Divine Bribery

I don’t know who said the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but that phrase applies to no one better than it does to me. In swimming there’s a little saying that goes like this: Eat to swim. It makes sense. Eating will provide energy and the essentials to maintain good performance in the pool (if eating properly), but now that I’m coaching, I eat to swim. The best part is my swimmers know this. Perhaps too much. So of course they tend to make or bring food in attempts to goad me into allowing them to have fun—like relays or sharks and minnows (a game where one person is the shark and tries to tag the minnows above water to make them become sharks). I give them the same response though—no fun is allowed in my group. A 2000 IM for anyone who smiles (this would be a five hundred, twenty laps, of each stroke starting with fly, back, breast, then ending with free, link to video of a 400 IM).

Over the past year, my swimmers have given me delicious treats in nearly every category of cuisine: cookies, cupcakes, cakes, banana/cucumber bread, brownies, chocolate bars, sour patch kids and almost every other kind of candy, Asian pears, candied apples, fudge, tiramisu, dumplings, siopao, and even baked goods whose names I don’t know or won’t even try to pronounce. I like to think I am given these items because they love and respect me, but that is simply not true (maybe). Food just makes me happier. Ergo I know they think that when they give me food I will be more lenient since I am happier. Oh yes, I have also received jam. The most recent, blackberry jam from Knottsberry Farm. So delectable. Anyways, my workouts don’t depend on my mood, regardless of what they think; they’re all planned out in advance. However certain, special kinds of bribes have worked in getting me to change practice from time to time. Since my swimmers are not yet clever enough to figure out just which ones win me over, here’s a few of my favorite.

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. My love for these heavenly creations go beyond any mortal state of existence. I’m not a huge fan of pumpkin, nor regular chocolate chips. But the flavor of milk chocolate circulated around a mild spice of pumpkin ignites a flavor so overwhelming California as a whole would be burnt to a crisp in seconds if this flavor were but a small camping fire. I have received these cookies, home-made which easily excels over store bought any hour of any day, and each time my swimmers have succeeded in convincing me to play a game as opposed to continue with the last set of practice. The problem was not lack of quality, but lack of quantity.

Candied apples. Believe it or not I had never had one until I started coaching, and even then only about a year ago. Though my appetite for them is lower than the above specimen, caramel with dark chocolate (the supreme leader of all chocolates) flakes and mini-m&ms is a tough combination to beat. I hate cutting the giant creations though. I mean, why even put them on a stick? That’s just stupid. On all three occasions of these heavenly rations rewarded to me, games were implemented into my planning process for the last practice of the week.

Cheesecake. Any kind. This master among desserts has been my favorite since I could crawl towards my yellow triangles that refused to fit into the perforated circles on that giant wood crate thing. As I grew older, cheesecake continued to grow fonder in my stomach. I mean Heart. Though nothing can beat my obsession with pancakes, cheesecake comes close. It’s like watching Lord of the Rings then switching to Harry Potter. Pleasing, but far from the degree of excellence in the first instance. Thankfully, and yes, I say thankfully for a reason, my swimmers have yet to discover my love for cheesecake. If they knew, we would be playing more sharks and minnows than breathing.

My love for food is truly abnormal. But wholly beneficial of course. It serves a purpose of more than simply satisfying my wild beast of a stomach; it fills me with a sense of accomplishment, which is greater than satisfaction. My swimmers know how to win me over. They bring bribery in forms of nothing else besides food. Though they explicitly bribe me into getting what they want, I implicitly bribe them into getting me my wants. And of course, since they think they’re the ones with the upper hand, my subtle requests are fulfilled over time. Funny how bribery is a two way connection, almost like the one between my swimmers and me.

Riddle Me This

My swimmers have recently gotten in the habit of asking me riddles. They, of course, intend to test my knowledge as well as make me look foolish, which really isn’t that difficult but they don’t quite know that, and I have no plans to tell them otherwise. For some reason, most of them see me as a being with a superior intellect matched by none other Odin (want another picture). The only minor difference is I didn’t hang myself from Yggdrasil for nine days. Mostly because I couldn’t find the world tree though. This is a title that I clearly have no right to complain about, but it’s something I have the most difficult time maintaining. Deception truly is a work of art, a skill that I don’t yet possess. Coaching is somewhat similar to deceit though. It’s learning to solve each swimmer and adapt when the answer you give isn’t the one being searched for, even if you don’t necessarily have the answer. However, I often wonder how Iago had the strength to deceive a friend over something so seemingly petty. It’s exhausting, and takes more time and cunning than I’m willing to spend. It is strange though, somehow I am in a place to be able to deceive. Either way, it doesn’t matter as I am the one who got myself in this position.

A while back I started asking my swimmers questions about nearly every subject matter found in school. Learning is something of a passion of mine and part of that comes talking about the most interesting things I’ve learned. This talk of physics or literature or art changed into a challenge. That is, I would allow my swimmers to pick a subject pertaining to school education and then ask a question about that subject, which I suppose indicates I know much about all subjects, or at least enough to make several questions on that subject. After allowing each swimmer to guess once, they would be allotted to play a game at the end of the week. This would include sharks in minnows, relays, or something of their choice if approved by me. In my career of asking questions, only two swimmers ever got them right. It made me feel pretty good showing my absolute knowledge to twelve year olds.

