Watch Ryan Lochte teach swimming! Would you teach differently?

by Terry Laughlin

According to his web site Ryan Lochte is ‘considered by many to be the best swimmer in the world.’ If Michael Phelps hadn’t come out of retirement, that might well be true . . . though fans of Katie Ledecky might beg to differ.

Still his achievements–11 Olympic medals and World Records on four occasions– are truly impressive.But how well does elite level swimming experience translate into teaching someone else. Particularly when that someone is your typical adult swimmer.

Watch this video of Lochte teaching USA Today reporter Nicole Auerbach. Then I invite you to ‘play TI Coach.’

Based on your own experience learning and practicing TI, and what worked well for you, would you have done anything different if asked to teach Nicole?

In the comments section here, or on the TI Facebook Group, I invite you to Be The Coach and outline a simple lesson–5 to 10 minutes or less–that would allow Nicole to take away something valuable, in skill and understanding of what matters. Choose any stroke; Ryan gave her a lesson in all four.

March 31st, 2016 Terry Laughlin. 13

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bobarsenault

Yeah, the picture of Lochte swimming was night and day different than what he’s teaching on freestyle. Her fingers were stiff, actually her whole hand was. She needs to relax them, and have a higher elbow…she didn’t have ‘wide tracks’ either. Her head was held high, his was relaxed. You couldn’t even see his head. He needs to be taught how to teach his own stroke. LOL.
OWS

Possibly embarrassing Ryan in this brief and non-serious coaching lesson may not be the best way to help make the (swim) world a better place. Your superb coaching skills, when compared to his snapshot effort, are undoubtedly opposite standards as is your/my ability to win any kind of Olympic swimming medal. I suggest any other comments would be irrelevant.
Sasha

Why would any professional swimmer do such a video? Freestyle lesson telling you to kick like that? Never swam a lap in my life until 2 months ago, age 64 and “discovered” TI. Within 1 week I could lap swim freestyle for 25 minutes without kicking by just focusing on PATIENT wide track rag doll arms, BREATHING and ROTATING my hips for propulsion. Now trying to put all the finer points together. Along with snappy, 2 beat kick!
John Link

He can’t teach at all. He demonstrates a stroke, his student copies him and makes a mess of it, and then he says ‘That’s it!”.
Victoria Jordan

Vicky Jordan

I would also recommend that she relax her head. Way too stiff. This
means that when she turns to breathe, she is lifting her head up instead
of just rolling it to the side. But, in all fairness, this was a super
brief example of teaching.
Fl. Swim Mom Lisa

This was entertaining! I had to watch it purely for entertainment purposes. We got to watch Ryan splash around in an endless pool. They were both good sports. Around the cake and cut it! Too cute! I am using that for my age group lessons. So much better then the WSI ice cream bowl to your heart and give it away. No question TI is the place to go for real help with all four strokes. Although, Terry is not quite as entertaining to watch. Fl. Swim Mom
Cheryl Turpin

First off all let me say that Ryan has proven that being an Olympian doesn’t mean that he an automatic teacher. It was all very awkward. Now on to the lesson plan I would have the student do.
1. Pick 1 stroke…..Freestyle
2. Pick 1 focal Point to work on say Head Position in the water
3. Have her spend a minute on the SUperman Glide. I would show her while I was out of the pool and have her see the profile of the head and its relationship between the shoulders. Explain laser beam from head etc.
4. Student would replicate in the water…glide with head position.
5. Add the arms (not our focal point)
6. Ensure head is in correct position . Focus on laser beam ideology, looking straight down. Head on pillow when side breathing
7. Tie it all together by showing how body position stays streamlined when your head is in correct position, feet don’t drop. Feet drop when your head and neck are out of water

So no more than 10 min. Student learns 1 focal point, also the relationship between how proper placement of the head affects thhe body ie. Buoyancy, streamline position etc.
Timbo Thirroul

The number one thing is to make sure that the student is able to maintain the level of involvement post lesson as before the lesson.
I have been guilty of training adults who have an extremely poor technique, only to overload them to the point that they get frustrated and lose the joy of swimming that they had before.
Frank

Terrific post on April Fools’ Day!
Unfortulately no hint on balance, on streamlining or whole body propulsion. So TI-Lesson should be totally different.
KearneyHimself

Could this be something to do with the fact that it landed in my inbox on April 1st?
It takes around 5,000 hours in the water to get to Olympic standard, so teaching four different strokes in under 3½ minutes would be a challenge for any coach.
The most useful thing that you could learn in 3½ minutes is Drownproofing. That is a great way to learn how to be comfortable and relaxed in water, a basic requirement for successful, pleasurable swimming. It might also save your life!
rebecca brown-thompson

wow looked like the type of teaching I got in the early 60’s!!! it didn’t work then and doesn’t now. Her head was not relaxed on any of the strokes especially breast where she was looking up on every breath., the whole body position was not streamlined, 6 kicks per stroke I would be exhausted after that…maybe for sprint swimming but not for what she was doing. No theory on the proper body position which might help her visualize where she needs to be and to help her carry on with out a coach. Granted 3 minutes is not long enough for 4 strokes and he wasn’t invested in the task but it shouldn’t have even been attempted, incomplete information is worse then too much…just gave her all the wrong muscle memory she will now have to undo!!! but on the plus side she got to swim next to a really hot guy….LOL
exu

Considered the fact, that Ryan tried to teach 4 different strokes under 4 minutes to someone with little to no skill in swimming those 4 strokes, he and the girl-athlete did a real good job. He picked one or two important aspects of each stroke and got it across. Who expects perfection within 3.5minutes of teaching, lives on a different planet. If you start with the step-by-step method of TI (which is really great) you would have started it with balance and ended it there. Nothing of 4 different strokes. The objective here was a different one than to learn 4 strokes perfectly and properly. The objective here was to learn the minimum of 4 strokes within the time limit of 4 minutes, and nothing else. So in my opinion Ryan and the girl did a great job.
Edison Waxbaum

Okay…..I’ll be the bad guy. i don’t even being to understand the point of this video, so I’m putting the whole thing down to a very bad April Fools’ joke. It is, without a doubt, the most useless swimming video I’ve ever seen. Of all the choices out there to teach us something about TI, this is what we get? Nothing that Lochte does…..n-o-t-h-i-n-g…..even comes close to anything related to TI.