Olympic Champions Talk About “The Basics” of Synchronized Swimming

Sarah & Karen Josephson at the esynchro booth
at the 2014 Age Group Nationals in Seattle.

ANA Synchro had the pleasure of talking to Olympians Karen & Sarah Josephson at Age Group Nationals this past July in Seattle, WA.  And it was clear that they are as passionate as ever about the sport of synchronized swimming, which took them all over the world as our country’s top duet, and which took them to the medal stand in not one, but two Olympic Games – gold in ’92/Barcelona and silver in ‘88/Seoul!

Today, the Josephson sisters, along with sports performance expert Duke Zielinski and long-time synchro official and philanthropist Carol Valles, are putting their talent, expertise, and energy into esynchro, an outstanding collection of printed and on-line resources for basic synchro training.  They have instructional videos and handbooks on safe and effective stretching techniques, figures, swimming strokes, and more.   

ANA Synchro:  At the start of our season in the fall, our coaches spend a lot of time on “basics,” like verticals, sculling, and eggbeatering.  What can you tell our athletes and their parents to help them get through this learning period, when they probably would prefer getting straight to the new routine or taking turns on top of lifts?

Sarah:  Everyone wants to do the cool stuff now!  But you have to swim first, and then you get to do the cool stuff.  It’ll make you better at the cool stuff!  Duke has a saying:  “Advanced techniques are nothing more than basic techniques performed to perfection.”  Once you learn how to do a back scull, for example, it doesn’t change when you get to an elite level.  You still do the same back scull.  You still do the same vertical scull.  So it’s really important to get those basics down.  The basic skills are one of the things I think we’ve lost in this country.

Karen:  To get successful in anything, you have to put the time in on the basic skills.  Life will be easier if you work on getting those basic skills really good.  It’s like learning to read.  You learn early, and then it’s a breeze.

ANA Synchro Coach gets in the water to help our youngest
swimmers get comfortable with the basics of the sport. 

ANA Synchro:  But it seems like the basic skills are all underwater, where judges aren’t looking.  Does it really matter what happens underwater, as long as you can do the moves well above the water?

Sarah:  Yes, it matters.  For example, to me, there is a very efficient way of tucking underwater and getting to the surface quickly.  But when I watch the girls today, I see many girls just sprawling out of a position now, which slows them down.  And when they torpedo down the pool, they should be able to shoot out and travel down the pool very quickly. 

Karen:  If someone doesn’t have good technique, they look like they’re just plowing through the water, and they’re not moving as far, or as fast, as they should.

Sarah:  Watch the Russian National team.  The strength and power of their kicks to move themselves down the pool are just so much more impressive than most of the rest of the world at this point.  That’s just basic swimming technique.

ANA Synchro coaches spend some practice time on stroke
technique because the better swimmer you are, the
better synchronized swimmer you'll be.

ANA Synchro:  Basic swimming technique?  Are we talking freestyle?  The common strokes?

Sarah:  Definitely.  It’s swimming.  It might be synchronized swimming, but it’s still swimming.  I think we forget that sometimes.  The better swimmer you are, the better synchronized swimmer you’ll be.

Karen:  Back when we were competing, we spent a lot of time with Matt Biondi, and he spent a lot of time on technique.  He made sure every finger was right when he entered the water.  That’s why he could win.  His training to the technique was exactly precise.  And it’s the same in Synchro.  It really needs to be that precise. 

ANA Synchro:  As you know, USA Synchro evaluates athletes on a specific set of skills, both land-based and water-based, to determine who will earn a spot on one of our national teams.  For girls who aspire to that, should they focus on just those specific skills?

Karen:  We’re big on not just training one specific movement.   You have to train all around.  Sitting in a split, for example, doesn’t necessarily make your split better.  You need to stretch out different ways.  It’s not just the one exact movement.  When you do just the one movement, that’s when you tend to get injured.  Because in Synchro, you are never just doing a straight leg lift.  You might be doing a leg left while swinging it around.  So you have to be all-around fit.  Synchro is really whole body fitness, not direct straight line moves.

