The boomer
boom!
There’s been a boom in Bill Boomer’s ideas on
coaching. The former coach at the University of Rochester has
thrown out the conventional approach to swimming fast and has given
coaches and swimmers a whole new language for discussing technique.
Dara Torres had only swum two laps on her first day of training
after a seven-year layoff when Stanford coach Richard Quick lowered
a kickboard into the water to stop her. "We don’t swim like
that any more," he said. Quick is one of a growing number of
coaches who is taking a different approach to swim technique based
on ideas being communicated by Bill Boomer, former head coach at
the University of Rochester. "Bill Boomer has had a dramatic
influence on our program," said Quick. "I have completely changed
the focus of how I teach competitive swimming." Torres said
Boomer’s approach to the technical aspects of swimming was
difficult to understand at first. However, she says those changes
have been a significant factor in the success she’s already
achieved in her comeback
Quick credits Boomer’s ideas with having a significant impact
on world record holder Jenny Thompson, and National Resident Team
coach Jonty Skinner says Boomer is welcome to pull Skinner’s
swimmers out of the water at any time to make suggestions on their
technique. Indeed, at meets like the Janet Evans Invitational a
year ago last July, the World Cup in November, and the U.S. Open in
December, Boomer could be seen on deck near the warmup pool making
suggestions to some of the top swimmers in the world. "Dara and
Jenny won’t go anywhere without him," says 1996 Olympic gold
medalist Josh Davis. Davis, and fellow Olympic gold medalists Amy
Van Dyken and Annette Salmeen, are among the swimmers who have
benefited from Boomer’s approach. Davis said he had been
reading articles by Boomer and trying to apply his ideas to his own
swimming even before University of Texas coach Eddie Reese invited
Boomer to give a clinic to the Texas swimmers in 1993. Davis has
been consulting with him ever since-- usually about once a year at
a national or international meet. "I’m so glad I worked with
him for two days before Pan Pacs," says Davis. Boomer spent a
couple of days with the U.S. team at its training camp outside
Sydney before the 1999 Pan Pacific Championships. Unlike team
coaches who have to be concerned about all aspects of their
athletes’ training-from what they’re eating to how
they’re sleeping-- Boomer has the luxury of focusing only on
an athlete’s technique. "My coach Eddie Reese got the engine
as strong as possible," Davis said. Boomer can concentrate on
finetuning. At the Pan Pac training camp, for example, Boomer
talked to Davis about details like where to focus his energy,
reminding him to use his stomach and hip muscles rather than his
shoulder muscles. "It’s nice to be around a fresh set of
eyes," says Davis, who placed fifth in the 200 free at Pan Pacs
with a 1:48.98.
Who Is Bill Boomer?
It would be a mistake, however, to suggest that Boomer is a Mr.
Fix-it who can patch up the rough spots in a swimmer’s
technique. Nor is his approach something that coaches an use on
Tuesdays and Thursdays while using conventional training techniques
the rest of the week. Boomer is talking about a fundamentally
different approach to swimming. Ask five different coaches to
describe Boomer’s approach, and you are likely to get five
different answers. Quick says the Stanford program now teaches swim
technique "from the inside out," working first on the "core body
posture, line and balance" before working on what the arms and legs
are doing. Ross Gerry, assistant women’s swim coach at
Stanford, says Boomer looks at swimming with the eyes of a
choreographer rather than a coach. "He sees rhythm and the origins
of the rhythm." Mike Walker, co-head coach of the women’s
swim team at Cal, says Boomer "is a specialist in the behavior of
humans in water." Brad Burnham, assistant coach of the
women’s swim team at UCLA, says Boomer is applying ideas from
physics to the sport of swimming. Skinner calls him a "visionary"
for his ideas about balance and flotation in the water. They all
agree, however, that Boomer has thrown out the conventional
approach to swimming fast and has given coaches and swimmers a
whole new language for discussing technique.
Boomer’s Roots
If Boomer’s ideas are unconventional, it is in large part
because he did not have a background in swimming before becoming
the swim coach at the University of Rochester in 1962. He was a
graduate student working with the track and soccer teams when the
swim coach retired and the athletic director asked him if
he’d like the job. Boomer said yes, even though he’d
never even seen a swim meet. As a former competitor in track,
soccer and basketball, Boomer said he felt at home on land, but not
in water. He felt he needed to have "a relationship with water"
before he would be able to communicate with swimmers about how they
should move in the water. So, the first summer after he took the
job, he spent time floating and swimming in a 16-yard pool, trying
to feel the rhythms of the water. Eventually, he said, "I felt the
oneness with myself in the water that I’d always felt on
land."
Managing the Aquatic
Environment
Boomer’s ideas are constantly evolving, say the coaches and
athletes he works with. One essential element, however, is the idea
that the athlete has to manage the aquatic environment to be
successful. People walk, jump and twirl on land and do not have to
think about those movements to know how they will feel. In the
water, however, moving forward, up or around can feel completely
different because there are forces other than gravity at work. A
flip turn may be nothing more than a somersault in the water, but
people who easily tumble on land can become quickly disoriented
trying to do the same move in the water. Eventually they may learn
to do a somersault in the water by adapting their land movements to
the water, but that doesn’t mean they are doing it as
efficiently as an aquatic creature would do it. Swimmers have to
Team different approaches to those movements based on the forces at
work in the water. Much of Boomer’s approach, therefore, has
to do with concepts like relaxation, fluidity, flotation and
rhythm. He, himself, sees it as a kind of "aquatic martial arts" in
which force is less important to success than balance and
stability. This is where the vocabulary comes in. Josh Davis says
Boomer talks about intention with tension. Mike Walker says Boomer
doesn’t talk about underwater kicking; he talks about
fishtailing. However, Boomer loses some coaches early in his
presentations and articles because it takes him awhile to relate
his ideas to swimming. Says Quick, "When I first worked with him, I
thought, `When will we ever get to swimming?’ " Jonty Skinner
says that during a standard 15-minute conversation with Boomer, he
might understand about two minutes. Several months later, however,
after applying the ideas to swimmers in the water, the conversation
makes much more sense. The foundation is important, Boomer
believes, because the faster swimmers go in the water, the more
resistance the water puts up. The most successful swimmers, then,
will be those who can reduce drag at every point in their stroke.
