Yep that's Dave, The other guy? Some backstroker
This is part 1 of a series of posts about the CSCAA Conference in San Diego California from May 19-21st.
David Salo is widely respected as one the greatest coaching minds in swimming. As someone that coaches breaststroke myself, I eagerly anticipated getting up at 7 this morning to watch him lead some swimmers through different drills and technique work that he does. There is no way I could have expected that mid way through the presentation he would have swimmers diving butt first into the water. And you know what? It was awesome.
I'm not going to just plow through everything I've learned in the first 24 hours of this conference. It's my third time in attendance. Instead, I'm going try and give you a snapshot of what its like here and tell you some fun anecdotes:
-The presentations are so far superb. Just a day in I've heard a former college swimmer and Navy Seal, the Salo demo, Nick Folker (Cal Strength and Conditioning Coach) and Dave Durden. Although you could accuse me of bias since Folker is South African and I have a weakness for that accent.
-Met Jim Reitz of UNLV for the first time. I've been a distant admirer of his teams. UNLV is one of those really great college programs that goes mostly unsung. Reitz told me one of the things he is most proud of is that he has had five assistant coaches leave to become head coaches. Its great when people you idolize live up to expectations isn't it?
-There's a young generation of coaches coming in college that I find it pretty exciting to be around. Brendon Bray, recently promoted to Asssociate Head Coach at San Diego State, was the guy who introduced me to Reitz. He's going to be a big deal some day. Matt Davidson of Harvard is here for the first time and is, as he always is, trying to soak up as much knowledge as humanly possible.
-I got to sit in on the college swim coaches board meeting. Most people find these things pretty dry and I have to admit I struggled at points. Still, what excites me about this conference is that the hierarchies that you think exist on the pool deck tend to melt away. No one cares whether your a coach of a Top 10 program or an assistant coach in your first year. You have a say at this meeting and I think that say something about college coaches in general.
I'll be back at the end of the weekend with something more organized (or not).
I saw Salo speak once and was in disbelief about some of it. It was very intriguing and made me rethink a lot about what I thought I knew about swimming. Keep giving updates for those of us who can't make it to a clinic this year.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to hear him speak and actually go out to dinner with him and a group of people at the Central States Swim Clinic last weekend. His ideas are so unique and it's astonishing to see how much success he has had considering he doesn't subscribe to the prevailing methods of thought as it comes to training.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the inspiration behind the butt dive?
It was as part of a drill where swimmers would scull in a V-Up position, with toes pointed and feet out of the water. A progression of this drill was to be in this position and have a partner push you by kicking, and then switch. The butt dive was mostly a fun way to begin this drill.
ReplyDeleteI think the butt dive is meant to be as a way to really emphasize pushing back with your legs and butt out (instead of down) on backstroke starts. I find it to be pretty effective for that.
ReplyDeleteWhoever commented that it was a part of the drill progression with v sit scull is correct. But you could use it for the other thing too.
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