As many of you know, I recently returned from Great Britain where I toured with the top youth and junior swimmers from Canada. I’d like to share with you some of my thoughts regarding my experience on this tour team. First, I’ll start off by providing an overview of the three week tour.

After landing in London on December 27th, the Canadian Youth and Junior Team quickly settled into a VERY spartan dorm in the Crystal Palace Gardens area of South London. Without much ado, the group got down to work. Training was vigorous almost from the first practice. This is a group of the best 18 and under swimmers in Canada, and they were in England to experience training in the land of the 2012 Olympics. Up to this point in the tour we had only seen the sun three times and half of the time it was raining. This was no tourist tour!

The first week finished with a nice trip downtown on New Year’s eve to see the fireworks in Central London. The fatigue was just setting in. After a long, delayed bus trip way up to the north-east coast near the border with Scotland we arrived in Sunderland. As the rain pelted out its rhythmic welcome we settled into a sprawling labyrinth of a hotel right on the coast of the North Sea. Can you say quaint? Then back to business. This time we were training with the England under 19 squad called England Talent. The groups mixed in as did the coaches and we shared ideas and practices for the rest of the week. As expected, the training was very competitive and the groups got along just fine.

At the end of the week they hosted a dual meet to see what was what!! Well, after 3 sessions of back and forth, race after race, the lead switching on almost every swim, Canada came out the victors by a scant 4 points. It was down to the men's 200 fly which Mack Darragh from Oakville won in fine style. We put the finishing touch on the meet with a convincing win by the women's 4x100 medley relay. Of course we all forgot the score by the end of lunch :) We did manage a day trip to Newcastle for a look-about and some shopping. Nice old town!

Monday saw another day of training in the modern Sunderland pool followed by a short 2 hour trip to the middle-English city of Sheffield. The Ponds Forge pool there is the best pool in England, so they say. After the sauna that was Sunderland, we have walked into its rival for air quality. Sweat equity indeed. However, we spent four more days of hard training (only one session with the very strong local squad) and we were now into the meet called the Burns Open Invitational. Some of the best swimmers in Britain were there. Elizabeth Simmons (200 back 2:06+) and Rebecca Adlington (Beijing 800 meter gold medalist!!) and Liam Tancock (current world record holder 50 back) were all in attendance.

The last day had now arrived and everyone really had only one thought and that was about going home. It was my turn to address the team and looking around to see nothing but tired faces and worn out athletes, I realized these young athletes had gone for 21 days straight with no days off, done everything the staff had asked of them and not once ever complained. Six athletes were sick and two were injured.

Based on this visual analysis, I changed what I was going to say. It is recorded it below:

This group of Canadian athletes swam like true champions on the last night and I was approached afterwards with thanks for such an inspirational speech for what its worth. The athletes are all gathered in the lobby of the hotel in a quiet room.

This recent tour experience has prompted a lot of reflection on my part. Exposure to that kind of environment challenges you to be at your best or “on top of your game” all the time.

This environment includes: 21 days of group living, travel, training, and competition. The fact that you are working with the best athletes in the country motivates you to bring to the table a level of enthusiasm each and every practice. At home, this level of intensity gets diluted during the day to day routine of competitive training, but not here because these camp trainings are so intense over a short period of time. I thought about what I could do when I get back to my home training pool and how I would try to replicate this environment of excellence. To me the challenge is to be able to maintain over a long period of time what we were going through in such a short period of high intensity training and living. Replicating this intensity and transferring the environment over the long haul of the short course and long course seasons, are what I strive to achieve as a coach. If I could learn how to transfer the momentum of a short term, but high intensity environment to the training environment back home, I would be providing much value to my home club and athletes. As a coach on a tour team, you are getting this exposure to top athletes every day on tour. It challenges you to really be on your game. The level of creativity and motivation for set design needs to be higher - it forced you to be a better coach - because you are training other coaches’ athletes that are the best in the country for their age group. This realization will act as a catalyst to spur excellence in the home pools of tour team coaches and athletes alike.

Personally, it challenged me to be at the top of my game for 21 days straight. I was coaching the distance men and women of the English Talent (their best 18 and unders). During the 9 days of the English and Canadians combined, I decided to plan the training design using years of my honed skills and I compiled what I consider to be the best to throw at these accomplished athletes. I used the collective expertise of the sports physiologist and sports equipment to test and monitor blood lactates, heart rates, stroke rates and overall adaptability of the athletes. Together we put forth a training program to challenge these swimmers and it is expected that we will see positive results of these fine young athletes in Victoria for the World's Senior and Junior Trials.

