Before Hustling to Finish, Relaxed Is a Good Way to Start
By GINA KOLATA, NY Times

LIKE so many people around the world, Dr. Michael Joyner was transfixed watching Michael Phelps swim in the Summer Olympics. But while many of us focused on Mr. Phelps’s world records, Dr. Joyner, a competitive Masters swimmer and an exercise researcher at the Mayo Clinic, noticed something else.

“I have never seen anyone so relaxed in the water,” he said.

Relaxation. It is a trait that is often underappreciated, coaches and athletic trainers say. Yet it can make the difference between doing your best and not doing well, between feeling dragged down or soaring. Coaches search for better ways to teach it. And many athletes, including some of the world’s best, work on it constantly. An ability to relax while pushing hard, exercise researchers say, is one reason why winners win.

“It’s the paradox of athletics,” said Rick DeMont, associate head coach for men’s swimming at the University of Arizona and a former Olympian. “Tension is slow, tension is inefficient. You need to be relaxed.” And relaxation can be taught.

“If a person is willing to learn, they will learn it,” said Ralph Reiff, a certified athletic trainer and director of St. Vincent Sports Performance Center in Indianapolis.

Coaches agree.

“Some started in a better position than others, but nearly everyone I’ve ever had can improve,” said Clyde Hart, the director of track and field at Baylor University. Mr. Hart has coached some of the world’s best runners, including Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner. He now coaches Sanya Richards, who won bronze and gold medals at the Beijing Games.

Yet relaxation also is a mysterious state and hard to describe. It’s one of those situations in which you know it when you achieve it.

Athletes who get there “always feel wonderful,” Mr. DeMont said. But, he adds, “you don’t get there by trying really hard to get there.”

In a sense, relaxation goes against most athletes’ instincts. Mr. Hart likes to point out the way elementary and middle school children run. “The kids throw their heads back,” Mr. Hart said. “They think that the harder they go, the faster they run.” That sort of body tension is the first thing Mr. Hart tries to correct. “The quickest way to improve a kid is to teach him to relax,” Mr. Hart said.

But it’s also important for athletes to realize that relaxing does not mean slowing down. “A lot of athletes don’t know the difference between relaxing and not running,” Mr. Hart said. With runners, he said, the upper body must relax but, he added, “the lower body is going to run.”

One of his tricks is to have athletes concentrate on relaxing their eyes. “If they’re wide eyed, they’re tense,” Mr. Hart said. “I tell runners to run sleepy eyed. It’s like pouring a soothing oil over the body.” As the eyes relax, the face starts to relax, the jaw relaxes and then, Mr. Hart said, he tells runners to let the feeling spread through the shoulders and arms.

“You want your arms to be your rhythm,” he said. “They may not help you, but they can hurt you big time if your arms are tense and you are gripping your hands tightly.”

Mr. DeMont said that in track and swimming it helps to relax the lower jaw and make sure you are breathing with your diaphragm and your stomach.

And Mr. Reiff said that he tells runners to stay tall, avoiding the rolled shoulders and tight upper body form that comes with fatigue and being too tense. He tells them to rehearse the phrase, “stay tall” to themselves while they run. And, he said, coaches or a friend on the sideline during a race can shout it out if a runner shows tenseness.

“If you are a coach on the sideline and holler to your runners, ‘stay tall,’ all of a sudden they lift themselves out of that position,” Mr. Reiff said.

People like Michael Phelps, these experts say, are masters of relaxation, able to get into a rhythm and stay there even with the intense pressure of Olympic competition.

For example, Mr. DeMont said, when Mr. Phelps swam, his stroke count remained the same in every lap. A tense and inefficient swimmer, he added, will take more strokes with every lap of the pool. Mr. Phelps, he said, “was able to nail it every time.” He is, Mr. DeMont said, “a rhythm master.”

COACHES and athletic trainers say athletes always know when they relax. Mr. DeMont asks people to remember the best they ever did in a race or in training. “Think of how darn good it felt,” he said. “That’s the feeling you are after.”

