Bushido Coach

Playing Time; What is it Good For?

2011-11-01T20:34:00.009-05:00

Another in a theme of LTAD influenced articles, this time using that framework to outline different phases of "playing time".

This is an aspect of sport that many struggle with. Young coaches want success, often like to win, and want to reward or display the ones they view as the "best" players (Ok, let's be honest, coaches at all levels usually want this). Parents want their children to play and if paying for a club sport then they expect that as part of a package of services or opportunities. Unfortunately early in sport is when playing time is most abused and it can be explained looking at LTAD and the first stages.

Young athletes should begin an activity in the Fundamentals Stage or where the focus is on Technical Foundations. This often takes them to the cusp of the PHV (max growth spurt) and the teen years of change. If kids are developing Fundamentals then they have to be given a chance to play as that is what they are working toward in game structure and in skill acquisition. Likewise with Technical Foundations, a skill can only be applied in a game setting ie timing, stress, external pressures when given a playing chance. Coaches who put winning ahead of player development at this stage do not understand the process and have the priorities wrong.

Does this mean all players should play equally? No, that is up to the program, the sport, the team, the organizational objectives. If a water polo player is learning to swim then asking them to do the same physical work as a player with aquatic physical literacy is misguided.
The next level of sport is where the big mistakes are made that turn off players with great future potential. In the Competitive Foundation stage an athlete is being asked to learn to apply skill under pressure as taught with a specific tactical objective. Players who do this can expect to get more reps in a game than those that fail, and fail again. The big mistake comes from parents who want their child to get lots of chances to play even when the failure of objectives has been demonstrated repeatedly in a game. Coaches have to find ways to let players try and succeed but the expectation is to do this with progress. Keeping a player in a game when they struggle can create problems of team rejection ie no passes or inclusion of that player in the team play by others. Coaches can manage this if they know the players and what they can do, where they can find success and how the team can have a focus that is not just "score" or "win" so any perceived error is not influencing the outcome as long as there is a progress made with that error/correction.

Usually in this stage the coach and the player have a very good idea of who plays and why, or why some don't. It's the parent, fan or outsider that might not know all of what is going on. Don't expect that a coach can talk to every parent, every game, every event to talk about every player. That is a huge burden when so much coaching or player management is already happening. However, coaches MUST be clear about how they approach playing time with teh team and make it clear to families as well if the sport is a club (or to school officials if it's an institution).

The last point to consider at this stage is that not all players have to have equal play time to be fair. A goalie might play a whole game if they are the only one, a centre forward might play less than others on the team due to the workload and constant corrections from coaches for what the 2M Guard is doing. Some will be better at coming off the bench when they have sen some play and relaxed a bit. Many things are being developed here and "fair" and "equal" are NOT the same thing.

There is one place that playing time does not have as much passion from outsiders and that is at the pro level or with the International game. Players can't play a whole match and be effective with water polo, coaches know that so player rotation is an art and if someone is in the water all game then it is a problem of team depth. The substitutions are for tactics, power, speed, recovery, defense, scoring - it's endless, so don't make the mistake of thinking that a coach is doing something right or wrong based on the subs if you don't know the team, the prep and the dynamic.

One thing to remember and that is "who is the most important person in this equation"? The athlete, they must know the playing time thought process - who plays and why, who doesn't and why. If they know their role and the team objective at each level then the dialogue with players and coach should be smooth and look to that to see if there is a misuse of this aspect of the game.

LTAD as the Understanding of Water Polo Matures

2011-10-24T10:34:00.004-05:00

I am about to try and get back to regular blog writing after an intense summer of building a house. Sorry if you have been looking for ideas or research on water polo recently and had nothing new here.

One thing I have heard quite a bit about this fall is training aerobic capacity for water polo and how Canadians taught to coach in the 70's and 80's (and onward?) were expected to develop an "aerobic base" for their players. This aerobic base had many coaches developing yearly training plans that had Aerobic training as a physical priority for as much as 50-60% of the season. However, the game has never been 50% aerobic at the senior level so that approach to training was unwise at the outset.

If you are wondering how that developed, how we needed to create an "aerobic base" for a water polo player, it can be found in the LTAD framework for the sport. There are 2 things that confuse this issue. One is the aquatic environment where coaches often need to teach physical literacy and comfort in the water. You can't teach comfort if the players are not able to be active in deep water for 90 minutes so aerobic work often got kids to that point. The other difference is between how International players play with explosive anaerobic components and children play the game with less structure ie chasing the ball aerobically around the pool. Coaches in clubs would need to teach various levels and that began with teaching movement and swimming so patterns of training were established and intensity changed as players got older but structure remained.

So, what am I proposing here? Simply that coaches need to recognize that aerobic capacity is outlined as a physical development of all children clearly under LTAD and in water polo we need to look at this closely around PHV (peak growth periods for each player). Children need to develop aerobic capacity as they grow and this can be done well in a water polo setting if that is where their athletic interest lies. However, this does not have to be doing swim sets that a speed swimming club would do with back and forth freestyle!

One thing is very clear, we don't need older players to have 50% of their physical load in an aerobic setting. I am very aware that history can give us many examples of coaches that "ran teams in the mountains", or swam 4000m swim sets for days on end, while producing great teams. But let me suggest that if all teams were doing this similar training then it wasn't simply the workload that set the winners apart form the losers. It also has to be kept in context that some coaches only train part of the player and they may put volume of work as a measure of toughness while psychological training can be absent. Perhaps "excessive workload" is playing that role of psychological training in some macho settings.

One of the things that an LTAD framework can help water polo coaches deal with is developing whole athletes. There are specific windows of trainable development for all energy systems and strength gains with each athlete. Sharing these periods with complimentary sports as children develop takes some of the load off water polo coaches who want to accelerate skill development in the pool setting. Likewise, extending a water polo practice from 90 minutes to 120, or 120 to 150, by adding land work can also help this area. Both strength and aerobic capacity can be developed on land in ways that will benefit in the water. Let's hope coaches are now beginning to explore these avenues more as LTAD points them out and waves the concepts in our faces.

One thing is for sure, if a competitive team of water polo players over the age of 18 is swimming a set of "8 x 400 free" then the the coach is either uncreative, underachieving or not sure of what energy requirements the game has at that level. Sorry to all the NCAA coaches that learned a different approach but you must have way too much pool time if a set of 400 free is a priority!

Senior Women's National Championships

2011-05-26T23:24:00.004-05:00

This week Bushido hosts the 2011 Senior Women's National Water Polo Championships at Pan Am Pool. There will be live webcasts of the games on Saturday and Sunday at the link included here.

http://www.livestream.com/bushidowaterpolo

Broadcast quality should be decent but won't likely keep up to the quality of play which will be very high.

There are only 5 teams involved but all are full of National Team, Junior National Team and NCAA players.

Results are also on the web at the second link here,

http://members.shaw.ca/bushidocamps/Senior_Womens_Water_Polo_Championships/

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Old vs New

2011-05-09T14:46:00.005-05:00

It's National Championship season in Canada so lots of games going on at various levels so hot topics are bubbling to the surface this month. Last weekend in Calgary I had the chance to hear our National Sr Men's coach (Dragan) present his ideas on a new Age Group Development League for boys 16-18. Great idea, just lots of politics and delivery issues that hang over it like a dark cloud.

Everyone loves the idea of standard competition, it's so close to what European Coaches who've come to Canada can relate to from home. It's a wild dream of Canadians who have never had such things as national leagues for age group or standard events. So, we are all excited to see how this will unfold as there is a significant chunk of Federal cash going into this project if we get enough clubs behind it at the outset. We are all happy about that influx of money to the men's side and how it will reach developing players and not just be the token funding that the Senior National Team used to travel in the past.

The few issues that exist as hurdles for this project to develop are geography and facility. Right now we have been presented with a draft format that has teams in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton for the West (cities that can be seen from the top of the Rocky Mountains that separate them) and Ottawa/Hull, Montreal and Toronto for the East (Lake Ontario/St Lawrence River). The costs are acceptable with the games and standard of events but there is no allowance for trips to the prairie cities of Winnipeg and Regina which have a long history of producing National Team players for the country. When those cities are included in the calculations the league costs will jump unless there is a new Central Division (ie Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg). Of course, a Central Division as a whole will have only the total population of places like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver so making the thing work with that dynamic is going to be a challenge that will test the sport.

This is a super project to take Water Polo toward fully implementing the national LTAD and as long as teams are easily incorporated in to the league as clubs grow then this will be great for the sport. If new teams do not have easy access then this league will serve only to kill existing local club events and force the sport to atrophy or die on the Prairies and in the East Coast.

But, what is the option if the league does not grow and thrive? It's not "same old, same old" as some would want you to think. That is because the country and the sport landscape have changed drastically in the past 10 years. To give an example of what I am talking about I'll mention a conversation I had on Sunday in Calgary. I was speaking with a referee who had played against me in my generation when we were in our teens and in university. He asked me about how players were identified and developed now, in the 21st century, to be competitive at the U18 level. I mentioned that we developed them from U12, or had them join at 13-15 years old from school programs with multi sport backgrounds. If not that process then it was almost impossible to develop competitive players at U18. This referee mentioned how vastly different that was from when we grew up and started playing at 15, in high school.

It was possible to start playing at 15 in the 70's or 80's because of 2 things; lack of high performance training and competition in the sport (ie the country wasn't that great internationally) and the influence of an active childhood that created physical literacy. Today we do not see many kids leading an "active lifestyle" and physical literacy is lower than ever before. That means kids have to play sports that are related directly to water polo before the teen years if they want success; "Call of Duty", "Facebook" and "Glee" are not what we consider sports related to water polo so they aren't helping develop any Olympians.

I'll help Manitoba Water Polo target the age group and year that they are best able to enter the new Age Group Premier League so that players here can look forward to that challenge. But, I will also keep vocal about the need to have realistic avenues to enter this league for developing clubs so that it does not shrink the sport to 5 cities in 4 provinces.

Scrimmage, what is it good for?

2011-04-06T23:19:00.002-05:00

There was a time, in the 70's and early 80's when water polo clubs in Canada had pretty dull and static practice routines. These involved a short swim set that looked a bit like a swim club, then some passing and a 30-45 minute game at the end of practice. That gave players a sense of the structure of the game but not much skill to execute it properly.

As practice frequency increased, sessions became longer and players started younger the skills naturally improved without too much of a format change. Then sport science became involved and clubs started to teach much more skill, different swim styles were trained and scrimmages were at a higher tempo. That was a standard formula even if some (most?) clubs did not change the swimming format enough.

About 5 years ago, after a long struggle with the city to improve our facility access, we were able to secure daily training space for our competitive players in Manitoba. That was great as a step in an LTAD direction with hours increasing in the water. But, there was a down side to the changes. To get the big blocks of time for water polo with other competitive sports (swim, dive, synchro) we needed to share the largest facility at the same time. That meant compromise.

Divers did not compromise diving boards, swimmers did not compromise walls or lines on the bottom and synchro did not compromise deep, open water. Water polo did compromise, no walls to set up a playing course and allow referees to walk alongside the "game". This meant daily "scrimmages" had to be confined in a half-court space during the week and only weekends were available to us to play a game with a water polo course set up.

A great deal can be done with a half court set up. But what can never be done properly is counter attack, transitional play, breakaways, restarts or extended game like swim set ups. This put increasing pressure on the weekend scrimmage as it was the only time that players played with a real view of tactical situations. We were promised that there would be additional space to make up for the weekly scrimmages when the prime time space was granted to us but that all materialized at the same time - Saturday afternoon - at all pools.

I've seen a big drop in tactical play with our teams the past 4 years, even if skills have improved in many cases with players. What was really interesting was the past 2 weeks during the Spring Break for school players (actually 1 week before and 1 week during). We had a scrimmage 6 days per week for 2 weeks. Not all players were there, some were on holiday, some just didn't bother. But those that were made measurable improvements as the days went by; counter attacks extended from 10m to 20m, advantages were recognized in transition rather just on an odd drive. Players started to create patterns on restarts that took advantage of progress from one attack to the next in a fluid game.

I guess I am writing this because I undervalued the scrimmage that we lost this fall with the PWPL games that took our pool time. I thought games could replace much of the scrimmage but these are not equal learning opportunities so they didn't. I counted, we had 7 scrimmages in the club for U16, U18 or Senior teams between the season start in September and the 2 weeks stretch of games in mid March. Seven scrimmages in 6.5 months and that is taking advantage of 100% of the pool space we had. Wow, no wonder the teams have taken some slow starts to games this winter.

We'll be sure that doesn't happen again, even if we have to create a Handball league to generate the game reps.

Referees Get Respect

2011-04-04T23:37:00.005-05:00

In the past I have posted somewhat critical looks at local referees. I wanted to be sure to say something positive about that part of the sport when I saw it. This was made easy by our participation in the 2011 Alberta Open in Calgary in March.

Usually, with 7 divisions of play and 3 or 4 pools of games at one time, referee action can vary greatly. This was the first year where I felt the level of officiating exceeded the level of play from start to finish at the U12, U14 and even U16 levels. Sure, there were crazy situations in some games where parents, coaches and players saw things much differently than the referee. But, that is just sport and it can be expected at any time. Even at the U18 level the referees for the most part were totally in synch with the level of play.

There is a reason for that and I want to talk about it so people hear me say positive things about referees and so anyone looking for ideas can maybe see a way to make progress. First of all you need to understand that Calgary in particular has many regular league water polo games during the year. This is supported by league games in Alberta with other cities and clubs. These league games force a need for referee development and it is made possible by strong leadership.

Leadership comes in different ways in Alberta, probably most clearly the referee support comes from Mike Dykman. He is a referee leader that shows authority, fairness and civility while still being totally relaxed and approachable. This is modeled for all young referees emerging from the playing ranks. Even if Mike is not in charge, which he seems always to be, all the referees know who he is and how he conducts himself. That is the solid footing to begin a training program of mentorship.

With a role model it is possible to set expectations for young referees and they will see the desired outcome. This also allows coaches to see where the referees are going and to know that there is a model being pursued. It prevents the common problem of referees being developed 1 or 2 at a time and toward different ends ie a competitive stream, a community stream, a youth stream, a masters stream. These new referees all acted a similar way and what really stood out was how they smiled and interacted with others. In 2011 referees were relaxed and professional.

That may seem like a small thing, them being relaxed and professional, but it is not. I was so impressed with how they acted that a "bad" call I didn't agree with was never considered an attempt to "screw" my team so it kept me from showing players I was upset, because I wasn't (at least not at officials). For a coach to go a whole tournament with that view of referees is really nice.

It is interesting that we went 2 years between the 2009 Alberta Open and the 2011 event and with that gap there was a quiet evolution of referees in Alberta. I say "quiet" because we didn't see it outside as it was in their leagues. That is the key thing in consistent officiating - REGULAR GAMES at a set standard where performance is standardized. That simply can never be done with a stand alone tournament in a community 2 or 3 times per season.

Once again we see Leadership, Regular Games and Mentorship as keys to sport success. Surprisingly it is not in a discussion about athlete development but it does impact that part of sport in a very direct way.

Referees get respect when .....

2011-02-14T19:05:00.003-06:00

There is another topic about referees and rules that came up on a competition weekend, and is ripe for discussion as it is a pet peeve of mine. I was asked by a young coach, that also plays and has begun to referee, "why can they be on deck refereeing all weekend - and kicking players out for talking back or swearing and then hop in the water and do the same thing themselves as players?".

A great question from a 17 year old who wants to develop as a leader and follow the right role models. My answer to him was complicated. He is right, it is hypocritical for a guy to remove young players from a game in a tournament in a 14U division and then get in the water as a senior player and talk back to referees and question their calls. Why does this happen?

First, because it is allowed to and that is cultural. When I say I want referees to be specialists and not take part as athletes or coaches in the same gender as they ref, that is part of it. When the referees, coaches and players are the same people they are unable to effectively manage or govern themselves. Who will decide discipline if a referee gets into a game as a player and swears at a game referee? Will there ever be confidence in that system and people under the impression that athletes and sport integrity come first?

Another reason it happens is that the people who have these multiple roles do not fully engage with any single one and only take it part way. That means they are not mentored as referees to the point of being available for all games and events, being able to take courses and grow in the area as specialists. And, if many players are also referees they do not push the point of wanting to have, or to expect, specialist referees as that, one day, may exclude them from something.

The third reason is not as nice; it is the people who take on these roles and can't control themselves emotionally as players. They are the ones who are the most hypocritical as they do not admit or accept that they behave a way they oppose as officials.

I'll end the discussion with a firm statement of what is NOT the cause of this "multiple role" problem. That is, popularity of the sport or size of the community. The only reason there would be no specialist referees is if they were not valued and pursued. I spent some time the past decade encouraging parents with sport backgrounds to get involved as water polo referees to be associated with their child's sport. That was possible and we had some great dad's who worked many hours for water polo and made very good officials. The only reason for them to not stay involved would be if they were disrespected or abused. That is not the same as "we are too small" so it is an argument I don't like to hear with water polo.

Ball Under?

2011-02-14T11:20:00.006-06:00

It seems that whenever we take part in competitions there are rules or questions that emerge as talking points for players and coaches. This past weekend there was such a thing happening at the Bushido Invitational with many frustrated over ordinary foul rule WP 20.6: "To take or hold the entire ball under the water when tackled".

This is a rule that is intended to keep the ball in play, available to defenders and visible to those trying to touch it within reach. It is not intended to penalize a player who grabs the ball from the top and raises it to take a shot when there is not a player tackling them. Coaches get very frustrated to see this call happen so often in games when it goes against the flow of play.

Even when players grab the ball from the side and do a roll, away from a defender, in a full layout ie not tackled at all, they can push lots of water with the ball movement and have a wave rush over the ball. That is not "holding the entire ball under the water" but it is often called that way by young referees.

However the time I see this called incorrectly the most is when a referee sees a defender at 2m reach over an offensive players shoulder while they wrestle for position and then when the ball goes out of sight the offense is assumed to have "had possession" so is called for taking it under. Then, as the offense raise their hands and there is still no ball, the referee does not adjust his call when he sees the defender bring it up and pass it to the goalie. That really confuses players, and referees need more support to either not whistle what the don't see clearly or to correct the call if they are able to see it was the other team that actually had the ball.

This didn't happen in any specific game or cost any one team a key possession. I am talking about something I saw at 12U, 14U, 16U and 18U play. All weekend, without players changing behaviour or referees changing calls. I know the play didn't change because it so often is not a player taking the ball under so they can't "correct" what they are not doing.

That's a coaches beef about a vague call that changes the tempo of a possession in a completely unjustified way.

What Comes First, Rules or Program Ideas?

2011-02-10T23:26:00.002-06:00

In the fall of 2010Manitoba Water Polo held an organizational planning meeting to discuss, priorities, common goals, obstacles to growth and things that make our organization work. It's great how these meetings can have the potential to change the direction of an organization and quickly accelerate the growth or modifications people seek.

I mention that now because we are into the Competitive Season for an organization that set the #1 priority in the fall as "Following the Water Polo Canada LTAD". Of course, that is terrific and it would have a big impact on player development, program design and Competition Focus. These are all things Bushido has been modifying for age group programs for the past decade, and with some success too, so getting the PSO on the same page was a really positive organizational shift.

It is not without bumps though, since we still have not seen any changes provincially to try and modify programs so the competition is not just "kids being treated as mini adults". Our Bushido Invitational is a 5 vs 5 format for 12U and 14U, modified games for all ages ie 18U teams playing exhibition games with Senior teams if they are a competitive stream etc. We are also using many young referees (who are also age group players), and asking them to whistle the games differently for 12U than 14U and differently for 14U than 16U. We are asking them to see how the players are different in their focus and development and they get it too.

This is why I am frustrated when I hear some older volunteers from clubs not following LTAD who comment on how FINA rules, and adult discipline, from the Olympics should apply to the 12U and 14U kids. It's just insane, but there is no changing this perspective if people don't see how players are developed as children and where rules must be different. Referees must see discipline as part of the growth of a child and work with them on control of physical play rather than against them as disciples of adult punishment.

We'd like to see referees work with clubs and coaches to develop the sport the way the 21st century demands it. I can say for certain that using PSO policies from the 1980's, or FINA rules from the Olympics, is not the way to do that. Starting with existing rules having no relation to the program ideals will fail, every time, when designing new ways to develop athletes following the principles that went into the LTAD vision.

Do Goalies Make the Best Coaches?

2011-02-07T22:10:00.008-06:00

There is an interesting question. It is put out there to get people thinking and I have a few things to offer since I know this question has been asked before.

The reason I ask is because we have some very good goalies in our club, always have had. There are two on National Teams now, including the one who plays at Hawaii in the NCAA, and the ones here at home are super. It's also a popular position I always show passion and support for and am willing to train specifically. Goalies sometimes make up a large percentage of our training group and I sometimes let them play in the field to get different perspective in drills. With Carson this also gives him an outlet for his competitive abilities as he shows field players every day what they are doing wrong or what mistakes they make when playing opposite him.

Today, in a team counter attack drill, Carson played in the field and was the guy who took coach instruction and adapted it during execution. This meant 1) he was listening, 2) he understood the principles on Offence and Defence and 3) he was competitive enough to care about success. That made him stand out even if others did similar things, because he did it EVERY time.

Why was it easy for a goalie to outplay some field players? Strength, of course, in his case. Knowledge, after watching drills and games from net for 8 years now he has seen lots of breakdowns and heard coaches reinforce the corrections he wanted all along from the team. He has also watched every play develop, offense and defense, without the stress of having to cover an opponent or be breaking free of one. That is a huge difference in the learning pattern in the head, no conflict with the personal challenge that field players are stressing over.

That is why a person with coaching or teaching tendencies will benefit greatly from learning the game from the net. But notice I said a "person with teaching tendencies" because just being a goalie is not enough. All that position ensures is that you are a bit special and that you march to your own drummer. Having spent some of my formative years in net I am comfortable saying that and having that label too.

