Publication Date: Friday, July 09, 2004
SWIMMING
Pushing the right buttons
Pushing the right buttons
(July 09, 2004) Profiles help Quick put his athletes in right frame of mind
by Keith Peters
Richard Quick has been a coach on the U.S. Olympic women's swim team in each of the past five Olympics, including head coaching duties in 1988, '96 and 2000. He has coached his own athletes to seven gold medals in just the past two Summer Games.
In addition to knowing how to physically train his athletes, Quick is equally adept in the mental game of preparation. In recent years, he has had profiles done on many of his athletes, in order to discover what buttons to push and those to stay after from.
"I will tell you this," Quick said last week. "Had we not had this profile done on Misty Hyman, she does not win the Olympic gold medal (in the 200 butterfly) in Sydney."
The man behind the profile is Washington state resident Richard Diana, who has designed "Knowing Awareness Thinking." Diana sits down with each athlete and asks questions that lead to a psychological profile of each athlete.
"He is an absolute genius," Quick said of Diana, whom he has known since 1992.
Quick is using such profiles on his Stanford athletes competing at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in Long Beach. Some 30 minutes before each race, Quick can sit down and offer up the right things to say, in order to put each athlete in the right frame of mind.
Two Stanford swimmers with very good chances of making the Olympic team are sisters Tara and Dana Kirk.
"You have to talk to those two girls in a distinctively different way, because of their psychological makeup," Quick explained.
"When I'm talking to Dana right at the end, you directly tell her what you want and then let her do it," he said. "You have to be very direct about it. She decides when she's going to tell herself what she's going to do. She's going to handle it in a completely different way than Tara will.
"She (Dana) is what we call random global. She's all over the place. When she tells herself what she's going to do, she cuts her heart out to do it."
When Quick sits down with Tara before her breaststroke races, "It's important to be calm, secure and have a depth in your presence," he said. "So, when I talk to Tara, I need to give her a plan for the race with calm confidence. If I'm not that way, her awareness will sense this and take her away from her potential performance. So, I can't be scatterbrain around Tara. Tara sees through all the baloney."
Quick explained that Tara, who recently graduated, "thinks in whole concepts. She gets the big picture. You give her information and then you let her process it. She thinks in a deep, meditative way. Dana, on the other hand, is strong-willed and wants to win at everything she does,
"This is really complex and deep, but there's no question it really helps them."
Quick explained that so many factors can sabotage an athlete at important events.
"Some people you have to touch to get their attention," he said. "Some people you can't touch at all. If you touch them, they may say "What the hell are you doing?' They don't hear anything you're saying. It's pretty amazing."
Quick will do his best to put the Kirk sisters in the right frame of mind at the U.S. Trials. Dana swam in the finals of the 100 fly last night and Tara is expected to be in the finals of the 100 breaststroke tonight. Each has another race to come.
"I am excited about the potential of these two girls," Quick said. "They've worked very hard and, in my mind and in their mind, they deserve to be successful. I think they both have the confidence to be successful.
"And that's 99 percent of what it takes at the Olympic Trials," Quick continued. "You don't get what you want, you get what you expect."
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