Nutrition is an important area of successful sports performance in any sport.

Swimmers need to eat nutritious foods to compete and train to the best of their ability. Coaches need to ensure that swimmers are eating well and re-hydrating to complement their training program. Parents want to help their kids achieve their goals and are keen to support them in every possible way.

Swim Clubs and swimming organisations, selling food and drink at Swim Meets need to ensure that a variety of highly nutritious healthy options that can still generate income and raise funds are available to the swimmers.

Swim Meets, Swim Competitions and Swimming Championships are the places where all the vested interests in swimming nutrition come together: swimmers, coaches, parents and administrators. Everyone is looking for the same thing: how can we maximise the opportunity presented by the competition?

Swimmers want to maximise the opportunity of swimming fast at the Meet.

Coaches want to maximise the opportunities for the individual swimmers and team to compete successfully.

Parents want their kids to make the most of the competitive opportunity and swim well.

Administrators want to maximise the opportunity to generate income from the fund raising activities at the Meet.

Is it possible to develop an overall nutrition strategy to meet the needs of everyone?

Swimmers

A feature of successful athletes in any sport is how they take responsibility for their own performances. As swimmers get older and approach open level competition they should be encouraged to take responsibility for their own diet and nutrition program – to become coach and parent independent as far as food preparation and consumption are concerned.

On Meet day, swimmers should check their own bags to make sure all the fuel they will need over the day has been packed. This includes not only an adequate supply of food and drinks for the Meet day but enough nutritious snacks to cover the crucial post race recovery period. If for example, the last race of the day is 4:00pm and the swimmer is unlikely to eat dinner before 7:00pm, it is important that foods like fruit, sandwiches and other nutritious snacks are available to munch on between 4 and 7pm. (It is unlikely you can “ruin the appetite” of a competitive swimmer!).

Athletes, by their actions, are above average people. They choose to push themselves to their limits and in doing so are “high performance” human beings. Just as High Performance motor vehicles use a high grade, high octane fuel, “high performance humans” need the best possible fuel to perform at their best.

However, athletes do not need to live a hermit type existence and abstain from all Take Away Foods, snacks, nibbles, lollies etc. The pressures of advertising and their peer group will make a totally junk food free existence near impossible for kids in the current times. The goal should be to practice sensible nutrition habits the majority of the time, to understand the basics of high performance eating and to be aware of the link between good food and fast swimming.

Immediately after racing, DRINK. Water is perfect, or try other fluids such as sports drink, cordial or fruit juice. Also eat something light within 10 minutes of finishing the race. This is the time when your body is best able to absorb and utilise new fuels.

If the Meet is two days or longer in duration, recovery nutrition, is an important part of racing successfully. Recovery nutrition is about planning an eating and drinking strategy that helps your body:

• Recover from the physical stresses of racing;
• Prepare for the racing to come.

This is also called the repair, prepare approach to Swim Meet eating.

Recovery nutrition is a technique which provides the swimmer’s body with what they need to recover (eg carbohydrates to replace used up energy, proteins for muscle building and repair) and prepare for the next day of competition. In between races, recovery nutrition is about replenishing energy stores quickly and effectively so that the next race can be completed at maximum speed. Foods that aid in a recovery nutrition program between races include fruit, blended fruit packs, tinned fruits and sports drinks – things that are easy to digest and absorb into the body. To maximise the impact of these “recovery foods” they need to be eaten or drunk as soon as possible after racing.

A key element of a successful Swim Meet nutrition program is eating timing. Swimmers need to ensure that their eating program is as finely tuned as their training and racing schedule. If competing early in the morning some swimmers may find it necessary to rise early (3-4 hours before warm up) eat, then go back to bed for a little more rest. Other athletes may chose to eat, then go for a short walk or jog to start the warm up / race preparation process going.

An Example of a Competition Eating Schedule

An important aspect of being a senior athlete is knowing what foods help you to swim at your best and when to eat them.

In minor Meets and lead up competitions try keeping a Nutritional Diary for the day before, the days of competition and the day after the Meet. Record what you eat, when you eat, how much you eat, how you felt and how you raced. By keeping the nutrition diary, you can evaluate what eating strategy works best for you.

An Example of a typical Meet Nutrition Diary

Coaches

Ensure you understand the basics of good nutrition and plan an effective education program for your swimmers. This includes a program of classroom education, Supermarket visits, teaching swimmers to read food labels and educating them about what’s in food. Senior swimmers need to learn to cook a few basic meals (for example pasta and sauce, vegetarian fried rice, potatoes in their jackets and apple crumble) utilising low fat cooking and food preparation techniques. Parents of young swimmers also need to be aware of how to cook with less added fats and oils.

If you as a coach lack the necessary knowledge to take an active role in the nutrition education program of your club, enlist the services of a qualified sports dietician or sports nutritionist.

If a sports nutrition specialist is not easily available, read one of the many good books on the topic and prepare an athlete and parent nutrition education program that is swimming specific, easy to understand and simple to apply. Alternately approach the local hospital dietician and ask them to help out with your education program.

An important area of nutrition education is to educate parents. Remember that in general Kids don’t shop and Kids don’t cook! Educating young swimmers is of limited value unless the parents are similarly educated and have the commitment to support their children’s healthy eating program.

Do a pre-meet checklist for swimmers and parents to follow AND ask them to sign it before the swimmer leaves home for the pool.

Swimmer’s Swim Meet Nutrition Checklist

As an alternative, have a team breakfast on the morning of the Meet. If competing close to home, have the team breakfast in the Club Meeting room. Away from home, find a pleasant venue for the Team breakfast (beach, park, near a river) with an alternate site nominated in case of cold or rainy weather.

Ask each family to bring something for the team breakfast, (give them a list of what you want) – The Smiths bring cereal, The Jones family brings milk and Yoghurt, The Wilsons bring Fruit and Juice etc. At the very least you can then be certain that the team has had one nutritious meal before competing. For a Medal winning Meet morning breakfast try some of these suggestions:

• Cereals (not the popular Chocolate or sugary ones). Try Weet-Bix, Vita Brits, Sustain, Just Right, Sports Plus.
• Reduced fat milk – e.g. Shape, Physical, Rev, Hi-Lo
• Low fat fruit yoghurt.
• Selection of fresh and/or tinned fruit (in natural juice). Sliced banana goes great on Weet-bix and Vita Brits!
• Selection of bread, toast, crumpets, muffins, and spreads such as margarine, jam, vegemite and honey.
• Drinks – fruit juices, water, and Milo.
• Spaghetti, baked beans or creamed corn on toast.
• Poached eggs or grilled tomatoes on toast.
• Pancakes or pikelets (with small amounts of syrup).

The team breakfast is also a great way to build team unity and go over team strategies for the Meet.

For a few laughs, select a swimmer at “random” and empty the contents of their swim bag in front of the rest of the team to check if they have packed it with all the healthy, nutritious food and drink they will need for the Meet. (By “random” it is a good idea to pre-select someone you know has done the right thing rather than publicly embarrass someone who hasn’t). You can do the same fun educational exercise and check the swimmer’s swim bag for other essential items, eg cap, goggles, towel, sun screen, hat, etc., to ensure they are packing for success!

If travelling to a Meet where you are likely to be arriving early in the morning or late in the evening have swimmers carry their first two meals with them. This reduces the temptation to seek Fast Food for dinner or breakfast. Arriving in a competition venue in the evening means that the only food outlets open will be Home Delivery Pizza and the Hamburger chains. Arriving at the competition venue early in the morning means coffee and donuts or the Fast Food chains.

Weeks of hard work and tough training may all be for nothing if the final two meals before competition are high fat, high salt and high sugar food choices.

Have swimmers follow a set nutrition and rehydration routine around every race. Try the R-D-T-E-R routine (Race-Drink-Talk-Eat-Rest). Swimmers race, then grab their drink bottles and take a sip, go the coach for the post race review, have a bite to eat then rest.

Keep your eyes open! Swimmers who are poorly prepared and have not brought healthy foods from home will be rushing to the Canteen or Shop for high fat / high sugar products early in the day.

Be aware of gimmicks and misinformation. Parents and swimmers can be easily influenced by the media and advertising campaigns to buying items that are not really high performance fuels. Food supplements, vitamins and minerals and fashionable products advertised by successful athletes rarely deliver on their promises of improved performance.

Parents’ vulnerability to a quick fix, instant success products and promises means that coaches need to focus on parents at every stage of their nutrition education programs.

Swimmers don’t always notice it, but sweating occurs when training and racing – even though the activity happens in the water. It is vital that a good supply of cool water, cordial, sports drink or juice is on hand at Swim Meets. Purchase a team 40-50 litre capacity Cooler, give the team captain or a committee member the responsibility for filling it and take it to every Meet (and also for cleaning it AFTER every Meet).

Parents

Parents play a significant role in the nutrition and lifestyle habits of swimmers (their children). Parents can have an important impact on their child’s eating choices in many ways:

By setting an example with their own diet, it is well established that children, particularly young children are influenced by their parents’ behaviours. This applies to social behaviours, beliefs and lifestyle habits. Parents who consistently eat high fat, high salt, high sugar, low fibre foods are setting a decidedly unhealthy example for their kids to follow. (This also applies to smoking and whilst this is not strictly a nutrition issue it is very definitely a health issue).