I believe these athletes felt the same way about their training that I felt towards my coaching. Everybody wanted to bring their best game! You are in an environment over a short period of time - a scientific petri dish of sorts. You could envision working hard for the duration. At the back of my mind I thought of my own athletes at home and how I could impact their day to day training - albeit at an unsustainable level that we did during the three weeks in the UK, but you could still up your game. I remember the words of Vince Lombardi who said “most people have the will to win - not everyone has the will to prepare to win!” - those words hang loud especially during the long dark, cold Canadian winter months. It’s tough to keep your focus. This Tour Team experience pushed me to go hard every day. I needed to bring that level of intensity back home, because really if the coach doesn’t have it – then the athletes won’t either.

Now we are back here in Toronto and are looking to championship season that lies ahead. Staying focused on a day to day basis is the athlete’s biggest challenge. The most important thing right now is the intensity that the athletes are swimming at. For example: threshold, V02max, and critical speed sets, are contingent upon swimming at a stroke rate that matches the intensity requirements of the energy systems. Put simply - the goal is to swim race pace as often as possible in practice – even for young kids. It's a mental thing. It requires you to use your mental focus first before the physical. This is what I want all NYAC athletes to strive towards. On the tour, there was great emphasis placed on the ability to dolphin kick off walls to a minimum of 10 meters. Race your turns - meaning don’t use them to rest - was another emphasis of the training on the Tour Team. The ability to swim great stroke techniques (max distance per stroke) with higher and higher stroke rates is the magic formula for optimizing performance both at training and at meets. This is what I want all NYAC coaches to instill in our young swimmers.

Peek performance is contingent upon using in-season meets to practice the above fundamentals. Both parents and athletes should realize that the time on the clock can’t be the only factor emphasized. I say this all the time, and I need to again. It’s not about how fast the athletes are swimming, but rather how they are swimming fast!

Whatever your champion meet is, swimming faster than you ever have before will be a culmination of all the skills: mental and physical, you have practiced and rehearsed during the preparatory season. Heading into championship season, train the way you want to race and have your goal times determine your efforts in practice. Make the connection between practicing and performing. Know your times in your workout. Read the pace clock.

This year, NYAC will be going to the Ontario Provincials as a team. The philosophy of keeping the team together is critical for future development. My recent Tour Team experience has reinforced my belief that athletes have to be ready for anything. You’re not going to have the creature comforts of home. Parents need to let the athletes go and experience the competition without constant intervention or influence. They need to learn to be independently race ready and how to handle themselves within a team environment on their own. This is precisely why NYAC introduces mandatory team travel at a young age. We want to give them these skills to set them up for success down the road. Let them make a few mistakes when they are young. The experience will become invaluable later on.

Another team travel opportunity is Team Champs to be held in Sudbury this spring. We will be using the usual criteria where we pick the top four swimmers in each age group for a total of 32 swimmers. The next 8 spots will be filled based on the needs of the team.

In addition we have two other team travel opportunities coming up. These include the East Coast trip and the Gee-Gee’s Meet. Parents should take advantage of these opportunities and encourage their swimmers to attend if they qualify.

In closing I would like to acknowledge NYAC’s collective efforts as a club for supporting these endeavors for our coaches and athletes. Whether it be supporting our racing and training schedule as set out in the beginning of the season, or be it team travel or allowing coaches to experience their version of team travel on tour teams. I characterize it as NYAC’s unselfish attitude. We have a “big club” attitude which promotes these opportunities (coachs' participation on tour teams, swimmers on tour teams, parents and families supporting the club and its infrastructure to enable this type of activity) and at the end of the day, the club is a lot better off.

What I brought back from my UK experience will make NYAC a better place to be for everyone. No one ever said that change is easy, but adapting to change (short term and long) is what NYAC has done very well.

I want to say thanks to all who support this vision and who supported my travel and my opportunity to learn in the UK. This includes coaches like Provincial Mentor Coach Dean Boles, NYAC coaches like John Calnan, Sabrina Ng and John McLeod who took on the responsibility of coaching swimmers who joined their groups for the transition, swimmers sharing crowded pool space, fluctuating schedules and just generally adaptation to change to allow us as club to grow and get better.

I wish you all the best of luck in championship season.

Go NYAC!

Coach Murray