Kaizen; or Transcending 99% Right

The world's greatest sushi restaurant Sushi Yasuda is on East 43rd in New York.

One of the blurbs on the website says,

'When someone sits down at his sushi bar, is moved by his fish and announces, "I've never tasted anything like it," Yasuda will matter-of-factly say: "as usual, only one-quarter inch above average." This is not false modesty. Rather, he is being precise. Yasuda understands that to always be a "quarter inch" better than anyone else out there, to be not simply good but transcendent, is all-consuming. And it is that quarter-inch difference that drives Yasuda day-in and day-out.'

This appreciation of small yet relentless increments in quality draws on a Japanese concept known as Kaizen, which translated into English becomes constant improvement. It is an approach to business which served the Japanese economy well - think of the number of versions offered during the evolution of the Sony Walkman; unlike a car where you are offered different versions from a catalogue and the manufacturer simply bolts on different wheels or paints it a different colour to give the impression of 'differentness', the Walkman was adapted, modified, upgraded, evolved, changed, over hundreds of steps to produce a better and better product. See one in the shop one week, go back the week after to buy it and, whoops, a different product!

Kaizen works. Think about it. Whatever you do in training, or training design this week, improve it next week. It can't fail as a philosophy and the starting point is irrelevent. Of course if you''re already terrific and you improve then, 'Watch out Phelps!' However, if you're not the greatest example of attendance, application and attitude but you constantly improve then, given persistence, you're going to end up a winner.

This concept is a little different from the much bandied-about cliche of recent and very welcome visitor to these shores 'Big' Bill Sweetenham; 'Ninety-nine percent right is one hundred percent wrong.' Bill's message is excellent and should be paraphrased as, 'Whatever you're doing, if it's not perfect it's not good enough,' but, taken literally, actually means, 'Whatever you're doing, if it's not perfect it's useless.' Even the 'not good enough' interpretation fails to deal with the reality of human-ness. Kaizen transcends these semantics and offers a fool-proof and fail-proof philosophy.

Women Playing Catch-up

Continuing our theme of the increase in standards and focusing on the long course distance events, you can see that the men improved around 2% whereas the women's 400, 800 and 1,500 only moved around 1%. These both sound small amounts but its around 18 seconds for the men's 1,500 so it's not to be sneezed at. Data source is swimnews.


The women's standard used for the FINA2004 points is actually less than 0.5% faster than it would have been in 1988 but don't hold your breath thinking its going to stay that way. The current base 400m time of 4:05.64 would have been 4:04.61 if taken at end 2007 and 4:04.37 if updated with February's swim by Katie Hoff when she missed the world record by 0.07 seconds.

Expect the women's distance events to show the same change the men showed from 1992 onwards; remember the men's had been stagnant since the high-point of 1,500 racing, the Montreal Olympic final of 1976

A Rising Tide ...

Minor modifications to data posted at 11:15 pm Saturday 1 March.

FINA points are calculated from a 'base' time which is the average of the all-time world top ten performances (one performance per swimmer so, e.g. Michael P and Ian T only get one entry each). FINA plan to update them every four years after the Olympic Games (unlike swimnews 'International Points Scores' which are updated each year) so they'll be updated at the end of this year and be known as FINA2008 points.

Come 1 January 2009 some swimmers may be in for a shock when they see how much change there is in their favourite event; an 800 point swim now may be only 775 on the new tables because there has been an unrelenting increase in standards for at least the last 20 years. This is a good thing. It serves as a self-regulating ramp-up of our Mining for Gold system where we ask 700-750-800 points for qualification on Youth Bronze, Silver or Gold squads and 900 points for qualification to World Short Course Championships - if the points stay the same next year the time associated with the points will be faster. Highly likely the standard for the 2009 World Championships in Rome (all roads lead to ...) will be 900 so everyone had better get their watery skates on.

The FINA2008 points will stay in place till after the London Olympics in 2012 so it is likely that after 2009 SNZ will adopt another ramp-up effect by increasing the points required at each level; e.g. 700 in 2009 may go to 720 in 2010, 740 in 2011 and 760 in 2012. The details will be finalised when we see the 2008 'base' standards and can guage the degree of change required to bring success in 2010 and 2012.