By purchasing healthy nutritious food, is one key area where parents can directly influence the nutrition program of their children. In most households mum and dad are responsible for selecting and buying the families food each week. In this regard, mum and dad can be positive role models, or quite easily become a negative influence on the family’s eating habits. If you don’t by chocolate biscuits, frozen pizza and sugary breakfast cereals, the kids can’t eat them. It then becomes a matter of a battle of wills between parents and kids. The pressures of television advertising and the influence of their friends and peer group may have children demanding non healthy food choices, but in the family home, parents should take the hard option of insisting on high performance nutrition.

(Try not to go grocery shopping when you are hungry. Research suggests that if you shop when you are hungry you are more likely to make poor food selections – usually of the high fat variety).

By not promising Junk food as rewards for good performances, this is crucial, most diets in Western Society fail. Recent statistics suggest that over 90% of people trying to lose weight do not achieve their goals. Much of the blame comes from the way we approach “treats” with children.

As a child, everyone has had an Auntie or Uncle or Grandparent say, “You’re such a good boy or good girl, here’s a chocolate”, or “Your school grades are so good, let’s celebrate with pizza and garlic bread”. From an early age, this “do something good – eat something bad as a reward” mentality develops.

Adults who fail in their efforts to lose weight often do so because they reward any weight loss with junk food, chocolates, cake etc. This is an extension of the eating habits learned and reinforced in childhood.

Be wary of products promising quick easy results. All parents want the best for their children and as a result are vulnerable to advertising and marketing of sports nutrition products in the belief that they are helping their children.

The Mid Meet Main Meal – MMMM:

Often at two day meets with families travelling away from home, the “Mid Meet Main Meal” is the most important eating occasion. Generally the MID Mid Meet Main Meal is the Saturday evening meal that swimmers and families share after a full day of competition (Day One). This meal is a time for everyone to unwind and talk about swim times, races and the things that happened on day One and to fuel up for the second day of competition.

There are several options for the “MMMM”. If dining out, coaches, swimmers and parents need to be aware of the positives and negatives of their eating options and be prepared to exercise control and discipline where unsuitable foods are available.

Typical food choices (Take Aways) available for Mid Meet Main Meals

Be prepared to ask the restaurant for changes and modifications to their printed menu. For example ask for salads with no dressing (or have the dressing served on the side). Ask for meals to be cooked with less oil and for dishes to be prepared with little or no salt. If you must have salad dressing or salt for taste, adding them yourself means you can control your intake of these products.

Get in the habit of asking waiters and waitresses how the food will be cooked before you order it. Be confident knowing that as you are paying for the food, you have the right to have input into how it will be prepared, (just beware of temperamental chefs!!!).

When selecting the venue for the “MMMM” do not allow swimmers performances to dictate where and what you will eat. The “if you do a PB we will all go to a popular hamburger restaurant” promise made by parents to swimmers may achieve short term success but it leads to long term eating lifestyle problems.

Parents please do not reward great swimming with junk food.

An alternative to eating out with the team for the “MMMM” is the team dinner or team barbeque that is catered by the families of swimmers and by club management. The great positive is that the coach and families have a good deal more control over the quantity and quality of food being selected and eaten by the swim team. The down side is that the parent cooked “MMMM” requires more planning and forethought as foods may need to be transported from home.

This does not present any real problems if travelling relatively short distances to the Meet by car, but is difficult to manage if longer journeys to distant competitions are necessary.

If preparing meals for a team when competing away from home, delegate the responsibility for the various contents of the meal to swimmers’ families, eg John’s dad buys the salads and cuts up the vegetables, Julie’s mum leaves the Meet early to buy fresh seasonal fruit and prepare a fruit platter, etc. Often the MMMM is a last minute, unplanned and uncoordinated meal leaving the swimmers with few options and what options they do have are usually the Fast Food ones.

A little planning will go a long way to ensuring a successful Meet and a sensible high performance nutrition program for the swimmers!

Glucose Tablets. Parents are often taken in by the “high energy” promises and packaging of glucose products in the belief that it will give their child a lift or boost on race day. These products are very high in sugar (the “ose” on the end of food ingredients identifies it as sugar – maltose, fructose, dextrose etc). These products are of doubtful, if any, value.

Sports Drink. The marketing of sports drinks promotes the idea that drinking them will provide a “boost” or make a big impact on the performance of athletes. Whilst sports drinks do appear to have an important role in post race recovery, they are not a miracle product that will compensate for poor dietary choices. If intending to use a sports drink on race day, swimmers should experiment with the different brands, concentrations and quantities in training to see what works best for them.

Chocolate Bars. Another great swimming myth is the “Chocolate Bar rush”. Often parents will give their children chocolate before a race to try and catch a sugar “rush” which will give them an edge in racing. This again is not correct and in fact, the chocolate bars may impact on blood sugars to an extent that the swimmers perform poorly.

Clubs and Caterers

The greatest challenge for Swim Clubs and swimming organisations is to provide healthy food options at swim Meets that also generate profit. For most clubs their single most important fund raising event on the annual program is when they host a swim Meet. The temptation is to sell the foods that are easiest to prepare and can generate the highest profits for the club. Pre frozen pies, sausage rolls, chips and other fried foods can generate a high profit but at what cost to the performance (and health) of the swimmers.

When catering for swim meets try to provide a range of healthy, nutritious foods for swimmers to snack on over the day. This includes providing swimmers with adequate fluids, other than soft drinks before during and after competition.

Typically the foods that are available at Swim Meets are high in salt, high in sugar, low in fibre, high in fat and low in complex carbohydrate are easy to sell, easy to keep warm, easy to store, taste great and make good profits for the club.

One idea for clubs might be to allocate a room (or tent) with a cafeteria / buffet style food serving area for swimmers to access. Athletes pay a small amount (three to five dollars) to enter the buffet area and fill a plate with as much healthy food as they can carry. This is an easy way to provide quick service to swimmers and provide a variety of food choices (and serving sizes). It is also cost effective as the bulk of the food choices can be salads, vegetables and breads.

Some Swim Eats buffet ideas include

Bread and bread rolls, pita breads, Lebanese bread, Turkish bread, and French sticks. Try a mixture of white, wholemeal, multi grain and light rye to encourage choice. Leave the breads unbuttered to try and encourage a low fat approach to swim Meet eating.

Things to put on and in the breads include:

• Lean meat/ham/chicken.
• Reduced fat cheese in slices or grated.
• Tinned fish like Tuna or Salmon. The fish should be in brine or water – not oil or mayonnaise.
• Egg (hard-boiled and sliced).
• Lots and Lots of Salad choices – tomato, lettuce (all varieties available), grated carrot, sprouts, beetroot, coleslaw, cucumber, avocado, pineapple, nuts, dried fruits. Be inventive!!!! Try to limit shop prepared salads that may be dressed in mayonnaise high in fats and oils.
• For desserts:
• Muffins – e.g. oat and honey, Fruit muffins – banana, date and walnut, strawberry, blueberry. Fruit cake, banana cake and carrot cake may be a good alternative – (try to get them made with low fat techniques).
• Fresh fruit – Whatever is in season and lots of it.
• Drinks:
• Water, Fruit Juice, Cordial.

Hot Catering

Swim Clubs often run barbeques or prepare hot foods for sale at Meets. The challenge here again is to provide a wide range of choice, offer a selection of healthy nutritious high performance foods yet maximise fund raising.

Some ideas for Hot Catering at Swim Meets

Other ideas for hot catering include:

Pasta with low fat, tomato based sauces. This is a very cheap hot meal, easy to prepare and has a good profit margin ($1.00 – $2.00 per bowl or plate). Serve with salad and fresh bread.

Rice (using low fat cooking techniques) stir fried with lots of fresh vegetables.

Curries, stews, casseroles with low fat meats, fresh vegetables and cooked with little or no oil. Serve the dish a 1-4 ration with rice, pasta or noodles, eg one scoop of curry, stew, casserole – four scoops of rice. Again this dish is a very profitable one for the club bank balance ($1.00 – $2.00 per bowl or plate).

Kebabs, shasliks, meat sticks – Cooked on skewers with alternating two vegetable pieces, one meat piece, eg slice of red capsicum, slice of green capsicum, piece of chicken (skin removed), small onion, ¼ tomato, piece of chicken.

Apple, berry crumble with low fat ice cream, fruit yoghurt.

Fresh fruit for dessert.

Healthy eating is only part of the total performance package of any athlete. Just as having a great race start is not enough to win races without the skills, techniques, mental strengths and fitness level required to complete the distance, eating well by itself will not make you a great swimmer.

An attitude of high performance eating will however go a long way to making you a high performance athlete.

Wayne Goldsmith

The eternal coaching question – how much speed is necessary for endurance athletes?

At the present time in world swimming there are many opportunities for swimmers who are capable of sustaining fast speeds over middle and long distance races. Particularly in woman’s swimming where World and Australian Records have stood for many years, the ability to be fast over 400, 800 and 1500 metres presents a great opportunity for the female swimmer prepared to do a little work and focus on these events.

There is no doubt that endurance is a key factor in these events. However, there is no question that competitive endurance athletes need some speed.

1. In close competitions the ability to sprint fast away from the opposition or to a point in the race is important. In open water swimming for example, a burst of speed might be important to break away from a pack of swimmers, to sprint to a turning buoy first or to sprint from one pack up to another.
2. The ability to explode off the start, in and out of turns and over the final five metres in a tight finish is also important.
3. Developing the ability to swim faster training repeat times over one season or many seasons is dependent on having improved endurance and being faster over a single effort.

In the preparation of middle and long distance swimmers it is important to balance the amount of speed with the amount of endurance in the training program.