If you think that goalies are poor coaches then please let me know, I'd be curious to hear why.

Competition Season

2011-02-06T22:55:00.004-06:00

Just as the NCAA water polo is now in full swing for women (last post) so, too, is the regional competition cycle for age group teams in Canada. This week we host the 2011 Bushido Invitational at Pan Am Pool. It's a bit smaller than previous years and that, oddly, reflects some growth on the prairies.

Teams from Edmonton are not traveling here this year, unlike the past few seasons, since they have so many provincial games with emerging regional clubs in Alberta. Great for them, reduced travel interest for us. Same for Saskatchewan, Cyril has energized the 12U and 14U competitions in that province so there are leagues each winter and the younger players who used to migrate here for their only winter event are now playing much more and closer to home. Again, a good thing for growth in the region but not so good for our event even though it is a unique 5 on 5 format.

This 5 on 5 play is one of the most interesting to me as a coach and it gives young players way more opportunity to touch the ball and to learn individual skills. We've seen lots of great players develop through this structure, including a dozen national team athletes from Bushido the past decade. This year the event will see National Team participants from Regina, Weyburn and Bushido.

One of the things I am most interested in is the chance for young, often overlooked, referees to whistle lots of games. Brendan Domoney is the Referee in Chief and he has a list of 5 or 6 referees that we don't see enough of each winter so that is very positive in this organization.

NCAA Water Polo

2011-02-06T22:21:00.003-06:00

I never set out to coach players toward an NCAA goal, that was a foreign idea when I began coaching. It was when Michel Roy went to Hawaii to coach that I changed my perception of the league and paid attention. But, it was Serena Bredin that made me understand the value of the league to Canadians.

Helping an athlete play in the NCAA, as I have now a few times, required a change in perspective and Serena gave me that. I spent my early coaching life building programs passionately and looking for solutions to domestic issues with events and teams. I was very caught up in coaching theory, never following what others did but always reading and learning so I could push training along scientific lines. I've written about that a bit but it is not the focus here.

While I was carving a path in terms of coaching patterns and event structure I was looking at building for teams, clubs and provinces. Serena helped me see that at the end of her highschool cycle she really had no credible competition options in Canada. She could move to Montreal and train with the national team but that was not interesting to her. The barriers to living in Montreal at that age with an unsure focus toward the future were not going to work. Staying here in Winnipeg with only a couple of university aged athletes was also not going to give her what she needed to keep pushing forward with training.

So, the solution was NCAA play on a scholarship and that is why I supported it. Now, of course, we have a few others that followed her footsteps and they are better for it. Better because there is no domestic equivalent right now and for them to sit here waiting for one to evolve would be a waste of their skill. One day we may have national playing options for this age that rival the NCAA but not yet. I will be happy to support any initiatives in that direction and applaud George Gross for his current efforts with the University of Toronto programs.

This winter, though, I will be sitting by the computer on the weekends watching the twitter updates as Breda leads her Cal team in scoring, Shae leads her Indiana team in steals and assists and Serena anchors a great Hawaii team in the nets. Hopefully a few 14-16 year old girls here will understand the confidence and focus those women are displaying for them.

The League as a Virus

2011-01-26T16:05:00.007-06:00

It's a funny title that defies logic. How can a water polo league be like a virus? Well, I will elaborate as this is a lesson in dysfunction that is good to take note of for anyone involved with sport.

During the 2009-10 season I worked with the Provincial Coach in Saskatchewan to develop a Senior water polo league on the prairies. We hoped this would be a way to energize our sport and challenge the competitive 18U players that we had in our clubs. There are several strong National Team athletes, of both genders, in our groups and having them play older players is very valuable.

This league was going to be regional so we made sure to involve all the clubs in our provinces, even if we had experienced difficulty working together in each province in the past. This was done and we created a 6 team league for both men and women. Wow, what an exciting way to start the season, with a 20 game league schedule!

What is the problem we encountered? There are several, but the main issue is a lack of organizational leadership. While there is a Provincial organization that governs Manitoba it has terrible, conflicting, grossly outdated policies. Add to that a lack of willingness to follow LTAD and, specifically, what is competitive water polo, and you get a recipe for disaster. When an organization does not function well in leadership it is wrong to give it a new league to manage. That is like giving matches to a pyromaniac!

Boy, did we see some nice fires this winter.

In our club we surrendered all of our fall Saturdays in 2010 to play league games with local opponents; that meant no scrimmage for over 2 months. I was expecting that could be positive and give weekly training a focus. The games ended up generating letters (from Sr Men) with complaints about rough play (by 18U boys). This is nuts, referees decide these things and when men don't get calls they want from other men it never makes sense to take it out on children.

That is the type of fire we are talking about and the league gave fuel to people looking for a fight. That is what I meant by the title; the jealousy and ill will was always there it just had a new flash point. Without a strong organization to handle governance and officiating there is no sense trying to bring diverse partners together in a competitive setting with egos on the line. I can spin the league any way I want, be a super cheerleader and supporter, but when the guys show up to a game and the referee is a player from the other team, or they hear about letters after the games complaining about what didn't get called; well, that is when people lose interest and enthusiasm.

Everything Is An Evaluation!

2011-01-17T00:22:00.004-06:00

I coach a club that follows the Canadian LTAD format in sport development, in every way possible. In fact, I help lead this transition whenever asked and love the collegial approach to athlete development that is slowly emerging. One aspect of LTAD that is worth talking about is athletes that train in multi-sport environments, as is recommended for players 14 or younger.

A multi-sport foundation tends to develop better physical literacy, a more well rounded sport perspective and helps to delay burn-out from observations made to date on this topic. This week I heard a parent talk about a training benefit from another sport that was not in any way physical and I want to write about that so other coaches see the possible benefit of sharing athlete development in this way. Perhaps there are also some athletes or young coaches reading this who will benefit from the perspective as well.

This parent has a child who trains with me 10 months per year in a Canadian "winter sport" of water polo. The summer is taken over by a second sport and this is maintained on a complimentary scale while playing water polo too. This is common in our club with young athletes in participating in football, soccer, rowing and triathlon. It was in one of these sports that a young athlete learning about Competitive Sport got to hear a presentation from a national team athlete in that sport. It is the main message that was communicated that I want to share.

This national team member made all the young athletes in her presence know that in competitive sport EVERYTHING is an EVALUATION. She was talking about how coaches form opinions and the things that go into a coach impression of an athletes abilities and character. I loved hearing about that because this is one thing I have trouble helping 13-16 year old players grasp. Doing a drill perfectly is great, being the fastest or strongest is wonderful, but I look for so much more. I want to know how players interact, who supports a team member, who listens to a coach and helps implement team strategy. Is there someone who brings the team together with their presence, someone who divides them? Who leads the drills, works the hardest, puts their best effort into EVERY part of practice? This is what I am looking at each day.

Why is that important? Let me explain from a National Coach perspective. One of the first things a coach learns when selecting representative teams, from all over the country, is that the players you select are all going to be talented so you better pick ones that work together. How can you beat an opponent that is 13 players all doing the same great things at the same high intensity, for a whole game, if you don't also have 13 doing the same? You can't. Selection has to ensure the team dynamic is focused on the same goal and that starts each day at practice.

Professional coaches, particularly hockey, use this expression often "he is great in the room". "The Room" is the dressing room and "he" is considered great if he unifies the team, speaks to them with motivation when needed, with anger when appropriate; and people follow. A veteran that is good in "the room" will extend his career for several years and will often be sought after by coaches looking for a championship in a pro sport.

How does that impact teen water polo players? Well, if you want to play on a National Team, or in the NCAA on a schools tab, then you better want the coaches to seek you out rather than avoid you. If you play on a club team and it is small, your work habits will influence what people think of the group and influence who joins. If you think of coaching, or being a referee, the place to show the qualities desired will be when developing as a player.

So, there is a benefit of multi-sport training that has nothing to do with physical literacy or sport technical skills. Too many athletes learn this lesson after they have stopped playing, hopefully I can help a few learn it a bit earlier and pass this on to another generation.

Speed Swimming Exit Point

2010-12-22T23:14:00.005-06:00

My recent posts about water polo and it's LTAD have drawn some interesting observations about speed swimming. And, for those speed swimming coaches that are following this and expecting another biting blog like last June, relax, it isn't happening.

In discussing Training to Train, or what I like to term "Competitive Foundations" we see a realization that this is where athletes tend to make choices about sport. For an activity that has early specialization, like speed swimming, this means individuals are seen as "dropping out" if they choose another sport. For sports with a later specialization the teen years of Competitive Foundations tend to be where athletes "opt in" and it is really the same thing with different labels; one is positive and one is negative.

With a healthy background of multi-sport activity there would be less negative association with choosing a sport direction at 14 and more of a positive transition to something that fits well with an individual as a person, an athlete and a team member. This is where the LTAD would go in Canada if we had a central leadership that shared vision through the National Sport Organizations rather than through a neutral funding arm of the government. As long as sports fight each other for funds and a share of government resources there will not be a joint development of elite athletes or a mass mobilization of the couch potato culture we have created.

That may sound extreme to some so let me give you perspective on this point. Hockey, in Canada, is the model sport in terms of success and performance. The organization nationally has a staff that could run a small country, and a budget that could also finance one. But here is a comment you would not expect to hear from them. In September I attended a Leadership Summit for water polo and listened to a presentation on "Relative Age" given by a facilitator from Hockey. The facilitator gave an example of a sport that was late specialization ie relative age not that important, and used the term "pirate" to describe them. He was talking about Rowing and how they recruit athletes who have dropped out of other sports in their teens or university years.

I have never thought of Rowing as a collection of thieves, more a group of astute coaches who know how to assess talent and make a grueling activity attractive to those who have learned to tolerate effort and pain en route to personal goals. This may be why Rowing is now attracting a significant number of ex speed swimmers in Winnipeg, the culture eases families into a healthy amount of training and competition as athletes head toward competition peaks in their 20's.

Speed Swimming, as I have mentioned before, ties sport development to an economic model rather than a sport science one. This has made them a very powerful sport organization but they fall well behind a boutique sport like Rowing who have much more Olympic success through a "science first" approach to athlete development. I am curiously watching these two sports right now trying to understand how much of what they do is planned, how much is science, how much is social and how much is just pure coincidence. I won't use the term luck here as both sports have very knowledgable coaches and it is the systems they work in that I am observing.

Looking Ahead

2010-12-21T15:43:00.002-06:00

I've been quiet on the blog front the past few months and this has promoted a number of comments and concerns. People seem to want the additional perspective I provide in this public forum so it will become more common to post regular installments in the new year.

One reason I have been unable to write more often the past few months would be the amount of writing I am doing in other areas. If you search "bicycle slide" and water polo on the Coaches Info.com website you will find a paper I was responsible for this fall. That took lots of time with film, dialogue, analysis, editing etc. I have also helped develop some LTAD based articles for the Water Polo Planet website through the efforts of Mike Reid. In addition to that work I am helping Water Polo Canada develop resources and evaluation materials for the next level of NCCP education - The Professional Coach. So, my blog has come after all these tasks.

However, I am always finding new ways to teach and talk about LTAD and give it perspective and relevance to others. One interesting point came up in December club parent meetings when we were talking about the competition options for our 14U teams this winter. We have 3 streams of play at this age - Competitive Boys, Competitive Girls and Active for Life Co-ed. There are training differences based on end goals of the athletes, some are training to be active and develop physical literacy for life; looking to create lifestyle habits that will last forever. Others are looking to develop physical literacy toward specific, athletic goals that involve competition and reaching for new levels of achievement.

I had to be clear why we didn't want the 14U Competitive players playing in tournaments with Active for Life kids who are not headed to the same place in the sport. Why not? Is it just because the Competitive players will win by a large margin? No, in fact they may not win that way at all. What is different is that the players are learning different things in application of skills, girls hold suits when playing each other in places that boys would not grab. That means the game teaches physical contact that is leading toward the future age groups for the girls. They learn how to avoid a hold at 14U and that helps prevent a hold at 16U or 18U.

For boys it can be more blatant what is different. They are taught to fight for the ball, not to play for a foul and referee "help". This is a vastly different approach between the Competitive players who are Learning to Train and Learning to Compete when viewed opposite the Active for Life players. It is here that boys can get labeled for life as "aggressive" or "dirty" or "cheap" because they want to use strength and skill they have developed over many hours of training and don't want the referee to be the one to decide if a shot is taken when they are being held.

I've seen many, many examples of this sort of label being placed on talented players. It happens all the time in Manitoba, the home of casual, co-ed water polo. Most of our National Team athletes get labeled as negatively competitive at home and then have to be convinced to be more aggressive in the NCAA or at a National Training Centre. I'm trying to put an end to that now by forcing only games at the equivalent level of training at each age. Hopefully that will put an end to the sillyness we see now where adults from a Recreational club think it is ok to punch young teens from Competitive clubs in the head during games if they don't get their way as "grown ups". It is a long process to develop the sort of rational adults we want in our community and I am hoping LTAD will take us there.

LTAD Explained a Different Way

2010-10-19T14:38:00.006-05:00

I have written several times about Long Term Athlete Development and how it is a crucial tool in the modern day development of athletes. Usually there is a superficial understanding of the idea when people are first introduced to it so repeated dialogue is good. What I will attempt today is to put a different perspective on the topic to broaden the understanding for some.

One thing I hear from the pessimistic minority is that following LTAD principles will not change anything, how can it? Some say these are just new labels but we will still have the same issues preventing growth or development or success. Others say that there are not enough resources to implement these ideas ie not enough money to do the things required. Or, more often, not enough pool time to train as much as is suggested; I hear that one quite a bit.

Let me explain how resources are what has always been preventing development and I'll show how LTAD could help remove that problem. I'll use an idea from biology known as Gause's Principle, or competitive exclusion, to help illustrate this. According to this principle species using the same resource cannot coexist in nature. I'll use "Water Polo Club" as a species and the city where it lives as the environment in which we apply the principle. Traditionally all Water Polo Club's were a single species and drawing on the same resources or pools, athletes, volunteers and financial support.

This commonality of club means that in our community the grassroots team competes for the same pool space as the competitive team because they are in the same "species". Consequently all clubs deplete pool resources without meeting the need of any one group. Is the space used correct for 10U kids, for 25-35 year olds, for school based programs or for National Team athletes? Do the facility owners ie the City, discuss allocation based on the end product of the participants ie physical literacy vs Olympic Podium? Are they allocating the pools to the sport based on no end product at all?

Apply this to athlete recruitment. Observe how many teams are made up of some Sport for Life players (who wish to be involved 2-3x week and travel once) and some Competitive ones (training every day and wanting games each month). What happens when the Sport for Life players are pushed by the Competitive ones to train too much? There is drop out. What happens when the Sport for Life hold back the Competitive ones from their regular events or daily training? There is underachievement and drop out again.

While this random use of facilities and unsatisfying development of all players goes on the community resources are depleted. Nothing thrives and only the club that fits the resource allocation continues to grow. I suggest that the LTAD will help the resource allocation be better directed and will solve this particular problem.

If we go back to the biological model of clubs being a similar species what the LTAD helps us do is distinquish between subspecies within the Water Polo Club family. That will allow for better exploitation of resources as players are recruited to a subspecies that meets their exact interest rather than sharing and feeling pressure from an external force pulling in a different direction.

Likewise, a much more effective push can be made to access local facilities to meet specific targets when the community need is better articulated. I am likely to have a better response to gaining access to a quiet community pool if I offer neighbourhood children a 1x week I Love Water Polo program. That's better than importing grown men from other neighbourhoods to violently shoot balls toward a net at 70km/hr while senior aquasize class runs alongside them. Putting the right program in new space allows for existing space be used more appropriately.

This classification of subspecies would also include coaches who lead the programs and having the right person is the key to leadership. How much easier will it be to attract the right people if they are leading those who share the same vision? Much! And, of course, current coaching education is directed toward specific program philosophies so the resources for the coach become much more meaningful. That may end some of the grumbling about how new CBET levels are imposing too much on volunteer coaches.

Are referees a part of the sport of water polo? Sure. Is there anywhere in Canada where there is a surplus of referees; too many to do the games that the community offers? Too many, so that each one is not able to do the number of games at their level? Maybe in a parallel universe but not here. I think it is possible that the referee shortage has to do with people getting involved at one level and being asked to referee at another, thereby removing their interest and passion. It's quite likely that many officials can be attracted to do community games with smiles, high 5's and thank you's. That is what would exist in a community stream if the competitive players and coaches were removed and given their own stream with appropriate practices, games and officials.

I hope I haven't bored anyone with this venture into a biological viewpoint. It is not exactly transferable, I know. However, it gives a bit of perspective about why we do not thrive when we offer obscure products to people looking for specific things. Let me know if I have helped or hurt the discussion with this article.

October and already the Calendar is full

2010-10-08T23:28:00.002-05:00

We've had a strange start to the season with the closing of our regular training facility and the movement of our secondary one. Practices have been less than ideal with I Love Water Polo kids coming twice per week and Competitive 14-20 coming 4x. They are using the same amount of space and time so running the older practice is a chore.

I'm glad we have had no time to shoot this month (no way to do so at this pool). That means legs, strength and speed are the focus. We still do ball work but not the powerful kind, just the technical type. Next week, when back at Pan Am Pool, the balls start to fly with players who have developed some strength and hunger to use it.

The first few games of the year, in the new Prairie Water Polo League, will have growing pains but it will be so much fun to coach a team in a game, work for a week or two on adjustments, and then play another team. That is what has been missing from the Canadian game forever and it's fun to be bringing it to life.

I am also looking forward to incorporating more of the sport science research we did last season into our training. That has started but will be much more important when shooting and when into the Specific Preparation part of the season. Right now it is all General Prep and we did research on specific technical things that have application in weeks ahead. By then I expect our initial research will be published as Dr. Marion Alexander is currently working on a draft of the summary data to be reviewed and put forward. I will be sure all coaches in Canadian clubs get this information, I am also going to ask to have it translated as I know a very bright and articulate young French athlete who could do this justice.

The fall has been so busy with club planning that I have not been able to set aside time to properly write this blog. But that should change and I will have a template of topics to write about in the weeks ahead ie Nutrition, Science, LTAD application, Technical Skills. I will seldom write about Tactics, this is for good reason. The majority of english language information published on water polo is tactical in nature, moving X's and O's on pages, and that all requires foundational skills that have not been addressed uniformly or even well. That is where my attention is focussed as other experts have tactics well in hand.

2010-11 Here we Come

2010-08-26T22:28:00.002-05:00

I am anxious to get the 2010-11 season underway. So much to do, so many changes in programming and events, all good. The only fly in the ointment is pools, the crucial piece that is out of our control.

In May I was told by the city of Winnipeg that the main competition facility, Pan Am Pool, was being shutdown from August to October for repair. Two months is a very, very long time for an annual shutdown, but given what we know, not surprising. It was also May that I was told we would be moved to another city pool in September while Pan Am was closed and we'd hear about where that was soon. That was in May. I heard where we are on August 25. Try getting fall information out in mid August when you don't know when or where you train. Arghh.

But, that is not too depressing as I expect it. Plus, I am looking at having some exciting new coaches added to the mix this season so we will see a new energy level at practice each week. We also have Claire Davis making sure that we have a 12U program that carries the "I Love Water Polo" banner that is so popular in Canada right now. Truth is, ILWP was very much modeled after our 12U program of the past 10 years, the one that developed all the national team and NCAA athletes recently. We've gotten away from that youthful focus recently and Claire is going to help me revitalize things.

We'll also be adding some new practices to the schedule, and some new pools, so that promises to be interesting as we hope to make neighbourhoods more important to 12U development. Of course, that requires pool access and city cooperation, a BIG hurdle.

The thing that will be most exciting for players is the creation of the Prairie League for older players. All our 16 and older athletes will be considered for our teams and we will be having a considerable number of older players return to regular practice and play to push older athletes technically and physically. I will have lots to write about that league as it gets going.

And, in case people are not aware, we will host the Canadian Senior Women's National Championships next May in Winnipeg. A chance for the NCAA players from Hawaii, Cal and Indiana to play with their sisters, former team mates and each other one more time in front of a home crowd. I will look forward to that all year.

Small Uproar

2010-06-13T21:07:00.002-05:00

Last week I wrote a blog about swimmers and how some clubs in Canada refuse to follow their national LTAD and instruct kids at 12 or 13 to quit water polo (or second sports) to participate solely in Speed Swimming. Wow, that got some odd reaction as the blog was circulated widely by a swimming organization trying to discredit me and what I wrote.

What is interesting is that some of their coaches wrote to me thanking me for what I wrote or saying that they agreed with me. That shows me that there is an unrest in the Swim community that I was not aware of ie an internal turmoil about the swimming LTAD and how it should be applied against the club model that has developed over so many years.

I had said previously that Speed Swimming, as a sport, is not the problem and that I was reacting to SOME swim clubs. That needs to be repeated as I have had that confirmed by several coaches who state clearly that they agree with me and what I wrote. If you are a swim coach, or club, that follows the LTAD ie uses it appropriately, then I am sorry if my discussion of swimming was so broad as to imply that all swim clubs misuse their development science.

Athletes and families Misled by Swim Clubs

2010-06-05T21:25:00.010-05:00

The title to this blog has been changed and the word "abuse" has been removed. That is because Water Polo Canada and Manitoba Water Polo are having to deal with complaints from swimming about my opinions (as a career club coach) and that was not my intent. Those swim organizations refuse to talk to me directly. The content of the blog remains due to the way many Canadian Swim clubs force pre-teen specialization that goes against sport science. I will do an additional blog later on why I decided to change the word abuse in my title as it relates to their LTAD.

I say "defies science" and I will quote from the Swim Canada LTAD document later to specify what I am talking about. This topic has come up because I coach a few young water polo players ie 14U who are 2 sport athletes and get pressure from swimming to do just one sport (swimming) and drop water polo, even if they came to swimming to improve water polo. Of course, all sport science data tells coaches and parents that multiple sports are advisable for a 12-14 year old, that specialization is to be avoided and that balance and physical literacy is important. When a swim coach tells a parent their child is "really good" and should be in group "X" or program "Y", based on their skill, it bullies them into following for fear of failing their child. It's bullying because their own LTAD documents say what they're doing is wrong.