This game stopped with changes of swimmers (ie them moving to different groups and therefore different coaches), which is how I put myself in my current predicament—they ask me riddles. This is how I’ve become the smartest man alive, at least to my swimmers. One of them decides to ask me a riddle at the end

Has a better thinking atmosphere than libraries

of practice (after completing warm down). Here’s what I remember: if 2 is 3, 4 is 4, and 5 is 4, what is 9? I tell him to give me a couple minutes to think this one through. I start visualizing the numbers in my head, wrapping the lines together, counting the number of curves in each number. Then one of my other swimmers gets to the wall while warming down, picks up her bottle of red Gatorade, and starts to drink it. Except she forgets where her mouth is and pours the entire twelve ounces all over her face, which makes her look like a vampire after feeding on a baker’s dozen, and I don’t mean his bread. Then she begins staring at me and says with sheer pleasantness “Gatorade is so good!” before pushing off to finish her warm down. Now the numbers in my head start taking showers of red Gatorade, which of course turns into blood. For some
reason they start dancing around 9 as 7 (like that old joke) begins to devour it, almost like a cult sacrifice. Then it’s too late for me to realize someone’s been trying to get my attention. When I come back to reality, the cult world was better, I have no idea the answer to his question so I do what any good man would do—lie! Actually I caved and said I know not, which is when his smile started taking over his face. Soon his face become a mere shadow to his smile. Picture slender man with a grin from ear to       ear. He explains to me in one of those high-pitched voices only boys whose voices fluctuate can reach that it’s the letters. 9 has four letters, so it’s 4. Should have known. But I care to little as the same girl reaches for another bottle of Gatorade and does the exact same thing. Red everywhere, floating on the surface of the water until the chlorine attacks and kills the dye. Though I don’t know where she got that one since hers was empty.

That was the last riddle anyone asked me. I guess stumping me once was enough for my swimmers. The problem with questions is that they don’t always goad the proper answer. Why did nine have to be four? Couldn’t it have much as easily been 5 or even 11? Different people want different answers, much like different swimmers approach sets or meets differently. The trick is figuring out which swimmer needs which approach, and how to use that approach for each swimmer. As a coach, the riddles for me aren’t questions delivered from voices of children trying to or not trying to challenge my knowledge (and as such self esteem), it’s learning to solve each swimmer and adapt when the answer you give isn’t the one being searched for. Riddles plague my practices. Good thing I’m smarter than Odin.

Take My Breath Away

When I first walked on deck the day I started coaching, people thought I belonged in the pool. They weren’t wrong of course; I was only a few years older than the swimmers I would be coaching. As I took nerve-wracking strides to greet swimmers and parents with a facade of confidence I’d been growing since forever, I performed a mindless act that I somehow engrained in my mind. Though this act is part of innate abilities most people are unable to defy, but I’ve also been self-reliant. I held my breath. Completely unintentionally mind you. It’s something that simply happens to me, more than it probably should. I walk over to my group of swimmers to be, and attempt to say something, anything. But of course I’ve been walking without breathing for the past thirty seconds so my lungs seize up on me. A fit of delirium passes over quietly as I stumble and fall straight into a life guard stand, which prevents me from breaking my nose the first day on the job. Though I can’t tell who is around me, I feel their stares strike my soul, but not as much as the laughter, which shuts my brain off to nothing but one thing—just lay here and die. No one even knows you. Unfortunately I wasn’t dying, just acting at a younger age of maturity than the swimmers around me. So, I regretfully got up and presented myself as their next coach. I ignored their stares of denial or shock or profound hilarity. Then I gave them the easiest practice they had ever had, even when they were just learning to swim. A four hundred warm up with twelve seventy-fives afterwards, and a single 100 free for time before a 100 easy. (Click on this to see a picture of a pool with dimensions.) Somehow 1600 yards, less than a mile when they were used to doing three or more, lasted an hour and a half. I offered my pleasantries after practice with a decision to myself to become a great coach, which involved me conquering the plague affecting me since I was little, holding my breath. Ergo, much to my swimmer’s demise and turmoil, I gave them a no breathing set a couple days later. Maybe it was a week. Lack of Oxygen seems to be breaking my memory.

For a restricted breathing set I’ll usually do 20 X 25 free or dolphin kick with fins (link to picture of fins. Okay, here's the real one.), which means they’ll do one lap no breathing then take a short break before doing that again 19 more times, for a total of 20. By now, whenever I tell my swimmers to get fins on, their grunting begins. They know better than to think the next set will be fun. They complain of course, but most will do the entire set breathing on no more than three or four of the twenty-fives. However, I’ve had several swimmers, all fast in their distinctive races, break down from simply hearing the set. No breathers differentiate good swimmers from great ones. But not for the reason you would expect. For my swimmers, no breathing sets are more of a mental workout than a physical one. I know all of them are strong enough to make the set, but all of them don’t know they are that strong. Of those swimmers that have shed many tears, it stemmed from a lack of confidence in their own abilities as a swimmer. Such a thought should have had no place in their mind to begin with, but it’s a human instinct to let doubt creep in. In these cases, I would pull them out of the water and say how I only want them to try, to make as many as they can and breathe if they need to. I’m not in the profession of drowning people. Though when I said that, they would just look stunned like they truly believed they would die from one of my workouts. Again, a simple loss of faith, for whatever reason. As these swimmers progressed with me, and through the set, they began to accomplish more and more twenty-fives without having to come up for air. Not only could I see their happiness directly on their faces, I could see their belief in themselves expand to harder sets, where they would then push themselves more. For if they can make a set without breathing, they can definitely make a set with air. This is why I continue to use no breathers; it builds a kind of confidence they must obtain from themselves, something they can’t gain by seeing a time drop or hearing a congratulations. Though, I’ll never admit this to any of them.

It’s funny how fickle people can be, especially when proposed with a situation that truly tests their mental strength. But it’s only through these tests that people advance into the persons they want to be. Though my swimmers may not yet know who that is, my job is to guide them into that natural progression. During all of this, they still manage to make me laugh hysterically and say or do something insightful. Sometimes, they even take my breath away.