ANA Synchro athletes get evaluated a couple times
a year so they can know when they improve and what
they still need to work on.

ANA Synchro:  Last year on our team, though, we started quarterly evaluations to measure how people are doing against particular skills.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Sarah:  A good thing!  Not every club does this, and I think they should.  In timed sports, you have a time, and you know if you get it or not.  In basketball, you know if you score a bunch of baskets.  It’s much more quantitative.  In Synchro, it’s not.  And there aren’t meets or competitions every weekend like other sports.  So evaluations give kids an easy way to set goals.  They can see where they are at this point and what they need to do to get to the next level.  It gives them something to measure.  Still, at the end of the day, Synchro is a subjective, judged sport, but there are objective ways to judge it to improve upon the skills to get where you want to go.

ANA Synchro likes to kick off its season with a fun social
activity.  This year's choice - a group trampoline event!

ANA Synchro:  What would you like to tell kids involved in this sport?

Sarah:  All the way it should be fun.  It’s an activity.  It doesn’t mean you can’t work hard, but it should be fun.  You should enjoy the challenges of working on things, learning new skills, and working with teammates. 

ANA Synchro:  What would you like to tell parents whose kids are involved in this sport?

Karen:  Make sure there’s enjoyment and improvement.  Are they getting better?  Are they working toward goals?  Not just randomly working, which is sort of an easy thing to do in Synchro if you just start working on a routine without knowing if you got any better.  And it’s quality of practice not quantity of hours.  More hours does not necessarily mean getting better.  It can just be exhausting the kids thoroughly.  And, if there are more hours, are they really working in the pool or just hanging out?  You can get a lot done in a few hours.

Synchronized swimming - a blend of athleticism,
technical skills and artistry.

ANA Synchro:  Finally, tell us what you love about synchronized swimming.

Sarah:  I think it’s that balance between athleticism and the technical skills and the artistry.  The choreography is just a way to show off your athletic and technical skills.  It’s the creative part with the technical part.  That balance is cool.

Check out eSynchro at their website:  www.esynchro.com

Synchro Skills Evaluations Explained

When Head Coach Leah Pinette arrived on the scene of ANA Synchro for the 2013-2014 season, one of the first things she did was implement a regular evaluation of fundamental synchro skills for all the athletes.  “I think the girls were a little hesitant at first because they thought we would use the results to select athletes for small routines and team routines,” says Pinette.  “But once I told them ‘no,’ this has nothing to do with routines, that it’s just information for them as athletes, they started to understand the value.”

Head Coach Leah Pinette uses evaluation results
to show ANA Synchro athletes how they've improved
over the year and what they still need to work on.

ANA Synchro recently kicked off its 2014-2015 season, and once again, one of the first things the athletes did was – you guessed it – evaluations!  ANA Synchro athletes are right now receiving their individual evaluation reports from their coaches, and this blog article is to help athletes and parents understand the evaluation report, the skills themselves, and why we do evaluations.

ANA Synchro:  Why are skills evaluations important?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Because synchro athletes need something to know how they’re doing and what their strengths and weaknesses are.  Synchro is a subjectively judged sport at competitions, which can make it difficult for athletes to see their progress.  But skills evaluations – especially repeated, regular ones like we have implemented – give the girls some objective ways of tracking their development as athletes.

ANA Synchro athletes work on "V-Up's" for a strong core.

ANA Synchro:  What exactly are they being evaluated on?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  We measure core building block skills that are the foundation for high performance and injury prevention.  There are six land-based skills – push-ups, V-ups, right split, left split, bridge, which is like a backbend, and headstand.  And seven water-based skills – ballet leg, eggbeater, torpedo, bent-knee vertical, double-leg vertical, water split, and 200 individual medley (200-IM) swim.  I know some of those terms may be unfamiliar to parents.  Several are described in an earlier blog entry, and I encourage parents to ask their kids about them or even to demonstrate them at home.