Any coach who ignores the sport science from Sport Canada and their national governing body, simply to keep kids away from other sports or to generate more program revenue, is operating in ethical darkness where they can never defend their actions. I don't say this as a general dismissal of speed swimming, I say it in response to what a few athletes I coach bring to me in tears or frustration. Maybe specifics are needed.

Today I had a 12 year old in tears at the pool thinking she had been to her last water polo practice because her future swim coach had forbidden her to break ranks and miss practice to play a second sport. That is, the swim practices that include 13.5 hours of pool time per week are 100% mandatory for a young girl not yet 13. Let's look at what the Swim Canada LTAD says about that, and I'll quote.

Speed Swimming - Train to Train

- Enjoying a lifestyle of sport and activity
- Chronological ages - Female: 11 to 14 Male: 12 to 15

Amount of physical activity, including non-swimming:
- 6-12 sessions per week
- 60-120 minute sessions
- Pool time (hrs): 12-24
- Participation in 1-2 other sport activities through a year

Let's look at that introduction, it speaks volumes. The amount of physical activity is 12-24 hours per week and it clearly includes "non-swimming" in that equation. By mentioning non swimming it makes it perfectly clear that there is other activity to be accounted for. There is even a breakdown of how many other sports should be part of the athletes routine (ie 1-2). This is from Sport Canada, based on credible sport science, and delivered to clubs through Swim Canada. There is nothing here created by me or by water polo, I am just writing about a dysfunction in Canadian swimming that everyone can see for themselves if they are not afraid to look.

Let's hold a local swim clubs training load for a 12-13 year old girl up to their sport's national LTAD;

TAG group swimming - 8 pool sessions/week and 13.5 hours,

NAT group swimming - 9 pool sessions/week and 16 hours.

Both groups have total training volume that falls within the time and frequency stated in the LTAD but, they do it IN ONE SPORT! That is early specialization and it leads to injury and burn out while preventing physical literacy. How can a 12 year old girl possibly know who she will be at 19, what her body will eventually be like (height, muscle make up, flexibility) what her personality and interests will be? Without knowing these things about themselves they are being asked to narrow focus much too soon.

How difficult would it be for a swim club to work with a water polo club to provide 6-8 hours per week of training in each sport for 12 - 14 year old kids? Not very, since I have been open to this for over a decade if anyone wants to work with me on it. That would provide 12-16 hours per week in a pool, just like the swim clubs dictate now, but it would be balanced over 2 sports that have complimentary but not duplicate training. This would prevent burn out, encourage greater physical literacy and provide athletes more options for the future as their skills and physical growth define a path toward sport success.

One of the key differences in our community right now is that I am working with athletes and families to find pathways to success. I offer permission to explore a second sport during a water polo season (and a 3rd in summer!) and try to have dialogue about these meshing with water polo. By contrast, swim clubs demand that swimmers follow a narrow program focus and refuse permission to negotiate a 2 sport season. That means any family with a child in swimming will be going against the wishes of the swim club by keeping their child in water polo - even if that is where they came from in the first place.

I could prevent the swim clubs from the strong arm position they take now if Manitoba allowed "unattached" swimmers to enter swim meets (ie from a water polo club). But they can't be part of the sport, and we all know why. Too many records would be held by water polo players, too many relay medals given out to girls wearing suits with zippers. Sad, I always approach coaching as if it were for the kids and their development. Too bad not all sports are willing to do that.

Coming up next, a blog about "what do you get from swimming/water polo if you aren't headed to a National Team?"

Eggbeater, what is it all about?

2010-05-21T16:40:00.002-05:00

I have been doing lots of thinking about the eggbeater kick this season, both reflection and inquiry. It is based partly on the sport science research we are doing and the dialogue with Dr, Marion Alexander at the UofM and Satoru Nakagawa the strength coach from Bushido.

This week I was reviewing joint angles, leg paddles and foot circles as we looked at video of players from various levels of development. There was considerable variety in kick dynamics, no standard biomechanical pattern that had knees, hips, ankles, feet and toes doing the same thing. The basics are the same but the specific technique is not uniform.

When I was asked questions about the ideal, what we are looking for as coaches, when we tried to determine the efficiency of the kick I had to qualify things for the University researchers working with us. The truth is that I have never coached an ideal standard in eggbeater as I never see the legs on a daily basis and don't compare athlete A to athlete B to athlete C. Up to this point I was not concerned with the minutiae of the kick since I could see too many variables that went into success before small parts needed to be corrected.

There are 4 components that influence an athletes eggbeater success; 1) Technique, 2) Flexibility, 3) Strength, 4) Buoyancy. Flexibility influences technique so that's a good place to start. If I know an athlete is not flexible enough to get their knees high and out then I don't tell them to quit water polo. I just deal with strength development while they minimally and safely improve flexibility over time. Buoyancy is something that Satoru pointed out as a possible major influence to me this season as I had really overlooked it's role to this point. It may be tiny, but I am acknowledging it now as a contributor to success.

Now, I am trying to help establish what the ideal technique is - patterns for eggbeater so that athletes can be taught where to point toes, how to turn feet, where to raise heels etc and to get feedback from video on a weekly basis as they learn. That video help will then be shift toward how the legs and the kick are used in the shooting mechanics as they develop and get stronger and more skilled.

All this dialogue and inquiry began with a simple question "how does the eggbeater kick change when a load is added with an external weight applied to the athlete"?

I'll post data once we get something concrete to report, fall 2011 probably as I am about to shift gears and do some recovery and then National team work in the summer.

Program Purpose

2010-04-07T00:07:00.005-05:00

"Floating Star"

The image above is captivating, it was labeled "floating star" when I sent it to the parent of the athlete doing the beautiful back float during a game. The name has stuck as some of the older girls heard about the picture and love it's qualities. The parents and I chuckled at it because it captured a particular part of this young woman's character that we also see in other parts of her life.

The reason it is part of my Blog that has the title "Program Purpose" is because it shows that this group has a purpose in water polo that is NOT winning. This issue is something I spoke briefly about at the 12U practice tonight with another coach. He had mentioned to me that someone he had spoken with had recently measured my success as a coach by the number of national championships I had won (none). This had made him shake his head and laugh, thinking "how is that a measure of success"?

If I were hired to take an NHL team to the Stanley Cup, or a CFL team to the Grey Cup, or a National Team to a World Championship then winning would be my primary objective. However, never, ever, in my life have I ever set a National Championship as my goal or the goal of my team. In fact, only once in my life did I attend a National Championship with a team that I thought had a chance of winning and that should have had that goal in their sites (16U Women's nationals a few years ago in Montreal with Breda, Shae and Sandra all playing great at the same time). So for anyone to judge me by "wins at a nationals" they would have no idea who I was or what I was trying to do at the pool each day as a coach.

Did I say that winning was not important? No, nothing like that. However, winning is only important when it is a product and the program purpose leads to that point. For example, a national team picks the best players in a country, from anywhere, to make a very strong team that can consider winning. A club takes players from a community, sometimes far less than a team worth in each age, not often a group that can win.

When I first started offering 12U programs in our club, in the 90's, there were only a handful of clubs running programs at that age. Of those, only Saanich approached the athlete development holistically and used sport science to any degree close to what we were doing in Bushido. What ended up happening is that when we took the 12U team to competitions we overwhelmed the opposition. There was a point where we won 5 Alberta Open Championships in a row, and those kids went on to win at 14U too. It was because the program was better than the others and the kids didn't have to be better, or bigger or faster or stronger, just more skilled and better prepared. It was also a time when our club was ignored by Manitoba Water Polo, nobody cared about what we were doing because they "were just little kids".

That all changes as players get older. More clubs offer programs for athletes after they are teens, players mature - speed, power and strength start to become issues you cannot deny when skills catch up. That means clubs with positive environments tend to produce better teams ie bigger cities have a larger base of athletes and athlete selection, more opportunities for games, more resources to support athletes. It gets harder to win as you move up and the "National Championships" are only for the older ages. Imagine that a club like DDO with 3 girls or boys teams of 16U players at nationals has a better chance of winning than a club like Bushido that does not have 13 players on their team or has players from 3 age categories ie 12U, 14U & 16U. An "A" team is selected on skill, strength, size and commitment so they put winning as a priority.

Without at least 7 players who have the same goal, the same work ethic, the same type of skill set, you will not have a team that can say winning is their measure of success. Look at that picture at the top again, are they all on the same page and is winning the objective? No, nothing like that. So, what is their measure of success? Let me explain it from a position that we coach our club from.

I help athletes meet their goals on an individual level. Some want to play on National Teams, I've helped over a dozen meet that goal since moving to Winnipeg. Some want to play in the NCAA, last month Serena was the NCAA player of the week and Breda is a Freshman who is at the top of scoring at Cal. Some want to be a game star at a big event or to make an all-star team, we've seen lots of that over the years. Others want a healthy lifestyle, maybe to counter health issues like Claire and her Cystic Fibrosis or to address introversion or rage issues. Whatever the player wants, I try to create the opportunity to meet their goals. That is my objective, build people using water polo!

Winning at some level is always important in a competitive program. That is why we play in the events we do; Alberta Open, Valentines International, Ontario Championships, Alberta Championships etc. This gives leaders a chance to emerge, very strong players an opportunity to shine, less confident players a chance to succeed in sport when they might not alone. Winning these events is a goal because in that context it is a standard of performance our training can be aimed at and measured by. Learning to win should be placed where it is realistic, otherwise it is a foolish goal. Coaches must learn this, set goals that are real and embrace them, push athletes to those goals and they will quite possibly reach them.

If winning is possible given the stage of athlete development, and the breadth of your program, then EMBRACE it. However, judge a program and a coach by their objectives, don't put winning as a standard barometer when it is not one.

Total Concentration

2010-03-03T15:29:00.005-06:00

Not too long ago I wrote a blog that dealt with Talent. This outlined some of the things that went into the creation of talent according to author Dan Coyle. Last night I experienced a very specific example of how Total Concentration during practice can make a profound difference in a single practice.

This is a practice with 12U and 14U players and it was an unusually small group due to some player illness and schedule conflicts that resulted in having to modify what might have happened during the normal session at that pool. This allowed (required?) me to try some different things with a group that has a very, very broad range of focus.

We were doing some passing drills about 60 minutes into the practice that had small groups and mentor relationships. I created mixed age group pairings ie 12U player with 14U so that young athletes could be lead in the water by an older peer. To get the older athletes attention and focus I included a negative reinforcement for dropped passes - pairs had to swim about 15m to the bulkhead and back with each dropped ball. The older ones did not want to swim if they could pass so it became a project for each one to find a way to get their young partner to focus on the catch and pass routine.

The picture above shows some of the pairs along the wall passing, others are swimming and out of the picture. I had to switch partners after about 5 or 6 minutes when I could see which 12U boy was unable or unwilling to listen to his mentor. After that adjustment we had pairs that all found a way to cooperate on the task the older player set for them. The change in focus of the young players in this situation actually surprised me in a big way. Hanika, in the red hat above, has a good deal of patience and worked the whole time with the youngest boy, Aidan. At 8 he is not confident that he can repeatedly pass the ball in a pair and it took some time for Hanika to get him on task. By the end of the session he was able to do almost 50 passes without dropping the ball and that is about 40 more than he has ever shown us before.

The really amazing shift though was with Zacharia, above on the right. He really responded well to Sam who was determined to; 1) not swim at all, 2) not be outdone by any other mentor. Zach has a tendency when catching the ball to lay out on his back and wait for it to drop from the sky into his hand as he sinks. This makes his passing partner want to lob the ball more and more softly which negatively reinforces the poor catching position. Sam realized this and worked patiently to find the strength, power and arch of a pass that Zach could absorb without laying on his back. The end result, after about 15 minutes together, was these 2 passing the ball 300 times without dropping it.

I didn't hear a word out of Zach the whole time he was passing, the first 15 minutes of silence he and I have shared at the pool. Now I see what he is capable of with Total Concentration and my role as a coach is to help him find that each day. A big task with 12U players, for sure, that is why it's important to lead this group with a mix of knowledgeable, experienced coaches somewhere in their regular routine.

An Island of Excellence

2010-03-01T23:17:00.009-06:00

The past few weeks people in Canada have been hearing quite a bit about something called Own The Podium when there was talk of our Olympic athlete performance. This is a name that has not been properly presented to the public in it's sport context and it came under some heavy criticism, and even some ridicule, from outsiders and uneducated members of the public.

To fully understand Own The Podium (OTP) you have to know the context in which it is applied. I will put it in the framework of the Water Polo LTAD to clarify how it is used. OTP is the name used to describe the programs primary objective. The over-all program philosophy at that stage is Road To Excellence (RTE) and if you are on the Road To Excellence you might expect that a Podium is something that is part of your vision. This is in contrast to my daily coaching of the top level athletes in Manitoba, teens who are under a program philosophy known as Competition and having the primary objective Optimize the Engine & Learn to Compete.

Athletes need to "optimize the engine and learn to compete" before they move on. Once they are ready to place an emphasis on performance then the focus must shift from developing the engine and skills to using them properly. That is how the concept of "own the podium" emerges; if you compete, what is the target? In Canada we say it is the podium and if we see that target then we train to "own" it. Right now I am teaching teens to own skills, values and training goals; that is their target.

We have a pretty interesting example of Own The Podium in Canadian Water Polo right now. Our senior men's National Team in Calgary operates as a bit of an island, cut off from much of the rest of the domestic scene while pursuing intense training that focuses on team performance. Dragan, the Head Coach, has changed a great deal of what the players at that centre do in their daily training and the result was seen this past week in Hungary. The men played a very close game with Hungary, 10-8 loss, that would have been unheard of a few years ago. That was a championship game in a tournament that saw the team also beat the USA and Australia and that has not happened in my memory.

Canadian National Team - Volvo Cup 2nd place

I mention this here because Dragan had to change quite a bit of the training focus for the men that arrived at the Calgary Centre when he took over as Head Coach. He was looking for uniform skills that could be used in a tactical system that had base line performance that is world class. He developed that last year and is now bringing it to the next level. He tried to share some ideas about the training changes he has made for these guys when he spoke to us at the Water Polo Canada Leadership Symposium in Montreal last fall. He will probably have more to say next year when people hear what he is doing. This success will also allow Pat Oaten to push harder for standards of training as he redesigns the entry level programs of the female National Teams this year.

It was very interesting to me that the men had this success in Europe at the same time that our winter Olympians were performing so well in Vancouver and Whistler. There are some similarities in how they did things. For example, when do we ever hear of female bobsledders in Canada? Once every 4 years, at an Olympics, and only for a few cycles - so, basically, never. But, the women that won Gold and Silver in BC have trained hard, as poorly paid pro athletes, under the Own The Podium banner on the Road To Excellence while everyone else was pretty much oblivious to what they were doing. They had 3 things in their training that I talked about in my last post on Talent - Practice/Practice/Practice, Great Coaching & Total Concentration. Of course, great athletes too, but in a supported environment that provided services specific to the goals they had. That is what Dragan is providing too and it is why both are meeting lofty goals.

This is what the LTAD is supposed to do for sport in Canada and we are seeing results top down. That is exciting since the big changes will be when the program is fully implemented and it works bottom-up, giving national teams perfect young men and women with focus and a taste for success. I sure hope that Manitoba Water Polo will one day understand and accept LTAD so I can help push the performance standards in Canadian water polo with better supported young players.

Talent

2010-02-20T15:15:00.011-06:00

Here is an interesting video link (click on the word Talent) that helps explain a bit about learning and talent. I'll use this to go into a bit of detail around LTAD and how learning is simple, but mastery of skill a bit difficult.

In The Talent Code author Dan Coyle breaks down some pretty basic concepts to show how young people can develop talent to exceptional levels. The discussion is on how talent is developed and an explanation of how Masters have been created in various fields ie sports and the arts. I will address this as it relates to developing skill in general and also as it relates to taking skill to an exceptional level.

We have to start with an understanding of the brain and the central nervous system. When an activity is done for the first time, ie throw a ball, it is a result of a series of commands along the nervous system that begin in the brain. The pathways for that command are new and the process takes time. Imagine walking through deep power snow from your back door to the centre of your yard; you are making the path as you go. When an activity is repeated it becomes more fluid since the nervous system has modified itself, built a pathway, by creating myelin around the nerve or axon involved in the action. That myelin supply increases every time the activity is repeated and the myelin speeds up the communication along the way, makes everything happen more smoothly. Imagine that walk through the snow after it has been done 10 times, the path exists and there is less "creating" and more "traveling". After 100 walks along that snowy path it will be hard packed and firm, no more sinking into the snow with each step, you will travel the path in a fraction of the time.

This is where Practice comes into the picture because practice creates pathways for the message and speeds up the process with new myelin. When discussing this in the video link here Coyle uses Practice, Practice, Practice as the first factor in developing talent. Why is it number 1 and repeated over and over? Because the repetition creates the talent physically, by changing the person. That is pretty straightforward but also pretty shocking to many.

This is not to say that everyone will have the same skill set if they apply the same practice. No, it means that nobody will be a Master without developing what they have. It was long ago established that to become a master of any skill there is an investment of 10,000 hours of practice that must be put into that activity. This number is not really in debate, it is accepted as the 10 year/10,000 hour rule in music, dance, sport and anything similar.

This is where sport is helped incredibly by following a Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) protocol based on science. Coaches are told what skills and systems are to be taught at each developmental stage AND, here is the key point, HOW OFTEN to train those skills or systems. Practice will help an athlete learn a skill and develop physically literacy. It is Practice, Practice, Practice will help an athlete Master a skill and become an expert. That is why anyone hoping to stand on a podium must train the sport skills 6-8 times per week from an early age ie early teens, to reach that level while still in their physical prime.

Let's move on to the other components of talent development that have been identified as they have a great influence on performance for all levels of athletes, not just Masters. Coyle lists Great Coaching as the second thing that is needed to develop talent and I can't argue with that. It's what defines great coaching that will surprise many and I won't debate it here as anyone that knows me knows where I stand on Coyle's observations in the video that great coaches are "mild, laid back, intensely watchful". When he said the words "intensely watchful" it made me smile.

What I want to remind you is that Coyle is talking about great coaches who develop talent. He isn't describing what is a great coach in the NFL or NHL where great talent is already present. Those coaches are managing that talent and the focus is often on systems of play rather than skills in those systems. This is a key difference as it also applies to amateur sport and national teams. Practices I design for developing athletes are quite different from what a National Team would need if they were senior players pursuing a podium finish. This is why Canada struggles in many sports. The best athletes are coming to national teams way before they are Masters and they are doing tactics and multi-skilled activities before they are ready to excel at them. LTAD is designed to address that fractured system.

When he is discussing Great Coaching Coyle mentions the "small, really intense, corrections" that he observes. This is important because the intense quality is affected greatly by the third factor influencing developing talent - Total Concentration. How many times does a coach deliver a message when there is no concentration or marginal concentration? That is where environment can make a huge difference in learning. A classroom with mayhem and noise, a gym with multiple activities, a pool with aquasize music blaring over a water polo coach instruction, all of these influence an athletes ability to focus on the small correction that is being demanded of the student/athlete.

After learning about the 3 factors that influence talent development it is much easier to understand the movement to LTAD in sport, world wide. Placing athletes in programs that reflect their developmental goals ie general physical literacy or literacy toward mastery, helps put them in the proper learning environment. We can also see why just training at anything more is not enough. It has to be "practice with a purpose" and that includes Great Coaching and Total Concentration.

This understanding of how talent is developed helps to see the value of different streams of activity. When Canada creates a sport system that has a top level named "Own the Podium" you can see that this refers to the motivation in the training to become a Master. It is not a boastful "we're gonna own the podium" type of label. It is referring to their goal, they want to own the podium through hard work that equals or passes that of their competitors; the point of the effort is to be one of the best. It is also possible to see how developing athletic skill and physical literacy in children does not have to be measured by wins or losses. What is important is the performance relative to what has been practiced or learned.

This topic introduces opportunities to go into some detail about what age group competition should look like, how the development of team skills relate to myelin in the brain and the psychology associated with this perspective of learning. That will come at another time.

Fructose = Poison?

2010-01-12T01:05:00.017-06:00

This blog will be a reference to the work of someone else that I think is important. I always talk to my athletes about nutrition as part of their development, learning and growth. Recently I have been talking to some of the teams about fructose and why it is something they should be looking for on labels.

Fortunately someone with a background in science and medicine has provided me a teaching aid for this topic. The University of California, San Fransisco's Robert H. Lustig, M.D. did a presentation as part of the Mini Medical School for the Public offered through the UCSF Osher Center for Integrated Medicine. His lecture is available online at the Youtube link I have provided with this blog.

It's a long lecture but the video is in short, 10 minute, clips so it is easy to view in parts. There is something for everyone in this piece, politics, business, history, biochemistry, all sorts of angles you can consider as the story is told.

I am not telling athletes that fructose has to be completely eliminated, they are kids and need some space to live. However, I want them to see it as a poison, as does Dr. Lustig. I am comparing it to alcohol for them as they know that can be part of a meal (glass of wine) or the root of major disease. This helps them understand moderation and reflect on the impact of different foods.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjxyjcvW7RE&feature=player_embedded#
(I still don't know how to embed these links so cut and paste the address in your browser address window)

Why Do People Train, Part 2

2010-01-06T12:02:00.006-06:00

Previously I wrote about the difference between players in an competitive club training "to develop" vs "to compete". This was not an attempt to exhaust the reasons or motivations for training but, rather, to highlight a fundamental difference in program model. Amateur sport is never a simple topic so I wanted to revisit this discussion and cover a broader ground to show how different program structures cater to different athlete motivations.

