Everything Is An Evaluation!

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

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

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

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

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.

Program Purpose

"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.

An Island of Excellence

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

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.

Cross Training follow up

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

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

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

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

Planning, Co-operation & LTAD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Say Much with Few Words

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.

Provincial Championships & LTAD

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

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.

How Much Fun is Winning?

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.

LTAD and its Impact

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.

Big Day

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.