TRIATHLON SWIM COACH

Making a swim coach choice is an important consideration when it comes triathlon training. The best way to go about it is to imagine what you would expect from a swim coach that would most likely get you where you want to go.

As far as I'm concerned, the most important prerequisite to being a triathlon swim coach is to have a love for swimming and years of experiencing the sport for themselves.

It's much easier to coach a sport if it has been a big part of a person's own life. There are many certified coaching courses available which will enable a prospective coach to earn proper coaching credentials (certificates)once they have decided that swim coaching is for them.

It's important that new swimmers look for these credentials when making a triathlon swim coach choice.

Learning how to coach is only one of the steps one must take to establish themselves as a triathlon swim coach. It's important to market their skills as well through some sort of advertising to let potential swim students know they are available as a triathlon swim coach.

That might mean applying at schools, fitness facilities, and possibly with the city they live in as often there are city run pools that offer swim programs. Also keep in mind that triathlon in a sport that is growing very fast and many new triathletes are in need of triathlon swim coaching.

As an athlete aspiring to triathlon, your triathlon swim coach choice will most likely made when you enter one of these facilities and checking out their programs and coach availability.

Just my letting triathlon clubs know they are avialable would likely result in many new students as newly trained coach embarks on a coaching career.

From a swimmer's point of view there are several things I discovered over the years that coaches could do to become more effective coaches that would make them my number one choice for a triathlon swim coach choice.

The biggest problem I ever had in the days when becoming a better swimmer was finding a coach who didn't insist on teaching ten or twelve people at a time.

I suppose it makes sense to them monetarily to charge a dozen people at a time for the same lesson, but it really hurts the quality of the teaching session and in my eyes is not fair to the new swimmers.

I really believe that becoming a swim coach means adopting the mandate that you give everything you have to teaching each individual student.

It's not like a team sport at all. Individual attention is so important when learning a life-long skill like swimming and this is an important consideration to keep in mind when making your swim coach choice.

Swimming is an activity where "technique" is King and if you do not learn from the very beginning how to swim using the proper stroke mechanics it usually means those bad habits will always stay with you.

The muscles of our body have "memory" and tend to remember how a certain physical action has been performed and will attempt to repeat it the same way time after time.

So if a coach is not spending enough quality one-on-one time with each individual student, chances are some of them will be being done a dis-service.

Would rather pay a coach more and have his full attention for a lesson and that way I know he will be correcting my swimming errors as soon as they happen.

Also, coaches should make more use of video cameras. There are coaches who will have you swim a length in the closest lane to the side of the pool and film your stroke as you swim from one end to the other.

Then they will replay it right away and explain any good and bad points of your stroke so you can alter your stroke in that very same lesson.

It works really well, and there are even coaches who will use an under-water camera and sit on the floor of the pool as you swim over top of them and record the action of your arms from underneath.

This is invaluable when it comes to helping new swimmers with the proper way to "catch" the water with their hand on entry and also to help them avoid "crossing over" their arms as they enter the water to begin their stroke.

I also think that it would be very helpful and time-saving if a coach would make a point of finding exactly what the student plans to use his new found skill for.

Many coaches will have you learning back-stroke, butterfly, and breast-stroke when all you really want to learn is the front crawl so you can enter a triathlon.

Learning all those other strokes are nothing more than a waste of the students time and money. Be sure when you make your swim coach choice that the coach will be perfect for what "you" want to learn.

Coaches should also leave the student with several swim sessions worth of drills and work-outs that will strengthen the skills just learned. That way the student can continue working on what he was taught until it's time for the next coaching session.

Some coaches have it in their head that every one who learns how to swim wants to learn to swim as fast as they can. However in the case of triathlon, it is the wise athlete who learns a "long, smooth" stroke as energy must be conserved for the two events to follow.

Students should make a point of telling the coach this as well so he can teach them according to their specific needs as every individual is different and has different expectations and goals from his swim instruction.

If necessary a coach shouldn't hesitate to get in the pool and swim a length himself so the student can better understand the technique that is being taught.

Often there is just not enough communication between coach and student and if I were to pick one main thing that will make coaches better, that would be it.

If you are just beginning your triathlon career, TOTAL IMMERSION is the perfect system to incorporate into your swim training as your career develops. If you are completely new to swimming, then you have the advantage of developing a great stroke from the very beginning without having to break bad swimming habits.

TOTAL IMMERSION....Simply one of the best swimming techniques in the world today for triathletes of any level.

TOTAL IMMERSION is offering all ironstruck visitors a 10% discount on Books, DVD's, and all other TI teaching tools.

Simply click on this linktotalimmersion.net/store/go to the store page and type ironstruck(all small case)into the shopping cart coupon box and you receive your 10% discount automatically.

Triathlon Swim Coach Back To Triathlon Swim Training

Triathlon Swim Coach Back To Ironstruck Home Page