COACHES CORNER: Planning for High School Swimming Success: Josh Runkle, New Trier

foreign [Music] hello everybody welcome back to the fitter and faster coaches corner as always i'm your host mike murray today i am thrilled to invite you all to sit down for a conversation on high school swimming and training with new trailer high school coach josh runkel josh welcome to the program how are you today i'm doing great thanks for thanks for having me uh i appreciate the invite i'm looking forward to this so josh are you meeting with us today from the office of the pool or the office of the school what's happening back there i'm in the pool office this is uh where i'm sitting right now um you can't really see me oh you kind of can there's a white brick right over my shoulder and it's the original one of the bricks from the original pool that was built in 1912 it was the first public high school pool and uh about mid 30s there there was a reconstruction they built a 25 yard by 20 yard pool and they called it lake new trier uh it was the works act kind of did that and and there have been a few renovations um we're on about our fourth deck so there's just layers of deck um but yeah it's one of the historic old pools in the country it's a neat it's a neat place and the the thing that's really cool now is we actually we started wow forever up until about 2019 we started in four feet of water in the shallow end that's literally right outside my door and um we've now moved down to our deep end and we flipped our timing or controlled meat control table to the other side so now i overlooked the pool before i was blocked by the pool and we first did it was a little intimidating because you see our pools lined with all our all-american certificates and we've run out of room uh to be honest with it and we have big banners that signify our state championships our national titles when we first moved in i could see it i got a little intimidated uh king of 2019 it was kind of like well it hit again like where i'm sitting and you know people who sat in this office so but now it's just something that i look up and i kind of smile and i get to see it and go wow i'm i'm really fortunate and uh you know it's a it's it's an honor it's really humbling to to be a part of this so coach runkle is quite literally joining us from the bunker it's about what if you stand up too quick you're gonna hit your head so well josh i was floored by your presentation at the astroworld clinic i took a lot of notes i think i filled my notebook most with notes from your talk and dan my associate head coach and i sat there and you know we were trying to pick apart some of the things that you were doing and see how we could use them in our program you mentioned you know the brick above that left shoulder of yours and all of the history at new trier the high school sports scene in the midwest particularly where you are in illinois has always been very rich with history you mentioned you feel a responsibility to the school and the program talk to us about some of the core values that make new trier what it is and what you relate to your athletes at the beginning of each season you know we we we really talk about and mark onset who is my predecessor here and he's also the guy who who hired me for my first coaching job uh 20 something years ago um you know he he had a core set of values and and and he printed them up and it essentially just came down to you know honesty integrity hard work dedication just you know all the things that we all talk to our athletes about um and you know over the years i think we kind of tweaked that and twist that to fit our needs and and so when i got here one day i was kind of sitting here thinking about um you know what do i want kids to really value out of this experience because and mark told me this and and while winning state championships and having all-americans and all that is is a big part of what we do it's not the soul thing of what we do um you know what can we teach these kids what what are these kids walking out the doors after four years not just in our program but in our school what are they like and and you know i always use the measurement of how good will we as a team will ask me about 15 years and we'll see what they're doing uh and how they're doing so um you know we have a sign in our locker and says we're going to value each other our time together and the journey that we're on and we really kind of preach that to our kids uh we don't want to waste time because time is our most valuable asset that we have you can't buy it obviously and it's something that we want to we want to make maximum use of our time and we want to we want to value our time with each other because we're all in this together and you know we have anywhere from 100 100 to 120 kids on our team in a given year uh our varsity group is you know anywhere from 25 to 32 guys and we talk about every person has a role every person can find their niche so we want to value that person and it might be you know the kid who might have been on your jv team who actually turns out to be like the best leader you have and turns out you know in 10 15 20 years when you see what they've become and the contributions and the things they're doing um it's always kind of that's to me that's the funnest parts that's something we preach to constantly talking with our kids about um and we're really fortunate we i i work with some some i'm really fortunate i have i've have great people around me and the adults and i have great kids i i just love the kids when i came into the interview uh it was the second round and i was meeting with different groups and stakeholders and the first group i met with were about a dozen juniors uh there's going to be the next year senior class and i remember getting done with the interview and my host who was walking me around the school and we have a kind of a huge building was walk me to my next stop i said can i make a phone call real quick and he said yeah i called my wife and i said if they offered me this job tonight i'm taking it and and she's like really you know she's like you're you know you need to think about like i just met 12 of the most unbelievable kids you know and that's after working for 16 years and having um you know i haven't having a lot of great people who i've had a chance to work with i met these folks and i was just like man i was blown away by it so um you know that's kind of what what