For example:

Training goal = 24 x 100 metres on 1:45 Holding 1:10 (best 100 time in competition = 1:09)
In this training set, the swimmer is aiming to hold one minute ten seconds for each 100 metre effort. However, as the swimmer’s best time for a single 100 metre effort in competition is 1:09 it is unlikely that holding 1:10 for twenty four 100’s is possible to achieve.

The principles of Energy system specificity suggest that maintaining 100% maximum for longer than 6-10 seconds is not possible. Therefore, it is logical to say that in most sporting events athletes spend the majority of training and competition working at sub maximal intensities.

In reality most athletes have difficulty maintaining more than 90% of maximum for very long.

Should the swimmer’s best time for a single 100 metre swim be 1:02 – 1:03 and importantly they have done adequate endurance training to resist the fatigue of swimming many 100’s, then holding 1:10 is far more realistic.

This, then, is the challenge. To enable the swimmer to swim faster than 1:09 they need do have done some speed training to develop that speed. Yet, to maintain 1:10 over 24 x 100 metres also requires great endurance.

Speedand endurance are in fact two sides of the same coin. Both are needed if the swimmer is to achieve maximum potential.

For example:

If a swimmer’s 100 metre best time is 60 seconds, it is likely and logical that their best 50 metre time is around 27.5-28 seconds. To swim a 27.5-28.0 second 50 metre swim, it is likely that the swimmer can swim around 12.5-13.5 seconds for 25 metres. And to swim 25 metres in 12.5 seconds requires the development of genuine speed.

Three of Australia’s leading male middle and long distance swimmers in recent years are Olympic Gold Medallists Kieren Perkins, Grant Hackett and Ian Thorpe. At a distance of 400 metres these three swimmers are able to swim around 3 minutes 45 seconds or an average time per 100 metres of around 56 seconds. In competition Perkins, Hackett and Thorpe have gone much faster over the first 100 metres (approximately 53-54 seconds) in middle and long distance races.

In order to go out at that speed they must not be at 100% or maximum speed or they would “blow up”. They must have a “speed reserve” and be at a relatively comfortable pace over the first 100 metres or their last 300 metres would be very slow owing to the level of fatigue, lactic acid etc.

When you consider that the 100 metres best time for the three swimmers is around 50 seconds it can be argued that they have a speed reserve i.e. traveling at 56 seconds per 100 metres is reasonably comfortable as it is approximately 6 seconds outside their best time.

In female distance swimming the benchmark is US swimmer Janet Evans whose world records set in the 1980’s still stand. Her world record marks in the 400 and 800 metres freestyle were seconds faster than the winning times for both events at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics. Her 400 metres freestyle world record of 4:03 is outstanding. Her 8:16 remarkable. Her endurance capacities are unmatched, yet, if her best 100 metre time was only 1:02, these fast times over longer distances would be impossible. Obviously she had the ability to swim fast and to sustain speed over 400, 800 and 1500 metres.

The Concept of Speed Reserve

The concept of Speed Reserve suggests that the limiting factor in Eliteendurance performance will be speed. This is not to say that speed alone is the key to endurance success.

Endurance training, long aerobic work and steady rhythmic sets are the core elements of the distance swimming program. However, in the end it is not so much the swimmer’s ability to swim long distances but to sustain high speeds for long periods that will win races over 400, 800 and 1500 metres.

A swimmer who struggles to break 1 minute for 100 freestyle, is unlikely to break 2 minutes for 200 freestyle or even come close to 4 minutes for 400 and so on.
However, a swimmer with a 55 second 100 and a solid endurance background has every possibility of swimming sub 2:00 and sub 4:00 because of the speed reserve factor.

Periodisation and Speed Reserve.

Over time, swimmers aim to swim their training sets at faster times.

For example:
Season one: Training Goal = 10 x 200 freestyle holding 3:30
Season two: Training Goal = 10 X 200 freestyle holding 3:20
Season three: Training Goal = 10 x 200 freestyle holding 3:10
In each season the swimmer is getting fitter, stronger, maturing, perhaps growing and improving.

However, swimming faster times in training sets is dependent on two key factors:

• The swimmer’s endurance ability is improving
• The swimmer’s best time is improving.

The trick is to combine the development of SPEED with the much needed ENDURANCE so that over time both improve allowing the swimmer to:

• Do more work
• Do more work faster
• Do more work faster with less rest
• Swim faster in single efforts

Coaching Implications:

Develop real speed in endurance athletes in addition to developing endurance. In the end, the limiting factor to endurance performance will be a combination of speed, enduranceand technical ability (swimming technique and skill).

The optimal conditions for speed development are:

• Glycogen repleted
• Hydrated
• Motivated
• Interested – focused
• Un-fatigued
• Low levels of lactic acid

Within these conditions, swimmers have the ideal physiological and psychological conditions to develop real speed.
These conditions are generally found at the beginning of sessions. However, there is a strong argument to do speed sessions at the end of workouts when race conditions are more closely simulated. That said, it is unrealistic to expect that speed improvements can occur in those conditions experienced at the end of workouts. The emphasis should be on technical proficiency and stroke control at speed when tired rather than on speed alone.

Speed development Workout Structure (Optimal Conditions)

• Warm up
• Stretch

Speed development

• Easy Swim
• Stretch
• Easy, relaxed swim session
• Swim Down

Speed Training at the End of Sesions(see T.U.F. Training)

• Warm up
• Stretch
• Skills / Technique
• Fitness / Main set

Speed training – emphasis on technique and distance per stroke

• Swim Down
• Stretch

The development of real speed is very much neuromuscular (nervous system and muscles working together). What type of training activities stimulate neuro muscular development?

• Short distances
• Long rests
• Limited reps
• Stimulating environment

Develop speedand relaxation at the same time. Young swimmers in particular tend to “tighten up” and tense their muscles when asked to go fast. “The faster you want to go, the more relaxed you have to be”.

The latest thinking on overspeed work, i.e. pulling or pushing swimmers at faster speeds than they can go under their own power to try and force an improvement in speed, suggests that technique should not be compromised for overspeed training. The old “spinning arms” drills for freestyle and backstroke should be abandoned!!!!!Overspeed training should not be more than 1% – 2% faster than the swimmer can travel under their own power as at faster speeds, technique breakdown is significant. In a race, swimmers win by maintaining excellent technique and stroke control at maximum speed.

When developing speed in age group swimmers, often the trick is to keep their attention and maintain some order and discipline during the sets. Speed development sets are by their nature (long rests, short distances, stimulating environment) an open invitation for age groupers to lose focus and misbehave. It is important to have a range of sprint games on hand to maintain control of the workout.

Active recovery is the practice of doing a slow controlled swim between fast efforts. For example:

10 x 50 as Explode the first 15 metres, easy recovery swim 35 metres on 1:30 is an example of a speed development set with a fast explosive effort (15 metres) followed by an active recovery (35 metres).

The active recovery allows the swimmer to break down lactic acid and blow off carbon dioxide and provides the opportunity for the swimmer’s nervous system to recover. Active recovery is essential when doing repeated explosive speed intervals to ensure that the swimmer is capable of producing maximum speed each time.

Mark short distances on the side of the pool (5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, 15, 20 metres). These are important short distances for speed development work. By having them marked on the side of the pool (or even better marked with colored tiles on the bottom of the pool if you have an understanding pool owner) the coach can standardise the distances of speed intervals so they can be accurately recorded and tracked over time.

Speed development training can start with relatively young athletes. We know that the physiology of the young swimmer is capable of learning to swim fast. At around age 10, most athletes will possess:

• An almost fully developed aerobic potential (i.e. the potential to handle aerobic training loads and easy, low intensity training)
• The ability to learn new skills and learn complex co-ordinated movements
• The ability to produce fast movements through the co-ordination of the nervous system and muscular system.

However at the same time, we know that children do produce lactic acid but have difficulty dealing with it!

In coaching practice this means:

• Kids can do easy aerobic work.
• Kids can do stroke development work, technique work and skills work.
• Kids can do short sprints.

Kids will struggle with long, sustained sprints and in practice training sets such as 6 x 100 at Maximum speed with long rests / 8 x 50 at maximum speed with long rests etc should be avoided in young swimmers.

Like all swimming training activities, speed development is multi disciplinary. Maximum racing potential is achieved when the swimmer:

• Has a great technique
• Has excellent skills
• Has an excellent distance per stroke
• Has a strong desire to succeed and the motivation to go fast
• Has done the necessary strength, fitness and flexibility work
• Has maintained a high performance diet.

Having the physiological capacity to produce speed without the skills, attitude, technique etc to support that capacity will not produce optimum results.

