Bob Bowman Edit
Wed, Nov 23, 2022 2:58PM • 30:04
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, people, beethoven, swim, gave, athletes, swimming, reframing, wondering, book, allison, athlete, started, bob, michael, race, ninth symphony, important, sat, work
SPEAKERS
Bob Bowman, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
Bob Bowman Good afternoon, my time and good morning, your time and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Bob Bowman 00:06
Thanks, Paul, for having me. Pleasure to be here.
Paul Barnett 00:09
Well, I've been chasing you for quite a while. So it's very nice of you to finally agree to this interview. I'm very excited to talk to you. You've got such varied experience and maybe just something really simple to get his going. Where are you in the world? And what have you been up to so far? Today,
Bob Bowman 00:24
I am in Paradise Valley, Arizona, suburb just north of Tempe, little bit east of Phoenix. And I got up at 415, had a cup of coffee, and went and swam at 5am 2500 yards, no meters, sorry, but 2500 yards, and then came back got myself together. And at 7am. I'm doing a podcast.
Paul Barnett 00:48
believable, you're putting me to shame? Well, it's great that you could carve out a little bit of time from your already busy morning to talk to us. And I'll try and make it worth your while waiting questions. But maybe I'll start by name checking some of the the legends of the sport that you've been involved with. Murray Stevens, Mark Schubert, John urban check, Sean Hutchinson, the amazing Eddie Reese, and of course, Greg Troy. And I'm really intrigued from this experience you've had up close with these great coaches. What is it you think that great coaches do differently? That sets them apart?
Bob Bowman 01:23
I think what they do differently is they have not tried to be someone else. They just are themselves. They believe in they've learned and studied, right, probably many different ways for many different coaches. That's what I tried to do. I tried to learn everything I could, from each coach that I worked with, or came along John or Ben check. Good example, I tried to learn how his whole system worked. And then I took parts of that, and put it into my system. But I didn't just take his system and just keep doing it. So I think each one of those great coaches has taken the best parts of what they learned from other people and put it together with their personalities, and in their system, and have evolved that into something that is consistently successful. So I'd say that's what they have in common.[PB1]
Paul Barnett 02:14
One of the interesting things about your story, Bob, is that you worked for three different Olympic coaches as an assistant before becoming a head coach. Now I know in swimming, this is not unusual. But still I was wondering, from that experience, if you can cast your mind back, was there anything that you remember, you stopped doing? Because of that experience,
Bob Bowman 02:35
I think I stopped believing that all of this is extremely predictable, because it's not, it's really unpredictable. I always believe, well, if you just put this in, you'll get this out. And while we'd like to believe that's true, to a certain extent, we operate on that premise. A lot of this depends on outside things that are beyond our control. And I think that's what I learned from each one of those guys, it was that today, a certain situation exists. But that doesn't mean it's going to be the same in six weeks. So you keep working at it. And I would say that's what I stopped doing. It's just trying to see everything is like happening in a vacuum. Because it doesn't it happens in life. We're dealing with real people, we are real people in real life situations. And as we know, life changes every minute, you don't know what's going to happen this afternoon, much less in three months. So I think that's kind of the biggest change I made. After working with those guys. I think[PB2]
Paul Barnett 03:35
that learning actually is probably reflected in this next quote of yours that I'd like to play to you. I know it's one of your favorite sayings. You've probably heard it read back to you a lot. But you say good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. And I'm wondering, was there a particular event or a moment that helps you form an attachment to this belief,
Bob Bowman 03:57
not necessarily a particular event, but I would say many events over time, that when you go back in time, and you look at us, and it's for me, because of my life, it's usually based on an athlete at a meet, right, some situation, we were trying to get a performance or trying to get them to a level. And at the time it failed, right? Mainly because maybe I didn't do something right, or whatever I thought I was doing at the time was not correct. So it was bad judgment. So the next time that situation comes around, I say oh, remember back in 2003 when I did this and it didn't work. I'm gonna change that this time. So now I have experienced I think, at this time, we're probably gonna go this path because the last time I learned a lot from going through that other path, it didn't seem to work and there are just so many that happens all the time.[PB3]
Paul Barnett 04:49
We've never met before today, although I feel like I know you've after all the research I've done but this tendency to test and learn as a means of developing yourself and Athletes seems to be quite central to your style it is, and how do you go about maintaining the energy to keep testing and learning all the time?
Bob Bowman 05:08
Well, that's what makes it fun, right? You want to keep trying things, and you want to keep doing them better. Interestingly, I just ASU had all of our head coaches together, when they had all of us take this thing called the predictive index. And it's largely a personality assessment. And it's shocking how with relatively little information we give them they can come back with something that I think feels very accurate. And everybody who knows me says, Oh, my God, that's exactly right. But one of my tendencies is, well, there are a couple. One is I like to be in charge. I'm a control freak. So everybody knew that or, but the other ones were, I tend to think through things really carefully. I don't just have an idea and act on it, I think about it really carefully. But once I've thought about it, I am completely willing to embrace change, and take on risk. I'm not risk averse at all that was off the charts, like I love change.