we look at is where we're going to be what are we going to become that's something i think i've always worked looked at my parents were both teachers um so that's something that's kind of always been ingrained in me is as you're helping young people just develop as i listen to you talk i'm reminded of something that one of my mentors growing up used to say to me all the time ernie steck he was a legendary athletic director and he was my father's high school football coach he he used to talk about the teacher coach and how important that role was in school districts and i was fortunate to go to a prep school but it was a tenant that he was very involved with uh laying down that philosophy to the staff was the teacher coach the person who is as involved scholastically with the athletes as they are with developing their athletic talent talk about what that means to you because i know that's important to you yeah i mean this the pool is different the pool the weight room the field you're doing dry land in the deck wherever it's the bus it's just an extension of a classroom um i think some of the most meaningful conversations and meaningful moments i've had my career have probably been you know sitting in this office or another office and just meeting with a kid one-on-one and swimming is probably the fifth thing we've talked about um and just just knowing that they feel comfortable enough to come to you with any kind of thing they have good or bad going on in their life and i think that's more important now than ever um with what we've been through in the last couple years i think our kids and all of us um in our mental emotional states are just still trying to come to grips with what what a world is now and i think that's now the most important thing and i i just think that that's my job first and foremost be a teacher i think all coaches are teachers and we're all educators um and and that's where i think the really great successful coaches uh i don't mean success winning and losing i i just mean the people have the impact i think whether you're a teacher in a school professor at a college or a literally coach you know some of the best teachers i've ever had never were in a classroom uh and their kids sometimes are the best teachers um so i just think that that environment of always learning uh not just about our sport but about ourselves is the most important thing and the expectations are high there as we said you know there's a legacy when people hear new trier and neutral swimming you know you're thinking of some all-time great high school athletes how do you balance some of those expectations uh with some of the traditions and and some of maybe the demands of the the community that you're involved with how do you balance that and how do you make sure it's not too big for the kids well we we embrace our tradition um when i when i was coaching at another school before i came here um i think nutria had a t-shirt that saw someone like live the tradition and i thought that was kind of a cool thing and when i got here i started thinking about it more and more and you know we have like i said we had a great group of seniors i sat and talked with them i spent a ton of time talking to them and what does nutrition diving mean to you guys and when they explained it and i saw the passion they had the the the pride they had um that really kind of hit sellers for me so i wouldn't got a giant sign and put locker you know live the tradition and actually we were just doing it yesterday with one of our seniors talking about ordering our you know our teams our team gear for the year you know our t-shirts they want to put live the tradition on the back of the shirt and we've done that for the last you know i think seven years i'm like you know we got to come up with something better and they're like no this is what we really want and i think you know we embrace that we i think our kids embrace it um they know there's expectations but the biggest expectation nobody's gonna have bigger expectations than ourselves um you know my first year here on africa we hosted the state meet and dave robertson uh who was a coach here for ever and i mean just one of the most successful high school coaches ever i think there's like two high school coaches in the international swimming hall of fame coach robertson's one he just passed away about a year or so ago and he happened to come to my first state meet in 2015 uh with his son and it was you know kind of a thrill to meet him our kids came over and got to shake his hand and he's just the legend and i remember there was like an email chain going back about how coach robertson had been here and in the like the wrap up you know somebody wrote well you know true only got fifth place at the state meet and i was sitting there thinking man only fifth place um the highest finish i had ever coached before i came here was eleventh so with fifth place i was almost doing cartwheels down the deck i mean i was ecstatic and you know i'm like man only fifth place and then you know the next year we got fifth place that's kind of like i thought we should have been a little better both years and then we ended up uh getting third and first um and that was kind of like yeah everybody was kind of yeah that's what we should be we should be winning trophies we give trophies to the top three teams in illinois um the year after we won we went five and five and duel mates and we finished 18th in the state meet and i got to be honest i think that's the best coaching our staff has done in my time here we got more out of that group of kids than i ever expected we just we weren't as good we just physically weren't as good and we had a really a nice group of kids who worked their tails off to be as good as they could we just weren't good enough you know we we just there's no other way around it and you know i'm as proud as that group that went five and five and you know we were everybody's senior night that year it seemed like like everybody wanted us um for senior night because they you know it was it was a different year and for our coaches or coaches have been here for 20 years it was a really different year for them um but i'm as i'm as proud of that group as it was the group that won it the year before any group i've had after and um so yeah so yeah so the expectations you know we talked about what the tradition is it's whatever we decided you know is it winning state championships is it