Reteaching

A principle of effective education is to re-teach. Once a skill is taught it must be revisited constantly until it is learned. Practical application of this educational point means that we find time to construct workouts that feed into each other. Create an opportunity for your athletes to practice a skill toward the end of a workout, then revisit that skill when starting the next workout. Here are a few ways to create opportunity:

1)Finish with a skill (flipturns), and start the next day with a skill (flipturns).
2)Perform the same warmup drill routine each day for two weeks
3)Use recently-learned drills throughout the practice, incorporated into warmups and transition swims.
4)Use recently-learned drills throughout the main series of the practice.
5)Talk about the importance of a skill, and do it daily.

How often do we see young swimmers get close to learning backstroke flipturns or breaststroke kick, only to have the practice end and essentially cut off the learning for the day? It happens a lot. As coaches we get that feeling often: "Ahh, they almost got it." This is a great feeling to have, because it does take time to learn skills -- but we have to act on the feeling, and reteach that skill again the next day, right away.