Ten Speed Development Sets for Age Group Swimmers

1. 10 x 10 x 10. (Ten times 10 metres in ten minutes). Swimmers have ten minutes to produce 10 maximum speed swims over 10 metres. These can be from a wall outward or swimming in towards a wall. (TIP: When doing explosive starts that end mid pool i.e. not on the wall, have the swimmer finish with a race type finish and pretend (visualise) finishing on a wall. Having no wall is not an excuse for practicing sloppy finishes.
2. 15 x 15 x 15 (Fifteen times 15 metres in fifteen minutes)
3. 10 x 50 metres as 15 metres explode start, easy 35m with excellent technique
4. 10 x 50 metres as easy 35 with excellent technique – 15 metres explode finish.
5. Odds and evens of above (i.e. on the odds 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th repeats first 15 metres are Explodes on the even repeats 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and 10th Explode the final 15 metres).
6. Half way Hots – (short course) Explode to half way. Rest 45 seconds. Explode to the other end. Repeat x 12.
7. Jump starts – Stand at half way (short course). Sink to the bottom, then spring quickly and powerfully up and forward. Use the momentum from the jump to help pick up speed. Explode to the wall.
8. Nine stroke power swims. Swim nine strokes at maximum speed in free and back. Note where you finish at the ninth stroke. Easy swim back to the start then try again. Goal is to see how far you can go on nine strokes at maximum speed. (Teaches distance per stroke at speed). For fly and breast try six strokes.
9. Super speed with a friend. Have a teammate put on fins and grab a kick board. Side by side race to the 15 metre mark. Change over. On the way back to the wall, you use the fins and board and your team mate swims. Motivating. Develops team spirit. Develops fast swimming and fast kicking.
10. Dive explodes. Just as it sounds – dive in and explode for 10-15 metres. Swim slowly to the other end of the pool. Repeat x 8-12.

Speed Reserve Summary

Distance swimmers need to have a program that is based on endurance training and aerobic development. This type of training helps develop the physiological and biomechanical factors that lead to efficient movement. It also helps develop rhythm and relaxation – two crucial factors in swimming successfully over the longer distances.

However, the emphasis needs to be on endurance and speed. Being able to swim 100 x 100 metres at a speed 5 seconds off your best time does not in itself guarantee being able to swim well over longer distances IF your best time is not very fast.

The aim at elite level is to be able to swim as close as possible to maximum speed for an extended period of time. If maximum speed is not very fast, then all the swimmer can do is sustain mediocrity. A swimmer not capable of breaking one minute for 100 freestyle is unlikely to come close to two minutes for 200 freestyle or four minutes for 400 freestyle, etc etc.

Whilst it is difficult to develop enduranceand speedsimultaneously, all programs should include a logical mix of both.

My thanks to Track and Field Sprint Coach and Sports Scientist Adrian Faccioni and leading Australian Distance Running Coach, Sports Scientist and author Dr Dick Telford for their inspiration for this article.

Wayne Goldsmith

However, there are six specific factors that have been identified as being essential for peak swimming performance.

Over the past five years, the factors that contribute to swimming successfully at top national and international competitions have been systemically and scientifically analysed using a technique called “The Competition Analysis”. Developed by Australian Institute of Sport Biomechanist Dr Bruce Mason, the Competition Analysis is a process that breaks down racing into it’s various components.

• Start time – the first 15 metres, (from the starting signal to the time the swimmer’s head crosses the 15-metre mark from the starting wall).
• Turn time – a distance of 7.5 metres in and out of the wall, (taken from the point where the swimmer’s head passes through a point 7.5 metres from the wall into a turn and continues until the swimmer’s head passes through the same point 7.5 metres from the wall on the way out of the turn).
• Finish time – the final 5 metres, (from the time the swimmer’s head passes the 5 metre mark from the finish wall to the actual hand touch on the wall).
• Stroke Length- the distance the swimmer’s head moves during a complete arm cycle, (i.e., from right hand entry to the next right hand entry).
• Stroke rate (or stroke frequency)- the number of stroke cycles per minute
• Swimming speed (or velocity)
• Split times (each 25 / 50 metre segment of the race)

Looking closely at the Competition Analysis it appears that six factors are crucial to swimming successfully. These Six Steps to Greatness are:

1. Long strokes
2. Fast strokes
3. Great skills
4. Excellent technique
5. Maintain all the above when fatigued
6. Maintain all the above when under pressure

Step One: Long Strokes

At maximum speed, world class male and female freestyle swimmers are able to cover a distance of approximately 2 metres per stroke cycle. In other words, they can cover two metres per stroke cycle at a speed of 2 metres per second. The tables below show the stroke length of placegetters in the 1998 FINA World Swimming Championships male and female 100 metres freestyle.

Table 1

Table 1 showing stroke lengths for the first three swimmers in the final of the men’s 100 metres freestyle at the 1998 World Swimming Championships

Table 2

Table 2 showing stroke lengths for the first three swimmers in the final of the women’s 100 metres freestyle at the 1998 World Swimming Championships

Step Two: Long strokes and fast strokes

Great swimmers are possessed with great speed. The ability to move fast through water is what the sport is all about. The top freestyle swimmers in the world are able to complete around 50 stroke cycles per minute at top speed, WHILST maintaining approximately 2 metres per stroke cycle.

Table 3

Table 3 shows the average stroke frequency for the first three swimmers in the finals of the men’s and women’s 100 metres freestyle at the 1998 World Swimming Championships

Step Three: Long strokes and fast strokes and great skills

In top level swimming, events are won or lost on competitive skills like dives, starts, turns and finishes. Explosive starts, tight turns and powerful finishes are often the difference between finishing first and third in international sprint swimming.

Table 4

Table 4 shows start times, turn times and finish times for the first three swimmers in the finals of the men’s and women’s 100 metres freestyle at the 1998 World Swimming Championships

Step Four: Long strokes and fast strokes, great skills and excellent technique

Technique is a difficult thing to measure. Coaches can identify what constitutes a good technique and what needs improving through years of coaching education and experience. It is generally agreed however, that excellence in technique is a prerequisite for fast swimming and much of what we know about technical excellence we have learned from studying the movements of champion swimmers.

Step Five: Swim with long strokes and fast strokes, great skills and excellent technique when fatigued

Swimming fast is not the problem. Swimming fast when it really starts to hurt, that’s the problem!! Swimmers competing in major competitions are able to keep swimming fast when it gets tough in those last 25 metres and their bodies are screaming at them to slow down or stop.

Table 5

Table 5 shows times for the final 25 metres and finish times for the first three swimmers in the finals of the men’s and women’s 100 metres freestyle at the 1998 World Swimming Championships

Step Six: Swim with long strokes and fast strokes, great skills and excellent technique when fatigued and under pressure (in a race situation)

Think about the great Susie O’Neill at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. Last night of competition, she was tired from a week of tough racing, a tough event (200 metres fly) ahead of her and all of Australia watching in to see her break the long standing record for the number of Commonwealth Games gold medals won by an individual swimmer: in other words she was under great pressure.

Not only did she win the race, do a personal best, almost break the world record and break the Commonwealth gold medal statistic, she swam with technical excellence and control throughout the race despite the enormous pressure of the situation.

Now that we know what they are, how do you take the six steps to greatness?

• Work on keeping strokes long and strong at training. In every effort ask yourself “Could I do this with fewer strokes?” When doing skills work like drills aim for technical perfection, then technical perfection with the minimum number of strokes.
• Develop real speed by working hard during your speed work training and getting the best out of every effort. Train fast to Race fast.
• Every turn in training is a race turn, every dive is a race dive. Every finish should be completed on the wall with power and controlled aggression. Train as you would like to race.
• Drills should be completed with precision and with 100% concentration. Think technique first at all times.
• Challenge yourself to swim fast when tired. In training challenge yourself to jump up at the end of the session and swim fast. When racing, challenge yourself to swim fast when tired, to swim fast heats in the morning then faster finals at night, to swim as fast on the last day of the meet as you did on the first day etc.
• Learn to enjoy pressure situations. Being nervous is a sign that something great is about to happen. Your body is getting ready to do something brilliant. Learn to enjoy the pressure of competition.

We can’t all be Alex Popov or Michael Klim, but we can learn a lot about them by studying the way the race. Great swimmers are great for many reasons. The six steps to greatness are ones every swimmer, of any level and any age can take to help them achieve their swimming goals.

As the proverb says, “the longest journey begins with the first step”.

Take your next step towards being the best you can be right now.

Keep your strokes long and strong,
Move them fast, Keep them long.
To help you through the swimming test,
Make sure that your skills are the best.
Work on your stroke and swimming technique,
Every day, every month, every year, every week.
When things get tough and you get weary,
Keep fighting on and never fear.
When the pressure’s on you will pass the test,
If you’ve done it in training and believe you’re the best

I would like to acknowledge the work of Dr Bruce Mason and his highly skilled team at the Australian Institute of Sport Biomechanics Unit. Dr Mason and his staff have worked tirelessly over the past 5 years analysing swimming races and gathering information at major Australian and International competitions. They have made this information readily available to coaches, swimmers and sports scientists across Australia and contributed significantly to the winning performances of many of Australia’s top swimmers.

Wayne Goldsmith

The term microcycle (the weekly training plan including details on each individual session) is used widely but sometimes misunderstood and confused with macrocycle (combination of several microcycles over a period of a few weeks).

Once the various cycles are organised within the season or yearly plan, the detailing of individual training sessions can begin.

A common but not necessarily universal method of planning training cycles involves loading volume in the first half of the cycle, and intensity in the second half. This applies equally to meso, macro and micro-cycles, and also in individual training sessions.

This is analogous to the strength training of spring and power athletes who also use the ‘accumulation first – then intensification’ approach. However this does not preclude speed work being undertaken in the early stages of various training cycles. In fact, placing speed work ‘up-front’ in a training week or even at the beginning of a training session, when swimmers are fresh, is a useful practice at various times throughout the training season.

Some coaches make the mistake of not properly integrating speed and endurance in the training program. This is particularly evident in the endurance phase where too great an emphasis on the volume of training may impair speed.

It is an over-simplification to think that only low-to-moderate intensity volume work is undertaken in an ‘endurance’ week or phase, and that only speed work is done in a ‘speed’ week. If insufficient speed work is undertaken during the endurance phase, a swimmer may pay the price later on when they are unable to reproduce race or competitive speed.