filling up banners is it winning duel meets is it making all american or is it just being as good as we can be and trying to figure out where that that ceiling kind of comes into it and how can we punch through it can we get to it um you know and and i'm fortunate i get a ton of support here um our our school our administration uh our coaches our families are really supportive um you know somebody once told me we're behind your parents you might hear from parents who are behind you all the way winter time um but i gotta be honest i i think you know i've been pretty fortunate i've i've had pretty good support here personally uh since i've been here no matter when loser time so um yeah that is the thing of of trying to balance it and trying to make kids be realistic you know um you know we've graduated some just absolute you know just great athletes from here and you know the one that comes back and i bring them back to speak as much as i can with the times of reading alone swam out at usc swam on a relay world championships uh years back was a university world university games gold medalist and you know we don't have those guys walking through the hallway all the time but we have guys who are pretty good walking through the hallway and i think that's what they got to realize is you know there aren't a lot of those guys around and you don't have to be the next you know insert that name um she's gonna be you and that's what we try to try to do i actually had a conversation with one of our freshman girls yesterday who's a good little swimmer and she's working her tail he's a tiny little thing and she's she she's going to she's going to have a really good high school career she's going to be a really good swimmer she's got some you know club events of the 200s a stroke 4im stuff she's good in that stuff and it's like yeah you're just new here it's okay you're this is six seven weeks into a season and and she's worried about where she fits in i'm like oh we got a long time to figure that out so it's just kind of you know trying to balance that expectation with kids absolutely and one of the things that i took away and dan took away from your talk at asco was how organized you are so let's get into the nuts and bolts of this you've got a how many week season for your high school season uh we go 14 weeks from start to the end of the state meet so yeah it's it's a short quick one um i'm going to correct you on the organizer i get a lot of people you cannot see my desk right now so um yeah but i appreciate the confidence yeah it's a 14-week season so how are we setting up our season when we take a look at those weeks well and i think we do it a little bit different i do a little bit i i've tweaked some things over the years uh i think you always have to obviously you know i listened to the the bret hawk interview with uh eddie reese the other day i know a part of it and i can listen to eddie reese tell stories all day i know people go to clinics like i want to hear what this guy i think you learned a lot from his stories um and just kind of the the thing of you know you're always looking at how to get better like you know that guy is almost 80 years old we're right around 80 and and he's still trying to figure out how to get better and so and what we need to change because every year is different and i embraced that idea too and so what we've done here is the difference here than where i've been in the past um our varsity guys and kind of just focusing just on those guys they're swimming for their club team year-round um i kind of i i get i almost cherry-pick you know our club we our kids swim for about four or five different clubs here we have great club programs in the area great coaches um you know i've gotten to know them i've had a chance to work with a few um i'm in contact with them uh often uh maybe probably not as much as i should be but i do reach out and kind of check in on kids they always you know know they're more than welcome to come visit us at practice see what we're doing they've already been the same way but when our kids come in they're they're ready to go um they've been swimming you know typically since labor day and we start the monday at thanksgiving so we don't spend a ton of time where some high schools might traditionally go kind of that old school hey we're gonna spend four weeks just going pure aerobic um our guys are coming out of a taper meat or some sort of rest they're coming in almost as fast if not going lifetime best pretty darn close to it we've got one group that just full on shave and taper um so they come in we're ready to go so we really spend those first couple weeks just keep developing that speed they're already on a high they're feeling good about themselves um we keep it going uh we don't do i don't think we're a big yardage volume program i kind of quit counting years ago and i do look at it because i have gone overboard when i've done that a couple times um but our volume probably that first couple weeks is a little bit lower and we're still we're working on front end speed and just going going going and um you know we're still getting i'd say 5k in a workout so it's not like we're not we're slouching it or anything 4k but um yeah we we go fast and we swim a couple duel meets early and teams don't like it because our guys are coming in and it's like oh man you guys rested it's like no we're just we're we're living off of what they've been doing for the last 14 weeks the great work that they've done before and we just look really good right now i look my first meet here between the team naperville central who's a a great program in illinois uh we went 136 8 in the medley relay and we've got these little closets on our side of the deck and i walk in the closet and i start laughing and there i came out i was like like red i think my eyes were kind of tearing like what's so funny and i'm like i coached the team we went 138 shaved and tapered a year ago and that was that was our school wreck you know these guys go 136 and they're always kind of he's all right um so it's just kind of that mentality we want to go fast and we just established that really early you know then we kind of get into an aerobic phase i i just i found out that when we went aerobic real early they were too tired to develop any speed until the end and while our kids would would drop time at the end of a year and you know i could beat my chest and say wow our kids weren't you know look