What is a Tech Duet?

ANA Synchro is competing a “Tech Duet” this season!  What is a Technical Duet?  Read on as ANA Synchro’s Head Coach explains:

ANA Synchro's Tech Duet

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  A short definition for a Tech Duet is “advanced figures placed in a shorter routine.”  Technical routines are considered senior level.  You can begin competing in the event at age 15, and you have to swim one starting at age 19 for USA Synchro Senior competitions.  US Collegiate Nationals doesn’t require them, but if collegiate level athletes want to compete at US Nationals or US Opens, they must have a technical routine.  These routines are swum at elite level international competitions, including the Olympics.

A Tech Duet is performed along with a Free Duet.  If you compare this to figure skating, the Tech Duet is like a short program, with prescribed elements, and the Free Duet is like a long program, with more creative choreography options.  A Tech Duet contains six of the highest level difficulty figures, performed in a particular order.  Athletes do not have a separate figure competition because the figures are done as part of the Tech Duet.

ANA Synchro:  Is it just duets that follow this format?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Synchro has technical solos, duets, and team routines.  And it’s the same short/long program idea for each. 

A double ballet leg is one of the required elements
of a Technical Duet.

ANA Synchro:  If athletes aren’t required to do Tech Duets until they’re 19, why do you have some of your Age Group swimmers doing one this season?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  I wanted to give them an opportunity to do something a little different this season. I have them doing a Tech Duet to challenge them in a way that they’ve never been challenged before – to open a more competitive side for them.  It also allows them to focus on themselves as athletes and improving their own technical skills, so why not give them the most difficult technical elements we have in our sport?  I know they eventually want to swim past high school, so introducing it gives them great experience for college.

ANA Synchro:  Is the choreography easier for a Tech Duet since the elements are prescribed and must be performed in a particular order?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  I find it easier to choreograph a technical routine, maybe because I was a technical swimmer myself.  But there still are some challenges and strategies.  You want to put the elements in a place that highlights them.  And we, on the East Coast, have to deal with a shallow end, which makes it hard because a lot of the elements require spins or sinks,  All those years swimming with the National Team, I never had to worry about a shallow end because we trained in all deep pools!  Yet we still want to evenly space out the elements so the athletes are not doing one on top of the other.

Athletes competing in Tech Duet also must swim a Free Duet,
which is longer and not constrained by prescribed elements.

ANA Synchro:  Do all meets feature Tech Routines?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  No.  There are certain competitions that feature them.  Our zone doesn’t necessarily see a lot of Tech Routines because our East Zone allows 19 year-olds (commonly seniors in high school) to compete in our Age Group and Junior tracks

ANA Synchro:  Did you have a favorite Tech Duet?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  I do have a favorite one!  It was the last duet I swam with my sister.  We are rockers, and we wanted to swim to Guns & Roses “Welcome to the Jungle.”  But we weren’t sure how our coaches would react because it’s not your typical synchronized swimming music!  So we cut the music ourselves and had it all ready for the start of the season.  They did allow it, and it ended up being our favorite routine!

A Secret to Better Figures

In an earlier blog article, Coach Leah described synchronized swimming figures for us – what they are, their overriding purpose, how they’re scored, and how she manages practicing them with her team.  In this follow-up article, Coach Leah reveals her number one suggestion for improving figures:

ANA Synchro Head Coach Leah Pinette

ANA Synchro:  If an athlete wanted to improve their figures, what’s the number one thing they could do on their own – stretching splits, strengthening their core? 

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Flexibility and strength are important, but I think the most important thing is your mind and what you’re telling yourself before and during a figure.  I think the biggest thing that someone could work on if they’re trying to improve a figure is visualization of that figure.  When I was competing, I clearly remember slipping into the water to get ready to do a figure and I would visualize what I was about to do.  Maybe that’s why I excelled at figures and why I like them.  Being in the proper mindset is huge in synchronized swimming.

ANA Synchro:  Do you actively work on visualization with your athletes? 

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Yes, we focus on it a lot.  Sometimes they don’t even realize they’re doing it.  When a girl does a figure for me, I’ll ask them “What were you thinking just now? What were you telling yourself?”  If they want to do great in figures, they have to be able to calm themselves and be positive in what they’re telling themselves.

ANA Synchro:  Is this something that comes naturally to athletes, or is it something that is taught and practiced, just like all the physical moves of synchro?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  It does take practice.  I started at a young age.  Probably high school is when I started doing it for my figures.  I remember going to camps when I was on the New Canaan Aquianas, and Duke Zielinski would work with us on visualization.  And then, when I was on National Team, we had a lot of sports psychologists who worked with us on it.

ANA Synchro athletes do a "think through"
of their routine before competition.

ANA Synchro:  Does visualization work for routines too, or just figures?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  It definitely works for routines too.  Although, it took me a long time as an athlete to be able to visualize a routine.  We would do routines totally as a “think through” where we’d sit, listen to the music, close our eyes, and visualize the whole thing.  There are different techniques to it.  You can do it from the point of view of what you’re seeing and what you’re feeling, or you can do it as an outsider looking in. 

ANA Synchro:  Which way did you do it?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  I’m a visual person, so I’d always visualize my teammates and what I’m seeing.  I could not visualize as the outsider looking in.  When I visualize a routine, I have to do it as what I’m seeing as I do it.  I wouldn’t see myself flying, for example, I’d see what I see as I was flying.

Coaching figures
includes training
athletes to visualize
their figures going well.

ANA Synchro:  How do you know, as a coach, if your athletes are doing it properly?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  I guess you never know.  I don’t know if my coaches knew what I was seeing when I thought about a routine.  Sometimes I actually saw some bad things in there!  I’d often see a routine going wrong!  So that was a hard thing – to be able to change my mind and do it correctly in my mind.

ANA Synchro:  That’s so fascinating that you’d visualize something gone wrong!  Because that’s just your mind making it up!

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Exactly!  It’s your mind making it up!  That’s what I try to tell the athletes. If someone tells me “oh, this will be bad,” I say, “yes, you’re right!  If you think it will be bad, it will be bad.”  This is the power of visualization.  You have to think it’s going to go well.  You have to see it going well.

ANA Synchro:  Visualization seems like a pretty big topic!

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Yes!  Someday I’d like to run a whole clinic on it.  And maybe we’ll get an expert to do a guest blog on the topic.  Stay tuned!