Conversely, swimmers may become overloaded and prone to fatigue, illness and injury if they do too much speed work without the benefits of some complementary endurance training. Highly trained swimmers can use endurance training to recover from and prepare for speed training.

What are some approaches to loading micro cycles in swimming?

One method used by the Swimming Program at the Australian Institute of Sport is to systematically increase the intensity of workouts during a three-day micro cycle. The example described here is taken from a relatively intense micro cycle used to target specific areas of aerobic fitness in highly trained swimmers (see Table 1).

The basic variables of interval training (eg intensity, volume, duration, and frequency) are manipulated to meet the goals of each individual session and micro cycle. This micro cycle is for senior swimmers in good condition and may not be appropriate for age group swimmers or those returning from a lay-off, injury or illness.

Inspection of this sequence shows that the speed of training is increased systematically within each day and also across successive days. Training three sessions a day is a big commitment but the benefits gained can be substantial.

Apart from having the opportunity to do a larger volume of training, there is scope to do all the things that as a coach you never seem to get the time for. This may simply involve working all the different strokes, drills and sets that you normally squeeze into a full week’s training. It also gives the opportunity for some creative coaching like switching sets for IM, combination sets of varying distances and intensities, and trying out some new technique drills.

One of the main benefits of three sessions a day is to improve the swimmer’s feel of the water with more frequent exposure than is normally experienced. Three sessions a day is not new and has been used occasionally since the heady days of the 1950s and 60s when Australia’s leading swimmers used this approach to prepare for major competition in as few as 8-12 weeks of organised training.

On Day 1, aerobic intervals and some short springs are undertaken for a total volume of 14.5 km (5.0 + 6.0 + 3.5). The AM session contains some 400’s at an aerobic level. This should be the ‘bread and butter’ of a highly trained swimmer’s program, but some swimmers shy away from this type of work. Even sprinters should be prepared to undertake some basic endurance work. If they struggle with this, then this is a sure sign that they need more of this type of work.

The main set of the noon sessions is 8 x (200 on 2:45 [1], 100 on 1:40 [2]. These cycles are for freestyle and would need to be adjusted for the form strokes. Most coaches use the approach seen here of 22’s at an aerobic speed and then 100’s at a slightly faster threshold speed.

The shorter session in the PM contains the speed work (4 x 2 x 25m at [5] – see Table 1 for description of intensity ratings). Again the emphasis is on increasing speed as the set progresses. Swimmers should always be able to knock out some fast 25’s even during high volume training weeks. We have had good results with this type of shorter session with some speed work – the swimmers seem to respond well to it.

On Day 2 the same training volume as Day 1 (14.5 km) is completed but there is more quality in the Noon session.

The AM session is used to prepare the swimmers for higher quality swimming in the Noon and PM sessions. This session has some 800’s and 1000’s. These are often, but not always, swum as freestyle. Mixing or alternating freestyle with freestyle/backstroke by 50, 100 or 200m intervals or even individual medley in normal order or reverse order is commonly seen.

A good practice is to mix up these longer intervals: some should be done straight freestyle and some using a mixed approach. Many coaches and swimmers fall into the habit of doing all the work using a mixture of strokes and distances and may miss the benefits of continuous over distance freestyle swimming.

There are many programs at both senior and age group level in Australia that don’t seem to use these longer intervals at all – this may be limiting in the long term.

The Noon session of 6 x (150 on 2:15 at [1], 150 on 2:15 at [2], 100 on 2:30 at [3]) is a useful way to introduce more quality and sped into the workouts. This is a descending set with the first 150 swum at level [1] or aerobic, the second 150 at level [2] or threshold, and the final 100 at level [3] or maximal oxygen uptake (approximately 400m race pace). The final 100 is on a longer cycle time (2:30) to permit some recovery before the set is repeated.

This is an example of a combination set which mixes different distances and different intensities. The total distance of the set is 2400m which represents a solid training session for aerobic fitness. This type of work can be used in conjunction with the commonly used ‘heart rate’ sets, which are characterised by the repetition of the same distance at equivalent or increasing intensity e.g. 30 x 100m on 1:40 holding 1:05 or heart rate 160-190 b.p.m. (40 to 10 beats below maximum heart rate).

A commonly asked question by coaches is whether it is better to hold swimmers at a high heart rate and let their repeat times slip a little, or back them off to keep their heart rate under control. The most important thing is to keep the speed up together with proper technique – if this means increasing the rest period or cycle time, or slowing the swimmer a little, then this is what should be done. There is no single answer here and a coach has to exercise his or her judgement as to the most appropriate action on the day.

On Day 3, there are only two sessions for a total of 9.0km. This gives the swimmers a better opportunity to attack the main Noon session. The aim here is to reduce the volume of training and concentrate on the speed (intensity).

Note again how the AM session contains a small build up of intensity [1-2] to prepare the swimmers for the demanding [2-3-4] Noon session. Contrast this to the AM sessions in Days 1 and 2 where only aerobic [1] work was undertaken. Using the first session to prepare a swimmer for the second session is possible where the sessions are close together and only a few hours apart.

The final Noon session of this three day micro cycle is 4 x {2 x 100 on 1:40 [2]. 2 x 100 on 2:30 [3] and 2 x 50 on 1:00 [4]. This is the most intensive session of the micro cycle both in terms of effort and speed.

Note that the second pair of 2 x 100 is on a longer cycle (2:30) than the first pair (1:40). The extra time is designed to support the increase in speed ie. 2 x 100 on 2:30 at [3] compared with 2 x 100 on 1:40 at [2]. It is expected that the 50’s would be quite fast, at around 100m race pace. Again these cycles are for freestyle and may need to be adjusted for other strokes or junior swimmers.

This is an example of loading volume first, then quality, within a three day micro cycle. While most coaches are familiar with planning interval training workouts, the fundamental step involves integrating a whole sequence of interval sessions that contribute to the specific goals for that training cycle.

The example discussed here was a three day training cycle with a total of 36 km. Senior swimmers have used this type of training in high volume camps, at altitude and in various stages of the training cycle, where the coach is looking to develop the level of aerobic fitness. Even age group swimmers could undertake a modified version of this three sessions a day training plan during organised camps or the school holiday period.

The principles and workouts discussed here are, of course, equally relevant to the more routine practice of two sessions a day.

David Pyne PhD and Wayne Goldsmith

But why warm up?

From a scientific standpoint we know that an effective warm up:

• Increases body temperature
• Increases heart rate
• Increases blood pressure
• Increases energy-producing enzyme activity

As coaches, we observe that an effective warm up:

• Increases confidence by giving swimmers a feel for the pool, the water temperature, wall, flags, blocks and general conditions, (increases familiarity with the race conditions).
• Increases race readiness through the opportunity to rehearse specific pacing and stroking strategies

The overall aim of warm up is to get your mind and body “ready” to race fast. How many times has your coach or your swim team friends asked “So, are you ready?”

But what does “ready” feel like?

What’s “ready” for you may not be “ready” for someone else.

Some swimmers like to sit with friends and family, laughing and joking to help them feel ready.

Some swimmers prefer to do just the opposite, they need peace and quiet to perform at their best.

Others like to listen to music, some read, a few walk, others talk, some jog, there are many ways that swimmers prepare to get the best out of themselves.

The key to an effective warm up is to know what your own personal “ready” feels like before you get to a meet.

It doesn’t make sense to prepare for months, commit yourself to training and working hard, eating the right foods and so on then not knowing what actually gets you “ready to race”.

One simple way to learn what your “ready” is all about is to write down everything you can about your race day routine. Simple things like the quality and quantity of sleep, your breakfast, your stretches and your pool warm up can have a real impact on your racing performance.

At your next minor meet or local club competition, ask yourself the following questions. Write the answers down in your logbook or on a sheet of paper and discuss them with your coach:

What does ready feel like for me?

• How did I sleep the night before the meet? (Rate sleep on a one to five scale. “One” being a poor sleep and “five” being slept soundly and woke up refreshed).
• What time did I get up on meet day? Did it give me enough time to get ready to race?
• What did I have for breakfast on meet day? Was it enough? How did I feel after I ate?
• What time did I get to the meet?
• What did I eat / drink at the meet? How did that food and drink make me feel?
• What did I do for stretching?
• What warm up did I do?
• Was the warm up enough? Did it get me ready? If not, what could I have done better or differently?
• How did I feel before my race? Ready? Almost ready? Not ready? Why?
• What did I do before my race: eg listen to music, read, talked to friends, relaxed, went for a walk etc. Did this make me feel ready?

In this way, if you swim well, you will know exactly what makes you “ready” and if you don’t swim well, you’ll know what to do better (or to avoid) next time.

Nothing can guarantee success, but you can increase the likelihood of success by understanding the process of “readiness”.

