What is too much?
AnthonyMcCarley
Berwyn, PACharter Member
The interaction on a different discussion (which shall go unidentified since I have been knocked upside the head for making an unpopular observation – ice pack applied) has prompted me to ask this group questions I have been asking myself: What is too much? Where is the line crossed? Is it my problem?
My first sport was judo and in judo the students are taught from the beginning to have great respect for the sensei (teacher). Many in my family are or were teachers. For me, this respect for teachers flows over to coaches. People who help others grow. Admirable. Deserving of respect.
Also, I admire people who have figured out how to create a revenue stream from their love of swimming. No harm in making money – it often drives creativity and everyone deserves compensation for their value delivered. Making a living by doing something you love sounds like an ideal life.
Someone may argue with the two paragraphs above, but if you don’t then it is reasonable to expect some self-promotion. How can you be a coach without letting potential students know you are a coach? Pretty tough.
So, I am respectful of coaches, I am happy for those making money from swimming, and I accept self-promotion as necessary. Yet, I cringe when I get the impression (from FB posts) that someone is acting as if they reinvented swimming. As if hip rotation in freestyle was a personal creation.
Is this my issue? Or is there a tipping point to too much? And, if there is, what is it?
Comments
I think consent of the resources involved becomes the real tipping point. I mean I KNOW I'm being used as a resource for the "free service" of Facebook. To find my name in that open water wiki is absurd. I'm not a competitive athlete. They do that in the hopes that we small fry will be all flattered and crap and post it around.
Dear @NoelFigart, Uncle! ^:)^ Not trying to defend the observation in the other discussion.
Wasn't trying to smack you around. But consent is a big deal, I think, when we're talking ethics in anything.
Anthony is being too obtuse. :-* . He's talking about a particular person who seems to think that their particular way of swimming is proprietary and marketable. ( am I saying that correctly @AnthonyMcCarley ?)
And at what point does that become too much?
At what point is selling ones swim stroke "too much". I ask.. is there such a thing as a marketable swim stroke?
@suziedods, did you just call him obtuse?!? That's a month in solitary for you.
Oh, and I patented a stroke called the American crawl. It is kind of like the Australian crawl. If you want to know exactly what it is though it will cost you big time.
I thought that was a drinking game
Please let me try again…
…while I cited only one recent example, every once in a while I read an update (self-promotion) that makes me think, “Really? You're saying that, really?” But mostly I read updates (self-promotion) and think, “Cool”. I honestly don’t know where the line is. Wondering if others have an opinion about what the tipping point is…
Upon reflection, I have decided that this discussion breaks my personal rule to try to be nice. Please consider my questions withdrawn. I apologize to everyone.
Well played, Warden Norton. Well played.
"Lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought be down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg and plead..."
My father would roll his eyes at my misuse of obtuse. And @AnthonyMcCarley , I wish I had a rule about being nice.
I think we can have a 'nice' conversation about this.
All marketing efforts attempt to manipulate. (Financial decision-making, emotion, behaviour…)
Some people market in a way we appreciate. We deliberately draw these energies into our lives, and might even share the commercials/campaigns with friends. Remember the WestJet Miracle? (It's worth watching if you missed it.) Although it seemed altruistic, the company profited big time.
Personally, I enjoy watching the Apple keynote every year. I can't think of another company that inspires me to spend 2+ hours, every year, educating myself on their latest products. The keynote is full of hype but, for whatever reason, it doesn't bother me that they make outrageous claims such as, "this is the best phone ever". I imagine such claims might bother some people, though. I don't think there's a tipping point, exactly. The same marketing can provoke opposite reactions.
Other people market in a way that makes us feel exploited. (Spam, annoying Internet ads that play video without your permission, organizations that collect big data to manipulate us "more accurately"...) We tend to feel a loss of control in response to their efforts, and feel the need to push back (spam filters, Internet ad blockers, not posting certain information on Facebook…).
To bring the conversation back to swimming, Speedo has these new fins:
The marketing on this feels so over-the-top to me, and it feels like it drifts into exploitive territory. But -- again, almost certainly -- there will be other people who don't feel that way, and who will enjoy discussing how many blow holes their fins have.
Why am I OK with Apple claiming they have the best phone ever? Why do I roll my eyes at the marketing for Nemesis fins? Who knows? :-) There is no accounting for emotion. :-)
I do think there's a point where marketing and profiteering can start to infringe of the spirit of open water swimming. If you are struggling with nausea during swims and ask me about my hard-earned experiences, I think it would be pretty anti-spirit (and pretty darn exploitive) to charge you for the advice. Or if I 'invented' @JenA's Magical Anti-Nausea Potion (secretly 100% ginger) and sold it to you at a premium, that would feel pretty exploitive/anti-spirit too.
And therein lies the rub...
As a sort of , part time semi pro (?) ( what does that mean?) "coach".. I struggle with charging people, and most of the time I am completely happy with just sitting and having a chat. At the same time.. it's usually the ones that pay you that DON'T listen!
Trying to keep to the spirit of sharing , and being nice ( that's a nod to @AnthonyMcCarley ) I think most of us share information that most other sports would not. No scientific evidence for that but we certainly share more than say tri-athletes.
And ,yes there is a tipping point and some have tipped over... most however, and those in the sport the longest have not. There's a reason for that.
This is a great topic... indeed an essential topic in this "post Xtreme Dream," increasingly social media-dominant era of marathon swimming.
I don't think Anthony should withdraw his question, and I don't think anyone is guilty of not "being nice" (yet). This Forum's about as "nice" as they come.... ever read SlowTwitch?
Some may recall a related (also quite productive) thread from a couple years ago:
Nick Adams on the Emergence of the 'Ego Swimmer'
If even Big Love Nick thinks it's important enough to put in the CS&PF Annual Report -- two years in a row -- it's gotta be worthy of discussion.
