo Canada and Sport Canada outline in published LTAD documents.

We've used LTAD principles for many years. I began this path when first starting to coach young children, 10 & under, and had no experience with them as athletes. I needed to seek out research from other sports and other countries to see how pre-teens were developing and should have their training structured. I then applied this to water polo under a club plan as there were few programs in Canada doing what we were with young children (actually, only Saanich Water Polo School was similar). That has changed now and there are several clubs teaching very young children and the sport science for all ages has been clearly connected to most national sport governing bodies.

So the reason that I say in line with Water Polo Canada "as much as possible" is not because the plan is faulty. Rather, it is the uneven application of the principles nationally that make it hard to follow. The bulk of club water polo in Canada is played at the age group - 4x week practice - level; that's not recreational and not high performance. It is, however, a level that can develop physical literacy in youth prior to making a transition to Train-to-Compete/Perform programs. In provinces outside Manitoba (Ontario, Alberta, Quebec, BC and Saskatchewan) the transition to high performance is helped by either a National Development Centre or a Provincial team program; sometimes both.

There are a few reasons we can't use the Provincial Team model here and the physical explanation is there are not enough players training competitively to "select" an elite group to bump up training. This is complicated by a lack of financial resources that go hand in hand with limited programs and player numbers. We can't add more burden to families already stretched so far. I've talked already about why we don't have the numbers or program diversity here, even though I have clearly articulated solutions, so I won't go over that again.

What I do want to touch on briefly with respect to LTAD is how it is so slowly being accepted by others sports who are supposed to be cooperating with water polo. This makes planning for complimentary sports like speed swimming impossible as water polo does all the accommodation and swimming makes all the demands. For instance, we have a 12 year old female water polo player who began speed swimming to improve her game. She excelled at both sports and swimming is now demanding that she quit water polo and train 17 hours per week at swimming. This violates several key principles outlined in LTAD but the issue I have to deal with as a coach is how do I give her flexibility to do 2 sports, keep her involved in 3 practices per week with us and still not have her burn out? I have to solve this question because the swim coaches refuse to accept the 2 sport allowance that Swim Canada, Water Polo Canada and Sport Canada have all outlined.

It's not just the elite swimmers that face this pressure. Even athletes in 3x week swim club programs are pressured to do the "3 swimming practices they dictate" rather than work out complimentary training routines for players in 2 sports. That means I see kids drop from 3 water polo practices/week at 12 or 13 when they actually have way more potential in water polo than in speed swimming. Too bad, they could do both sports until the 16&U age group and be better prepared for whichever one they choose at the time when they must specialize to move forward.

I've asked to meet with one of these swim coaches to see if they will dialogue about a promising young player. I'm skeptical but at the same time hopeful, we'll see.

Manitoba Myth

This is the third blog that originates from dialogue at the Water Polo Canada Leadership Summit. It doesn't talk about a specific summit topic or theme, just things that arose from that weekend. It is about Manitoba and a few myths that remain in the sport community in spite of there being no basis in reality for these.

The first myth that I keep encountering is the belief that Manitoba is a province rich in teenage water polo resources due to a large high school league. It's true that there is a relatively large league of Middle Years and Senior High water polo in Winnipeg but that is NOT a rich resource.
The schools play a co-ed version of the game, a recreational level that hinders competitive development. This may help some club female players, in a small individual way, when they scrimmage stronger boys once a week at 14 or 15 years of age but it doesn't really add to the development of the sport.

A few coaches from eastern Canada asked if we recruited from the school league to our club programs, not knowing that it was a rec league. When they realized it was a co-ed set up they quickly saw the drawback that presented and how it could interfere with streaming players to clubs. We do recruit Middle Years players but it is not always easy based on their family perceptions. Imagine if you were the parent of a 12 year old speed swimmer who was being told to avoid all other sports while also being pressured to train 5-8x week for swimming. If your first intro to water polo was seeing a co-ed team of recreational play, and little or no formal practice, you would not be inclined to ask about a competitive water polo stream as an alternative to the swimming monolith.

That casual league play is not a problem if it is labeled as "recreation" or "participation" or "community" and exists alongside highly visible competitive club programs. But when it is the only water polo played in a city there tends to be a lumping of all the sport into that casual setting. This is a real dis-service to Bushido when you consider that our club produces more carded and national team athletes than any other aquatic sport in Manitoba. We could stand to have a bit more Manitoba Water Polo support for our programs in terms of allowing our vision and leadership for local leagues and events.

An example of that would be accepting our desire to have tiered 14&U play so there could be casual co-ed play and competitive developmental play in gender specific streams. That leads to another myth in Manitoba, that the sport is played co-ed at 14&U in other parts of Canada. It is not, other than in rural communities with small populations and no numbers for gender specific squads. The largest province, Ontario, has co-ed play for fun in the "Active-for-Life" stream but that is not how the competitive clubs are developing players when they follow the LTAD and its scientific foundation.

Fighting a myth can be frustrating. It creates obstacles when selling a sport or a program that has already been judged in error. It also means people who are in positions to offer support or advice are sometimes not able to since they see our landscape as something other than it is. Since these mythical images can be changed quickly internally it is even more sad that they exist at all. But, we keep pushing for things to change and maybe they will. I don't want to consider the alternative.

Leadership Summit, Part 2

I had said there were a few things of interest at the recent Water Polo Canada Leadership Summit and one I want to talk about today is land training. Specifically, extending practice outside the pool to develop strength, muscular balance and flexibility.

The key piece of this for me is muscular balance, not because it is measurably more important but because it is harder to develop elsewhere in a water polo training environment. This is a crucial piece of training in avoiding shoulder issues which can arise from an unstable muscle balance front vs back. I heard something in Montreal from Alain Delorme that is a bit of a sacred principle for me in this area and want to repeat it here. He stated exactly what Mike Reid has written in our club strength manual and what I am doing with our athletes - do 3 times as many pulling exercises as pushing ones. Simple; 10 push ups, 30 pull ups (chins). Try 10 of each and see what part of your shoulder you are using, one is front (like an overarm swim stroke) and one is back (balancing that stroke).

Alain said some other beautiful things, like keep weights away from the developing athletes. Not all weights, but heavy weights that are not part of the body. That is important when working with age group players because the proper execution of exercises; body positions, posture, range of motion, these are the keys to injury free gains for men and women who add loads in a weight room later in careers. Don't worry, there are 100's of exercises kids won't be able to do with just their body weight, long before you ask them to do a one legged squat. You can develop to a great level with what you were born with and a proper diet (more on nutrition as the season goes).

I have a few advanced athletes who are pretty well along in some of these land exercises and a few will have a load added to squats when we introduce them to a kettle bell this season. But that is the exception with age group kids, I'm just mentioning it to let you know I am not anti-strength as players grow.

It's possible that with Alain speaking to a wide audience at a national clinic we may see more clubs open to doing the sorts of exercises he explained on a nationwide scale. I am able to share our club land exercise program with any club coach who wants it, just let me know. This was developed by a professional strength trainer (Mike) and was created for age group water polo. It's really accessible stuff and can be taught by most coaches with experience and done by athletes on an independent basis once they learn the structure and how to use a log book.