how hard we were we're dropping five seconds and a hundred that year to your progression wasn't getting any better it was getting you know half second maybe two tenths of a second better by year instead of getting that you know hey that kid just got bigger and stronger here we should be getting a second less faster so that was just kind of how i looked at so we start off going fast and then we kind of it's a little bit of just reverse periodization i mean uh yahtzee scaffordiante skinner talked about that was kind of the influence to me um but that just made total sense so that was kind of i think the one unique thing we did and like i said we started with some speed development working front end speed then we go into some aerobic just kind of re-establish that a little bit uh and then we go into a mix stage where we just do a lot of anaerobic and aerobic stuff mixed in a lot of mixed circuits uh and then we go into you know another speed race prep phase start doing some brokens and just getting the idea uh i quit using the word pace about three years ago because i think it's a dirty word because when kids hear pace they think easy or it's just unrealistic like we have our guys who swim the 500 you'll pace um we should have a couple guys going 410 um evidently because they can hold 25 plus um going pacework but it's like it's a full-out sprint i mean their tempo is like you know 0.9 per cycle or it's just like off the charts they're like that you're not swimming like that so i just so now we call race and they kind of and for some reason that's kind of clicked with them a little bit better so and then we just rest you know and like i said it asks they're 16 17 year old guys they're pumping growth hormone left and right um they're they're they're a lot harder to screw up than they are make faster i think um it really is i think if you keep them like mentally and emotionally in the right state of mind it's it's it's i don't want to like you know tell everybody who's doing well it's easy but it's it's a little easier than i thought it would be with guys girls is a whole different animal and i think girls are more coach i think guys are just way more like i just want to brute force flex the muscle and let's go and girls are so much more technical and they're more more thoughtful and mindful about it uh and it's a fun mix i really i we coach the girls in the fall and i'm an assistant for their program and i actually enjoy it quite a bit josh talk to me about what a set looks like at new trier high school second week of december on a wednesday night on a wednesday well what's changing this year because we went to a different schedule in school uh but probably what it'll look like this year on a wednesday night second week in december we'll be getting ready for our duel meet with naperville central and hinsdale in naperville friday in jail saturday um we're gonna go to three mornings a week and one of them is gonna be a lift we're gonna lift monday morning uh because we can get the weight room all to ourselves um it's a little later start for us so they get a little bit of time to sleep a little extra sleep in um so wednesday morning will be off wednesday morning is going to be just probably a pretty quality set especially that second week uh we're going to work a lot of front end speed i get i gave the example uh and asked i stole it from dan flack at an ask a talk i love what the stuff he does when he publishes it always i think you can always put it in context obviously um and i really like this that he came up with and it's just like a progression of you know uh 15 meters 25 37 and a half 50 and it's all in four minutes and it's like two of each and it's just working on getting out working on uh on our start working on our breakout um i think a lot of a big mistake a lot of us make and i know i've made it in the past i wait to work on that stuff to the very end of the year i kind of get to the point where i'm like oh man we need we haven't done enough start work we haven't done enough breakout kind of things working just the technical aspect um so we just try to reinforce it right away and so we'll that's something we do a longer warm-up maybe a little preset that and then we might go into like a little aerobic set after it or a kick set um nothing that's going to crush them because we want to build up that that system and the next morning and thursday morning typically we go into groups uh we break our morning groups into 50 500 and immers and thursday is a pretty quality day for that group on a racework a lot of broken our 50 guys will be on the towers our our 500 guys will get on the towers for a little bit so um yeah i mean there i don't think there's any secret sauce to it just that's the one thing i've learned over the years is i think we all do pretty similar stuff it's just how you get the kids to buy it and we just talk about we want to be fast now i'm i don't know if i'm ever going to do it i'm kind of i'm a little chicken to do it um i'm thinking of putting kids in suits every once in a while i know one coach who still got some blue 70s and i wish we had those or just any kind of body suit to put them in there just once just to make them feel hey this is what it feels like just that feeling of speed and i i just i in illinois you only have to be fast one day to be honest with you we qualify for a state meet at the sectional which is the week before state it's the only time you can qualify it's the silliest setup ever um you can set an american record in that first week in december and if you don't hit qualifying time or win a sectional the third week in february it doesn't matter and it's just it's a silly set we're kind of hoping to get into the 20th century at some point uh we're making steps there uh we're gonna get the 20th first then we'll get in the 21st but um it doesn't matter but trying to get them to buy into being fast early biggest thing and that time is when we really get it so you mentioned josh that your competitions in the dual meet season are are typically friday and saturday so do you plan like okay maybe i i can go a little bit less speed work and think more about drilling or skill work or maybe some more aerobic stuff because i know they're going to go fast friday saturday or are you saying hey we're firing up another two days a week and getting after it we just go and because it's such a short season and because it is so focused on those last two weekends