For Boomer, a "feel for the water" is not about the swimmer
catching as much water as possible in his hands, but moving as
efficiently as possible with every part of his body. Indeed, Boomer
believes there has been far too much emphasis in swimming on what
the arms and legs are doing and not nearly enough on what the body
core is doing. When the body core is factored in, the result is the
kind of fluidity that is evident in Jenny Thompson’s
strokes.
The Stanford Connection
In 1986, Ross Gerry, then a swim coach at Clark University, went to
the NCAA Division III nationals "and saw a team warming up that was
so graceful and beautiful that it stopped me in my tracks," he
said. "It was like watching a bunch of Baryshnikovs at a dance
recital of 10-year-olds." It was the University of Rochester team.
Gerry introduced himself to Boomer and began to pick his brain at
every opportunity. Gerry joined the Stanford coaching staff in June
of 1991, just after Boomer began working with the Stanford team.
Boomer had been given an open invitation to visit Stanford by
men’s coach Skip Kenney after he had read some of
Boomer’s articles. One day, when Boomer was traveling in
California, he stopped at Stanford. He talked with Kenney and Quick
for about two hours before Kenney invited him on deck to work with
the team. After working with one of the Stanford swimmers for a
short time, Boomer had earned the trust of the Stanford coaches.
"It was one of those moments," Boomer says emotionally. It was one
of those moments for Richard Quick as well. He cites his
association with Boomer as one of the two or three experiences in
his 25-year coaching career when the right thing had come along at
just the right time. Of course, no one would have blamed Quick if
he had simply thanked Boomer for coming to Palo Alto and returned
to coaching the way he had for years. Quick is one of the most
successful swim coaches in history, and Boomer had coached only a
Division III team that sometimes had an undefeated season, but
sometimes went winless. Indeed, had Boomer been churning out
national champions, his ideas might have caught on a lot sooner.
But ask coaches to learn a new approach and a new language from
someone who can’t point to his successes, and the resistance
is high. Quick, however, was not reluctant to take a chance on a
new idea. "I don’t want to leave a stone unturned" in trying
to find the best way to train swimmers, he says. "If there’s
a new idea, I want to investigate it." He can always go back to
doing things the way he did before, he says. Not all the Stanford
swimmers were as keen on changing their approach as Quick was.
"Some of the athletes got into big arguments with (Boomer)," Gerry
recalls. Top-level athletes were being told the foundation they had
built on to achieve their elite status was a little shaky.
"That’s pretty strong medicine," Gerry said. One of those who
didn’t resist the change was Jenny Thompson. A lot of factors
have contributed to Thompson’s success, her coaches say, but
they agree her openness to Boomer’s approach has been a
significant factor-starting before she set the world record in the
100 free in 1992. Quick notes that the best athletes are often
those who are most willing to look at anything that might improve
their swimming. Jenny Thompson, he says, "has worked very hard for
a very long time, but part of her hard work has been her
willingness to work on technique even when she was the best in the
world."
Good Ideas Travel Fast
Brad Burnham was particularly interested in learning how
Jenny Thompson was doing her flip turns when he worked as a
counselor at a Stanford swim camp in the summer of 1993. As a
graduate student and assistant coach at Colorado State University,
he worked with Amy Van Dyken. Van Dyken, he said, had terrific
speed going into the wall, but had trouble carrying her speed
through the turns. After having contact that summer with the
Stanford coaching staff and Thompson, whom he’d known growing
up, Burnham started applying Boomer’s approach to Amy Van
Dyken, although he admits he didn’t have a full understanding
of the approach at that time. The following spring, Van Dyken set
an American record in the 50 yard free at the NCAA Championships.
On the way home from the meet, Burnham found himself on the same
plane with Boomer, who’d been impressed with the changes
he’d seen in Van Dyken. Boomer and Burnham soon developed a
close working relationship. Burnham began work as the assistant
women’s swim coach at UCLA the following season and began to
apply Boomer’s ideas to the college program. Annette Salmeen
was one of the UCLA athletes who took to the ideas quickly. A
chemistry major who became a Rhodes Scholar after graduation,
Salmeen understood the underlying scientific concepts of the
approach. In 1996, she surprised some people by making the U.S.
Olympic team in both the 200 fly and 200 free, and she won a gold
medal as a member of the 800 free relay. Quick, however,
doesn’t think it’s necessary to have an analytical mind
to benefit from Boomer’s ideas. "If you believe significant
swim improvement is related to significant technical improvement,
then you’re open to (Boomer’s) information." Although
Boomer spends much of his time these days consulting with elite
athletes, he has also worked with USA Swimming to produce a series
of videotapes, "The Boomer Chronicles," that communicates his ideas
to a much broader audience. These tapes are available by visiting
Swimming Technique’s web site at swiminfo.com/swimshop, or by
calling 1-800-352-7946, ext. 1.
About the Author
Lois Melina is a free-lance writer, author and former sports
information director at Ball State University. She is currently
working on the book, "By a Fraction of a Second," the inside story
of nine swimmers pursuing their dreams of the Olympics, which will
be available from Swimming Technique this fall.
Copyright Sports Publications, Inc. Jul-Sep 2000 Provided by
ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights
Reserved
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