Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The Amazing Snippet Technique

I tried something at practice the other day that was pretty successful.  "Snippets"
Wordle: Untitled

Isn't it funny how sometimes we can over explain things?

On the pool deck I played some "Telephone Swimming" with one group.  If you haven't read the post yet - here it is:  Telephone Swimming  It basically uses the "snippet" technique - a short phrase that gets the point across!  Kids hear the snippet and pass it along to the next in line.  Of course there are many other things going on with that exercise.... but it really helped me in another practice that evening.

I was losing my voice a little and I had to explain things with as few words as possible.  It was awesome.  Everyone still understood, and probably understood even better than they would have if I had explained it in detail.  I had to pick the best words to describe what I wanted and since the swimmers have all heard it before - it was easy to say things like:

"3 awesome kicks"
"Shoot forward on your breaststroke"
"Surge forward on your breath"
"Continuous kick"

I found myself just barking out snippets all night and it was great.  We did a bunch of 25's and when they were on the wall for 5 seconds I gave as many snippets as I could and went to the other end.  The practice flowed really well and swimmers got better.  Perfect.

Follow me @t2aquatics

No comments:

Post a Comment