I will start with an example that is not water polo but gives a good indication of what I am dealing with through a sport structure that is well known. Think of the swim clubs that you know or that you see at local pools. How many Masters groups swim with a competitive age group club? Does Manta in Winnipeg have a Masters program or do they let the many Masters clubs take the adult swimmers? How about in Regina or Calgary or Toronto, how many Masters groups swim in an age group club? You get the point, not many if any. That is not because they are swimming different strokes but because their motivation to train is from a different place.

Am I saying that older athletes, Masters or 19+, are not competitive or that they should stay away from kids? No, not at all. You just will not have success offering a program to adults and their needs if your focus is on skill development, competitive team structure and the fundraising and fees that go with that. Likewise, if you are focused on lifestyle training and social physical activity you will not win many places on national teams or enable too many players to earn post secondary scholarships, or achieve too much team success at an elite level.

In order to have success with a program you have to be able to market it to a specific audience. If the message you send is vague, or conflicts with what you do at the pool, then people will feel a lack of satisfaction in what they have become associated with. There is a way to solve this problem with a water polo club structure but before getting to that I will talk a bit about the things that bring players to the pool in each type of program.

Adult programs can attract players that are primarily looking for a social outlet that involves physical activity. That may mean they want to go for a beer and wings after practice or to extend their social group with people having a common interest. It might include people looking for a mate, a drinking buddy, someone to watch weekend football games with or any other social aspect of group interaction. It could also include people who need a physical outlet to deal with stress or who have to stay active to control their weight or their health (as does everyone!)

The other side of an adult program is one that gives a competitive outlet to people who must compete in a physical game. This usually means people who know the sport and don't want to deal with the teaching of basic skills to young kids when they are at the pool during the few available hours of recreational time they have in a week. These people may also be concerned with their weight, strength and over-all health but they are looking to deal with those in a specific sport setting rather than a primarily social one.

Usually an age group club feeds adult players into one or the other streams of Masters play (competitive or social). Both streams include aspects of the other but people will be "lifers" in a program if it offers an identifiable stream to members. When a program does not choose one mandate or the other it will have players fade in and out of participation on an ongoing basis and this will make it hard to grow as there will not be a direction on which to base a club mission.

It would be possible to offer age group and adult programs in a single club if there was a leader who recognized and valued the role of each and did not see them as conflicting when assigning resources. I am pretty sure we could have a reasonably large group of adult players in our club if we had access to the pool time required to play regular games and have appropriate practices. I know of excellent leaders who could coach such a group within a larger club and I would be happy to use the seasoned players in a variety of mentor roles if they were interested.

Right now we do not have the pool space we need to do this and it is partially due to how the city allocates space. The other obstacle is that I have tried to get another local club to embrace their strengths at adult, social water polo over the years and have not wanted to conflict with that. However, I have failed to convince them to make this a goal so I am now modifying our program to grow into a broader mandate.

Why do People Train?

2010-01-04T23:04:00.006-06:00

Tonight I had an interesting assortment of 22 players attend our "18U" practice that usually has closer to 16 people. This was due to a couple of developments the past month that allowed for a jump in participation and I want to talk about those briefly as they are cornerstones of sport participation.

The first reason we had more bodies had to do with the return of a few teen aged players who had quit club water polo in the fall and then decided they missed it and wanted to return to regular activity. They were welcomed back for the same reason we invited the second group of practice newcomers, the "over 18" crowd. Both these groups are interested in playing water polo as opposed to "training" for water polo. That is what I want to talk about, the difference and how it impacts sport development.

Normally we only offer age group sport in our club 12U, 14U, 16U, 18U and then individual training for older carded or national team players who need structured practice. This is an athlete group that trains as part of a routine, usually a family routine, and it is part of growing up - character, personality and physical development. Most often it is a parent that starts kids in a sport activity but then it is usually a child that decides that they want to be competitive and push themselves. This cycle involves discipline and the routine of daily (or very regular) training.

Competition is crucial to this competitive development but it can take the form of drills, scrimmages and structured games or tests that have athletes in competition with themselves or others. Game play is part of the equation but not the only part, or even the main part.

The reason we had many older players at the pool tonight is that we have allowed them to join our "Open" entry in this weeks Bushido Invitational. That is the reason why older, casual players practice, to play GAMES against other teams. They are not satisfied with training for development of strength, skill or character, they want to use the tools they already have. This means practice enough to play a game without having their body betray their mind and it's water polo knowledge.

I wanted the older or returning players to join us for 2 reasons. One was to push the existing players, offer them alternative challenges at some practices and scrimmages. The other was that I am planting the seed for a competitive league next season 2010-11. I am working with Saskatchewan to develop a Prairie League for next season that has a Men's and Women's division with regular games against a variety of components. This will allow our competitive 18U players to play knowledgable opponents that they do not practice with each day or play each tournament. Having such a league will allow me to keep older players active on a big team while the younger players are never without a regular match during the season.

Without a league or a regular set of games the casual players would never play. They don't mind some training but it has to have a purpose that includes tough matches. This is why so many players drop out of the sport in Canada by the age of 18, events are all focused on youth unless you play for a National Team. We have seen that Water Polo Canada has little interest in domestic water polo competition beyond hosting a national championship so we know that provinces must do all the planning themselves.

I will go into much more detail about these leagues when they have a bit more structure but Cyril, in Regina, and I are on exactly the same page with this project. We know that our 18U teams can play with Senior teams and that we instantly have 4 men's teams and 4 women's teams with our programs working together. If we can count on participation from Neptunes and Saskatoon clubs we could have 6 or 7 teams in each gender the first year. We have found that we can not have viable senior leagues in our own provinces so the logical step is to work together and that is always easy if you have a partner with similar goals and perspective.

Teaching and Learning

2009-12-16T23:54:00.000-06:00

I have been hearing quite a bit about "learning" the past little while as my wife has been completing her Masters thesis in Education (Language and Learning). That process is deep immersion and she often has to verbalize things she is writing about to help unload and shift focus to other mundane lifestyle things. My job is to listen and support but there are also times when a little light goes on when she mentions something about teaching or childhood learning, and it hits close to things I am thinking or dealing with as a coach.

This past weekend I watched some local school league games that I was not part of directly but that included many of my club athletes divided on several school squads. One thing I watched for was how Middle Years schools divided teams when they had 2 entries in the league. This "2 team" situation was allowed due to large numbers of interested players and no limit on participation. I took note of how the schools divided players since I had coached my sons school teams when they were younger and I had a specific way of splitting up students to make sure the focus of each team was right for the participants ie appropriate learning for all.

One of these Middle Years schools divided the players equally, or perhaps randomly and that ended up equal. They played each other in a semi final that went through overtime and to a shoot out. It was of great interest to me to watch these teams as I had half a dozen club players involved on these teams. They were split between the squads and this meant that players with 6 years club experience were on a team, in the water together, with kids who were learning to swim. Imagine how different their focus and expectations would have been all season and imagine trying to set a team objective other than "pass it to the kid who knows what to do with the ball".

What I saw was the same chaos at year end that I had seen early in the season. Teams had not learned much about what to do but had improved in their ability to find the star and try to get them the ball. My approach would have been different, and has been when faced with that situation in years past. I would have put the club players on the same team, with strong competitive students who wanted to learn from them. Then the focus could have been learning to play off the strengths and skills of each other. I would have encouraged each non-expert to find a way that they could use the skilled players to give them space, or get them the ball or set them up in front of the net for high percentage shots. As the season progressed they could have set some team goals based on what they had learned as a group.

Following that model I would have then had a squad of complete novices as a second team. They could learn skills from the stronger players at practice and focus on applying them in games. They could be subbed in during a game in lines, playing as a unit for the whole game and getting used to helping each other with correct passes, helping the ball, switching on defense etc. The focus could have been on their group improvement each week.

I think when teams are divided equally in a league like that we see some polarization that is not needed. Everyone has different needs and nobody has them met to the fullest potential. I would much rather those kids had structure that meant a competitive player could take the 3 month school introduction to water polo and turn it into a foundation for club play year-round. The non competitive players could then take their interest to a high school co-ed program and into a non threatening Sport-for-Life stream. The only way this string of acivities will happen is with integration of programs and new partnerships that are not really welcomed right now as school leagues see clubs as self interested rather than as strategic partners. We try to change that by supplying many of the school coaches from our athlete ranks, and volunteers from our parent group, but it is a slow process.

Mini Clinic

2009-12-02T00:07:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-25T23:35:00.000-06:00

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

2009-10-30T23:45:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-27T23:37:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-21T16:10:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-17T22:16:00.000-05:00

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.

Water Polo Canada Leadership Summit

2009-09-15T15:09:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I was in Montreal to attend the 2009 Leadership Summit put on by Water Polo Canada. I was pleasantly surprised. There were interesting presentations by both national head coaches, Dragan and Pat and a very appropriate strength session by Alain Delorme. These sessions were very different but offered direction and purpose in their domain. I will write about some of the things we discussed over the weekend in this blog.

The place I will start is with Dragan and his primary message to coaches, "think about what you are asking athletes to do and how it is connected to the game they will play". That is not a quote, it was an underlying theme in each presentation he was leading. The reason I start with this area is because Dragan was asking coaches to change practice structure, alter what they had been taught, use new research to guide drills. That is EXACTLY what Mike Reid and I have been saying and doing (and writing about) for well over a decade so I loved to hear that come from the top of the coaching food-chain.

Of course, most coaches probably think they design practices like that but that is just not true. For example, at the Leadership Summit there were still coaches talking about doing an "aerobic base" at the beginning of a season, as if that were sound physiological practice. Dragan acknowledged that he does not do "aerobic training" on it's own ie swim-sets, only as part of games and drills. The "base" for water polo is not aerobic as that would imply that the energy system used in a game is primarily aerobic. It is NOT! I have had this discussion with athletes so many times over the years it was nice to have somebody else standing in front of people taking the blank stares when that information was presented. The primary focus of all training must be anaerobic endurance and if done properly that will also improve aerobic capacity. But, Mike Reid writes about this on the Water Polo Planet website and his Water Polo Strength blog so I won't dwell on it here.

Another thing Dragan talked about was the type of swimming being done ie head up vs head down. He stressed the role of head up swimming in the training centre workouts and how he is changing how the young men there are swimming on a daily basis. This was great to hear as club coaches need to send players to the National Team with the skills they will use when they arrive. There is one caution I wish he had given coaches though and will mention it here as it is a vital piece of the LTAD framework we have embraced.

Not all players can be developed as the men at the National Team level are. Skills must be taught in clubs but there is not too much complex tactical information given to youth. Rather, in clubs we focus on developing physical literacy in athletes as they grow. That means some age groups will do aerobic drills because that is what their developmental physiology is able to accept. We also need to develop many swim strokes, even if they are not used in a game the way head up front crawl is. So, while we emphasize swimming head up we also teach efficient movement with breaststroke, head down free, butterfly etc. These are the building blocks of physical literacy and help with muscular balance and flexibility by not developing a body that is too specialized too early.

I will watch with interest this season as some coaches try to follow the challenge that Dragan presented. Some will nail it, others will stumble.

Back to Routine

2009-09-02T21:39:00.000-05:00

I am finally getting back into a water polo routine that involves daily computer use and coaching. The past few months when planning and coaching I have been in a remote rural setting that did not allow for internet blogging. Too bad, there were some great things happening with Bushido players, former Bushido players and Canadian players internationally.

Serena Bredin, who is the backbone of the University or Hawaii NCAA defense, helped Canada to a solid performance at the FISU games. This was a team that was only together a short time and that had not played together so all their success was worthy of recognition. It was also fun for Serena as she got to play with some UofH team mates who now have another level of common experience to build on in 2010. She also got to play with Coach Toth for the first time and it was really good for her to have a former pro goalie as a leader at this point in her career.

Keeping pace with Serena were Shae Fournier and Breda Vosters who played on our National Junior Team at the Junior Worlds in Russia. The team never found its rhythm and finished out of the medals so that depressed them with all their skill and hope. Our girls did well enough as individuals finishing with the 2nd and 3rd most goals in the event on the Canadian team. I know, it's not all about goals, but they showed they are at a world class level and can bring performance even when the team is not firing on all cylinders.

Liz & Shae Sitting Beside Coach Beeb

A curious thing that not many people may know is that the leading scorers for Canada at the World Championships, Liz Henry and Shae Fournier, first played on a team together at the 2006 Alberta Open in Calgary where they won a Silver Medal in the 14&U division. Liz was loaned to Bushido when her club was not able to field teams in all categories. I wonder if they remember anything about that weekend?

I'll blog more now that I can, be patient, there will be science, history, opinion and whatever else I am compelled to share.

Season Winds Down

2009-06-09T21:37:00.000-05:00

The current club season in Canada is now winding down and plans are in place for summer camps and National Teams. I will have some down time before coming back with a vengeance in the fall, full of revised programming plans for all ages.

This summer we launch a new initiative in cooperation with the University of Manitoba where we take our successful summer camp model and help deliver it to a wider audience through a major institution. This may help us establish the UofM pool as a stand alone satellite program for our 12&U and 14&U teams in years to come. That is the goal, develop interest in camps at a young age, carry it through to a winter age group "foundations" program, stream it to school leagues (casual) or Bushido teams (competitive) and then back to the UofM as students and potential Mini-U instructors.

That goes hand in hand with a new Coach Mentorship Program I am developing to help bring a rural Manitoba program into the water polo community. That follows on our initiative this past season to hold games outside Winnipeg by hosting Saskatchewan teams in Brandon. That circuit will repeat this fall, maybe more than once, and by the following year we expect to add a rural Manitoba club to mirror the rural Saskatchewan teams.

Ideally these growth plans would be coordinated through the provincial association but that is not possible in Manitoba right now. There is a polarization of the provincial group that has it focussed on the needs of a single club, helping them understand the sport rules, policy and structure, finding them pool time, arranging teams for them to play with in other provinces, hosting events for them to play in etc. So, even when it seems nothing constructive is happening that is not the case. There is lots going on behind the scenes.

We are also building a new, vibrant, generation of coaches within our club. Next year we will introduce 4 or 5 new coaches who all bring different qualities that are going to motivate players in key ways. Some of these coaches are still players and will be mentored the way Breda was the past few seasons. Shae is already excited to give some very specific hands-on guidance to up and coming Centre forwards and Carson and Sandra are both ready to share knowledge and experience with young goalies. They will help bring new perspective to the coaching ranks and Heather and I will be pushing them hard to get as much out of them as we can.

For those that have wondered about what is happening with our National Team athletes I can give you a partial update. Serena Bredin has been named to the FISU games team and is training in Montreal as they prepare for the summer event in Serbia. Breda and Shae are both in Montreal with the Jr National Team preparing to help Canada make a serious challenge for a podium finish at the World Junior Championships in Siberia. Brendan and Carson Domoney are both still waiting to hear if they are selected to play with the Jr National Men's Team this summer. Brendan is also in Calgary training for a spot on the Men's FISU games team so he has opportunities on 2 squads that he is waiting to hear about. Carson is also a leading contender for the 16&U Boys team as a goalie.

We don't know when decisions are made for those boys teams. We do know that both the Domoneys will be playing in California with the SET club in major events if there are not solid National Team options presented to them here.

There is lots of positive stuff going on. Sorry if the recent Blogs were infrequent and sometimes dealing with negative issues that kept being thrown at us on the pool deck or in the board room. There won't be too much negative going on the next few months so any Blog entry should be positive.

Referee and Me

2009-05-18T22:28:00.001-05:00

This past weekend we hosted the largest national championship in the 103 year history of Canadian water polo finals. It was 2 categories, 18&U men and 18&U women, held at Pan Am pool, using 2 tanks 25m x 20m.

The event was amazing, no issues of protest or violence, no minor official shortages or problems, no coaches yelling at the bench, none of the usual stumbling blocks at these sorts of events. This was a long weekend in Winnipeg, a traditional date to go and open cottages, so it was really huge that this was pulled off so easily.

There was one referee issue that really annoyed me though. There was a ref who really should not have been there, a guy that NO team wants at any event, ever. He has a strong negative history with our club and it shows up every time he referees us. Above is a picture of the kick-out board the first time he refereed our girls team. It shows 15 major fouls for us against 8 for the other team. That can happen, sure, but what tells the story is the game by game stats. He refereed a second game and it happened again, we were excluded twice for every opponent exclusion. That stands out since the 3 games he did not referee had us with the same number of fouls, or close, to our opponent.

That bias should never exist at this level. I am going to make some effort to ensure that he stops being sent to events outside his province as he gets too many people upset and plays too great a role in influencing game outcomes over the players themselves. I won't use his name as that is not what this blog is about. But I will say that everyone involved knows exactly who the ref is. The majority of refs, who did a great job all weekend, are not the issue!

The dialogue about referees and bias can go on forever. I don't want to do that here as it is best done with data, hard data, from game stats and I will let the referees do that themselves. Peer review is the best method to process this but once in awhile coaches have to vent so I touch on that here.

Ignorance is not bliss

2009-05-05T23:01:00.000-05:00

What is the weakness that exists in people to allow them to feel better about themselves when they belittle others, is it insecurity? This practice has always been something that annoyed me and it was one of the things that Darko and I realized we shared as a common viewpoint soon after we met. These people have no place in sport. If you want to feel good about yourself then do something that can be appreciated and measured as a contribution; don't just put down others. This is important for my blog because Manitoba Water Polo is full of people who do nothing but never stop undermining those of us who are producing national team players, pro's and NCAA scholarship athletes.

I mention this now because of something I heard the other day about me, as a coach. It was a comment that a stranger made to someone that knows me pretty well. The basic statement I am referring to was that I was a coach she wanted to avoid since I had a "win at all costs" attitude. When I was younger this would have made me quite angry since I would have wanted to know what I did to earn that reputation from someone I had never met. Now it makes me smile before I get upset as I know it is based on ignorance and gossip by others who are insecure.

In this instance it was funny because it came from a parent with a child in another club that is recreational. When we were supposed to play a Provincial Championship with that club at the 14&U level this spring they refused to play girl vs girl and boy vs boy with their teams because they could not compete. Since we train all year as separate genders I was not prepared to combine my 2 teams into 1 co-ed group even though I knew it would result in a huge lopsided win, just like all our other teams. Instead of playing a championship I offered a series of "friendly" games with their co-ed team playing our girls and then our boys. I had a couple dozen players playing, all different levels and experience; they had 9 or 10 players, mostly veterans, they wouldn't let new, inexperienced, players play.

The games were all close, a tie for the boys and a 1 goal loss for our girls vs a team with the strongest 3 or 4 of each gender from the other club. They stacked their team to win, I kept mixed abilities together to develop 2 teams and 2 genders on a plan toward future growth and development. A player on that co-ed team was the child of the parent who said I have a "win at all cost" attitude. I guess people see what they want or, in this case, don't see what is there before them.

If this person had taken the time to meet me and talk to me they would learn what I am about, what I value. They'd learn things like I coach a young woman with Cystic Fibrosis, a 16 year old that I have coached for many, many years. And she is a starter on my teams at every stage, and will remain so as long as she keeps playing. She's a good water polo player but she will never be world class, her lungs will not allow it. However I value her contribution to our team so she will keep being a major part of it even if she sometimes "runs out of gas" in the middle of a counter attack. Certainly that is not something that is in any way related to "winning at all costs" and it does nobody any good to ignore reality in order to create fiction about what I value or teach.

If you are a person who likes to judge others but not to meet them or talk to them then you are not doing anyone any favours. Take time to understand what you believe and where the beliefs come from. Consider the bias of the people who tell you things to prevent you from forming your own opinion. If you are a parent of a child in sport you are not only hurting your own kid by being uninformed about coaches, philosophies and values - you are also damaging sport with uninformed opinions.

PS I don't know any athlete that has ever thrown a water polo ball at a net and thought "I hope I miss" or started a game thinking "I hope we lose this game". No, everyone loves to win, it is more fun than the alternative. I love to win too, it's just not why I coach, it's a product of a successful program. Usually the ones who focus on the winning of others are the people who never win themselves.

Exercise and the Brain

2009-04-27T22:57:00.000-05:00

Being a coach, who writes a coaching blog, I felt I had to post a link to this CBC video clip about exercise and the brain.

The link probably will not work from "Blogger" so you may have to cut & paste the address in your browser address bar.

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/brain_gains/brain_gains_2.html

NCAA

2009-04-27T20:52:00.000-05:00

Congratulations to Serena Bredin for helping Hawaii qualify for the NCAA Championships in May. Hawaii was awarded an "at large" berth based on their record against stronger teams in the league. There is a very good chance the team will place top 4 and that will be quite an achievement considering it is the best league in the world for women's water polo.

Professionalism

2009-03-26T12:16:00.000-05:00

I want to deal briefly with professionalism in coaching and why it is fundamentally different than volunteerism. This is important for several reasons, one being that it is how I make my living, but I am discussing it today because of how it shapes Water Polo in Manitoba.

When someone accepts a professional coaching role it involves responsibility. It is a "the buck stops here" kind of responsibility that means you can't hide from it. This is very different from a volunteer coach who can drop responsibility and have little consequence. When most sport in Canada was run by volunteer coaches the difference between these two leadership functions was less obvious. At that time people viewed being paid to coach as a soft, luxury filled, lifestyle. Non professionals viewed jobs in coaching as being paid to do what they did for fun. But the roles are not the same, not even close.

An example of this is "obligation to attend" where a volunteer coach can say that their work ie accounting, teaching, bus driving, will not allow them to be at practice. A professional coach can't use this excuse to avoid leadership and their athletes know that they will see the same face leading every session all season as they pursue a common goal.

Another difference professionals must accept is that the hours needed to provide adequate training are "determined by program not personal availability". This is a huge issue for us in Canada as we make the change to LTAD program models. There is no way that clubs across this country will be able to provide adequate programming for athletes from 10-25 years of age who train 6-12 times per week with a few volunteers. It is foolish to contemplate that and as teenage athletes move their training hours closer to their weekly educational hours we can see why coaching is needed to be delivered professionally.