Calling out BS when we see it is as much a part of this Forum's cultural DNA as celebrating great achievements. (See here for a few examples.) Otherwise it's just constant Woo-hoo'ing, and is that what we really want? I hope not.
I thank @AnthonyMcCarley for starting the thread, and by the way, can I interest anyone in licensing my patented Evmo Freestyle Technique? Special discount, only a penny per stroke.
I have no problem with charging for coaching. I have happily paid for swim lessons. IF you want a tipping point with that example:
"I'm a marathon swimmer with X-Swims successfully completed, and 10 million hours as a coach and observer on such swims. From that experience, I can tell you want I did, as well as what other people I have coached did to do this successfully."
That's fine.
"Other coaches are lying to you about what you need to be able to be a successful marathon swimmer. Only I can give you the Real Truth for you to learn the shortcuts to swimming the English Channel."
That's way the hell out of line. And people fall for variants of it, especially in sports and fitness coaching, every day.
Well said. And anyone who says there is a shortcut to success or only one way to do "IT" .... is FOS.
Full of %^$#.
This isn't unique to swimming, you see it daily business and family life. We're all wired differently and whilst I am very relaxed about swimming, others are 'driven' by a desire to dominate. They truly believe they've reinvented the wheel, they ignore all other view points etc.. Yikes.
I have a really hard time with self-promotion. I am a coach, and I do nothing to advertise it. I've been doing it for years and don't even have a business card for when people find out what I do. I actually have clients who keep asking me to make cards so they can hand them out when they talk to people. Still haven't done it. Ha!
Usually, when people say "What do you do?", my answer is something vague like "Um, I like to do the swimming."
And I make no claims to having "THE WAY." My "Way" is exactly what @NoelFigart describes. I talk to prospective students, ask what THEY want to do, because it's about their needs and not my agenda, and then, we go from there. If they trust me, it's because they've either heard things from other students, or they have read my website, etc. Or, it's because we've connected in some way, on a personal level, that makes them feel secure.
Recently, I had a very negative encounter with a coach who shall remain unnamed who does frequently claim that it's his way or failure. He told me that his particular method would "Fix" my swimming and that if I didn't embrace it, I would slow and just get worse and worse. (FYI--I have embraced some new techniques in the past few months and am now swimming faster than ever, and feeling stronger in the water than I EVER have. He is, ahem, not a fan of these techniques...) He literally started with a LIST of everything he thought I was doing wrong, and what would fix it. Because insulting my swimming was SURELY the way to get me to buy in!
I hadn't asked, didn't want his advice, and certainly did not want to buy his extremely expensive program. He had shown up at one of our Masters practices, started coaching swimmers without asking or speaking to my coach, talked trash about other coaches and their methods, and it was generally appalling. He then tried to sell me on his training program, under the pretense of his way being the absolute best.
My coach was equally upset about the entire encounter, and finally rescued me from the conversation. Both of us found the degree of narcissistic self-promotion appalling, and almost desperate.
One of the things I particularly loved about working with a coach like Sheila Taormina, when I went to her clinic in February, was that her method was the antithesis of that. She is all about finding what works for the individual swimmer, and while she has tenets that she firmly believes in, she does not have the pathological zealotry that prevents her from seeing the merits and value in a variety of coaching forms, and from finding what works for the individual swimmer.
I've probably said too much already so I am stopping now, because I am tempted to keep my big mouth writing and writing and writing.
I've encountered this coach too! $20 bucks on T.L.
@bruck -
I plead the 5th!
Let's just say that I was told by this person that if I didn't become a coach of this particular method, my swimming would suffer as a result. I was mansplained to death!
I have, ahem, not found that to be the case, my swimming is faster, and, um, I have a waiting list of clients who are, um, having some frustrations with that method. I get emails on the regular...If only there were more hours in the day for me to accommodate them all! I am the luckiest girl around! My clients are so fantastic and I learn from and with them every single day---another thing that is so super important!
One more thing----I am also a part of a variety of swim groups where we all share information. I agree with @suziedods that those moments of having a chat are so very important. I am happy to talk, share information, learn from others about what has worked for them and share advice on what's worked for me. And that's not about a financial transaction. That's about the spirit of generosity I believe we all should have as members of this awesome, crazy, niche sport.
I have people ask me questions all the time, and I ask questions of others, and I love that give and take. It's part of what makes this such a wonderful community of shared experiences and knowledge.
To me, that's the stuff that's just about being a good steward of the sport.
When you come to my pool and I am filming you and discussing your stroke, or teaching you breathing technique, or making you training plans and we are having a one-on-one swim time, etc. etc., that's when I become a coach. And that's a different animal, because you have asked me for specific attention in a specific way. That's a different animal.
Otherwise, I'm just another swimmer sharing in this crazy sport that we all love! I firmly believe that sharing knowledge and information freely and being a paid coach/instructor are not mutually exclusive!
This thread is keeping me from doing my homework..:)
Of all the coaches I know with the initials "T.L.", I would not characterize any of them as ego-driven, exploitive, self-aggrandizers. Rather, my take is one of passion, stemming from a lot of research and observed results. Less a vibe of "you must listen to me!", but rather one of "I noticed you repeatedly slamming your fingers in that car door, and, uh, you don't have to do it that way."
Then again, I'm ok with Apple claiming they have the best phone ever, so, you know... grain of salt and all that.
It was definitely many years ago, and people can change...
The discussion between Sheila and one T.L. is quite old (2002!). I definitely don't get a "it's my way or failure!" vibe from his response to her criticisms.
Wholeheartedly AGREE!
Thanks for articulating so clearly and concisely.
Signed,
Growing the Pie Bigger
=D>