Thoughts of an old dog

So you are having trouble motivating your distance swimmer and thinking they havn't got the drive that swimmers from the past have had.
Their training attendence is poor at best and their attitude, well I just won't comment on that least I lose it.
Well I've got news for all of you, maybe you should look at yourselves first ,remember if an orginization is going off the rails look it from the top first,look at the goal and more importantly the plan on how you are going to achieve it.
Next you must share the dream with everybody on your team and have them all on the same page before the journey commences.
When you have established how you want to proceed, do it from the front and by example, this way you steer the ship in the direction in which you want to travel and are constantly in a position to make changes when and if they are needed,much better than reacting to problems as they crop up, all you seem to do is complain about how they won't do what you want and the more you react the worse it gets, till in the end all you seem to be doing is putting out the fires and going backward instead of the direction you intended to go.
Impower your team both swimmers and helpers this way you will get the best out of everybody and together you can make this exciting journey.
I don't believe it has anything to do with training volumes number of session needed per week or whatever, show your team the way and they will follow you,try and drive the from behind and you will fail.
Coach Trev