Streamlines #5: It's not what you do but the way that you do it.

When I first started in swimming, and I was paying my way through University by coaching a small age group squad, I had the incredibly good fortune to get to work with a very smart old coach, Terry Gathercole.

A former world record holder himself, a coach of an Olympic Gold medallist and an outstanding aquatics leader, Terry invited me to work with him at the Australian Institute of Sport where he was preparing swimmers for World Championships and Olympic Games campaigns (where incidentally his swimmers won World titles and Olympic medals).  

After I'd spent a few months following him up and down the pool, asking him questions and hanging on every word he said, Terry arrived on deck one morning with a stack of note pads and presented them to me saying, “These are for you”. 

I opened the first book, and my head exploded….it was a year’s worth of training programs – all of it – sets, reps, time cycles, drills, volume, intensity, frequency, tapers, warm ups, cool downs, dryland, altitude training workouts and routines – everything!! I opened the next book…another year of workouts. The third book – yet another year of programs, practices and plans.

I said to him, “Coach this is incredible. I am beyond words. Thank you”. 

Terry smiled and replied, “They won’t help you though. Because you’re not me and you’re not coaching them...” (pointing to his team). He continued:

“Everyone thinks that it’s the workouts that makes the team successful. It’s other way around. It’s the team ... that makes the workouts work”.

What did  he mean? Let's take a look.