It makes sense to Dr. Joyner. He explained that when people start to train and compete, these experiences of being relaxed happen at random. “But if you pay attention you can increase the odds of them happening again and again,” he said. “To me this is what people talk about when they say they are ‘in the zone.’ ”

It happened to Dr. Joyner recently when he ran a half marathon after what he said was minimal training. Somehow he finished the race in 1 hour 38 minutes, a result that shocked him.

“It’s a strange thing because at some level you are reading the fatigue and ‘pain’ from your body and using it to get and stay right on the razor’s edge,” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I put pain in quotes because you hurt, but it is not painful in the traditional sense because you are using it and you are not fearful and are just sort of ‘right there.’ ”

“It was interesting when I ran that half marathon,” Dr. Joyner said. “I had not run a race in like 11 years but I was able to get right into a rhythm and just sort of do it. What did Yogi say? ‘It was like déjà vu all over again.’ ”

“At some level,” Dr. Joyner added, “everyone I know who has been a hard-core endurance athlete for many years is a covert religious mystic due to these types of experiences.”

Some Helpful Tips for Your First Meet

Listed below are some tips and information that hopefully will make your first meet a little easier. Swimmers have been entered in every event possible. A “psych sheet” has not been posted for this meet as of yet but you can keep checking the Marlins web-site under “Meet Information”, click on the GOLD meet which will take you to their web-site. The psych sheet will provide event information but not heat and lane.

Warm-ups. It is important that swimmers are ready to for warm-ups 10 minutes before the warm-up session begins. Coaches will provide lane information. Saturday warm ups are as follows: 10 & under are at 8:00 a.m. – 11 & up will not begin before 12:00. Each session of the meet will begin 1 hour after warm ups begin. Sunday warm up schedule may change slightly so please check with a coach before you leave the pool on Saturday.

There is not a team area or bull pen, although it is nice if everyone tried to sit near each other. Find a comfortable spot and grab it. There are plenty of bleachers, and no folding chairs are allowed inside the MVAC building.

Purchase a heat sheet (about $10) to find the event number and heat and lane for your swimmer. Most parents write this on the swimmer’s leg or arm (bring Sharpie!)

Swimmers need to report to the coaches table before and after they swim. This is so the coaches can give last minute instructions/reminders and review their swim.

It is the swimmer’s responsibility to get to the blocks for their race. All needed info is published in the heat sheet to allow this to happen. A coach will not be available to get your child up for their race. Younger children will need your assistance to find their proper spot. Swimmers need to report behind the lane four races before your own. Pay close attend to the “scoreboard” as this will tell you what event and heat is in the water.

The next item is much different than summer league and you may want to review this with your child to be sure they understand.

The start is as follows: a series of short whistles signifying that the current race in the water is almost over. A long whistle that means “step up on the blocks and assume the starting placement with your feet”. Swimmers should listen closely for this long whistle. The starter will then say “take your mark” at which time the swimmer takes position and remains motionless until they hear the “beep” (command to go). Swimmers will all assume the start position at the same time. If this does not happen, the starter may say “stand”, in which case the swimmer simply stands up. If a swimmer falls into the water after the “stand” command has been given, no false start will be given. When the starter is ready, the “take your mark” command will be issued again. If there is any movement once the swimmer is in position, a “false start” may be charged to the swimmer and therefore DQ’d. If a swimmer falls into the water before the “go beep” the swimmer will be DQ’d. Swimmers are allowed 1 false start.

Disqualifications – DQ’s. If a swimmer is DQ’d for any violation/infraction, a referee should notify them at the conclusion of the race. Every effort is made by the referee to advise the swimmer and explain the infraction, however this does not always happen as there may not be enough referees to reach each swimmer.

Your swimmer’s entered time. A “NT” means ‘no time’, which indicates that a swimmer hasn’t swum the event before. In a few cases, swimmers that have transferred to our team but haven’t provided us with a list of their previous times will find that they are entered with NT.

Common errors

Breast and Fly require that two hands touch the wall at the same time and with the shoulders level.

On the backstroke a swimmer must finish the race, and finish the backstroke portion of the IM on their back. Sometimes swimmers accidentally roll onto their tummy as they look back for the wall. This is illegal.

