Mel Marshall is one of the world’s top swimming coaches. Having coached current men’s 100m breaststroke record holder Adam Peaty to his groundbreaking 56.88, as well as his 25.95 50m record, Marshall knows a thing or two about getting the very best out of athletes. But she also has plenty of advice and learning to offer to her fellow coaches.
When it comes to tips for coaches currently making their name, whether at the club or elite level, Marshall insists that discipline and an eye for an individual’s strengths are key. But she also highlights the precision and focus that coaches need to bring the best out in their students.
“You have to create drills that bring about that change,” she says. “Then, when you get to the top end, I think it’s an exploration to find that extra inch, that extra burst. It’s about knowing the individual athlete and knowing the right coaching cues to help them improve the basics, in a specific way for them. If I taught Adam to glide more, we never would have been able to access rate as we did. Being a good coach is knowing when to intervene to make it better, which is different to intervening because the book says so. With some people you may need to throw the books away.”
Visual cues for improved performance
Marshall may be known for her successes in training elite athletes to breaststroke success, but she also has plenty to say about young prospects that she is training in other strokes, too. For her, the fundamentals are the same when starting out, keeping an eye out for those who excel in certain classes, but never ignoring a back-up stroke that may develop more slowly.
“Regardless of stroke, it’s that body line and making sure that every stroke you are moving with that body line,” she says. “It’s the breathing, the legs, the arms, the timing, the head. That’s the checklist. Checking all those markers on every stroke is really important, along with purchase on the water. People look good on top of the water when they’re doing what’s required to get good purchase, and I think that’s really important.”
When it comes to keeping an eye on what goes on beneath the water, Marshall is a firm believer that instant video technology is the big difference between now and when she was training. She may have had her own career as a top-level freestyle and backstroke swimmer who represented Great Britain at the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and World Championships, but believes she could have excelled farther with better moving images poolside
“I’m a big visual learner, so it would have really helped me,” she says. “Visual and kinaesthetic is my kind of space, which means it would have been a real game changer for me. Now you’ve got young people on iPads all the time it’s a really relevant piece of technology to be able to utilise and make your sessions more entertaining.”
Marshall uses the Athlee camera to give instant feedback to her own students, believing it gives her an edge in a space where coaching can be every bit as competitive as racing. Every trainer is looking to improve on their and their club’s own performance, as their students grow and improve, so new technology can play a huge part in winning these battles.
“It opens things up for you, as you see thing you just can’t see otherwise as a coach,” she says. “You get more insight. Sometimes, if you can’t slow something down then you miss things. I know I would. That ability to watch something instantly two or three times on the split screen delay means you may catch possible improvements that you would not even notice otherwise.”
Turning young prospects into future champions
Marshall posits that, safeguarding allowing, video playback could benefit those as young as 10 years old. Importantly, she believes that it can help monitor growth spurts and their impact on technique as limbs lengthen.
“Kids can think that they are doing one thing and it takes visual confirmation to see they are not,” she says. “When I was younger I had no idea what I looked like when I was swimming until I was shown video feedback from an old compact camera, and it was a mess. You also have a big change around puberty, where kids grow and suddenly their arms and legs are different and the timing is all off. It can be really frustrating for them, so having that visual feedback can really help them to gain control and accelerate their learning.”
She believes that the way in which visual feedback can engage young learners can also make coaches’ life easier in group settings, with the camera system essentially working as an assistant coach.
“The Athlee set up is exactly as good as a number two,” says Marshall. “It’s that instant feedback. If you’ve got your key markers and you’ve got a checklist that groups of young athletes are trying to work on, then they can watch, and effectively coach themselves to a degree. With big groups of 30 kids – which a lot of club coaches have – having a focus where athletes can just learn themselves and explore really helps the session move on so much better.”
Discipline can trump raw talent
The young Adam Peaty that Marhsall trained was an exceptional athlete, but she believes identifying those with an ability to see their training as a journey is as important in a coach as spotting natural physical talent. In a world where attention spans are decreasing year-on-year, becoming a swimmer who can even dream of being the next Adam Peaty, or Mel Marshall, is a long and slow process. Only the dedicated and the determined can hope to make it.
“Swimming is a patience game, and it will take 10 years to master your craft, technically, physically, tactically and psychologically,” says Marshall. “That is the biggest challenge for young swimmers, and their coaches. You need to be really present in the moment. The thing that made Adam stand out was that he was like a sponge. He would just absorb everything. It is about who can apply feedback the quickest, learn the quickest and have the patience to see it through. It’s not instant. This is not a cup of coffee.”
To illustrate her point, Marshall runs through some of the details of the often-excruciating marginal gains that helped Peaty to break records. It’s definitely not for the easily-distracted.
“Take Adam’s start time,” she says. “When we were initially timing starts, he was as high as 8.0, and it took us 10 years to get to a 6.3 or 6.2. That was religious – day in, day out, week in, week out training. In the last five years, we moved it 0.8. The higher up you go, the harder it is to move times and the more feedback is required.”
Athlee’s camera system is definitely an easy and intuitive way to monitor these marginal gains at any level, allowing coaches to see every detail from biomechanics to physiology and physics. Marshall is a convert, although she would argue that you don’t need to be a World Record holder or Olympic coach to benefit.
“It’s who can pick the right information and who can work with it the best,” she says. “Feedback in these environments, and particularly in that club space, is so vital. Every club should have Athlee, because it’s such an easy tool to have at the end of the lane where athletes can just watch what’s going on and where the improvements are to be made.”
If you want to find out more about how Athlee can help coaches to improve, as well as bettering training programmes for anyone from prospects to elite athletes, then please visit www.athlee.com to book your short online demo.
NB: Mel Marshall’s participation in this interview is entirely independent, and she is not compensated by or affiliated with Athlee.
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