A few little tips to help you get ready on race day:

• The Swim Meet Program tells you only two things; what lane are you in and what race are you in. All other information is relatively unimportant. Many swimmers get “freaked out” when they look in the meet program and see the entry times listed by the other swimmers. It doesn’t matter who you are racing or what times they may have claimed to have done, your job is the same – swim to the best of your ability. If Michael Klim is on one side of you and Alex Popov on the other side, you still have to swim the same race distance, in the same water, in a lane that is the same length and width. The race credentials of other swimmers have no bearing on your own swimming performance.
• If you are not ready to race, do something about it before the race. Going to your coach at the end of the day and saying “I really wasn’t ready to swim fast” is not an excuse for a poor performance. If you are not ready – do something to get ready. Success is your choice!
• Being ready is an individual thing. If you are not feeling ready to swim fast and your swim team friends are off to the showers, don’t go with them just to be sociable. If you are not ready to do your best, do more warm up, or rest, or go for a jog, or skip, or eat something, or sleep, or talk to your coach – just do it! You can catch up on the meet chat later.
• Pack in your swim bag all the things you need to get ready to race. If you are a reader, pack a few books. If you like music, pack your favourite tapes or CD’s. If you like to sleep, pack your own pillow. Take what you need to get the job done.
• Ignore 90% of what you hear said in the change rooms and marshalling area. Every competitive swimmer has heard questions like “What time do you do?” or “How many sessions a week do you swim?” etc in the marshalling area. Would you like to know a little secret? Most of it is 100% pure rubbish. The swimmers who try this cheap attempt at “psyching out” are usually the ones who have not prepared for the meet themselves and are looking to make up for their poor preparation by making you feel less confident. Do not listen to them. Or have a clever answer for them. If you get asked “What’s your best time”, answer “I’ll tell you after this race”.
• A good “get ready” trick if you haven’t had time to practice race starts as part of your pool warm up is to do a few dry starts. Find a clear, flat space (ideally on grass) somewhere around the pool area where you can hear the starter. A good time to do this is around 15-20 minutes before your race. When the starter says “Take Your Marks” to the swimmers on the blocks about to race, drop into your race start position on the grass and when the gun (or horn) goes, jump forward fast with explosive speed and power. This is a great exercise to get your brain and muscles firing and prepares you to explode off the blocks when it is your time to race.
• Try the walk the race, talk the race (WR/TR) technique. Stand at the end of the pool where you will be starting from. Imagine how you will feel behind the blocks. Take some slow deep breaths. Imagine hearing the gun. Imagine feeling your body explode off the blocks. Walk down the side of the pool and “feel” the race. Try to walk at the same speed that you will be actually swimming during your race. Imagine every stroke. Feel every breath. Think about where you will breathe, about keeping smooth and controlled with long flowing strokes, about keeping your kick strong and rhythmic. As you approach the turn (still walking along side the pool) think about being aggressive and powerful in your turn. Feel your feet on the wall. Imagine kicking back hard at the wall and exploding out of the turn. Feel the streamline. Imagine where you will take your first breath. Concentrate on your skills and technique. Think positively about controlling your stroke and your speed. Imagine the last ten metres. Control your breathing. Feel your body drive hard to the wall. This technique (also called mental rehearsal) is a great skill to develop. It allows you to swim your race in your mind before you to do it in the water and fine tune the way you will compete.

If you want to race real fast,

And never be the one to come in last,

Learn what gets your body ready,

And when it counts you’ll be the one who’s steady!

Learn how to get ready to race. It is a skill that will make the difference.

Wayne Goldsmith

There are two key phases in all swimming strokes: The work phase and the rest or recovery phase.

In the work phase, when the arms are applying force to the water, muscles are working hard to propel the body through the water. Generally the arms and hands are moving backwards – i.e., towards the end of the pool you are swimming away from. This feels like you are “pushing” the water backwards, but you are actually pulling your body forward. Ideally, the hand will scull in the same plane with the body moving forward past the hand.

In the recovery phase, arms are moving forward in the direction of the end of the pool you are swimming towards. In butterfly, backstroke and freestyle the arms are recovered out of the water and in breaststroke (for most swimmers) arms are recovered just under the surface.

Think about that word “recovery”. It means rest. It means restoration. It means take a break. It means turn the power off and prepare for the next stroke. Recovery is in many ways just as important as the work part of your stroke.

The Power Circle Concept

The power circle explains how work and recovery interact to help you to swim fast.

When your arms are working hard turn the power on.

When your arms are recovering turn the power off.

When your arms are working, concentrate on great technique, high elbows, correct sculling and smooth hand actions. Then when you have finished working, turn the power off again during recovery.

This is particularly important when swimming butterfly.

Young swimmers often struggle to swim fly repeats longer than 25 metres. They mistakenly believe that the reason they struggle is due to a lack of strength or fitness.

One of the main reasons long fly repeats seem tough is that swimmers don’t turn off the power in recovery – they keep working their arms and tiring their muscles even when they are in recovery (i.e. when their arms are moving forward out of the water).

In other words, their power circle is power on, power on, power on, power on, they are not recovering!

To ensure that the work phase in your stroke is effective, it is essential that you learn to stroke correctly and apply force to the water at key points in your stroke.

Current thinking in swimming and under water stroke power tells us that the best swimmers reach out long, catch the water, “hold the water” right to the end of the stroke, release and then recover.

You can practice this by remembering the three power tips:

(When applying force in freestyle, breaststroke and butterfly)

Fingers pointing to the bottom of the pool

Elbow pointing to the side of the pool

Back of your hand facing the direction you are going

In backstroke this is changed around:

Fingers pointing to the side of the pool

Elbow pointing to the bottom of the pool

Back of your hand facing the direction you are going

Underwater film of the best swimmers in the world taken at the Olympics and World championships gives us the answers we need. Looking from front on (i.e. with the swimmers moving towards the camera) you can observe the back of the swimmers’ hands when they are stroking and see the back of their hand all the way through their underwater pull.

By keeping their hand in that position (with the back of their hand facing the direction they are swimming), the swimmers are able to keep constant pressure on the water (i.e. feel the pressure of the water on their palms) and keep pushing the water backwards (pulling their bodies forward).

However, this constant pulling force is far more effective over the duration of the race if you also practice to rest and relax during your stroke recovery phase.

Power on when pulling, power off when not. Turn the power on when you need to. Turn it off when you don’t. It’s a simple way of improving stroke through saving energy and relaxing your muscles when you don’t need to use them.

Why does it work?

1. By resting your muscles during recovery your body uses less energy overall and using less energy means you have more left when it really counts – the last ten metres of your 100, the last 25 of your 200.
2. There are basically three different types of muscles in your body. The ones that work, the ones that rest and the ones that support the others. The aim in being efficient is to learn how to work the “workers”, rest the “resters” and allow the “supporters” to support without over stressing them. Recovery is all about being able to rest muscles when they are not working and not getting the “supporters” involved in the swimming action so they can keep doing their support job.
3. It is logical. Muscles help move your body through the water. They don’t need to help you move through air! Why waste effort and energy working those muscles hard when they are out of the water recovering?
4. It is a great mental technique because it gets you to focus on the feeling of resting and recovering and helps you to stay relaxed right through your races.

And the best part!!! Learning to recover and to turn the power off means you will learn to swim faster, swim faster for longer and have more power left for the last part of the race when it really matters.

It doesn’t require doing more training, or more laps or eating special foods or buying special equipment. The power circle concept means you swim fast by doing less – i.e. learning to rest your arms when you are recovering! Who says you can’t get something for nothing!!!

Tips for developing the power circle:

1. In fly, try the “power circle” chant. When you pull say to yourself power on. As your fingers leave the water to recover say power off. You will soon develop a rhythm of power on -power off – power on – power off which not only reminds you to use the power circle correctly but helps you develop a nice stroke rhythm as well. This rhythm in turn helps you to develop a long, relaxed stroke.
2. Try some slow (very slow) swimming with a deliberate, purposeful power on – power off approach. Initially you may have to use fins to maintain momentum. In freestyle, try reaching out long and tall, catch the water and feel the pressure of the water on your palm. Think power on and pull your body forward with power and strength. Then, as your fingers leave the water to recover, think power off and relax your arms, fingers and hands as you reach forward for the next stroke.
3. Imagine there is a big “on” button just out in front of you as you swim. With each stroke, reach forward, feel the water, then get your elbow high ready for the catch. As you catch the water, imagine your hand is pushing the “on” button.
4. Use an exaggerated one arm drill in free, back and fly where you feel a long, easy, relaxed recovery with each stroke. This works particularly well with an exaggerated straight-arm recovery when doing one arm free and fly drills in training.
5. Think of cues, words like easy, smooth, relax, long etc in recovery to teach your brain to turn off the power.

Work when you have to – rest when you can,

This is the way to be the best in the land.

Turn the power on when your arms are in the water,

Turn the power off when your arms are out of the water (or moving forward).

Learn to use the power circle, it really works.

Wayne Goldsmith

Coaches are always looking for an edge, a new idea or innovative technique that might provide their athletes with a performance advantage.

Sports scientists are in the same game. They search for evidence to support ideas that may lead to breakthroughs in sports training techniques and competition performances.

Sports science is not a magic trick or short cut or easy way to the top. The methods and techniques of sports science are tools – and like the tools of any trade their effectiveness lies in the skills of the user.

The challenge is to provide the coaches and athletes with what they need – an edge – without giving them too much information or the wrong type of information and pushing them over it!

Tricks of the Trade: Physiology and coaching

The basic tricks of the trade for physiology are the H.E.L.P.P. techniques:

• Heart Rate
• Energy Systems – Training Zones
• Lactate
• Perceived Exertion

These basic techniques are used to help the coach determine the key aspect of training exercise intensity. How hard the athlete is working.
Whilst the volume of training is an important issue, it is intensity of training that is the key determinant of how the athlete responds and adapts to the training program.

Intensity of training is the key aspect of exercise physiology. Training adaptations, fatigue, recovery and other issues are all directly effected by training intensity. Successful coaches must have a thorough understanding of training intensity, how to manipulate to achieve performance goals and very importantly how to measure it.