in february just kind of found out that if you back off in spots and it just it comes back and bites you a little bit i think and so we we train through everything before when i was at another school and we we would back off and when i say back off maybe a day or two out from me dropped out about 75 of our volume and intensity maybe work a little more drill work maybe work a little more technique some skill stuff um something i've tried to incorporate the last few years or really want to do it more um is some skill work within like a warm-up set uh or within a preset and just getting them you know getting out of just the mind with swimming and a lot of times i i think it's we are worried about volume and things like this and we say okay let's we're going to go you know you know five 200 skips to warm up pretty go and it's just like you know they just they're just counting eight five times and you know what are they getting out of it instead of like just being more mindful i've talked to a couple coaches a couple club coaches nearby got some great ideas and asked of braden holloway's presentation i thought was really really neat this morning we did something similar i was coaching a baxter backstroke group this morning and we did a 600 and every at the 75 they got out they did a backstroke start so we got six starts in this morning uh and just you know kind of was able to watch and do a little coaching at that time so um you know we just go through and and i think that's just the way our kids are they just wanna hey we're tired we're beat up we don't care um you know we lift the morning of meats on saturdays a lot of times um and to be honest depending on what it is will kind of vary on the workout um but you know sometimes it's activation but there's times when it's no we're going hard and our guys are gassed um we did that a few years ago uh we had a coach a volunteer coach who was in here working with with one of our guys it was kid charlie scheinfeld he's swimming down in texas now he's a senior and charlie's huge i mean i think he's deadlifting like 405 right now and he just he's a he's a monster and they did we were doing a little bit of deadlift in that day supposed to be using appropriate load for reps of like eight we're supposed to do reps of four or sets of four and you know i can just hear weights clanging on the floor and there's charlie just just heaving some weight and he and the coach going at a young volunteer coach we got to the meet that afternoon and jerry's like my legs are shot like well yeah dude you know you you probably didn't need to see what we could max out this morning in the weight room you know so that was a lesson learned and but it also wasn't one i was real worried about he actually got beat in two races and it was just kind of like all right i know how i need to prepare better i'm gonna need to rest a little more you know those are always good times but yeah we go through pretty much the season i love it talk to us about how you use towers uh not as much as i'd like we've only got four which i i say we only got four when a lot of high schools are like what's a tower you know so we're pretty lucky um trying to use it more i wish there's part of me that wish we had racks uh although obviously the tower being way more versatile with our with our guys who are more 50 focused um we do more rack type work we drop a cone in about 10 and a half yards we've got a piece of tape uh mounted on on the on the on the tower and they can see when it gets there that's ten and a half yards so we time them just kind of follow the protocols you know i think everybody's taking those you know should it be you know 5.8 seconds to 6.7 seconds and you know we're just kind of very some days we'll be like hey we're going to go heavy but we still got to get to 10 yards within eight seconds um and so we just do kind of reps like that sometimes with them um with our our more kind of uh i'd say longer kid you know high school doesn't really have a distance event but our 200 500 kids we might do some you know wider weight but some repeats with it and then go right into some race work you know give them a time like hey this is we want you holding we're doing 200 work hey we want to hold 26.5 or under on these and we want you know kick count off the wall we want tempo just like a 200 or 500 um we had a guy years ago a few years back who just was going to end up being our third flyer but he was our best 50 flyer and we and we can only enter two guys in the sectional event and he was going to make the lineup in our medley relay and we just kind of about six weeks out of state me just made a decision you're swimming a 50 fly we put him on that thing every day every morning and we put a monofin on him and we honestly just did like 12 and a half repeat 15 meter repeats 12 and a half you know whatever's kick we tried to find a sweet kicked out spot for him and then we would go you know 25s with it underwater so just a little stuff like that but yeah i'd like to get more into it um and using more i wish we had eight we had like you know one in every lane um but again that's that's kind of greek um i went out to arizona years ago like the early 2000s and i just oh yeah i mean i was like holy cow we had a connection with frank bush through somebody i worked with and i was i remember just being like oh oh my god i mean they had a tower like every lane going the width of the 50 meter and i was like wow and he's like yeah we use it every day when i went i went to virginia a few years ago i was keeping like name dropping um but you know they they had just gotten some more it uh and you know todd was telling the story was telling me yeah we use this daily and we do we try to put some kind of resistance work in every workout so either towers that gets a little tough here we can only do it in the morning because um we're eight lanes and we have three diving boards at the end so we have divers going as we're swimming under them um it's a pretty interesting thing um it's and our divers are really good and we're not going to haven't had any problems but uh it's it's pretty interesting so having you know the towers going down is just not going to work out real well with divers here so we use shoots in the mornings we use cords drag socks all that weight belts stuff like that so we try to get some resistance all the time you know you have this picture in your presentation and i know that a lot of folks