The change is likely to be significant; it only takes one swim faster than the all-time 10th best during the four years since Athens2004 to increase the base time and, as you will know there were three long course and two short course world records in seven days in February alone. In fact during February alone there were 28 long course swims faster than the 10th placed time on the all-time world list as at the end of 2007, never mind end 2004! A lot of those 28 swims were by swimmers who are already in the all-time top 10 but there is no doubt the tables will change - in the women's 50m freestyle seven out of the all-time top-10 times have been done since 1 January 2007. The message is, 'swim fast or go home!'

On the left of the tables below I show the base times for each 4-year period back to 1988 (following the Seoul Olympic Games) and the base time as it would have been if calculated at the end of 2007. On the right-hand side I show what these base times would have scored using the current FINA2004 standards - obviously anything in the 2004 column scores 1,000 points because that's what it says on the box - 2004! Data source is swimnews. As usual, click on the image for a full-sized version.




Graphically we can see the almost linear increase in standards during the 20 year period so it is not a stretch of the imagination to see that end 2008 the base will be pretty close to the current 1025 level.

21.56

For those of you of a sprinty bent eavesdropping on this blog; Eamon Sullivan's stroke rate on his world record 50m yesterday was 68 on the first 25m and 58 on the second 25m.

Just thought you'd like to know so you could check your sprinters' rates :)

... and, contrary to the impression given by TV ONE, there were many more great swims in North America last weekend than in Australia!

Asthma

Rick DeMont's problem was beaurocracy but his underlying problem was asthma. Same with me; I've had it since I was 9-years old. It started the week after the Munich air disaster. My dad used to take me to watch Manchester United every home game but I can't remember any of them before the air crash; asthma's a funny old thing.

Rick talks about living in Arizona and, 'I believe I'm healed' because of the dry air. My experience is similar; if I take Britain as the starting point, because I was brought up there, and give that an index of 2 for asthma-controlling drug use, I then moved to Canada and used 1, then Greece where I used 0 (literally, my medication use was totally negligible), then back to GBR (2) and on to Godzone where it's been continually at least 4 for the whole time I've been here.

You all have asthmatics in your swim squads and the medics here don't accept the climate as a problem.

It is.

Rick DeMont

swiminfo.com, the online arm of Swimming World magazine, has an interview with Rick DeMont on their Morning Swim Show tv slot.

Rick was the first man to break 4 minutes for 400m Freestyle (think Roger Bannister in Track & Field) and finished first in the 400m Freestyle at the 1972 Olympics. However, finishing first wasn't good enough and he didn't win the gold medal - check out the interview to understand why. It needs broadband, so don't try it on dial-up!

Consider also that the swim meet was interspersed by Mark Spitz winning seven golds in seven world records and 17 people were killed by terrorists or anti-terrorists. The Games was brought to a halt and re-scheduled; I know because I was there.

The interview illustrates how a screwed up beaurocracy can potentially ruin an athlete's career but also beautifully displays Rick's personal qualities of work ethic, attitude to racing, challenges and his humble opinion of his own abilities (in my opinion, probably technically the best freestyle we have EVER seen).

He talks about switching from 4-beat crossover to 6-beat freestyle, negative splitting and all the good things about swimming fastest, but is most emotional (understandably) when talking, 35 years after the fact, about the monumental screw-up by the United States Olympic Committee which resulted in him being branded a cheat and, at 16 years of age, having his Olympic Gold Medal taken away.

He quotes a terrific piece of psychology gleaned from possibly the worst film ever made, Dumb and Dumber; when given a 'One in a million chance' of suceeding with a girl, Jim Carey's character responds with, 'So, you're saying I've got a chance?'

As part of the history of our sport Rick's story is a watershed in doping control and values, and possibly the most unfair decision in swimming, EVER.

Attendance.. Application Attitude

Regarding the attendance aspect of training - remember, 'Stay healthy; if you can't train, you can't improve.'

Read it