To illustrate this, consider swimmers training 30 kilometres in training in a given week. The volume of training is 30 kilometres and there are some physiological adaptations that will occur because of that volume. However, the key to the physiological adaptations is the intensity of training done.

For example the swimmer could:

Swim slowly for 5 kilometres per session for 6 days and enjoy one day off.
Swim slowly for 10 kilometres each session on 3 days and enjoy one day off.
Complete 3 x 10 kilometre hard sessions all at or near maximum speed.
Complete a 20 kilometres open water swim one day then 5 x 2 km time trials at or near maximum speed over the next 6 days.

There are countless combinations of training activities that could be completed as part of the 30 kilometres training volume. However it is the changes and variations in the intensity of training that will determine if coach and athlete achieve their program outcomes.

Primary and Secondary Measures: An Important Concept.
It is important here to distinguish between primary and secondary measures. A primary measure is the more constant or controllable of the measures. For example, consider a swimmer training over 400 metres. The primary measurements here are time and distance as they can be accurately and reliably measured.

The secondary measure in this situation might be heart rate as it can not be measured with the same accuracy as time and distance (especially if it is being measured manually) and it is subject to many other internal and external factors.

The coach generally wants to know how hard the athlete is working at a specific speed over a specific distance. With speed and distance known, then secondary variables such as heart rate and lactate can play an important role in providing feedback on the fitness level and progress of the athlete.

Heart Rate

Once the panacea of sports physiology; heart rate, as the primary determinant of exercise intensity, is increasingly coming under attack. The reason stems from heart rate being a very volatile indicator of what is happening to the body. For example, heart rate is affected by caffeine, alcohol, fatigue, hydration, nervous system arousal, mental stimulation and many other factors. As it is so volatile and subject to so many factors and daily fluctuations that basing training loads exclusively on heart rate is not logical.

However, heart rate is a valuable tool when used in combination with other measures of exercise intensity. In swimming coaches use speed or time as the primary measure and heart rate as a secondary measure. The reason is that speed and time can be standardised and measured accurately – heart rate can not.

A coach would want to know what the athlete’s heart rate is at a set speed or at a specific time to provide valuable information on the progress of physiological adaptations that are being targeted by the training program.
However, no one wins gold medals for having the best heart rate: it is one tool – not the “magic pill!”

Recent research suggests that heart rates taken manually, particularly at intensity levels above 130 beats per minute are very inaccurate and heart rate should not be the exclusive determinant of higher in intensity exercise.

Energy Systems & Training Zones

This is one of the most confusing areas of exercise physiology primarily because the sports scientists themselves can not agree on the number or nature of training zones that can be recognized and utilized in training for sport.
Some sports scientists recommend 3-4 aerobic training zones alone and up to nine different training zones in total!!!

It is impractical and unrealistic to expect that a coach, especially a coach working with team sports in a field situation who can identify at most any more than 3 or four training zones.

For practical purposes the most readily identifiable and useable zones are:

• Recovery level, relaxed, comfortable
• Low intensity, easy aerobic
• High intensity, sustained pace work – what some might call threshold training
• Specific pace work at the speed of the targeted competition (with race specific dynamics
• Speed development work (neuro muscular training).

Whilst it is possible to identify other zones in a laboratory setting with an individual athlete, for all practical purposes, these four training zones will cover the vast majority of training needs for the majority of sports.

Lactate

Lactate is one indicator of how hard the body is working in terms of the relative contribution of the aerobic and anaerobic systems. In general terms, the greater the athlete uses their anaerobic system to produce the power and energy to perform an activity, the higher the level of lactate will be.
Lactate is produced in working muscles during hard work and high intensity efforts. The lactate then “leaks” out of the muscle into the blood where it can be collected by a simple blood sampling technique usually from the ear lobe or finger.

The challenge with lactate as a measure of exercise intensity is that it too is subject to variables such as nutrition, recovery level and fatigue. It is relatively expensive to use and for coaches working with teams of athletes with limited support or assistance is highly impractical.

Perceived Exertion

The concept of perceived exertion relies on the subjective judgement and “feel” of the athlete to provide feedback on the intensity level of the training activity.

For example, an athlete may be asked to perform a training activity at a specific intensity level. The coach may chose to prescribe the intensity level not in terms of objective measurements like speed or time, but in terms of how the athlete “feels” these things.

Whilst there are documented scales of intensity, many coaches and athletes formulate simple scales that are practical and meaningful to them. A one to five scale is popular and when used in combination with other measurements can give a relatively accurate understanding of the athlete’s intensity level.

INTENSITY LEVEL	FEELS LIKE	EQUATES TO
1	Very relaxed	Recovery
2	Easy	Easy Aerobic
3	Tough	Threshold
4	Very hard or uncomfortable	Race Pace
5	Fast but not hard	Speed / Neutral

The downside to using perceived exertion levels is that each athlete’s subjectivity about how things “feel” applies to that individual only. A “four” for one athlete may feel like a “two” for another athlete. Also the feel and rating of an activity may change from day to day as the athlete’s level of fatigue, motivation, attitude and recovery status change.

So what is the best way for a coach to determine the intensity level of training activities?

Recent research (see references) has suggested that heart rate taken by manual palpation is so inaccurate that alternate methods should be sought. Lactate – even with the introduction of hand held portable analyzers, over recent years, is expensive and generally impractical for the majority of coaches. Both heart rate and lactate are subject to a wide range of influences and variables that question the validity of using them in many field situations.

In the end, the coach must determine the most appropriate way of monitoring training intensity in their athletes. As athletes become more experienced and get older, it is important that the coach take time to demonstrate and teach athletes to self manage and self monitor so that they themselves can determine accurate training loads.

A summary of the research suggests that the best way may be a combination of two or more of the above physiological measurement techniques.

Practical Example:

Coach and athlete meet at the training venue.

The coach has determined that the training activity should be completed at a moderate pace.

The instruction from coach to athlete may go something like this:

“I would like you to swim 400 freestyle; somewhere around 5:30 pace. It should feel about 6/10 pace; just steady swimming; moderate effort”.

In this instruction, the coach has given the athlete the same information three ways and has clearly indicated the intensity of the workout. The athlete; educated and trained to understand accurate pacing and the concept of perceived exertion, performs the training activity to the demands of the coach.

On the completion of the 400 metre swim, the coach takes the athlete’s heart rate to determine how hard the athlete is working at the prescribed training pace.

The coach and athlete then exchange “feel” and “feedback”.

Coach: “It looked good. It looked comfortable. How did it feel?”
Athlete: “It felt easy. About 6/10 pace. What was my time?”
Coach: “The time was 5:28. Nice pacing”.
Athlete: “What about heart rate?”
Coach: “Pretty comfortable – about 140”.

Through the interaction of coach and athlete and the combination of “feel” and feedback, the training session can be fine tuned to achieve the program goals.

In most cases, simplicity is the key

An educated athlete with a strong feel for pace and an understanding of how their body works, training together with an intelligent coach who has an understanding of and empathy for their athlete and an understanding of the principles of sports science can achieve anything.

Whilst sports physiology can provide coaches and athletes with technology and tools to measure a wide range of responses and adaptations, often it comes down to what is practical, simple, immediate and affordable.

Just as no sensible investor put all their eggs in one basket, no coach or athlete should place all their faith in one particular physiological measure or technique.

It is with a combination of the art of coaching and the feel for the athlete together with the science of sport through the appropriate use of heart rate and other measurement techniques that the most effective training methodologies lie.

Wayne Goldsmith

References

Borg, G. (1985). An introduction to Borg’s RPE-scale. Ithaca, NY: Movement Publications.

Neal, M. A., Walker, J. L., Murray, T. D., Patton, R. E., & Squires, W. G. (1998). Variation in exercise heart rate based on ratings of perceived
exertion in children. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 30(5), Supplement abstract 180.

Norton, E., Vehrs, P. R., Ryan, N., & Jackson, A. S. (1997). Palpated vs electronically monitored heart rates in predicting VO2max with
submaximal exercise tests. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 29(5),
Supplement abstract 275.

Ueda, T., & Kurokawa, T. (1995). Relationships between perceived exertion and physiological variables during swimming. International
Journal of Sports Medicine, 16, 385-389.

A common mistake made by many masters swimmers is to do their slow work too fast and fast work too slow.

The reason behind this often lies in the lifestyle of the masters swimmer. Masters swimmers usually have limited time for training owing to work, study, family and other commitments so they like to come to the pool, train for an hour and leave feeling fatigued and believing they have done a real workout, i.e. they want to feel tired.

For most masters swimmers, this means they are doing the majority of their training at or close to what might be termed threshold as it is the fastest possible speed they can maintain for the duration of the training time available.

Whilst this may seem to be a good training strategy and it may appear that the swimmer is working hard, in reality it is an inappropriate intensity level for most masters swimmers as it does not really develop the five key elements of competitive swimming or T.E.S.S.T:

• Technique: Good technique, long strokes.
• Endurance: The ability to sustain high speed throughout the race and be “fatigue resistant”.
• Skills: Breathing, timing, feel – swimming fundamentals.
• Starts: Fast, strong, powerful, explosive and with great streamlining.
• Turns: Aggressive, fast, powerful and with great streamlining.

Swimming at the appropriate speeds and intensity levels allows the swimmer the opportunity to develop these elements. Always swimming at threshold tends to reinforce poor skills and inefficient technique as the body is constantly under pressure and fatigue and only serves to compromise racing success.