who are listening to this will go to asco once that uh talk is uploaded and and listen to your talk because it like i said it resonated with dan and i but you have this picture of the team in the weight room and it looks like you get great buy-in there so what does the lifting look like throughout the season um well we lift two to three times a week uh like i said we're going to go to monday mornings just so we can get the room to ourselves that picture um again we're really fortunate here at nutrition we have a lot of resources um that that a lot of schools just don't have um and one of them is a full-time strength coach um and we've got he's got a staff of paid assistance um and when i first met him uh you know he's a typical strength coach he's a football guy uh i'm a football guy so you know he and i could connect right away and when i met him he was his energy level was just through the charts and all i asked him once and that's we were lifting the mornings at that time and i just said all i need you to do is be this guy like 6 30 in the morning and just get him going and um he he actually has done a jim jim davis name he presented ask a few years ago along with our girls coach out in dc about building culture uh in the weight room and through dry land and um he's just been fabulous researching talking to people he ended up at a conference in louisville and he went and found the string coach in charge of the swim program and he went out had a cup of coffee with him and just picked his brain like i'm coaching high school kids and just you know kind of are we doing the right kind of thing so uh we look at more we don't do anything swim specific i don't think uh we do stuff more just general strength training uh my favorite line i think i told this at the conference was you know we don't bench press and every as soon as people hear us say weightlifting everybody thinks we're in bench presence um i teach a strength and conditioning class here and that's all that's all the guys want to do we literally just started benching last week we were doing push-ups um you know my favorite line is tell me tell me why swimmers should bench press you can't say the texas men do it give me a reason and there's some people who use it and there are benefits to it but you know our strength training it's pretty simple we swat we clean we dead lift um we work on different planes upper body lower body push pull try to get as much uh balance workers again we do a lot of things on one foot do a lot of bandwork a lot of cord work uh pretty general stuff i don't think anything again earth shattering but our kids have really enjoyed it um and it's the environment that that that our strength staff creates um we went in there a few years ago and they decided to do some battle ropes and we're in there with the football team and we got some big big kids at this school and uh i think the football team guys were a little annoyed that you know hey why are these guys in here and then they looked at a couple of our guys like wow you know they're really getting after it and so you know our coaches bring out the battle ropes and they go let's get a football guy and a swimmer and you know good-sized football players that i'll go and this one kid who said from our team he said i'll go i'm like oh that's the last kid that i thought would volunteer and i'm like this is gonna get he's gonna get wrecked and sure enough you know i mean two pulls in and our guy goes flying across the room and the entire football team mops the guy who wants they just dog pile they're going nuts and our kids are looking like what are they doing this is nuts they're like oh they're celebrating they're it's a victor they're winning they want to compete and so we decided to go round two and we had a pretty good-sized kid who plays waterfall division one college waterfall and i mean he's he's a horse and he got up there and about three pulls he yanks the football player across the room the football team mobs the swimmer all of a sudden our guys at the bottom of the swim and i'm looking i'm like get in there and they they just thought it was greatest thing in the world and it's just they've really bought into it uh and i think that's like anything if they believe in what you're doing they're gonna go after it our girls have gotten a lot better at it they've been in the weight room with our strength staff for about six years now um and and we were in there i was in there last week a couple days with them and i'm amazed at like not just how strong they are but how they're getting after i mean they're really pranking and that's i know i know it's not just male or female but kids in general that's a hard thing to do um but they they really do they enjoy doing it they they spend the time doing it and they've really bought in i think against credit more to our strength staff than anything else i love it it sounds like it's helped really build the culture and a great segue into my next question 14 week season coach what does the taper look like at neutral two weeks when we get to the end of it they dip their toe in the water um we just we rest i mean we and sometimes i'm always worried we're doing it too much because we were our kids you know we we in the high school season on on saturday they go back to their club team on monday and then we have our state senior champs thursday friday saturday sunday and then a lot of teams are going to ncsas or speedo sectionals after that and i'm always really concerned especially a lot of our kids we don't have a lot of 500 type kids we have a lot of 200 stroke kids 400 i am i'm i would love for high school to add the 800 free relay in the 400 medley relay i think that would give us a great chance and a lot of stuff um better than we are now uh we set our state record in the 200 medley relay a few years back first school to go under 130 and i'm like i bet if we went to 400 million it'd been way more impressive um but we we focus we start getting you know by that point we've got our lineup set up everybody knows where they're going we just do a lot of race specific work this last year during covent we had an eight week season so we really we did one week of rest and it was a lot i would give them a yardage amount just i want you to do this and 300 yards of it has to be fast you can do it however you want but you can't do more than 100 yards at a time or something like that um we get a lot of assist work going in we do