Dobkanize Swimming Report Card - November 2010

I am very excited to share with you how well I am doing as a triathlon swimming coach for my 1-1 triathletes! I use data and facts to quantify my progress, and I monitor this data in order to continuously improve. I see every new athlete as an opportunity to make them faster, and make myself a better coach and teacher. Now, I want you to have access to the data so you can see for yourself how I am doing. One of the great things I like about swimming is that the measure of success is simple. If the swim times of my clients are dropping, then I am doing a good job. If I can make times drop more than any other coach out there, then I am doing a great job! I plan to update this report as I get more results and clients. Check in periodically to see how I am doing!

Improvement Stats

I am happy to report that my client improvement rate has remained well above 5% over the four years I have been coaching swimming. I now have improvement data from 63 clients, and on average, my clients improved 5.41% between their first and second session with me. This result is between the benefits of a full-sleeve wetsuit (at 7.9%) and a fast skin swimsuit (at 1.5%). Here is the cost versus benefit breakdown associated with Dobkanize coaching in comparison to buying a wetsuit. If you pay $450 for a full sleeve wetsuit, it means you are paying $56.60 for every 1% improvement in performance. With two sessions costing $160, my clients paid $29.57 for every 1% of improvement! And they could still go out and buy that wetsuit if they want to!

I have a lot of successes to report. 15% of my clients improved their time by 8% or more. I have spent a lot of time analyzing why these people succeeded more than others so I can help more clients in the future. I am very proud of my performance when considering my client base involves beginners as well as professionals. The top 20% of my clients by speed (each in this group could swim a 50yd free in 32seconds or better) showed an improvement average of 3.9%. Many of these people had been trying for years to bring their swim to the next level. And I got them there in less than a month. I am glad I could provide for them the tools they needed to succeed.

Although the average improvement is good, I did see an increase in the number of people who did not improve after 2 sessions. The percentage of clients that did improve was 84%, down from a 90% rate 2 years ago. I have analyzed what happened so I can continuously improve. 50% of clients that didn’t improve had in common a stroke that was too flat and without shoulder rotation. Overall, clients who started out swimming without rotation improved 3.5% (below my average of 5.4%), and the success rate of this group was only 58%.

Taking a deeper look at the people who didn’t improve, I found that 80% of their second session was within 2% of their first session by total time. I have a general observation that all of those clients didn’t change their stroke that much. They continued to swim flat and without rotation despite my instruction. In the future, I will be working harder to help these clients and future clients that have these issues. I will focus on the 58% of the clients that did improve and understand what was different about them. I am excited to take on this challenge and report success in future performance reports.

Overall, I am excited to serve my existing clients better and serve new people with all of the experience I have. I see improvement rate of my clients as a personal responsibility and indicator of my coaching ability. You won’t see any excuses that people don’t improve because of a lack of motivation or listening skills. A great coach adapts their style so that anybody can understand them, and has a wide array of communication techniques to accommodate people. A great coach relates their abilities with how motivated they can make their clients. I believe motivation happens when people see themselves getting better. A great coach is not afraid to broadcast their performance and is honest about their own opportunities for improvement. My experience over two decades of swimming, 1 decade of triathlon and 4 years coaching is not an eternity. There is always more to learn, and I am very excited to see all of my clients get better. I treat every swim session with someone as an opportunity to help them, and an opportunity to learn and help others better. I look forward to serving you!

Dobkanize Report Card – the DATA

The metric used in this report card is the 50 sprint difference (either yards or meters) from the second 1-1 session to first 1-1 session with Coach Dobko. A percentage of improvement was obtained by taking the difference and dividing by the initial time (on the first session). The 50 distance was chosen because it is a good indicator of raw speed. As my clients are fit athletes looking to improve, speed is the metric they are after.

As of 20-Nov-2010, I have collected data from 63 returning 1-1 clients with a wide range of ability. Skill levels include elite amateur triathletes combined with athletes with less than a year in triathlon and swimming. Performances in a 50 yard Freestyle range from 30 seconds up to 70 seconds (a 40 second difference). For privacy reasons, I am reporting percentage improvement and not actual times of individuals.

The percentage improvement is shown in the histogram below.

Summary Statistics:

Low improvement value (% of time): 0 %
High improvement value (% of time): 33.20 %
Average improvement value (% of time): 5.41 %
Median improvement value (% of time): 4.08 %
Number of athletes with no improvement: 10
Dobkanize success rate: 84.13%%

Improvement Scorecard