Back turns. A swimmer is allowed to roll onto their tummy and take one pull of freestyle going into the turn. Once they have extended their arm all the way through on the one freestyle pull, their head must begin to go downward into the flip. If they continue to just float forward after they have finished the pull they will be DQ’d. This is a common error with new swimmers because they often have trouble judging the wall as they approach on their back. The key is to know how many strokes it is from the flags to the wall. This is one reason warm-up is important, to get a sense of the number of strokes from the flags to the wall. Remember that the freestyle flip is only used on a back to back turn.

Breast Stroke: Swimmers are allowed one pull and one kick underwater before they surface off each wall – including the start. Sometimes a swimmer will be very deep, say off the dive, and find that they need to take an additional stroke (in addition to the one allowed) to quickly reach the surface. This is not legal because in essence that would be underwater swimming.

Finish: A swimmer’s time will be flashed up on the wall (scoreboard) when they touch. This is transmitted by the touch pad that hangs in the water on the finishing wall. A swimmer should touch the pad squarely and in the middle, and avoid finishing by touching the gutter. This will not stop the pad and the clock will continue running until some part of the swimmer’s body bumps into the pad, adding several extra seconds. This is a common error on backstroke wherein a swimmer will slap their arm into the wall or gutter and miss the pad completely- another good reason to count your strokes from the flags.

A swimmer should always ask the timer for their time and not rely only on the scoreboard time.

Attire: wear team suit (if you purchased one). If you wear a cap, please wear the team cap.

Questions: If at anytime during the meet you have questions, please either ask a veteran parent or a coach.

Here are some Frequently asked Questions:

Do we need to know what events he/she is swimming in? Yes, you do. When you get to the meet on the day you signed up for, at the warm up time for the session your kid is swimming, buy a heat sheet. This will tell you the Event, Heat, and Lane assignments for each swimmer in each age group. Turn to the section for that session, i.e. Sunday afternoon, and look through each event for his/her age group to find the name. Then highlight all of his or her events. Then, most importantly, follow the meet format and make sure they get to the block on time. This is real swimming. If you miss your event, you don’t get a second chance.

Do you need any money for her events? There are per event meet fees for each meet, usually around $4/event. A meet fee escrow of $150 every three months will be collected. Give your check made out to Marlins Sports Foundation to Lim or mail it to him at 250 Brookview Place Woodstock , GA 30188. If you email your entry to me after the deadline, there is a probability that your swimmer did not make it into the meet. You can “late enter” or “deck enter” a meet by seeing the Clerk of Course before the start of each session. The entry fee doubles if you do this and you may only swim in an empty lane in the slowest heat.

Do we need to fill out a form for his/her events? No.

What to do after each swim event? Be sure to send your swimmer to check in with his or her coach before heading to the warm-down pool. Remind your swimmer to be patient because coaches are watching other swimmers competing in the lanes.

What should we bring to the meet? Water-proof marker, money for heat sheet (usually $10), water/sport drinks, healthy snacks. Usually there are both food and equipment vendors at the meet.

I know Lim is supposed to take care of what event he/she will be swimming but we have not heard yet which ones. Has my swimmer been signed up for the dates and sessions that I requested? Often the host team of a meet will post a psych sheet on their web site before the meet. This will show you that your swimmer is entered in an event, as well as what place they are seeded. If the host team does not post a psych sheet, then there is no way to know what your kid is swimming until you get to the meet and buy a heat sheet. There are often mistakes. I make mistakes on the list. Lim can make a mistake doing the entry. Parents make mistakes in the sign up, etc. Sometimes these can be corrected by the Clerk of Course. Sometimes they can’t. If your kid is a new swimmer, you can assume that he or she will be swimming every event for his/her age group up to the daily event limit (usually three individual events per day, but sometimes more).

Overall theme: Unlike summer league it is not your team versus the other team. It is you versus your previous best time. A swimmer is really only racing the clock, though it is helpful to have other swimmers doing the same with you. The goal is personal improvement. Please also remember good sportsmanship which applies to non-swimmers as well!

See You at the Meet!