Successful competitive swimming is the ability to maintain good technique and excellent skills at high speed when fatigued and when experiencing race pressures. Achieving this requires a balanced program which focuses on the development of all the elements of competitive swimming, ie not just the ability to swim at threshold.

Sorting out this training zone stuff

There have been a lot of things written about training zones and training intensity levels but the majority are too complicated for the reality of everyday Masters swimming.

Training sets with these training zones include:

Summary

1. Masters swimmers should take time to develop a balanced training program using the T.E.S.S.T. principles: Technique, Endurance, Skills, Starts, Turns.
2. The intensity of training is the key to the whole thing – masters swimmers should have a strong understanding of training intensity and how it applies to their training program – remember: understanding Pace makes a great Race!
3. Keep training zones simple, the four basic zones outlined here will help you achieve your competition goals.

Wayne Goldsmith

Author, Peter Blanch, is a physiotherapist with the Australian Institute of Sport. He assisted with the preparation of a number of Australian National Teams with whom he travelled which included the teams for the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada, and the World Championships in Rome. He has a strong conviction in regard to the prevention and management of injury. Together with ASI Sports Science Co-ordinator Wayne Goldsmith this article provides 10 simple tips to promote performance through injury prevention.

Injury prevention is an important part of the training plan of every coach. The best-planned and periodised training program is of little use if the swimmer is always injured and unable to train.

Due to the high repetition involved in swimming training, the injuries that are most common are of the overuse variety. This is where the cumulative effect of repetitive actions … like pulling or stroking … cause tissue breakdown and inflammation, (microtrauma). Regardless of the type of injury, learning to minimise injuries is far better than learning how to treat them!

Here are 10 simple tips to promote performance through injury prevention that all coaches can use.

1. Develop a Network of Sports Medicine/ Science Specialist: Get to know your local sports physiotherapist, sports MD, sports massage therapist, podiatrist, etc. It is important to develop a network of reliable, suitably qualified, sports medicine backup personnel who know and understand swimming and who you can send your swimmers to with confidence in times of injury. Don’t underestimate your role as a coach in this network! Not all health professionals fully understand the demands of swimming and swimming training. The coach should work closely with the doctor/physio to determine an effective rehabilitation strategy for injured athletes. Imaginative rehabilitation programs can be co-operatively planned and structured into a modified training schedule. This will help ease the frustration that both coach and athlete feels during times of injury.
2. Screening: Prevention is better than cure! Have your local sports physiotherapist screen your squad for possible problems. Have them look for flexibility limitations, movement patterns, body symmetry, etc., before starting hard training. A 10-minute screening by someone who knows what to look for may save a lot of pain and frustration later in the season. For example, a limited range of motion (R.O.M.) in a shoulder may eventually lead to shoulder pain. A lack of symmetry in the upper back may lead to an uneven stroke and pain and spasm in the neck.The coach’s role in injury prevention is essential. If biomechanical deficiencies are identified and rehabilitative programs are suggested, the coach needs to reinforce these as part of the overall training schedule.Finding a skilled professional may not always be easy, but there are standard screen protocols available through the State Directors of Coaching and the A.I.S. that your local sports medicine professional may find useful.
3. Stretching: Stretching has many roles. We tend, as coaches, to just consider the aspect of stretching during warm-up for injury prevention. However, stretching has an important role in performance! Increasing the range of motion of different joints will make for a more efficient swimmer. For example, in the early part of the freestyle armstroke, most of the propulsive force is generated through internal shoulder rotation. If a swimmer is able to exert force through 40 degrees instead of 20 degrees, they are able to generate power through a greater range (there are of course upper limits to this increase in range of motion).The body’s joints move through the path of least resistance. If one joint is limited in its ability to perform a motion, this task will be passed along the chain to a point where the movement will occur. Take the swimmer who kicks with tight hips. If the hips can’t supply the motion, the body will compensate by increasing the amount of motion through the lower back. This is not only inefficient, but potentially injury causing.  Attention to better stretching technique will ensure better results in increases in the range of motion. Many swimmers perform stretches incorrectly, believing that leaning against a wall with their arms over their heads is enough to reduce injury risk and enhance performance. Most stretches need to be performed with a strong, stable trunk. We are looking to increase mobility around the peripheral joints whilst maintaining stability in the core.  Stretching gives the swimmer the range of motion to efficiently execute the skills of swimming.
4. Strengthening: Not in the Arnie Schwarzennegger sense, but a program designed to strengthen the body to limit and reduce injuries. The weights program should be periodised to compliment the overall training program design and the compatibility of strength and endurance needs to be considered – i.e. gains in maximum strength levels in the gym may not be as effective during the general preparation (aerobic endurance) phase of pool training owing to the physiological complications of training strength and endurance concurrently.Skilful swimming requires quite a deal of strength. There is valid argument that suggests swimming itself is sufficient strength work for swimming – i.e. to get strong enough to swim, you swim. However, there are specific benefits that a swimmer can gain from doing specialised strength work. Muscles that stabilise the trunk and scapulae (shoulder blades) can be better worked in the controlled environment of the gym or pool deck.It is important to perform all stabilisation exercises correctly and with an emphasis on control rather than on lifting the maximum weight possible. The aim should be to develop the ability to produce force at the body’s extremities whilst maintaining a strong stable trunk.
5. Technique: Swimming techniques have been developed over along time to effectively increase force production and minimise resistance. Generally speaking, strokes performed with correct technique are less likely to cause injury because the movements are more efficient. Technique needs to be reinforced and stressed for all swimmers at all levels at all times, and particularly when the swimmer is feeling fatigued.It should be noted that training develops not only the cardiovascular and musculo-skeletal systems, but also the nervous systems. It is important to maintain good control of movement patterns regardless of physiological fatigue.In the case of the tired swimmer continuing to swim in a fatigued state with poor technique, the gains in cardiovascular conditioning may be offset by the decreased stroke efficiency reinforced in the nervous system – i.e. the poor technique is reinforced – and the increased likelihood of injury.
6. Backstroke & Kicking: As well as being a competitive swimming stroke, backstroke has an important role in injury prevention. Butterfly, breaststroke and freestyle are all strokes which place a lot of strain on the muscles which rotate the arm inwardly. This continually inwards rotation causes stress and sometimes the condition called “rotator cuff tendonitis” (swimmer shoulder) eventuates. Using backstroke works other muscles between long fly and freestyle sets and helps reduce the load on the muscles and tendons of the shoulder. For example, instead of 20×50 Fly on 1:00, try 2x(10×50) Fly on 1:00 with 200 easy back every 10.Instead of straight overdistance freestyle (1000’s, 2000’s, etc.), try 100 back every 500 free.(Note: Backstroke also works inward rotators during the pull phase.)   Coaches have also used kicking in the past to reduce training stresses on shoulders and arms. It is important, if using kicking sets between swim sets to give the shoulder a rest, that swimmers using boards cross their arms on the board or don’t use a board at all. Kicking with the arms straight out in front only increases the strain on the point of the shoulder … the very thing the kick set is supposed to be relieving!
7. Parental Education: Parents can be the frontline in injury prevention and management strategy. Regularly hold parent education sessions where experts such as physiotherapists, nutritionists, doctors, etc., come in and teach parents the basics of injury management and prevention. Topics such as “Eating to Win” and “The R.I.C.E.D. Technique” or “Recovery Techniques for Competitive Swimmers” may help parents understand the important role they play in the preparation of a swimmer.
8. Massage: Massage is extremely useful in three forms:
   (1) Professionally done i.e. massage therapists or physiotherapists working directly with swimmers.
   (2) Swimmers massaging themselves.
   (3) Parents massaging swimmers. It only takes a few sessions with your local sports massage person or sports physiotherapist to educate your swimmers on the benefits of self-massage. Swimmers can be easily taught to massage problem areas – e.g. neck, upper back, triceps, and shoulders – if pain or soreness presents. Similarly, parents can be taught the basic of massage and can work with swimmers to massage out spasms in back, neck and shoulders.We are not suggesting that parents can take the place of an experienced, qualified physical therapist (unless one or both of them has spent five years at University studying to be one), but it is not always possible to get in to see a professional immediately the spasm or injury presents. Parents and swimmers, using simple injury management techniques, can keep pool time lost to injury to a minimum. (But as the Panadol ad says … if pain persists, see your family doctor!).
9. First Aid, Medical Kit, Ice: The fundamental responsibility of ALL coaches and teachers is the safety of the swimmers under his or her control. An important part of this responsibility is having a well maintained and up to date medical kit close by at all training sessions (not locked in the club cupboard), and at all swim meets and being able to administer basic first aid in case of emergency. Check regularly to see if all medicines, preparations and medications in the first aid kit have not gone past the use-by date. A current first aid certificate (St Johns or similar) is a vital part of being prepared for the first line in injury management. Ice should be available at all sessions and meets as part of your injury prevention and management strategy.
10. Coach Education: It is vital that all coaches keep up to date with current injury prevention strategies and injury management techniques. Make it a priority to read up on injury prevention and to discuss the issue with sports science/sports medicine professionals at every opportunity. It is difficult (impossible?) to have a 100% injury free squad program. Swimmers are working hard, pushing themselves to the limits to achieve their best and injuries are an ever-present danger. However, injuries can be minimised and controlled with a sensible injury prevention and management strategy, which is at the heart of your training plan.

Hopefully these 10 tips will help you develop a sensible, safe and effective training program.

Wayne Goldsmith