A person who is strong out of the water
will be strong in the water!

ANA Synchro:  Why are land-based skills even part of a synchronized swimming evaluation? Shouldn’t we just focus on water skills since being in the water is what we do?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  If an athlete is strong out of the water, they’re going to be strong in the water.  If you really look at the land-based skills, collectively, they are measuring strength, core, and flexibility.  These are the very qualities an athlete needs to hold verticals in the water, have good height in the water, and move quickly through the water.  Pretty much everything they do in the water is affected by how well they can do the land-based activities, which is why we have land-training every week as regular practice and which is why we include them in the regular evaluations.

A Synchro "Bridge" - not your ordinary backbend!

ANA Synchro:  OK, so what’s the measure of all these skills?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  It varies by skill.  For push-up’s and V-up’s, we measure how many they can do in 30 seconds – in proper position, of course.  Right and left splits are judged 0-5, with 5 being a perfect flat-split position.  Bridge is on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being a perfect position – feet together, knees straight, arms in the 12 o’clock position.  A perfect bridge is really hard!  And it requires great back flexibility.  The headstand is also judged 0-10, with 10 being a perfect hold, with no wavering, for 20 seconds.

Bent-Knee Vertical -
one of 7 water skills.

ANA Synchro:  And the water skills?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  With the exception of the 200 IM, which is just a straight time measure, all the water skills have multiple, measurable components to them.  Ballet leg, for example…we measure how long they can hold the position, the height of the leg, and the quality of their extension.  Some girls have good height but need to work on extension, or vice versa.  So, by giving a score to each aspect of the skill, the girls and their coaches know exactly what they have to work on.

ANA Synchro:  Who determined what a “5” or a “10” is or how high a leg should be out of the water? 

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  USA Synchro has a point system for the skills that they use to determine who gets to be on the national team, so we have adopted that.  We’re talking the “national” team here, so we are definitely holding our girls up to a very high standard.  I tell athletes all the time that they should not get discouraged if they see a zero or a low score on their report.  They are doing things they’ve never done before so everyone is going to start with low scores.  It’s just an indicator of what they need to work on.  I can’t emphasize enough that these standards are very challenging. 

Coaches evaluate ANA Synchro athletes about three
times a season to help them track their development.

ANA Synchro:  Is it just you evaluating the girls?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  We try to have three coaches to give independent scores, and then we average them together for a final, combined score.  The report that people get will show the three scores as well as the average.  And, in some cases, the report will also include some judges’ notes and comments to help the girls – things like distance off the floor, if a move was performed too fast, etc.

ANA Synchro:  Is all this really worth it?  Don’t evaluations just take time away from working on routines and figures?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Evaluations do take time out of practice, that’s for sure.  But I definitely think it’s worth it.  When you just do routines, you can go all season without knowing if you individually made any gains or not.  By regularly evaluating the girls, they get a good sense of where they were when they came into the season and how they progressed throughout.  Having that knowledge should be both satisfying and motivating at the same time. 

ANA Synchro:  You have a whole year of data from last year…did people improve measurably?

Head Coach Leah Pinette:  Yes!  This has been a great experience for me, too, seeing where we were as a team at the beginning of last season and where we are now.  Together, we’ve come very far on torpedo, verticals – everything really.  You know, no one becomes a great athlete overnight, no matter what the sport.  And, you can ask any accomplished athlete – they’re always working to improve on something.  When I was competing, I always had to spend extra time and effort on height.  At only 5’2”, I had to be the highest to be even with everyone else!

These evaluations are just one part of a bigger process to develop these young girls into not just athletes, but successful young women.  The lessons they get out of it – acknowledging weaknesses as just something to work on, accepting coaching help, making goals, working hard, celebrating accomplishments – are life lessons.  True, they’ll help their synchro season today, but they’ll benefit just about anything they want to do later in life as well.