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.

Specific Training

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.

Shooting Technique Being Revised?

Is there a Canadian standard for water polo shooting technique? No, nothing close to resembling that. Should there be? Well, if national coaches are concerned that the majority of club players are not coming into the national team system with correct shooting technique then there must be a standard set for all to follow. I am discussing this now because the MWPA just had a weekend shooting clinic with the former Men's national team captain, Noah Miller, and the current women's national team captain, Krystina Alogbo. We chose those clinicians to bring us the perspective of the current national coaches on domestic athlete shooting technique.

Of course, with a standard shooting technique would come a standard skill set to support that shot. There would be specific passing technique to set up that shooting skill, specific catching to prepare for the pass and shot. These would be supported by specific strength and flexibility of the upper body and torso. Also needed would be exact legwork needed for support, lunge and recovery. All of that wouldn't take more than a 1 or 2 hour workshop lead by national coaches to create such a family of "basic shooting skills". Delivery of that information would be so simple at a national coaches symposium I won't even bother to discuss it.

So, why isn't this sort of national shooting skill being taught across the country? A skeptic would say that the fewer clubs there are teaching standard technique the fewer athletes (ie clubs) would be involved in the national team system. That idea can not be taken seriously since EVERY national coach must want competition for spaces and want as many great athletes as possible to fight for team spots. No, the reason most likely for this lack of a national system is related to security for those that create it. National coaches believe they have too many things they are responsible for to create this program and oversee it. If they don't oversee it then they don't want it brought forward. More to the point, if a national skill set is created there will never again be a possibility for national coaches to use lack of skills coming into a program to be the reason for lack of program success.

Maybe there is an "it's coming, don't worry" idea out there in Water Polo Canada that this is part of the current LTAD project. If so, it puts too much faith in that program as delivery will still be the obstacle that it is today. LTAD will deal with this sort of hierarchical structure of learning and skill development but what the skills are and how they are delivered are a generation away. Why wait that long?

The basic difference in the way Canadians shoot the ball now and the way Dragan is pushing us, toward a Serbian model, is found in a more vertical torso. There is more forward hip pivot and less torque from a torso twist. I will talk about that in more detail once I have reviewed the Dartfish video that Sports Biomechanist Carolyn Taylor, who has worked with our athletes twice this winter, has provided. Today I post a quick, low quality image of Breda showing her evolution from "old skool" shooting to Serbian influenced method. I am going to get some specific feedback from Darko on her shot in Calgary next week, then will make up my mind on the transition in our club for the balance of the season.

Breda Modifying her Shot

If you are interested in coaching science, or education theory, I will touch on supplantive learning when I talk about the alteration of shooting technique in established players. Right now I am allowing this modified shot to be experimented on by just the players who have given up trying to improve their shot through all other methods. Otherwise it is just being experimented with mid-season in some passing drills.

Final thought, I know the video quality is crap but that brand new AGON suit that Breda is wearing is pretty slick and "super heroish". Girls were crazy excited to see those custom made and delivered in 7 days from Spain!

Sport Nutrition

Having a few days without a blog entry tends to create a backlog of topics if you have been in the daily routine of writing about coaching. I am working on three specific topic areas motivated by this past weekends MWPA clinics which covered shooting and, to a much lesser extent, nutrition.

Two of these revolve around the techniques being taught by national coaches and being "expected" from athletes coming out of Canadian clubs. One blog will outline the shooting technique favoured in Canada today and hopefully show video and give a simple biomechanical description of the old method and the newer "Serbian" method. The other blog will talk about why this is a symptom of a huge disconnect between the national teams and the clubs developing 100% of the athletes for those teams. This modified shooting is the way Mike G. has been shooting since Darko began working with him as a Cadet 3 years ago.

Today, the topic is nutrition and that jumps ahead of the shooting dialogue thanks to Mike Reid, or club strength and nutrition guru who now advises us electronically from Sweden. Mike has a blog himself (http://michaelreid.typepad.com/) and this weekend it has a wonderful entry about artificial sweeteners. Mike and I see eye-to-eye on so much nutrition and lifestyle information that I am not going to repost his blog entry, I'll just direct you to it.

I love that he has located research about something that supports what I have known intuitively for some time but not been able to articulate due to a limited background in the science of nutrition (and limited hours to research that myself). Here is the conclusion from the research Mike has written about;
"... products containing artificial sweeteners may lead to increased body weight and obesity by interfering with fundamental homeostatic, physiological processes."

It is appropriate to post that link today since so many young club athletes had a great sport nutrition introduction from Jorie Janzen on Saturday. Jorie took a practical approach to this topic with our athletes by dealing with the big picture, avoiding preaching, and giving athletes specific examples of things they could relate to. I particularly liked how she made a differentiation between water and sports drinks and then talked about a sport nutrition plan. These are things the coaches can follow up when planning with the athletes of each team. The follow up will be easy since Jorie has added to our portfolio of support literature that will now be delivered to athletes over a period of time to reinforce the regular inclusion of nutrition planning in their sport lives.

This is the month, March, when all our youngest athletes (Atoms and Bantams) get their first comprehensive introduction to nutrition. We always use the Alberta Open as the test event to give young teams the chance to connect what they learn about nutrition to how they live while on the road. It's so easy when we have them in a hotel and on the bus for 5 days to exercise influence on what they eat and what thoughts they form in that regard. I am also working on a strategy to help bring athlete hydration to the bench during games in a way that is shared between staff and athletes.

Saturday Line up

I finally got my butt in gear and organized a sit down meeting of Bushido Coaches for Saturday. Tough to juggle all schedules but with the older ages having the night off it was easier to get everyone just before the 5:00 practice. We will talk about some missing, or deficient, skills of the Atom and Bantam crew; outline objectives for the Calgary bound teams for the next 5 weeks and then review some roster changes for Cadet and Youth teams.

Today I was very lucky and had a chance to learn some very specific things about our goalies from a sport science perspective. After coaching for 30 years it is not easy to get that much new information in a one hour session. In December we had Serena, Carson and Sandra all video taped and then had a bio-mechanical analysis done. The pictures don't lie, technique is clear, of course, but effort is also obvious and so is flexibility. Carson had exceptional hand positions, just as he has been taught. But out of sight, under water, has been lurking a real lack of hip flexibility. This is holding back his lift by as much as 30%, can you imagine Carson getting 30% higher or getting out to his hips in half the time? Well, give it 12 months and it will be so.

For those keeping score at home, Hawaii is now 3-0 but Serena did not play today. No need, they were only playing a division 3 team and their name is Santa Cruz "Banana Slugs". Really, how serious could they have been.