a little bit of visualization with them uh probably to start focusing more on the details we take some time uh it's a lot of low volume um we probably drop our volume the first week by almost 50 percent and then the week after that we almost go 50 percent of that so i mean it's uh well i'd say 60 than the 50 of that so i mean it's it's a pretty low volume though um that last week we are honestly because we've had the sectional meet on saturday hopefully you know we've qualified hopefully we haven't had to arrest anybody to get in there we throw them in suits and caps just to to make sure you know we get our time you know get our kids through and then it's it's just it's more just kind of zeroing in and kind of you know sharpening that knife so to speak so and we talked you know we spent a lot of time during the year talking about nutrition and sleep taking care of yourself and and i think that that part of it's a real important part and again it's like starts turns and finishes you can't wait till then to do it you gotta do it early in the year so but that those two weeks we really hammer how individualized do you get josh when it comes to you know the different events who's doing what uh a little bit our guys who are a little bit longer going the two and the five um we'll go we'll obviously do some different things are guys who are sprinting we'll do a lot of just short burst stuff off the block a lot of assisted stuff some of our kids are more like i said 200 focus kids uh we might let them throw a little bit more value if they really are worried about it uh we might give them a little aerobic work you know so i'll get a lot of kids they won't and we we really lay off kicking um i just you know bring the legs back it just takes so long um but we'll do some i might let him do a real light easy pull um just things like that do a lot of race rehearsal uh so it just kind of really depends we do we don't individualize probably as much as a lot of people do in the club and college world but we do i think we do cater towards events more than anything else we do the same thing in the weight room we'll lift the week before but it just kind of depends on who you are uh and what you think you need and most of the time you know again they're 16 17 year old kids hey they don't know what they need but b it's probably not the worst thing in the world you know a little extra work isn't give a little more extra sleep it's probably going to be is just as beneficial so um you know i i think we do we do kind of cater to some of the needs a little bit and i'll have kids come up and say hey i just want to do i just want to swim like can i i had a we had a kid a couple years ago was over 200 500 kid and he said i just want to swim a little bit i was like all right because you care for close i go doing one just pull 600 and go knock yourself out so every day at the end we're done he's like i'm gonna pull 600 then cuz we got like three days out i'm like why don't you pull it 300 today you know i don't think his heart it was ever over 120 130 beats a man but it just it made him feel good so i'm just like you know go for it man i love it i love it and i love you know the trust that you have with your athletes and that they have with you they felt comfortable going to asking for that josh what's what's the role of the parents in your high school program how do they contribute to your team what what do you do as a coaching staff to keep them involved well we try to communicate with them as much as we can and like i said earlier i've been really fortunate um you know you know i think there was that perception that that it was when it all costs here if you don't win uh they're gonna run you out of town and that's that's never uh ever been the case i mean especially from our parents uh it's been very smart we try to involve them a little bit um i'm trying to figure out even more ways to give that have them be a part of this because especially for our seniors um you know we had a couple we have kids and we've actually been running the problems with this we have our during the boys season our girls team will come time meets for us and our boys will time during the girls meet well one year we were i think most of our girls were away at meats something was going on it might have been like a school break or something uh and we we lit we solicited help from the stands and we got one parent who came down and he had had he had been coming to high school meets with his sons i think he had five sons and it had been a span of almost 20 years that he had been spending his friday nights at high school meets he came out we have these little rickety plastic chairs i went and got him a nice kitchen chair and then i pulled up one one for his son and i said people sit with your dad and i just thought that's a really special time that he got to come down on deck and hang out with his kid um you know they don't get those opportunities very often and you know it can be it can always backfire on you obviously and we're always trying to kind of where do we keep the separation and things like that but um you know trying to get them involved as much as they can and just trying to educate them and understand that their kids are doing the best they can they're facing a whole lot of things in the world especially again talking about seniors they're trying to play in college what's the next step of their life so um you know we do so some social things with them and the parents volunteer to help all right so josh we talked about the role of parents in your program we talked about taper we talked about lifting how you plan your season talk to me about who you're following what is your favorite thing to do in order to learn new things and expand your knowledge of the sport stuff like this uh um this is i and i mentioned it and you know you doing this listen to the stuff that brent hawks doing um uh zach mertens out of springfield missouri when this when the when the pandemic first hit was putting stuff together on facebook like bob steele kept coming on i've known bob since i was a little kid uh he was my dad's high school teacher um so that was kind of a trip getting to watch him and then just you know just connecting with people um like i said you could never measure how bad covet has been but i i i'm definitely not an eternal optimist but i've been able to find some good things out of it and just the sharing that's come out of it has been