One problem we see here that is facilitated by volunteerism is "lack of responsibility for decisions". I work with a club that has professional leadership and coaches have clear authority to present plans for annual training and then obligate teams to attend events, play in leagues, go to camps etc. When the club geographically nearest to us has volunteer leaders we can see that a meeting where we agree on competition or training can have the program fail at time of delivery because the coach who agreed to it did not have authority to make decisions. This happens every year, over and over. Our local clubs have a dialogue, agree, then it all falls apart on delivery because some parent along the line, who has equal authority for program decisions, over rules a volunteer coach with the other club.

That different style of authority is the root of the Manitoba problems in high performance programming. Families that begin in a volunteer lead club that does not mandate training more than 2 or 3 times per week have a very hard time accepting that players need to train more than 5x week as they get older and that this requires trained professionals for leadership. This is really important to me now as I am planning the transition for when I move out of the main professional leadership role in Manitoba. I want there to be an expectation that this province will continue to be lead by a professional coach but there is very strong opposition to that from the Neptunes members.

That opposition is important because in the 16 years that I have coached Bushido professionally there has never been 1 penny contributed to my earnings from Manitoba Water Polo or Sport Manitoba. There have been carded national team athletes from my programs since the beginning but the MWPA has never connected that to my coaching and linked it to the grants available for high performance coaches. So, money has been available to pay coaches from government sources in Manitoba but only through the Provincial Sport Organization. That never comes our way since there is no recognition that professional coaching and high performance training are valued in the community. Hopefully I will see that change before I retire.

Pre Game Team Cheer

2009-03-16T12:58:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I witnessed something quite remarkable at the Alberta Open Water Polo tournament in Calgary. It was not an event or a performance by a player, it was a psychological change that manifested itself in a team cheer. I will explain more.

The normal pre-game activities of our teams will always come to a conclusion with a team cheer, at poolside, right before the players line up to play. That is not unusual, most teams do that. Also not unusual is the type of cheer that we normally hear; a loud, intimidating scream. Something that says to the other team that they better watch out, we are ready to go. It is an outward sign of aggression to a large degree and a small sign of unity at the team level. After all, anyone can be taught to scream with a group like everyone else.

What I saw that was so different was our Youth Men taking their aggressive cheer and turning it into a quiet, introspective exercise that was a sign of unity. These hormonal teenage boys decided to touch fingers in a circle and very quietly say "Bushido" in a hushed tone. It could only be heard by those in the group or people standing right near our bench. Of course this turns the purpose of the cheer upside down, it makes the boys feel like they are talking to one another, rest of the world be damned. If you know these guys you will understand how very odd that is since they are quite often "in your face" guys.

That change in pre-game or quarter break "cheering" happened to coincide exactly with the change in the boys performance. They took their considerable skill and focussed it for a full 4 quarters to beat a very solid team from Fraser Valley. That team was between them and the medal round at the tournament so it was the right time to change their ways.

I missed the first time they did the cheer as I was coaching the 12&U team at the same time. When I first saw this during the second half I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I didn't know how it came to be. I asked Heather if it was her idea and she just laughed and said no. There is no doubt that having a woman coach influenced the boys a little bit, opened them to the possibility that a change to the way we have done things would be ok.

What I am curious about, and will study very closely the next little while, is the influence a female coach has on boys confidence. The boys skill level did not increase this weekend, what changed was an application of skills they have carried with them for some time. Exactly why they found the confidence to be different and play as a group against bigger, stronger opponents is very interesting. This is what the different cheer has caused me to review, how did Coach Heather get these long-time players to become the best generation of male age group boys from Bushido? How did they change the pattern of under achievement we have carried so long?

Say Much with Few Words

2009-03-07T00:52:00.000-06:00

A little while ago I was asked a question by a national coach, a guy who has been to the Olympics, a person who gives water polo pretty much all of his attention each day. What he asked was "should an athlete fit a program or should the program fit the athletes?" That might not seem like it has much to it, you believe one or the other and it's no big deal. But that is not what I heard in the question.

What I heard were the problems facing Water Polo in Canada right now put into a single question. National team programs that are geared to international success MUST be designed for that success. Meaning, of course, that athletes should fit the program. This is not how we have traditionally developed teams. Past success has come from coaches assembling the best players and designing a system for the team that uses their skills and abilities to greatest advantage. That never helped our men succeed and it only helped our women succeed when European countries did not put a priority on the women's game with a national system.

Now we have the organizational maturity to see that the planning must be long range, the skills must be foundational, the players must fit the design and have no serious flaws. This brings us back to the LTAD and how it is helping deal with this reality. But, LTAD is complicated, it is not understood by many and it is hard to summarize for people not familiar with a sport culture. That is why one sentence said so much to me, it is a way to explain what changes are coming in the sport.

If we look at the success over generations by the Hungarian and Yugoslavian/Serbian/Croatian/Montenegran teams, and the rapid success of the Chinese, we see recognizable systems. Players come and go but the systems are the root of the success. This is where we are going too and it was great to hear that question come from a coach leader who is trying to get us on that path and keep us there for generations.

Leadership

2009-03-06T13:48:00.000-06:00

I have the unique opportunity to talk to many people about every aspect of amateur sport. This involves discussion on development of physical literacy and character in young children all the way up to specific tactics used by national teams in major events.

Sometimes I hear things that resonate with me, sometimes I hear nonsense. It's all part of the big picture and navigating through theory, science and experience is what coaching is about. This week I heard something that I thought I would share because it speaks to a key thing that coaches often value - character. This is from the parent of an athlete I coach.

"The one thing I am usually struck by is that world class athletes in amateur sport are not prima donnas. Those who are selfish and out for themselves always get exposed for who they are. They don't become heroes."

I post this here because it might help others understand what it is they so often see in young athletes that sets them apart from pros with big 8 figure contracts. It also explains why coaches seem to have more time and patience for some players over others.

Time invested by a coach in other people multiplies its impact if the person being guided is apt to positively share that experience and knowledge with others down the line. This is a key point of my program design and why I always have mentor relationships in the training environment. Oddly enough I had that exact mentor dialogue with two promising young athletes on deck this week too.

One is a female that is being pushed in so many directions I wanted to remind her that there was also a bit of "pulling" that she could do to feel more connected to others. She is bright and understood exactly what I was saying. The other is a young man who others already look up to but who has not defined his leadership yet. I am helping him find a way to give as much to younger players as he genuinley wants but does not have the vehicle to do so yet.

Funny how these things that I deal with on the deck are also in the minds of parents in the stands at exactly the same time.

Frank Dialogue

2009-02-20T23:56:00.000-06:00

Someone observed today that my blog lately has been quite blunt. There is a frank dialogue that openly states differences in the Manitoba clubs in a way that is usually danced around carefully. They wanted to know why.

Well, it is pretty simple really. We have tried long enough to get clubs to work together on common goals and it is not going to happen (for reasons I touched on yesterday). I have also tried to work with the MWPA on this, hosted an open meeting with the community to talk about how LTAD was going to impact us. It didn't make any difference, we still have one club that does not have an identity, won't embrace it's strengths and won't move out of the way of progress.

That last point is why I am being a bit more open in the recent comments about working in partnership. I am hoping that enough people have now seen that there is no partnership in long term development; we are on our own to go down this path. That is a big, big point to make as it means decisions have to start being directed at what we need, not how do we find a common program with someone else. And, importantly, when someone else is obstructing our efforts with chaos or nonsense we need to be quite blunt and say "get out of the way".

I have known for quite awhile this point had been reached but the LTAD is helping others see it much more quickly. Now parents can put their 10 year old in water polo in the fall and see by the spring how our programs go in a specific direction and that we are alone in Manitoba. They can see why I am trying to be in an Atom and Bantam league with 3 Saskatchewan clubs and why we have monthly games with 16&U and 18&U Team Sask squads. Next year when I am trying to get our satellite pools going they will see that we should not wait to see if the Neptunes want to play along or be part of the growth. Everyone will know we have to do it ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with any of that. We just have to start talking about our sport and it's programs in the right context. We have to see that if we are not following the Water Polo Canada LTAD much more closely as an organization that we will be lost forever. If the rest of Canada is running local leagues for 12&U and 14&U teams and having hundreds of kids playing in tiers, and the top ones practicing 6x week, we are behind already. In 1 short generation, no more than 4 years, the 14&U playing level will be where many 18&U Canadian clubs are now. The problem is that this level will only be in BC, Calgary, Edmonton, Hamilton, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. That will fit the short term plans of Dragan and Pat, both want more hours spent on standard skill at a younger age, but it won't help any of the clubs outside 6 or 7 of our biggest cities.

That is our challenge now, figure out what we want and set local programs toward those goals.

Provincial Championships & LTAD

2009-02-20T00:15:00.001-06:00

Not directly related to the topic, just nice Prairie athletes

My blog entry yesterday prompted a few people to talk in more detail with me about Provincial Championships today. Some coaches had an interesting conversation at the pool tonight when discussing another difference between clubs in Manitoba when we consider season ending games. We tend to look at a championship as a summary of something, an exercise in evaluation of progress made. Sometimes this involves looking at the win-loss outcome but slowly I am getting people to look away from that to the seasonal development.

By contrast, I always hear Neptune coaches talk about "getting games for the kids" as if that was the purpose of a championship. It is not, "getting games" is what the 10 month season is for, it is why we train athletes - to play games and measure growth or development. I don't want to say the other coaches are wrong, their perspective was common in Canada for a long, long time. It is just that sport evolution does not come from grass roots volunteers in Active for Life endeavors, it comes from professionals in comprehensive programs. So, we see things from a different perspective.

Last year I sat with the Head Coach of the Neptunes and talked about having 12&U and 14&U leagues this year with specific growth targets for each club. This would have involved developing programs in new neighbourhood pools (like we have at UofM) and bringing the kids together often for local games. This would have been a learning league where outcomes were measured against program goals. The main reason it did not happen, in spite of both head coaches agreeing it was needed, is that only Bushido had goals against which outcomes could be measured. Without these goals we could not convince Neptune leaders to see where this type of league could go.

What I had wanted was a 14&U league with a wide range of skills in 2008-09; players like Jaelyn and Erik playing with 1st year athletes. This would have been social for the very experienced players and they would have seen fun in the growth of the sport they love. Then, with the fun and enthusiasm generated, we would have had a broader base to deal with in 2009-10. That would have allowed us to remove the top 14&U players and have them play in a 16&U league, leaving the 14&U league to grow bigger again as a unified growth vehicle. I could see that but could not help others from another system see what we were talking about.

This type of league structure would really help growth and it would help every level of the sport, not just the entry. Having a broader base would allow the early maturing athletes to play up "age groups" which are not really about chronology in an LTAD matrix. That aspect of chronological age vs developmental age is something that people have trouble with. They can't see how we can use LTAD and develop athletes with a less rigid age group ie play according to actual development. Well, the easy answer is the early developers are removed from an age group and play up with older players. Once in awhile there will be a very late developer who could justifiably be held back to a younger age but this is not a central issue. More often than not these would be athletes who are too small for the physical aspect of water polo and should be doing a different sport. They will often have technical skills to allow them to play with "larger" players but the size makes parents want them held back for safety.

LTAD is supposed to be a blueprint for the sport growth and it is great to see how it is being used properly in Ontario. I'll discuss it whenever anyone wants, just let me know. Today I just wanted to follow up with some folks who have mentioned this the past few days.

Planning without Partners

2009-02-18T23:22:00.001-06:00

If you are a songwriter or an author you might have some success looking at the world, reflecting and then putting thoughts to paper to share with others. If you develop a sport or a team it is pretty much impossible to do so without partners. Nobody plays alone for long.

The reason I am thinking about this today is I am looking at the competitions for the balance of the season and one of the gaps, or undetermined events, is a Provincial Championship in Manitoba. We chose a date last spring and competition categories and format were agreed on 3 years ago. What is missing is a team to play in most categories.

It's no problem for us to get people to agree that Seniors, Juniors and Masters from the other club in Manitoba can play against our 18&U teams, everyone is ok with that. After that it is very difficult to find game play since Bushido is developing athletes according to the LTAD framework with Technical Foundations, Competitive Foundations and then the more advanced training and competition levels. The Neptunes are offering FUNdamentals and Active for Life programs but under the label of Competitive ones. This is not always obvious to observers but it becomes clear when we sit down to plan events.

The Water Polo Canada LTAD documents are pretty clear but too often they are referenced improperly. For example the Master LTAD document we use nationally says "Combining male and female competition and training is not optimal after approximately 10 years of age..." But, in Manitoba I hear people say that LTAD suggests that genders play together at the 14&U level and, this is how the Neptunes want to play 12&U and 14&U Provincial Championships. That is just a simple contradiction of the sport science and all developmental research. So, we don't have common ground for teams to play and people tend to look at that as lack of cooperation. But, we can't cooperate when comparing apples to oranges.

Ontario deals with this in a way that we can't without considerable growth here. They tier events and allow Active for Life stream players to play a AA tier co-ed level with special rules. Their AAA play is still gender specific, for sure, and the top level of championship in that province for 14&U is boy and girl playing apart. Their AA rules limit players to be able to play only half a game in net (no specialized goalie), to not allow zone defenses, to prevent any holding away from the ball etc. This, clearly, is not a level for the 6 Bantam aged athletes that Bushido has invited to attend 16&U national championships. It sounds much more like our co-ed Middle Years school league.

Ideally we would ask 14&U players who train in a Competitive stream to play up on 16&U teams and not be part of 14&U programs. But, we can't grow programs without games so removing the 14&U players from those age specific teams would cut their game opportunities regionally by 50%. It might also mean there are no 14&U programs here as the numbers are so low in total registration as to not support 2 tiers. I'd like to introduce these concepts (tiered leagues) to this province but my plans have been shut down by our "partner" every time I propose them so we never grow in that direction together.

We are still trying to figure out how to have a 14&U championship between 2 clubs who train in the same city and have 14&U programs but only 1 of us can field teams for both boys and girls. Of course, if we were to combine into 1 co-ed group we would field a team that was unchallenged so there is no point in doing that. If we took the strongest players out and just had the beginners or 2x week kids play then the Neptunes wouldn't have a team. They only play if they can wrap a team around the 14&U female goalie who is an early maturer and has played for 3 or 4 years and trains every day of the week with women. We can't come up with a format that gives a meaningful game but has rules on age or experience.

Maybe if the Neptunes had agreed to a fall league with us it would have created a 5 vs 5 14&U division for both boys and girls or a coed tiered division in 2008-09 that was designed to grow into a gender specific league in 2009-2010. If we had a plan it would be possible to overcome many obstacles but as long as we are not talking the same language we won't make progress. Too bad.

Kellogg's, take a little heat yourself

2009-02-09T13:12:00.000-06:00

Last week I had some fun on Facebook poking at the Michael Phelps bong story. This tale has now spun a few tantalizing sidebars that I want to use to breach the subject of nutrition and athlete health.

Today I read that Kellogg's dropped Phelps as a spokesperson because his actions were "inconsistent" with their corporate image. That made me wonder, "what is the corporate image"?

Should we immediately think of salmonella and tainted cookies when we hear Kellogg? Because they have done massive food recalls at least twice already this year. One was today when it acknowledged the link between salmonella and "Keebler Soft Batch Homestyle Chocolate Chunk Cookies". Talk about "making a mistake" and "letting down their fans". Phelps seems consistent with corporate image here because he gets roasted for a DUI after one Olympics (2004) then roasted for pot after the next (2008). What part of that is unlike Kellogg's repeated circulation of food that will kill?

Truth be told, when I think of Kellogg's I think of childhood obesity first. I fully understand kids eat the worst kind of sugar laced breakfast every day because it is marketed by companies like Kellogg's. Not just a subtle kind of marketing but full-on, multi-million dollar mind freeze marketing. It's marketing presented with a slick message that has the illusion of so much authority that you would be insane to question it. The kind that makes families think that not having sugar cereal on the table is "weird" or wrong in some way.

When I talk of sugar cereal I am not just referring to Frosted Flakes either. Here is the product ingredient list for "Special K" that supposed diet and lifestyle cereal (check out the 3rd & 6th most prominent ingredients);

Ingredients: Contains rice, wheat gluten, sugar, defatted wheat germ, salt, high fructose corn syrup, dried whey, malt flavoring, calcium caseinate, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), alpha tocopherol acetate (vitamin E), reduced iron, niacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin (vitamin B2), thiamin hydrochloride (vitamin B1), vitamin A palmitate, folic acid and vitamin B12. To maintain quality, BHT has been added to the packaging.

As nutrition expert Mike Reid says "if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it".

But, if you don't buy the link to childhood obesity with Kellogg's processed foods because you just think kids are not "active enough" then maybe it's time to do some research into childhood diabetes as well. What role does processed food-in-a-box have to do with the amazing jump in childhood diabetes in North America in this generation? That is too much food science and nutrition detail for me to go into with a water polo coach blog.

So, ya, you can say that an Olympian like Phelps is not anywhere close to the image of Kellogg's as a company, but it has nothing to do with his apparent use of cannabis.

Sorry if you were looking for technical information on water polo today. I decided to deal with the "athlete machine" side of the sport instead.

California Dreamin

2009-02-06T15:29:00.000-06:00

This is an odd weekend for me as a coach. Here I am in Winnipeg, running regular weekly activities, preparing teams for their upcoming club events. But my focus is split as I also follow the play of Serena as she begins a tough weekend of games at Stanford with her Hawaii team in the NCAA. Then, just down the interstate from Stanford I have 2 boys playing in the Winterfest tournament in LA. Brendan and Carson are both playing with their CA buddies in the SET club. Carson will be a goalie on the team in the 18&u A division and Brendan will exchange bumps and bruises with the teams in the 18&U AA division.

It's hard to explain exactly why Bushido has 3 players/former players active in California this weekend. To help put it in perspective there are 4 categories of play in the boys 18&U age at Winterfest. 78 teams in total in that one age group (24 AA, 24 A, 19 BB and 11B), that is the attraction for the boys. Soooo many games, sooo much variety in skill and style. If every 18&U boys team in Canada played at 1 event it would not even be as big as 1 of the 18&U Categories at Winterfest.

Serena plays in the NCAA because she can play 40 high quality games in a 3 month season, while getting a free education. She plays at Hawaii because, well, it's Hawaii (and they have a great Canadian coach). It is hard to explain the feeling an athlete gets when they are surrounded by 100's of players with similar goals and ambitions in the sport they love. That is quite different than a practice at Pan Am with 6 or 7 players of your age.

That issue of teams, games and sport growth is not one I want to deal with here. I just want to promote a few players who are busy at a high level this week.

Specific Training, Part #2

2009-02-02T12:57:00.000-06:00

A little while ago I wrote about specific training, how it is related to goal based work. This was primarily directed at training gains - fitness, strength and skill development. But, there is another aspect of specific training that is also very often overlooked - that is tactical effort ie knowledge of scrimmage or game play.

In our club we play games, or use full court tactics, 1x per week for each age and gender. The balance of our training is directed to building the parts that are applied in a competitive team effort ie increase pass accuracy or shooting power and apply it in the weekly game. This means that the game day is completely focused on a competition. That is important as it puts a key emphasis on proper warm up and then on specific tactics. Every game we ask the teams to work on something specific to the opponent and teams for scrimmages are mixed in ways that allow tactical experimentation.

A funny thing happened last Saturday during our boys game (not HaHa funny, awkward funny). Our 16U boys were scrimmaging our 18U boys (with a few 14U add-ons) and the 16U boys were shutting down the older team pretty well. That is, until they stopped following coach instructions and started following the direction of the dominant 18U player. We had discussed specifically how to eliminate this dominant player (Brendan) and keep him out of the 18U offense. After he got too frustrated with his team he changed their tactics and that was a cue for the 16U boys to switch defense in response. When they did try to switch they were told to "play the same defense" by Brendan. Sure enough, they abandoned team objectives and blindly followed an opponent in their leadership.

That was a big turning point, not just because the team had abandoned what they were working on during their 1 weekly game. More importantly because when challenged on that departure from game plan they tried to justify their lack of team learning by saying they wanted to help Brendan show his team how to beat their defense. So, they were not focused on applying a team tactic according to an opponent but instead were focused on following an older team member when it hurt their game performance. When I explained how wrong that was the response was just "it's only a scrimmage, jeez what's the big deal?". Of course, the big deal was that they were working on tactics to eliminate Brendan from the 18U offense, not helping him beat their own team. Oddly enough, the 18U team has been working all season on not letting Brendan be the only one to lead the 18U team in the water so the 16U boys had ignored what we have been working on for months.

When the 18U team changed tactics, as we knew they would, the 16U team had a plan to counter it. They didn't follow the plan and further frustrate the older team, they gave up their united effort. Instead of the 18U going to the quarter break and getting instruction from Heather on what they had missed or done wrong, they went to the side feeling that they had figured out how to beat the 16U defense. In a real game the 18U team would never face an opponent that played the same defense no matter what they did on offense so the 18U had just taught themselves a false lesson, they created a situation in a practice game that they would never face in a real game.

That was a lesson in how NOT to train. Never create a practice that does not mirror a game. If you teach basic skill you do it away from a stressful, competitive setting. If you teach a skill under competitive pressure you do it in a training setting that isolates the pressure. Then, after that, you apply the skill in a game. The first game application is in a meaningless one, like a scrimmage, then a real one with a result that matters. That is what we are after, it is why we play games vs Team Sask every month pretty much all year. We are building on a foundation that the athletes are struggling to accept.

I hope that Saturday was a lesson learned, I know it was for some as they have already talked about the process. Others, we will have to see.

Milk

2009-01-28T14:55:00.000-06:00

Ok, odd title for a water polo coaches blog, I admit. However, it became apparent last night that I am now coaching many players from a younger generation that have not heard me talk to them enough about nutrition. One athlete actually went so far as to tell me I was feeding them conspiracy theories when I answered some questions about milk and how it has a negative impact on many people.