really good i really do love clinics and conferences and you know you hear it all the time it's not when you're sitting in the room and they're up at the board talking it's sitting in the lobby it's sitting you know drinking coffee it's eating breakfast for lunch with somebody um those are the best things and again and nutria are really fortunate we have a lot of resources i've been able to do some professional development um i got to go out to uh to the university of virginia for three days and todd de sorbo was nothing but you know i just randomly emailed him and he said sure go ahead um you know one year i didn't think i could travel so i just went down the street to northwestern um but also just i mean for years i picked up the phone or emailed you know chris plum at carmel you know peter veroff at bowles and and dan flack at baylor just asking hey i saw you doing this on twitter uh what kind of equipment are you using and just i i think any time you can do this i i've only got it i think it figured out i've got it like nine years after i retired and i just kind of thought you know i want to learn as much as i can in those nine years because i think i want to keep coaching afterwards too but i think again it's just it's a way that to keep getting better and you know i stopped swimming lost 10. so my competitive experience is zero um so for me to be able to to kind of keep going and not being able to call on what i did as an athlete um it's really really difficult when i first started i used to go to everything try to read every book possible and now i just think like i said listen and go talk is the best part i i bought the book that uh dana abbott and chuck warner wrote about eddie reese and i bought one for my dad he was he was a coach for about 40 years in high school and eddie reese was his hero and and you know with a connection down there hey coach reese would you mind if when i see at the central stage clinic would you mind autographing it and he autographed it it was just it was a thrill and then i said something i'm talking about i heard my guy down there who was fortunate enough to coach and and i said i'd love to come visit you and he goes oh any time i just said the one thing was you have to tell me at the end of the workout what i could have done better and i keep wanting to go down there but i'm trying to figure out how in the heck i'm going to tell him something and just it hasn't worked out to get down there with covey but i really do want to get down there i think any time you can talk with other coaches and swimming is the best with that but even just other coaches in other sports i've learned a ton of stuff from from from coaches from other sports and watching other practices i when i was a first as a head coach uh i went to a baseball practice and that was the most organized thing i'd ever seen and it was you know you think baseball such a stationary sport it was just constant movement i went to a basketball practice it was constant competition um and it was just really seeing the level of engagement uh was a huge thing so i just i think anytime you can do things like that you can connect uh it's also reaffirming uh you know when i spoke and asked i had fortunately a couple people came up wanted to talk afterwards i was i was just thrilled anybody showed up um and then when i got talking to him afterwards it was kind of like oh i do that too and we were kind of both like you know we were all like oh we do that yeah we do something similar and it i think making all of us feel like okay i'm doing something right or at least doing something that somebody else is trying to so i think that's such an important piece of it as well this has been an awesome hour and uh i want to leave our viewers today with what you're most excited about for the sport oh i just think seeing i see where it goes i i i got i was fortunate we got to go to trials for a couple days uh in june and um where we were sitting michael phelps was about 10 feet from us matter of fact i looked over i'm like it's michael phelps and you know aaron pearson was sitting up there and names that i know and that everybody knows but now seeing like this new generation of these young athletes coming in you know like the jake mitchells the kieran smiths uh you know um i mean just all these you know tory husky all these kids coming in and just it's so cool seeing it because you know at some point caleb dress was going to retire katie ledecky's going to retire and seeing who the next one is to come out of that and to see who they've inspired to become this and seeing that with coaches like you know who are the eddie reeses of the world inspired who have the terry mckeevers of the world inspired into seeing like new and new people coming i i just think i'm really looking forward to seeing what 2024 looks like and just to build up into it and hearing all these new names um and you know i it's just to me it's a really exciting time there's opportunities that i think haven't been there for athletes now because there were so great such great athletes there for you know michael phelps and ryan lochte were you know generation you know multiple olympics and you know generational talents katie ledecky's in the same boat but now seeing all these you know young kids coming i just think it's really exciting i i think you know the direction of the isl all that stuff you know watching that on tv that was cool i never really got it kind of followed it but just seeing where the sport people are trying to take is really deep oh i'm with you there and uh josh how can people get in touch with you if they want to ask questions uh you can probably even well i'm in a dungeon so good luck trying to find me but um if they want to email me uh do you want me to just give you my email perfect uh it's wrong r u n k l e j at n t h s dotnet and if if anybody wants to email call me most important things i 847-784-6576 you before we started i'm a pretty good thief i think i've been stealing from people for 20 years and if i can give one thing back that makes me feel a lot better well coach it's been a great hour we appreciate it and look forward to seeing you more thank you very much this was a thrill i appreciate the offer and the opportunity

Channel: Fitter and Faster Swim Camps

Views: 1,035

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Id: RnlDdhnrZX0

Length: 50min 23sec (3023 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021