First of all, I am not going to tell anyone not to drink milk even though there is ample research to tell you why not to. I am also not going to tell you to drive within the speed limit, to not download movies or video from the internet, to not drink alcohol to the point of intoxication. Everyone can make their your own choices about lifestyle; I will just help with information that is current and applicable to athletes.

So, why am I saying that milk consumption is not necessary? Simple, we are one of the few cultures in the world that drink milk after infancy. We, in North America, are told we need milk for calcium as we apparently can't get enough from other dietary sources. We are told we need the calories and the nutrients. However, we have the highest dietary consumption of milk and the highest rates of osteoporosis and obesity in the world. Next time an authority (doctor, nutritionist) tells you that milk calcium is needed to prevent osteoporosis ask them to discuss that in more detail. Ask them what role exercise plays in osteoporosis (more or less important than milk) or if zinc is more or less important than calcium in that disorder. Ask them why cultures that do not drink milk have much lower rates of osteoporosis.

I don't want to dwell on this topic but I do want people to realize that Milk Marketing in North America shapes the image and consumption of that product. It places milk on a pedestal that it has not earned. The many calories from milk can easily be replaced by better sources of calcium, like green vegetables, sesame seeds and nuts. It never hurts to challenge existing patterns of behaviour and that includes food consumption.

Here is a really good place to start reading about milk if you have questions and are surprised to hear that it isn't a wonder food from heaven - http://veg.ca/content/view/139/110/.

I won't even begin to discuss chocolate milk and why the addition of refined sugar just takes milk from unadvised to harmful.

Choice, or lack thereof

2009-01-26T22:06:00.001-06:00

As the women's NCAA season gets underway I am thinking about the competition choices available to Canadians. Next year Breda will be at Cal, Brendan will be at a top 10 California school, training his butt off, and Serena will be a 3rd year starter at Hawaii. That seems good but only on the surface as it shows a disconnect with Water Polo in Canada.

I was asking one of my Cadet players today what grade she was in and she said "grade 10, you have me for 2 more years". It was said with a smile and an innocent voice. Heather, beside me on deck, had the same response as I did. Why just 2 more years? Why do Canadian players think the sport ends after high school when all around the world that is when serious water polo starts and national leagues are featuring their premier divisions? That's a big problem.

I am hoping that one day, before I leave the sport, there will be domestic choices for those beyond high school; some Intercollegiate leagues, club leagues etc. This will take a big, combined, effort but it is possible as we see parts of this emerging in Canada already (in Ontario at least).

Specific Training

2009-01-07T23:07:00.000-06:00

One of the things that I am finding difficult to deal with is the reluctance of athletes that I coach to follow sport science in training. There is still a great deal of "old school" training methodology in the water polo world and unfortunately much of this resides with the (Canadian) National Team as well. Too little emphasis is placed on specificity of training and too much time spent on generic direction to include a volume of work rather than a specific type of work that is goal oriented.

In December I had 2 national team athletes return from Montreal telling me that they had been directed to "swim more" by national coaches. My reaction was "more than what, how do they know what you do now" and "more of what, heading toward what goal"? It was odd that teenage athletes were told to increase swimming when their coach had not been consulted about how much they were already doing. This has happened before too.

That commentary is a set up, to deal with the conversation I had to process on Monday. One of my players insisted she had to swim "more" to get faster. That was frustrating because it is not a correct relationship between more and fast. The two can work in opposition if there is no plan and no goal. Young athletes need more volume in the water to develop specific aquatic physical literacy but once that is developed training must move to sport specific energy demands and strength requirements. And, to complicate this, there is no black and white distinction in water polo for these aspects of the sport. The requirements and parameters are different for children, teens, women and men so knowing what you are after is very important.

I am writing about this today because there is light at the end of the tunnel. Sport in Manitoba is actually putting money behind sport science now and I can access various grants (tiny ones) to do real research in water polo. This allows me to keep a close professional relationship with Mike Reid who is a strength and conditioning coach with loads of water polo experience. It also lets me keep close contact with Carolyn Taylor a biomechanics expert who has worked with us the past two years. She can help me direct work in specific areas while Mike can help me tweak things to be as precise as I need to be for energy and strength demands of the sport.

That science does not help the masses much since we have no land exercise space at the High Performance facility in Manitoba, but that is another story. What I am able to do is give specific feedback to high achieving athletes who are on National Teams or headed to the NCAA. Since I am likely to have 3 players at top 5 NCAA schools next year I am eager to help them in any way I can.

One of the things Mike is helping me with is to identify the mistraining that interferes with specific athlete perfomance at a high level. For instance, the random training that athletes do that can interfere with rest or recovery is mentioned so that I can help athletes replace that with added work that makes sense and is in harmony. To their credit, most of the players are welcoming when they get that support, even if they are not sure about "less is more".

I just hope I can get the next generation of coaches from Manitoba to see the important relationship between science and training before I retire and leave this place for a quiet rural life. If my recent conversations with Heather Carson are any indication I think we are headed in the right direction.

Leg Cramps

2008-12-23T12:39:00.001-06:00

I am on much needed holidays so what do I do, first thing? Update my work blog, go figure.

That's ok, I have a specific topic I wanted to cover as it seems to impact more athletes than I had first expected. Several club players have asked me about night cramps in their legs and what causes them. When the question came up last week it got an odd reaction as several players indicated having had these.

I gave some suggestions about increased water intake, more stretching after workouts and adding a little sea salt to the water for those that already hydrate well. There was discussion that this probably related to training and recovery too, that the muscles need time after effort to build, reshape, grow etc and this might be a part of the issue. But, being a professional coach presented with a physiological question I could not definitively answer, I looked further for more information.

Here is a link to a general discussion of the problem from the Mayo Clinic - http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/night-leg-cramps/AN00499# (this will not show up as a hyperlink in the blog so copy the address and post it to your web browser address line).
I provide this as it suggests that there is not a general answer to explain the cramping in all people. It does mention many of the same things I said to the athletes - exercise, water and potassium are possible factors.

So, if you are experiencing night cramps try to increase water intake and post-practice stretching first. Then, if the cramps persist, add a small amount of sea salt to the water when drinking (ie less than 1/2 teaspoon per litre) and possibly add a multi-vitamin with B-12 if your diet is not what I would suggest is healthy (my athletes know what that entails). That should take care of most of the night cramping I am hearing about at the pool, if there is someone with a serious cramping issue after these adjustments please let me know.

How Much Fun is Winning?

2008-12-15T14:08:00.000-06:00

2008 MWPA Middle Years "B Division Champs"

I had this photo sent to me today by a parent of a Middle Years school water polo player. It shows a very happy group of kids who have just won a game that determined the "B Division Provincial Champion" for Manitoba Middle Years school water polo. It made me think of many aspects of sport when I first saw it so I thought I would write a bit about those things here.

First of all, the look shows that these kids are happy. They proudly hold up a ribbon won. They are extra happy because their championship game went into overtime and then to a 2-round shootout to decide a winner. That's right, a participation based Middle Years co-ed league played overtime and had a shoot out to decide a winner. A shoot out, for pre-teens in a fun league? Yes, that is what I said. So, the next time you hear a league official from a school organization say that "it's not about winning, it's about fun" ask them to give their head a shake. The objective of the shoot out was to decide a "better" team not a team that had "more fun". And that is not wrong, I just want to point it out because I am going to talk a bit more about winning and competition to outline why this is so important and why it should be acknowledged.

The competitive aspect of this league is positive because it is a tiered format. That means the strongest teams are playing together away from the weaker teams. This allows weaker teams to play for a "B Division" crown in games that are close. They are fun BECAUSE they are competitive, not the other way around and that is the key to keeping games attractive to kids. Tiering is key tool when taking focus off winning. If all the schools were playing each other it would create hugely lopsided scores. This would place the emphasis on the losing and not the game play. If scores are close then teams are motivated to keep practicing and playing; wins and losses together make it interesting as kids learn both sides of that competitive experience.

The reason I thought of this when I saw the picture was that I had a frustrating weekend in Regina the past few days with our competitive teams. We took 4 teams to Regina; Cadet Boys, Cadet Girls, Youth Boys, Youth Girls. They played Team Saskatchewan twice on Saturday and once on Sunday. The team that had the poorest performance was the Cadet Girls and they were never really competitive with the other team. Why? Because there were only 8 players, simple. The 8 players means there is no competition for positions on the squad, everyone plays regardless of how they perform. The team has no games against squads that are close to them, such teams do not exist within 1000km, they either win big or lose big. So they don't learn to win in close games and have no idea of how to overcome a deficit or protect a lead. Mentally, they shut down when they are pushed and get behind.

Why did this team come to a point with no competition for spots? That is complicated but the simple answer is we lost a generation of players the past 3 years at the Bantam level; small group of girls, no games, no competition for their spots. It's not that we don't have great players, we certainly do. Jaelyn won swim-offs and scored several goals playing with the Youth team even though she is 13. Sarah Whitmore scored and played great defense as a Youth but was quiet and timid as a Cadet. Sarah Mutch scored and played well at 2m as a Youth even though she seldom got the ball at that position when playing Cadet. It is not the player skill that is an issue, it is the volume of players, competition for spots and local game reps that provide competitive learning that are all missing.

Vast, Frozen Prairie

This discussion brings me back to previous observations about the changes needed in Manitoba to develop the sport. The LTAD would welcome the tiering of games for kids 16 and under, it states that this is good. The problem is we can't have tiered competition with no partners developing the sport together. I could do this alone, with just 1 Winnipeg club, but it is not possible when there is a second club interfering with the projects and vision that is put out there by trained, experienced professionals. I would have hoped that this was obvious after the past couple of years of my reaching out to develop partnerships; I guess not though. The picture above shows what surrounds us and why we need to look for game solutions at home. The longer this goes unaddressed the colder and more isolated we become.

Captains From Bushido

2008-12-05T00:16:00.001-06:00

Breda and Darryl, National Team Captains

I forgot that I had this picture. It was uncovered in a purge of old files in my office today; good thing it didn't get tossed. This is Darryl Bourne and Breda Vosters, 2 very, very important members of Water Polo Canada National Teams and captains of squads that won big international medals. Darryl would hate this picture being used but he is a confident enough guy to know that I mean well and he is not losing any street cred with this youthful photo many years later.

The picture was taken in Calgary at the Lindsay Park Pool, before it was twinned and renamed Talisman Centre. I don't know the exact year but Breda looks about 9 so let's say it's 1999. If so, this would have been the March before Darryl lead team Canada to a thrilling come-from-behind bronze medal victory at the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg. It would also have been 9 years before Breda lead Canada to a Gold Medal at the 2008 Junior Pan Am Championships in Brasil.

It is very odd to me that Manitoba Water Polo has never acknowledged the contribution that Bushido made to the national teams with these amazing athletes and in these big wins. There certainly was no other major success they were dealing with could take their mind off this Provincial success story.

I am not one to overlook when athletes have success and who is by their side making contributions at the time. People may be surprised to hear that there is another person who is in the shadows playing a role in their athletic success but who will not get mentioned by anyone else. That person is Rich Corso, Head Coach of Cal Berkeley Women's Water Polo. Rich was the Canadian Senior Men's coach when Darryl made the transition from B team "young guy" to leader of a new Senior generation under a new coach. Coach Corso opened that door for Darryl to explode on a larger stage. It is a bit odd then when you consider where Breda has agreed to play NCAA water polo and take her next big step in the game, with Coach Corso at Berkeley. Talk about a small world.

LTAD and its Impact

2008-12-04T01:08:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday I spoke to the water polo community about the LTAD (Long Term Athlete Development) model that has been adopted by sport across Canada. This is a nice package that has charts and tables to give a broad audience a taste of what it covers. It also includes a complete package of data for coaches that helps pinpoint developmental stages of athletes and appropriate activities for those stages. It's great to have that all in one place and available for sport to use as a guide.

This is important to me as a coach because I have been a lone voice in Manitoba for many years, pushing for a distinction between participation based sport (Active for Life) and competitive sport. I have also been incorporating cross sport training for a long, long time. In fact, in the 1980's when Bushido was first starting, we once had a program called the "Summit Series" that had 3 levels of aquatic skills that came from Synchro, Water Polo and Speed Swimming. This was taught in camp settings with coaches from all 3 sports and developed aquatic physical literacy. Then, in the 90's I delivered a land based strength and flexibility program that combined Pilates and Yoga with various body weight exercises. People thought I was a bit nuts. I also used to drill into players minds that doing multiple sports at once had to be coordinated, missing one to attend another was not complimentary but harmful. Now I just smile when I read that multi sport activities should be coordinated by sports and land work for water sports is required.

But, that is not what I wanted to touch on. The LTAD is important to Manitoba Water Polo because it shows them what I was talking about the past 3 years as I have fought against having pool time taken away that I fought very hard for. This training time was awarded to water polo through my efforts for High Performance sport and it was being taken away from me by Manitoba Water Polo for "Active for Life" sport. Nobody understood why I said that the other club, practicing 2-3x week was not High Performance. Now we have a document that illustrates that very clearly and can be used to help distinguish what HP is and who has programs at that level. This 3rd party document will help take the political decision away from a provincial organization that is polarized by 2 clubs with different vision and program goals.

Maybe I am naive to think that a national sport change should be accepted by the province or that the MWPA board would see it as valuable to overlay the LTAD program variables on our clubs to see who fits where and what role they should have in our future. We'll see.

Give and Go Lesson

2008-12-01T16:01:00.000-06:00

Here is another video of our Atom league games played in Brandon a few weeks ago. It gives another lesson in basics that are applied from practice to game. We are teaching players to make a pass and follow it with movement. The instruction is also there to move toward the net when your team has the ball. To help drive this home for the little Atom players in Brandon I had them run a set play, Natalie would win the swim-off (one of the fastest 3 or 4 girls her age in Canada!), she would pass it back to Annika or Scott who would then look at Natalie attack the goal. The pass was made to her right shoulder if the defense was on the left - which always happened. She would accelerate and take the ball to the net to score.

This was a good teaching opportunity because Natalie had the speed to make this happen often. She also has the size and strength to make the ball handling and shooting a success most of the time. This happened 2 or 3 times in an early game which allowed Natalie, Scott and Annika to understand the process. All could handle it because we have taught "pass and go" and "pass to a moving target" many times. Once they knew the pattern they could repeat it and teach the other team members in future games, which they did.

The natural step from this was "if we can do this on a swim-off, why can't we do it all the time?" That was one of those situations where the athlete teaches themselves to apply something in scenario B after seeing it work in scenario A. That sort of applied knowledge is the most important, players have ownership of it. Hopefully we get a few competitive games close enough together that the kids can burn these lessons in to their heads for all time.

kakikouri

2008-12-01T00:54:00.000-06:00

Kakikouri Table

Here is a picture of the end portion of the Saturday Kids Festival. Some of the club parents decided it wouldn't be a complete party without something sweet to wrap it up. Normally I would not call attention to feeding kids sugar but this was different. Satoru and Sandie have a special device that is used to shave ice for a Japanese treat called "kakikouri". Since we don't see that every day it is worth a small mention here.

In the photo you can see the ice shaver that Glen is turning by hand to reduce a block into something similar to snow. Then the moms along the line top it with a bit of sweetened condensed milk and various flavour syrups. Yes, horrible sounding but kids were coming back for 3rds so it went over very well.

Just to confirm it was not all fun and sillyness, here is a video of kids actually doing some skill work, treading and jumping. I include it because, like the shaved ice, this camera was from Japan. It is a new metal camera that can go in the water without being put in a case. Carson was experimenting with it during the festival.

Goalie Lesson

2008-11-30T18:24:00.000-06:00

Today I was handed a DVD with short video clips of our recent Atom/Bantam league play with Saskatchewan in Brandon. I have only started to go through the various clips but had to post this one immediately. It is an excellent example of basic goalie skills and shows one of Canada's best young goalies as she demonstrates technique that will last a lifetime.

This is a 13 year old goalie, Claire, who has a sister playing goal in the NCAA (Hawaii). Claire shows the impact of proper basic technique while a player under pressure attacks the net with the ball. As they near the goal she raises her hands so that as the shooter turns and faces the goal there is an intimidating goalie with hands up. This presents an obstacle that has to be processed by the shooter, with defense on the shooters back. The result is loss of control and the ball comes free. This is where you see instinct that foreshadows great goalie potential; Claire instantly reads the distance to the ball, the proximity of the opponent, and sprints to make a steal.

That sounded like too much analysis of a 13 year old goalie, it's not. It reflects exactly what I seek at the Atom and Bantam level - transfer training to game play. Claire is growing and working on patterns as she builds size and strength. So, as she raises her hands she shows that she has processed that instruction and can apply it under pressure. Sprinting for the ball shows she has the correct idea of what to do and the confidence to do it. This is pure athletic development as it should be.

I love writing about this sort of positive competition result, not the game score, the performance. Next blog entry will be about the Atom team at this same Brandon event. It will include a video of Natalie scoring one of her several goals from a swim off and it shows a field player repeating lessons learned in training.

Festival Wrap up

2008-11-29T23:02:00.001-06:00

Shallow End Group

Tonight was the Fall Kids Festival for Bushido, second annual event. Whoa, what a turnout! Over 70 kids, mixed between 14& under in the deep end and younger, smaller ones in the shallow. I had been expecting about 50 new kids with the pre-event registrations but that swelled to over 70 with member friends being brought along.

I didn't think it was possible to have an Open House with too many participants but this sure maxed out the resources. Lots of age groups players in the water helping, and all the older coaches too. We could not even have considered this event without that athlete support. So THANK YOU to all those who helped.

Deep End Group

I had mentioned in an earlier post about some subtle changes that we hoped would turn tonight's visitors into future members. At the pool we got a few immediate registrations, a few still deciding between 1x or 2x practices and then another few memberships by email about an hour later. I imagine when I send out a summary email with some pictures later this week it will sway a few more.

With any luck we will have a big enough shallow end group to start some Flippaball each week and have a game that brings a smile to a bigger crowd each session. The Bantam teams are also swelling a bit so we will have better deep water scrimmages too.

I am going to get the Japanese name of that ice treat that we gave the kids at the end of the session and post a few pictures of that madness later.

Big Day

2008-11-29T12:37:00.000-06:00

Today is a big day for water polo in Winnipeg. This morning I was part of a presentation to the water polo community about LTAD (Long Term Athlete Development). I got to address how the Water Polo Canada LTAD framework will impact the sport on the deck and in our clubs. It was an interesting mix of participants.

I tried to be non-political and somewhat hopeful even knowing that our provincial structure will kill the sport if radical changes are not made soon. There continues to be (and always will be) a reluctance from the Neptune club to allow professional leadership and that is the sticking point for the inter-club dialogue. The LTAD nails that coffin shut for them.

I spoke today using a "Summary Framework Matrix" from the national LTAD documents. That is all that is needed for the casual observer to see where the sport is going. On that document it is very clearly laid out that practicing 3x week is part of the "Active for Life" stream once players are 12 years old. The "Competitive Stream" requires 5-8 practices per week after 12 years of age. If anyone from Manitoba takes that simple template and puts it over the 2 local clubs it is very clear Bushido = Competitive Stream, Neptunes = Active for Life. If we can just get everyone to calm down and except that we could quadruple our membership in 2 years as people focus on their strengths.

Tonight I will oversee a Kids Water Polo Festival at Pan Am, that is an introduction to club activities. Players 14& under and 10&u will get a picture of what we offer in terms of practice, skills, games and then be invited to join our entry level teams for the balance of the winter. We may even manage numbers for 3 atom teams at the Bushido Invitational by January. That would be the foundation for a winter league just like the one in Saskatchewan but without the travel.

Later in the week I will also detail our latest partnership in the development arena - we are branching out to help offer the sport in UofM's 2009 Mini U. That initiative will seed a regional Atom and Bantam team for our club league in 2009-10 as we try to make the program there more autonomous. Maybe we can even get students thinking about a senior team for a local league as well, or is that too naive? I will have details about that a bit later, with a long range plan for all to hear.

Conflict of Interest?

2008-11-26T23:23:00.001-06:00

While we are on the topic of the amazingly popular Kids Festival I will vent a bit about a conflict. As a full service, age-group club, we have a mandate to provide community access programs each year. I impose that mandate on the club as I see it being part of what we were established to do. That includes summer camps, Novice programs, school clinics and events like the Kids Festival. Most do not result in direct, immediate, registration jumps but do lead to positive community standing. This has indirect registration benefits that are seen over time.

That indirect, build upon a foundation, sort of growth is important for a club that is 100% self funded. We are the only high performance club in Canada, with the possible exception of Saanich Water Polo School, that is self funded. All other competitive clubs receive some sort of funding from government, direct or via Bingo or Casino funds. Not us. Keep that in mind while I outline the conflict that we are presented with.

There is a recreational fall school league in Manitoba that offers co-ed games from September to December, 1x week. It is subsidized by the provincial association, gets direct funding. That funding support does not happen to the club that sends teams to National Championships each year, hosts interprovincial events, developes multiple national team athletes etc. This year we have a problem, the MWPA has decided to try and offer a heavily subsidized winter drop-in league for kids from the school teams that want to play in the new year. That is the same athlete group that clubs recruit from, it is the reason we (Bushido) had volunteers initiate the middle years league to begin with. To build the sport.

2007 Kids Festival

We create things like the Kids Festival, introduce somewhere around 50 kids to the club aspect of the game in 1 day, then compete with a governing body to have them join our program. I will have to be prepared to explain the difference between a self funded club program and a provincial program that covers costs from public funds. Ouch. That doesn't seem fair, how can we compete with that? I will do it but there are going to be plenty of kids who don't play club polo this winter, opt for a free program, get turned off and then quit or lose a year of developmemt at a crucial age.

Is there a solution to the conflict? Sure, ask clubs to generate specific membership numbers in specific target groups, provide support and watch it happen. I will have more kids at this Saturdays Kids Festival than the MWPA will have at its first rec league 14& under session. So, why not use our numbers, athlete names and program profile to please Sport Manitoba and Water Polo Canada? Simple, if they use our numbers, support our club, then they feel a need to do the same for the other club in the province. They don't have the same organization or vision so it all grinds to a standstill. The lowest program level is the standard, not the highest level. Sad. I keep offering alternatives, they keep getting ignored.

But, I will have a very positive blog after the weekend, new pictures of the festival and then an announcement later in the week about a very major partnership that will help our age group program in years to come. It's a big announcement that will shape our Atom and Bantam programs next year.

PS I hope Malachi notices I have posted his picture twice in a row.

Kids Festival

2008-11-24T23:30:00.000-06:00

2007 Kids Festival

It has now become tradition that we offer a free introduction each fall through a "Kids Festival" that allows players to run, swim, jump, climb, shoot, laugh and play in the shallow end. We fill the shallow end with older players who know how to laugh and guide kids, then let the games begin. It's a blast.

Last year was our first attempt at an Open House of this nature ie big promo. It had plenty of interest but with a very low registration following. We've done a few things to address that in the second go 'round so it won't be an issue in 2008. Some of the people who registered kids in the Festival were sad that the ongoing program did not have the same volume of kids and energy level that goes with that volume.

I'm sorry if the Kids Festival is too light weight a topic for most blog readers but I had a few days of critical posts about the CSL and I wanted to move away from that. Don't worry, it will come up again.

Brandon Weekend

2008-11-16T16:09:00.000-06:00

Bantam Girls action - Brandon

This past weekend we had a great chance to see our Atom and Bantam teams play against opponents that we know quite well. It was a good thing too, no question about how the training-to-performance ratio is demonstrable through game play. Our Bantam teams have some skill, broad range of it, but not until Sunday did it start to gel. If we played every month in a league it would be amazing to see the progress. I am working toward that with the Saskatchewan Provincial Coach so it may happen sooner rather than later.

We could also see the difference between the Bantam boys team with half the players who have practiced very little so far this season and the Saskatchewan teams who practice much more and for a longer time this fall. The Bantam girls are trying to figure out who is who and what their team members can do. With a few new players, one only in her first week of club water polo, it was hard for them to know what to expect. Now everybody has a starting point.

The Atom team is like a few previous generations, lead by players who have played for a few years and have a high skill level - swimming fast and shooting hard. I was experimenting with mentoring novice players, rotating them through while looking for leadership from the experienced ones. This worked very well. By the final Atom game I was able to play all 3 new Atoms at the same time with just 1 mentor in the water. This meant they had to initiate things on their own and figure out who to cover, when, how etc. It was a good sign that in these situations we played pretty much equal to the second place team. I look forward to seeing these kids in a 7 vs 7 event so all the players can feed off each other.

Transformation

2008-11-14T00:32:00.000-06:00

We had a team meeting with our boys team this week, Cadet and Youth. It was intended to highlight how their training had been reflected in their performance in Regina last weekend, some good, some bad. We narrowed in on focus, discipline and respect - all obvious issues with some of our group. There was not a single guy who did not understand what we were talking about and why, it remains to be seen if they care enough to change things though.

There is a pretty high skill level with these boys and plenty of experience. What is missing is a focus at practice that allows transfer of knowledge from week to week and experience from event to event. I am trying to get them to understand that in some ways this is like learning math, each lesson leads to the next, overlook one and it will show up in mistakes later.

Carson 2005

One thing we left the meeting with was a reassurance that there was nothing the team could not achieve if they set their minds to it as a group. We highlighted how individually we manage some success but it is the team that doesn't reach it's level. The pictures above and below were used to remind them of how Carson and his hard work and extra effort have allowed for a much greater improvement the past few years than most boys. This is not just maturation, it is effort and goal setting on a personal level.

Carson 2008

Technique and skill are never the issue with our club. Carson had great coaching from a Serbian goalie coach, Darko, in that earlier picture. It was that introduction to how hard he could work that let him set high enough goals. We are hoping that this image helps the boys gather a team picture of where they want to be in April and how they are going to make practice changes to do it. We'll see.

Brandon's First Water Polo Event

2008-11-12T22:21:00.000-06:00

This weekend I get to coach our Atom team in a competition for the first time in about 3 years. It is amazing how much I look forward to that. I have not given much time to the Atom and Bantam ages the past few years, too many demands modeling high performance and increasing practice frequency at the other end of the spectrum.

Bantam Boys Team Captain, playing Cadet in Regina

I hear there are some really good Atom teams in rural Saskatchewan, that Weyburn and Estevan are good and Regina is close. With our solid group at that age we should see some really interesting games where players improve from game to game and feed off each others enthusiasm.

Bantam Girls Captain, playing Open Women in Regina

We are fortunate this week that each Bantam team going to Brandon will have a player that played on an older team this past weekend in Regina. Eric was on the Cadet Boys team that won silver and Jaelyn was on the Open women's silver medal team. In fact, Jae even scored in the gold medal game. I am excited to see their leadership with their own age and the confidence they bring to this level will really help influence the rest of the group.

We had 3 new registrations in the Atom/Bantam age groups last week and 2 of those players are joining us on the Brandon trip. I am very interested to see how these 2 sisters, 1 Atom and 1 Bantam, pick up skills and tactics in the weeks following their games. We seldom have players play an event in their second week of training so it might influence the sharpness of their focus.

Speaking with the Saskatchewan Provincial Coach last weekend he is as excited about this event as I am. We want to expand on it next season and have multiple events in Brandon that are single age groups and single day. That would allow a Saturday morning drive, 2 or 3 afternoon games of 30-40 minutes, a team dinner and then a drive home. A great package for our two provinces with such small populations that same-city events are tough to make interesting.

I am really excited that Cyril, the Saskatchewan coach, agrees with me about the value of these short, 5 vs 5, age group games. He has even created a provincial league on this format, the one we pioneered with the Bushido Invitational 10 years ago. For those that are not familiar with this set up it is a mini version of the regular game. We play with 4 field players so there are more touches on the ball for each player. This reduces the team tactics ie umbrella set up and complex defense. Instead of that it is possible to focus on 1-on-1 defense and passing/shooting.

The games are short since part of the learning involves team meetings to set objectives, application of specific things with a narrow focus, meetings to review objectives and execution and then a chance to do it over again. This takes the emphasis off winning a long game that tires the players and repeats errors that could be corrected with a team refocus that is not possible in a 2 minute quarter break.

NCAA

2008-10-29T15:04:00.000-05:00

I tagged this blog and named it NCAA because that is what I am thinking about today. This is the time of year when players are contacted by US schools for 2009 scholarships and it takes our focus to that part of the world for awhile.

Of course we know that Breda, captain of the Jr National Team, will get offers from schools but there are others who are being looked at too. Like the guy in my last blog picture, Brendan Domoney. He plays in California in the summer, smart guy, so has some people there paying very close attention to him. He has a scrappy quality that most US boys with speed swimming backgrounds do not match until later in a collegiate career. He is possibly the most overlooked male player in Canada right now (but since we know nothing about NT depth charts we can't be sure).

Old Pic from the late '90's

Girl in front NCAA bound, behind 2007-08 pro from Italy

I coached for a long time without supporting NCAA play for Canadians; didn't fight it but didn't support it either. It wasn't until I had female players being overlooked for national teams while they were offered pro contracts in Italy, or having girls told to move to Montreal to get support, that I decided it was wrong to not help them improve down south. There are no english speaking female players who have moved to Montreal to the Training Centre and have graduated from a Canadian University there. That is sad since it should be possible to combine post secondary education and training. In fact, 2 players from the Hawaii NCAA program combined studies and training that still allowed them to win Olympic gold medals this past summer after a brief return home to prepare with their national team.

Coaches in Canada have been talking for some time about using National Team cards (financial support) to help Ontario university programs attract players and keep them in Canada while boosting the level and status of the OUA league. The only thing stopping that is .... well, nothing should stop that. It just is not supported by NT coaches right now.

Hopefully I will be around long enough to help make the changes to our domestic program that I have been after for a decade or so. In fact, this past weekend the youngest member of our club told me I could not retire for 10 more years. He wanted to be sure I was coaching until he was 18. I would say that is one of the warmest compliments I have had in a very long time. But, I don't quite have 10 years of high end coaching left in me.

Finally, a new blog entry

2008-10-27T20:53:00.000-05:00

It's been quite some time since I last sat down to update this blog, sorry. I have been busy but also preoccupied with negative BS in the water polo world that I didn't want to write about.

This past weekend we had some friendly inter-club games with the Saskatchewan Provincial Team at Pan Am Pool. That gave us a really good early season snapshot of what the players know and how strong and fit they are. The absence of game knowledge was surprising for the girls and that is not explained by the fact that their national team members were away at other events. The boys, that was a different story, they picked up ahead of where the finished last year.

After 2 weeks of formal training this fall we have a decent fitness level and good passing mechanics and strength. What was poor was pass selection and leg strength with the ball. We'll deal with that in weeks ahead as we do drills that include partner work. The best thing to come out of the weekend was the interplay between Heather and the boys.

Some people thought I had lost my mind when I named Heather, a 20 year old woman, to coach an 18& under boys team. Hopefully this weekend helped people see what I am after as she was very calm, direct and specific about what she wanted and expected. The boys were better each game and seemed to follow what they were asked to. There is more excitement to come as Heather starts to share some experience from her pro career in Italy with these guys.

Now that Breda has finished her NCAA visits to the tropics and Shae is home from CSL we can turn our attention to serious training and getting ready for the Sask Open. That will be a good time to look at teams in relation to real games vs training.

Symposium Comments, Day 3

2008-09-22T15:49:00.000-05:00

I had some bad feelings at this years leadership symposium. It was, in fact, not about leadership and only 1 national coach was present. No Men's coaches even though they had just been to an historic Olympic Games, no Junior Team coaches even though club coaches were there to hear their plans. Pretty much a wash out in that respect.

There were plenty of contradictions presented to us as well. The big push in years to come is to concentrate efforts in what is referred to as MMA's (major metropolitan areas), specifically - Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. The women's program is actually only focusing on Toronto to Montreal, nothing to the west. No mention of water polo support for the prairies or the maritimes at any level. That is consistent with past history so at least now it is being talked about openly. The funny/sad part is that there is some sort of illusion that water polo will be added to the Canada Games in future. That is odd since Water Polo Canada is shrinking the base, the provincial support, and killing all domestic competition beyond Cadet age.

I am thinking of writing a large blog on national team centralization and how it is killing women's domestic water polo while leading to slumping national team performance. That effort will take some time though since I am busy with club registration right now and getting 2008-09 going for the players who I can actually help.

Leadership Summit, Day 1

2008-09-19T23:31:00.000-05:00

Hmmm, not sure how this is going to roll out. I had a few chances to raise points tonight, to get dialogue going in a specific direction, and that was positive.

I keep bringing up the topics of partnerships, dialogue and responsibility. It remains to be seen if this resonates with more than the few people who thanked me after the meeting for raising the points I did.

This is a very big group of people, 105 in total. Maybe 25 or so are young BC coaches so it is not a genuine cross section from Canada. But it is a good start. We'll see how Saturday goes before I have specific observations about the dialogue.

Daily Blogs Coming Soon

2008-09-15T23:51:00.000-05:00

Hotel I will be at this weekend

As I get back into the swing of things I am starting to have meaningful things to say. Soon I will return to blogging on a daily basis. Topics I may cover are; the new designation of elite training with Bushido as the High Performance Centre; rosters and philosophy for 2008-09; why no Neptune girls will train at a high performance level; what the CSL is and how it has influenced domestic play.

This weekend I will be at a national water polo leadership summit in BC. At first I was under the impression this was to be a sharing of ideas and a coming together of ideas from all corners of the sport. I was excited by that possibility and the chance that the philosophy behind the old "Leadership Symposium" might be returning. Sadly though, I now have the agenda for the weekend and it is a not good sign. We have 2 days of meetings, much of it around Long Term Athlete Development, the NCCP and new theories in athlete development and coaching. Oddly the summit will not follow the theories underlying the NCCP and instead we will be sitting down for the whole time as people "tell us things". We won't be sharing much, just hearing what others have already decided on and want us to "rubber stamp".

You can be pretty sure I will have some things to say about the weekend. I'll have my laptop with me (as always) and may even do a blog from there if my mind is blown by something unexpected.

Back in the Saddle

2008-08-24T11:57:00.000-05:00

It was a pretty long summer of very limited internet access so there was not much Blog activity. That will end now as I am back in Winnipeg planning the 2008-09 season.

I was very happy to see a Canadian referee that I know and respect get chosen to do the Olympic men's gold medal match. Gaetan is a great ambassador for the sport and his having been a Manitoba coach at one time is an interesting curiosity.

This week I am meeting with coaching candidates to sort out roles for the coming season. There will be some radical changes in staffing and in practice structure. All the juggling of people and resources will be sorted out soon and seasonal plans outlined for everyone.

Good News

2008-07-05T22:52:00.001-05:00

Today Water Polo Canada named its Junior Team for the Junior Pan Am Games later this summer. Of course, Breda and Shae are both on the squad. This wasn't a surprise but it's always good to have the details confirmed by an official selection so everyone can relax and get focused on serious final prep. Congratulations girls!

Sorry that I am not blogging more regularly this summer. It's a down time from coaching, recovery is the focus, and we are also very busy moving right now. That means there is not a lot of water polo news to blog about and my energy is low for manufacturing topics. Don't worry, it will be back to normal soon enough.

Clinic by Bushido Experts in Ontario

2008-06-22T12:32:00.001-05:00

Here are Breda and Shae in front of an important landmark in Kingston Ontario. They were visiting clinicians on Saturday June 21st as we ran an intro clinic to help kick-start club water polo in the area. There were over 30 people present, half kids 14 and under and half adults. The adults will start a weekly rec league at Queens in the fall after a few more summer sessions. The younger players will have a basic club program if we can find some weekly pool time for them in the fall.

The girls were here at my request to give a media boost to this effort. I am in the area for most of the summer and will live around here eventually so it makes sense for me to lend support. Hopefully in a few days I will have some of the photos from the clinic and will post them here after my next chance to get to a wireless connection.

For those of you who have been waiting for the land strength program for the summer it is now ready. You can find it by following the link to Mike Reid's website that is listed on the left of this page.

Page Turned

2008-06-10T00:06:00.001-05:00

Tonight was the genuine conclusion to the 2007-08 season as we held our awards party. It was a low key affair, only about 60 people, but enough of a cross section to be interesting. This was also the last Bushido party on Dorchester as we are moving in July, there will still be lots of room for parties though.

Sorry this picture is not great but here are the 3 award winners from 2008, Breda, Callum and Hanika. Callum was Most Improved, going from uncertain field player to authentic goalie with recognizable skills - that is no easy task. Hanika had the honor of being recognized as Most Promising and that reflects how coaches noticed her personality and work ethic ahead of any game skills (even though those are solid). Breda isn't a huge surprise as Athlete of the Year because she is so talented and works so hard at practice. But above all else, she is a decent person that helps everyone and all coaches enjoy coaching, even when we have to bash heads with each other now and then. Congratulations to all of you.

Breda and Shae will soon leave for Montreal as part of a summer National Team centralization; this will prepare them for the July Pan Am Junior Championships. This will be a stressful training environment after a crazy season and it will be nice for them to get a break in August after a long 11 months.

We're Hosting 2009 Youth Nationals!

2008-06-06T15:01:00.000-05:00

We learned today that Bushido has been selected to do something never done before, host 2 huge Youth National Championships at the same time, in the same facility. That will be on the May long weekend at Pan Am Pool and it should give our club and our High Performance programs a great boost in terms of fall excitement and spring media attention.

This event will anchor a very exciting 2008-09 season where we will play 20 games on the prairies with Team Sask and Calgary Water Polo at the Youth and Cadet ages. That will help close the gaps with other provinces in terms of seasonal games; now all we need is to get players training more frequently and with more purpose. Both are realistic expectations!

This also gives my summer planning some specific focus and puts team targets, budget realities and timelines all where I can manage them at one time. What an exciting thing to work with.

Season Almost Over

2008-06-05T23:37:00.001-05:00

Great Goalie, Doesn't Know It

The season is soon ending, one more practice and I can let out a sigh. Already looking forward to the fall of 2008 when we get to start over. So much potential was untapped this year I hope kids have seen what is missing and hear me when I ask for a renewed effort in September.

Tonight I met with Trevor 1 last time for the season to try and find common ground for the future. He and I agree on pretty much all points for the future of the MWPA. The provincial board seems to agree with us too. What is missing is support or endorsement from a unified Neptunes club that wants to turn High Performance over to the MWPA, even though the MWPA can't fund it or manage it and has no mandate to do so.

Maybe time will change that perspective and be helped by the realization that attending nationals from Manitoba in 2009 will only be possible with a Bushido Team. I didn't want that to be a threatening reality ie that we would "steal" Neptune players, but people are pushing it that way. I was more interested in evolution, sending players form each club across membership boundaries based on their training goals, but that image is not being embraced. Maybe it isn't being understood but since I haven't been able to talk to people from Neptunes about it I can't say for sure.

Nevertheless, I am ready for a break, time to recharge some energy levels and come back ready to get it done. I'm pretty sure that if I can build a cabin, then a house, with my hands, with materials that I harvest from the land, then I can deal with some small obstacles in my way while trying to keep building water polo in Manitoba.

Year End Awards Party

2008-06-03T23:36:00.000-05:00

The date has been set for the year end awards party and it is Monday June 9, 2008. This is the time we recognize 3 individuals, kind of against the grain of the usual "team" development we focus on. Naming an Athlete of the Year is pretty safe as there is always someone who everyone can agree worked very hard, played a high level and was a role model, it's a pretty positive award.

Giving our the Most Improved is soooo hard because so many people improve at so many levels. But, I try to mention a few big improvements before I actually name the final winner. The 3rd award is Most Promising Newcomer and that can be a hard label to place on a young athlete. We have had a few of those who take a big turn after a few years and don't even keep playing the game, whoops. But it is important to let some young players know that we coaches watch the beginners and talk about who we would like to have at our practices in years ahead. That is the focus, attitude, not just amazing skills in a new player.

Practices winding down

2008-06-03T23:11:00.000-05:00

One of the things that becomes apparent each spring is which athletes are really thinking of long term development as water polo players. Everybody needs a break now and then, for sure, and these are built into the season. Normally I would take practice right into high school exams so players have an outlet during that stressful period. However, even with fun practice that focuses on passing, shooting and games there is a reluctance for many to actually get in the water. That is where we are now so we have our last practice week of 2007-08.

Here is a picture taken at 5:45 tonight, 15 minutes after practice started. These boys were all on deck well in advance of 5:30 but they have no motivation to work so I am getting the message that they need a break and don't want to be there training. Ben was on deck well before little brother Sam, but Sam has already swum a few hundred meters when this shot is taken.

Sorry there is netting between me and the pool but that is the safety barrier that the city has finally agreed to allow during our practice. As the boys get stronger the net becomes more and more crucial every month. I usually place myself on the other side, by the pool, but was sitting by my backpack for this photo. It looks pretty quiet in that picture but we had 18 players there tonight, quite a few for this time of the season.

Heather was there with one of her Volturno pro suits on and that had some stares from the other players. I'm not sure if she wore that while I was away at any nationals, and if anyone has seen it, but there was some prestige having it there. Serena always has her Hawaii suit too so the girls get to see some different sites this spring than they did all winter.

Thinking of Pools

2008-06-02T12:11:00.000-05:00

Final Saturday "fun" scrimmage

Wouldn't it be nice if Pan Am looked this quiet every practice? You'd think with 6 pools of 50m or more in Winnipeg it would be possible to coordinate enough time for all sport clubs to have adequate practice space while still allowing the public lots of access. What would it take for such a thing to happen? Much less than what it takes to prevent it from happening! I'm pretty sure I could come up with a schedule that accommodated every group, every interest and every request for pool space if I was let loose on that topic by the Parks and Rec department.

I mention that today simply because I have been having discussions with some people in Southern Ontario who are trying to get a new 50m pool built in Kingston. That is possibly the largest Canadian centre without a public pool to serve its population. The fact that I will live near there one day makes it of interest to me to be involved in this discussion so I have been thinking of pools and access quite a bit lately. Maybe I will talk more about that in later posts as I am helping deliver a clinic in Kingston this summer.

Meanwhile, back with local planning, I am meeting 1 more time with Trevor this week. He is the head coach of the Neptunes and if his club will actually allow him to speak on their behalf we will have a unified sport community in the fall. I haven't given up that vision and am being as positive as possible as we work toward that. Hopefully before I break for the summer we will have some specific details, exciting ones, about how water polo will work in Winnipeg next season.

Looking Inward to Change Perpsective

2008-05-28T20:48:00.000-05:00

I have outlined lots of external pressures that contribute to struggles of our teams so now I will turn the light on to the players themselves. What I am about to write is not criticism, it is observation. Some of the things I struggle with as a coach involve knowing what I can change in athlete focus ie what is coachable, and what I have to move beyond and look elsewhere for.

High Performance sport is not well understood by many in our community. High Performance "anything" is not well understood; it goes against much of what North American society is teaching, marketing or supporting. This makes it hard for me to get players to understand that sport performance at a high level requires personal commitment to high level performance in many things. For example, diet and lifestyle, 2 things I constantly talk to players about. How can you expect an engine to perform its best when the fuel it consumes is low quality? You can't. How can a peak performance be called up on demand if the mental skill to focus has never been developed or is cheated by lack of sleep? It can't.

Players need to understand that coming to practice 75% of the time will result in less than 75% of the performance they want in games. Players that coast through 75% of practice, half effort in swim sets or drills, will have less than 75% performance when it's needed. Players who don't get proper nutrition before and after training will not get the most out of the workload they welcome in practice. If you don't do everything you can to prepare then you won't find the personal strength to outperform an opponent who HAS done everything to prepare. That's simple and it explains the 4th quarter losses at nationals to Fraser Valley, Calgary and York (Cadet Girls), York (Youth Women), DDO2 (Youth Men) and Regina & Calgary (Cadet Boys). Sure, lack of practice was part of it but did we make the best of what was available? No, not even close, and that will change for 2008-09 - even if it means smaller rosters of harder workers.

Club Under Stress

2008-05-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

The past few blog entries have maybe sounded a bit like the sky is falling, "woe is me" sort of thing. I'll try to re-frame things a bit with this entry to keep perspective.

They are not praying, just concentrating!

Amateur sport in Canada is always operating with a level of anxiety from stress. That stress can be political, financial, lack of volunteers, poor resources etc but there is always something. What I am outlining this week is the blanket of stress that is over Bushido programs and then some solutions so those issues can be lessened and the club can thrive. We have to acknowledge obstacles before having solutions to them.

The obvious place to start when we talk of stress is with our lack of facility access in Winnipeg. I can say without much doubt that we are the best club in Canada with teams that train 3x week in a 12x20 yard space. That obstacle can only be removed with help from our PSO (Provincial Sport Organization) in a major lobby to secure more access to city pools and to protect the space that our club fought for so long to acquire. That simple problem, adequate practice space, could change everything in one short season.

How? Here are some ways;
1) more practice time ie hours, would mean more specific team practices catering to more specific athlete development stages.
2) better practice space ie 25yds with 2 end walls, this would allow multiple water polo nets in the water and many more game-like drills,
3) more practice time ie other pools, would mean more specific age group practices catering to neighbourhoods and peer groups;
4) more training hours would also mean the ability to properly follow the Long Term Athlete Development philosophy that I have been addressing piecemeal for the past decade.

That is a quick and simple overview of how pool access could help our programs. I have lobbied the city for 20 years to get better space for our sport. Those efforts in the 80's got us into Pan Am on Saturdays after closing; in the 90's they gave us access to the Pan Am Training Tank when it was off limits and then recently I managed to gain access to Prime Time space from 5:00-8:00pm. Taking it the next step requires the MWPA to support this initiative and make some bold moves. I shouldn't be fighting with the MWPA to improve training for the best athletes in the province, that's a stress that need not be there.

Imagine if Bushido secured more and better training space during a year when we have managed to arrange a 20 game prairie competition season with Team Saskatchewan and Calgary Water Polo. That would give us increased skills and fitness from practice and increased tactical knowledge from game play; all in under 12 months. That's pretty much what I am after, too bad it's so hard to get people behind that vision.

The Impact of a Negative Environment

2008-05-26T23:47:00.000-05:00

While in BC last weekend I had an interesting conversation with Gabi Vindisch of Saanich Water Polo School. For those that do not know, she is part of a club that has had some historical difficulties with lack of support from BC Water Polo that has resulted in lots of fighting, arguing and name calling. She was in pretty high spirits and I asked her how things were going - she said that things were great and there was now healthy dialogue with the provincial association and the clubs. Then, the interesting part, she also offered that her club registrations had doubled in the past year, up 100% since the fighting and name calling stopped.

Why is that important to this blog? Well Bushido has never had any measurable, intentional public support from the MWPA in it's history. Other provinces (and many Manitoba PSO's) give their top clubs money for their coaches, but Bushido is often criticized for being lead by a professional coach as if it were some terrible sin. Other provinces fund their top players but our players only see small grants ie $250.-500. if they make a national team and have already spent several thousand dollars representing the country. Our pool resources, that we have fought decades to gain access to, are constantly being poached - the MWPA has actually taken away pool time for the past 2 years to give to a competitor without replacing it or justifying the harm they do with reduced training hours. Can there be any way to interpret that action as supportive of the provinces top athletes and coaches? Breda is the only carded athlete in any sport in Canada who has had her PSO take training opportunity away from her! This certainly has an impact on the confidence of a developing player and asking them to stand up, be proud, be confident, bring attention to themselves, it's not consistent with how they are treated by their governing body.

That lack of obvious support is not the only reason why players don't have more offensive confidence but it is an underlying theme that must be acknowledged if anyone is to understand team performance. Certainly the loss of training time we negotiated with the city also has a huge role to play in team preparation. When we are forced to reduce the team specific practices and double up age groups it creates lots of practice time with 16-24 athletes and that is too many for a 12 x 20 yard training space. The crowding means that individual attention is reduced and communication is much more difficult.

So, overcrowding and lack of public support combine to harm confidence going into intense competition. I develop various strategies and partnerships to deal with this but none are working as well as I would like. It would make more sense provincially to have external public support that gives hope to more volunteers, coaches and athletes who could then provide the energy to make significant, broader changes. This would impact sport growth, pool access, coach recruitment and athlete enjoyment.

Trying to generate an understanding that would promote that community support is one of my motivations for working so closely with the Neptunes this season. I thought that giving freely of my time and energy would lead to more support for what we were doing, but I'm still not sure if that will materialize or not. The gift of my support and experience, for athletes from another club, seems to have been taken for granted.

That may all have sounded negative but that is not what I intended. I am just trying to get information out there so that parents who wonder why their children struggled at nationals, but who excel elsewhere, can understand why.

Lots to Say, be Patient

2008-05-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

Now that I have finished an intense month of travel and competition I have quite a bit to say about competition, training and team performance. I'm going to try and be positive and non judgemental so the blog entries will be gradual and hopefully limited to simple, linear thoughts.

2008 Cadet Boys Nationals, Richmond BC
Hotel rooms with kitchenettes

First, I will say that it was a very frustrating spring to be involved in so many national championships for age group athletes that had a "elimination" format. What this meant was that every game was centred on a result standard less so than a team performance one. So, if you played well and lost by a goal your team was a "loser" and sent to a negative side of the competition bracket. This is 100% in violation of the principles being promoted by the Federal government (and Water Polo Canada) through LTAD, or Long Term Athlete Development, strategies. I don't want to discuss how that came about - the national organization promoting one philosophy of sport development but employing an opposite philosophy in competition structure. Suffice to say if leadership was strong and communication solid this would never have happened.

My preference for all of these events would have been to have small groups competing in a round robin to seed teams based on 2008 ability and not relying on 2007 championship placing. This would have allowed teams to have a strategy for developing team play, tactics and player involvement at a level that is new to a vast majority, especially at the 16& under category. Then secondary rounds could be judged on performance results that were based on teams of relative similarity and winning for some would be the obvious objective. I could write about that topic for a long time so I will stop there.

2007 Youth Girls Nationals, Richmond BC
anything familiar in the 2 pics?

I had no teams this year that were ready to win a championship medal, all of them were in the development phase, still learning how to compete. I am not too concerned about any teams placing but I am VERY concerned about some of the player and team performances based on their abilities. Only our Cadet (16& Under) Girls team has a significant number of players graduating next year, all others can return almost intact, so performance can quickly take a huge jump if teams embrace a common goal and train toward performance.

This training focus will have to be central to our 2008-09 program plans since the top 8 teams from the recent Cadet Boys Nationals all come from big centres with many seasonal game opportunities. Even Calgary, with a National Training Centre and a city league, could only make it to 9th place at this event in 2008. It's obvious that the winter games being played in Ontario the past 3 years have helped Ottawa, York, Hamilton and Scarborough all catch up with the Montreal based teams and the BC teams from the lower mainland, all of which have lots of play experience before nationals. Hopefully the Prairie plans that Team Sask and I have worked out for next year will counter that a bit and our local training intensity can be picked up with less tactical focus during the week.

My next blog will speak about team offense, sport psychology and why we can be one of the best defensive clubs in the country but have so few players that want to shoot or score.

Backlog of Topics

2008-05-20T12:42:00.000-05:00

I am home for a brief 36 hour period so I can't possibly blog on all the topics that need discussion. Two that I am going to try and cover today and tomorrow are 1) the recent national events, their format and why teams are not finishing as expected and 2) the silliness and/or stupidity that I am dealing with around 2008-09 plans.

Cadet Girls at Nationals

I like the girls in the picture above; every one of them has a quality I respect and admire. Unfortunately I think a few adults from outside our club are going to poison their water polo futures and prevent them ever playing together again.

Bringing 2 groups together, a purely social club like Neptunes and an obviously competitive one like Bushido, is very hard to do. It was obvious from nationals how little these girls have trained together and how unfamiliar competition stress was to the Neptune crew. I took some learning opportunities away from Bushido Bantam and Cadet girls in favour of players with more years in the sport but these girls had practice experience not game experience. The doubt and insecurity I created with Bushido players I have known for years was not something I anticipated hanging around this long into the season.

Hopefully everyone can see now that I did not work with the Neptunes to "strengthen" our 2008 teams. It was an effort purely to bridge gaps, mend fences and provide a framework for the future. Our team performance for women has actually been hurt with this effort. That is not to say we prevented a top 5 performance had we played with a pure Bushido team, we just messed with team identity. So, I am hoping people now understand why the High Performance program in 2008-09 will be a Bushido club one and not a hybrid that blends coaches and athletes a couple of times per week from different training environments.

Maybe some Neptune players will be allowed to join that HP training group, some likely won't. But if their parents are more concerned about not "betraying" old club friendships by joining Bushido then we know what that says about how committed they are to Social Sport vs High Performance sport. They've had 25 years to initiate HP water polo and so far, no sign of it. Either way, we have shown how positive our teams, athletes, coaches and training environment are so that is not the obstacle to success.

Relax, I am not Giving Up

2008-05-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

Youth Boys Nationals

Sorry if anyone was shocked that I posted a comment about Neptune leadership heading into the abyss. I am not giving up my vision for the sport, my passion or my energy; I am just not fighting any more. I have to redirect how I deliver programs in 2008-09 since a small angry group from the Neptunes, who have opposed Bushido for many years, will not allow peace in that club. They are driving their own members away, and it is the same troublemakers for many years, so I am not going to fret.

After the National Championships are done and I am back to some sort of normal life I will deal with the 2008-09 season. I will talk about this with any Bushido parent who wants to hear me talk about it.

So far I have set up a training cycle with Bushido and 3 Saskatchewan clubs (Weyburn, Estevan, Regina) for an Atom and Bantam competition series in Manitoba (Brandon/Nov and Winnipeg/Jan). Then there is a training series with 5 dates (3 Winnipeg, 2 Regina) for Cadet and Youth players, both genders, between Team Saskatchewan and Bushido. The Regina dates are also going to include a mini Prairie League for Youth Women (and hopefully Cadet Boys) that includes Calgary. That will be a 20 game season just on the prairies and we have bid to host a combined Youth Nationals next spring - Boys and Girls at Pan Am on the same weekend. So, lots of games for not too much cost to the families and that will allow me to include DartFish video tagging for the older players (very exciting) and team psychology for all the players. Anyone who thinks I am not busy building and planning doesn't know me so everyone can relax if they think I am running out of steam or being put off track. No way!

History

2008-05-13T11:54:00.000-05:00

They say that what you don't learn from history you are bound to repeat. That is certainly something the Neptunes water polo club should reflect on as they support a parent leader who wants to dismiss technical plans made by coaches from 2 clubs and replace them with some half baked "daddy plan" that takes Manitoba Water Polo back to where it was 30 years ago. I am all for working together and supporting common vision but when parents get involved with sport to stroke their own ego or give themselves a soapbox I am outta there.

2008 Youth Men's Nationals - Montreal

While on the topic of crazy things in water polo, here is a photo from the national championships I was at last week. This is in Montreal, location of the National Training Centre for women, where all our top females are sent to train. The game is mid day Friday against an Ontario team. Do you see the mass of event volunteers on deck or the fans in the stands? No, we didn't see them either. Would you believe the event program was a 2 sided photocopy of the schedule? It was very obvious this was an event site to deal with economics not celebration of the sport we train all year to play. Sad.

simple lessons made difficult

2008-05-10T18:59:00.000-05:00

Today was an odd day at the national championships. The Youth Boys have shown an ability to play solid defense, adjust to their mistakes from previous games, play the same for 4 quarters. However they also showed that defense is the easy part and the side of the game that invoves confidence, offense, is still not something they are ready to address.

Carson has been playing great and was the best player in the pool tonight. He stopped at least 5 breakaways, 1 poor guy had 2 shots stuffed on the same breakway after getting a rebound. He also gave an aggressive face to our 5 v 6 defense which we had to play quite a bit due to facing the "dive under" Storm squad. As solid as he ways, we did not support him with an enthusiastic offense.

The boys know what to do but they lack the confidence to put theory into action. That means the learning is not complete even when they say they "know" what they are doing wrong. We'll believe they know it when we all see it.

Brendan has been doing a good job taking all the other teams focus when setting 2m. His team hasn't stepped up to exploit what they are left with so he forces things his few times with the ball. When he reflects on that after the game he hears the problem but he has been shooting blindly out of frustration too much this weekend.

I hope the Cadet Boys are paying attention to this lesson on offense this week because I do not want to live through this again in BC in two weeks.

When I get home on Monday I will try to do a summary posting with some event photos that Phil has taken and talk about why the top 4 teams are from Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto-Hull.

Boys are really nuts

2008-05-08T17:17:00.000-05:00

These Youth Boys are really proving to be more than I had imagined they could be. After playing terrible water polo, weak and timid in all aspects, all they can talk about is going shopping tonight. It's understandable that losing to the top seed would be a low point in terms of their excitement but I am at a loss to understand how little respect they have for themselves. They played a team they know well, and do not fear, yet played right into their hands turning the ball over at every opportunity without ANY pressure. So why do they want to shop for shoes and shiney clothes...... Weird.

Now we likely play a decent Scarborough team as we struggle to stay above the 9th place threshold and improve from our pre event seeding. Hard to get excirted for that prospect.

montreal is getting old

2008-05-07T14:38:00.000-05:00

It seems like I have been here forever. It was odd to not return home with the girls on Sunday and then to meet the boys on Wednesday but so it goes.

I was a bit worried about the girls and how they would play in terms of confidence. That turned out be a valid worry as they never reached their potential as a group. Players never played their best all at the same time or in the same game. With peak performance, mentally, from all girls it would have been a top 6 finish for sure and possibly a top 4. Of course, I have to keep in mind that the Neptune girls that had joined us in December had never won a game at a nationals until playing with us so I had to temper my expectations until they got a few wins under their belts.

The boys give me a totally different worry as I have no concerns about how they will play or if they will show up focussed. I only worry about what bone headed thing a 16 or 17 year old boy will do to make me shake my head away from the pool ie in a hotel or a store. It is hard to understand why we have a 730 game Thursday morning during a nationals but schedules never seem to be something I can be happy with at a Canadian championship.

Since I have limited computer access in teh hotel lobby I may do another blog entry while I am here to update on what kinds of things I see in the boys play.

Regina Recap

2008-04-29T00:17:00.000-05:00

This past weekend the Cadet teams were in Regina as a tune up for Nationals. This was a good time to bond as a group as we included the Neptune players that have been training, but not playing, with us. They fit in well and I was quite happy to see Katie be openly and warmly adopted by the Bushido Bantams who have been her opponents for so long.

The boys were steady all for 3 sessions, 2 scrimmages and an official length game. There were a few Youth Boys playing a bit with Regina but we welcomed that to increase the strength of the opponent. Without Mike, our strong shooting lefty, it was a good test of offensive resilience. Carson was very strong and even when not playing his best was too much for the Regina team to mount any real extended threat. All the other boys had low points of performance but the good thing was that never did the whole team play badly at once so there was a player to pick up slack when another went into a lull.

The girls were a contrast, playing quite poorly as individuals during the two 6-quarter scrimmages. During these games Breda and I took turns coaching and running the bench while we played everyone as equally as possible, Shae being the only exception. This created a bit of a confidence problem for some Bushido Cadets as they were stressed about watching the Bantams and Neptune newcomers play equally on a team where they had been key players for over a year. We had some 1 on 1 talks about that and some team discussions to put things in perspective. For the final game on Sunday I challenged them to pick it up, figure out their limits, commit to basics and get it done. That worked and they played very well.

The girls were helped by my starting the same girls every game and then allowing those starters to play longer before subs in the final. That fatigue made them appreciate the first break they got and nobody stayed out long so they kept confidence high. Now they know I have plenty of confidence in them and it started to pay dividends. As the younger players went in they played with energy and confidence knowing they had already been given lots of reps and that they could do anything asked of them. In this last game I also played Shae at 2m a few times to set the standard of intensity for Olivia and Sarah to aspire to. That worked well and everyone at that position was effective.

Both teams were allowed to choose their defense of choice during the final games since we had been forcing zones and gapping on them in the scrimmages. Both teams chose the press as the defense of choice and this will be the standard for nationals, only using the zones when a 2m player is too much for that 1 on 1 defense. This is fine by me as I dislike teaching anything but a press to under 16 athletes anyway, too much focus on performance and not enough on player skill.

This week begins a long, long month of national travel for me with 4 championships. I will not get to update the blog too much on the road as I am not taking a laptop (by choice).

Provincials review

2008-04-24T00:31:00.000-05:00

I know it has been a little while since I have done daily updates to the blog, sorry if that has broken some patterns for regular readers. We bought a new house on the weekend so there is plenty of non-water polo stress hovering around these days.

Now, getting back to the Provincial Championships that I mentioned as "interesting" the other day. This was a series of 1 game contests between 2 clubs - Bushido and Neptunes. The Neptunes won the Open Women's game, using some fit young players that train with Bushido (ad have confidence playing us) and some very experienced veterans. Having Breda away in Montreal at CSL, Heather playing pro in Italy and Serena playing NCAA took a toll on our squad and we only had 2 Seniors (Erin & Shelagh), 1 Junior (Ellen) and 1 Youth (an ill Madison). That meant it was Bantam and Cadet squad as much as a senior one and it showed in our inability to take advantage of what was presented to us.

Most of the other games were quite lopsided and it was hard to know why since there are some good solid Neptune players on their Bantam and Cadet squads. The Bantam Neptune rosters were both co-ed and while we had agreed to play a co-ed opponent with our Bantam Boys we had not with our girls. So the girls game was officially a default and that is one of my concerns from the weekend. As a championship at the end of the year I would have preferred to see the 7 Neptune girls play the final game and not have girls on the bench for a girls game while boys played in a 1 goal game. The same thing happened with the Bantam boys when they played girls while Neptune boys watched. Winning was not the objective at this age so it would have been great to play the actual gender and allow our teams to fool with tactics, back-up goalies, under-aged 2m players etc. So, I will work toward that understanding with the Neptunes for next season.

The Open Men's game was one of the closest and the most exciting. We played with only 8 players and only Jesse was older than the Youth age for us. It was great that we pressed a large team of experienced older men for the whole game and if Domo hadn't had a big day it would have been very, very close.

I am hoping this event sets the stage for regular inter-club games at the Atom and Bantam age next season. That will help my growth plans for the club and the sport in general as all kids want to play games with some regularity.

On Sunday there was an awards brunch that I would have preferred to have seen on Saturday after the final game (not a brunch but a pizza party) - that would have meant one less trip to the pool over the weekend. I think I know a band or two that would have played at that event too if it had been social in nature. Maybe next year.

Short update

2008-04-19T23:54:00.000-05:00

I will do a lengthy blog entry on the "Provincials" on Sunday or Monday, after the weekend activities have been completed. Interesting event to be sure.

Meanwhile, some family promotion as Riley had his first solo CD reviewed in the Free Press today. It was pretty favourable and you can read it here;

http://www.whatsonwinnipeg.com/
index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43253&Itemid=0

Odds and Ends

2008-04-17T21:08:00.000-05:00

Charming Cadet Girls

Team psychologists have dropped the gauntlet, boys vs girls in enough categories to keep things interesting. Tonight the boys had greater "On Task" performance, hmmm, didn't see that coming. Girls won't let that happen again but can the boys get enough guys to practice on time to challenge in the stretching and attendance categories? Don't hold your breath.

This weekend the "Provincial Championships" take place, be still my beating heart! But, seriously, it will be fun to play some games without all the inter-club stress and BS that we have had for decades. Kids know each other well enough from each group that they will push each other respectfully.

The Cadet Boys and Open Men's event will be without Mike, today he went to the doctor to x-ray his broken finger. Great, our history of major injuries for Cadet Boys continues for another year right at Nationals. What is it with the "Granola Belt" boys at practice that their fingers break in April? Arghh!

I just heard from Beeb (Bronwyn) who made it back to Canada after a year of traveling and avoiding Hep A and everything else tropical. Maybe we will see her at the pool soon.

Thank You Shae

2008-04-16T23:54:00.000-05:00

First, I want to be sure that all the Bushido girls realize that Shae has agreed to stay home from the final CSL weekend this week to play in our Provincial Championships. That is a pretty big sacrifice from a player so intensely competitive and driven to succeed at the highest level.

Another reason Shae is staying home is so that she will not have to travel 3 weekends in a row with the 3rd being a hugely important Youth Nationals in Montreal May 1-3. Staying home now means that she has a short 2 day trip to Regina next week and a long 5 day trip to Montreal the following week.

I mention that because it should help to focus the Cadet and Youth teams on what they are working on the next few weeks, TEAM play. The opportunity to really get in synch will be given to the Cadets on their Regina road trip where we get 3 controlled games in one and a half days. That gives us a game to work on each zone defense with switches between press/drop, press/M for a full 4 quarters regardless of success or score. Then we will see who knows what and in the final Sunday game we can do what we feel most comfortable with or what needs a final tweek before we play BC at nationals (tough first draw, but as much so for them as us).

Girls, is this picture any good or do we redo it?

The teams in Regina will spend all weekend together so there will be some healthy rivalry going on. This will help the boys a lot as they see a challenge (playing better team systems than the girls) and like to rise to it. The boys will also really benefit from having a team psychologist in Regina because they don't fully understand why they play up and down without control. Tom will help them bring that into perspective and it may even sink in enough to be applied at Nationals in BC in late May. That is an event that I am happy is last, it is the most pleasant site to visit and there is an AMAZING coffee roasting house - Viva Java, that is close to the pool/hotel if we are in Richmond again. Wohoo!