And I love taking a risk to see what happens, because that's how you get better. So I would say that's what I kind of brought to my coaching is that I've never been afraid to try something and fail, because that's where you learn the most. And there's a great quote out there that says, failure is not the opposite of success. It's part of success, it's part of the process, if you're not failing, you're never going to ultimately be successful, because everybody is going to fail, and you're not going to get very much information to help you get better. So that's when I tell my athletes you learn the most when things don't go well. That's when we can sit down and say, Okay, what are these things that we have to change, to be where we want to be, when you have a great swim, and somebody breaks a world record or something, you just pat yourself on the back and say, oh, we'll just keep doing that. And it never works. That way, you have to keep evolving and changing and growing. So that's a big part of my philosophy.[PB4]
Paul Barnett 07:00
I've interviewed more than 100 coaches now from around the world, many of them like you have coached athletes that have won Olympic goals and teams and so forth, that there's this ongoing trend around a comfort of testing and learning that I'm not sure is as prevalent in the rest of society. And I wonder if it is a prerequisite to coach at the elite level?
Bob Bowman 07:25
Well, I think it's part of it, it's just part of high performance, whether it's a coach or a baker, or anything, right, I think you have to kind of be pushing the limits a little bit, or you need to try to innovate, or you're just going to be stale. Because you can't do the same things. Eddie Reese has been coaching for a very long time, I don't know how long but a long time, right. And he does some things today that are similar to what he did 30 years ago. But they're not the same. And he's doing a lot of new things. Because that's what number one keeps it fresh and interesting. Who wants to do the same thing for 30 years. And number two, the sport changes, the athletes that we're working with are in different situations. So we have to change with that. And I think that becomes part of the trial and error or just and the way I look at it, it's not quite as simple as trial and error. I'm not just coming up with some idea and say, Okay, I'll do this. There's some reasons behind it. Right? It's relatively thought out before we do it. This is why I think these things will work. And every now and then I'll just try something because I've been doing it for a while. And I have a feel for it, maybe. But I think in general, people at the top of their professions are not afraid to try something because that's a chance, it's a huge opportunity, I don't see it as a risk, I see it as an opportunity, you're either going to have a great success, or you're going to learn a lot. So the next time you can have a great success. I[PB5]
Paul Barnett 08:44
got another great quote from your book. And I think it builds a little bit on the life you you just shared you say, pressure comes when you start paying attention to external causes of things that happen. It's such a great idea. And perhaps easier said than done. And I wanted to ask you how you work with your athletes to ensure that they do pay as little attention as possible to these external noises?
Bob Bowman 09:07
Well, I'm a big believer in a process oriented program, right? We focus on our process. And process goals are things that are 100% in our control, how we practice the standards we have for ourselves, how we behave in the bowl out of the bowl, the attitude we bring to our work, all of those things are completely How are you going to swim a certain race, how your strategies, how they're going to be in the moment, we've tend to leave those things out and spend our time where we can have the most impact. And I do think that helps alleviate a lot of this pressure because they're focused inward more than outward. [PB6]
One of the things that I told Michael was a quote I stole from Ian Thorpe, I saw he gave in an interview and he was at the height of his career. And he said they asked him about pressure is like, what do you think about all this pressure that's on you? And he's like, Well, I look at it like this. If you look at it from a negative state employees, it's pressure. But if you look at it from a positive standpoint, it's support. A lot of people care about what I'm doing and are interested in it. And I was told Michael that and I think that was a good way to look at it too. The reason there's pressure is because people care about it, and they're interested in it, right and in what you're going to do, so if you can kind of channel that a little bit, I think it helps as well,[PB7]
Paul Barnett 10:23
is reframing people's thoughts, a large part of your daily work,
Bob Bowman 10:28
almost all of my daily work, reframing their thoughts and sometimes reframing their actions a little bit, but it's a big part of it. Because what we do is very difficult. It's very boring. And the sad part about what most of our work is, is that it's just repetitive. So they've done it before. It's hard, it's difficult, it's pretty exhausting. And there's no real lead up. And the consistency of it just keeps happening day after day. So you have, that's where the mental game is important. Because if they're engaged in that mentally, and they're trying to make their stroke, do a certain thing under this stress, or trying to improve on some aspect of what we're trying to do, they can get a lot out of it. But if they don't, they could just do it and not get much out of it. So almost all of what I do is on the mental side, trying to get them to be engaged. To make things important. A great coach once told me if you make something important enough, they will think it's important. So that's a big part of my job pointing out what the key elements are and why they're important. So I would say that reframing things is a big part of my job,[PB8]
Paul Barnett 11:43
one of the things that fascinates me about swimming is, and you alluded to it, they're boring, being quite boring, and you're, you're trapped, sort of in your own head with limited stimulus around you, you're looking ahead of you. And there must be the opportunity for people to overthink or over speculate. And I'm wondering if that is the case, how you go about helping people with that,
Bob Bowman 12:06
there definitely is that potential, what I try to do is get them to focus on the other side of the equation, which is let your mind be free, you finally have two hours in your day, where you can leave everything else out there, get in this beautiful pool, and just free your mind up focus on something else. So that's sort of how I do it.
And I even noticed that in myself. When I started swimming again, after 30 years, not swimming, I actually hurt my knee. So I had to swim. And like I could do, it was very hard. I swam 500 yards, which is 20 lengths of a short course pool. And it just took forever. And I was like, I'm not even going to get through this. And I just stayed at it and stayed at it. And what I found was, after I had done enough to just be in shape enough to do it. Every time I got out of the pool. I just felt great brain wise, physically, but just all I was like, Man, I just feel great when I swim. And now I will go in and swim. And I have my trusty Apple Watch on the couch on my lap. So I don't have to worry about that. But I will think in my inner clock, I'm like, Well, I must have gone about 1000. And I'll look at the clock and it'll be 1800 my watch. So you just lose that sense of space and time a little bit. And it's a wonderful thing. I'd love that. So that's what I tried to get them to find in practice.
Paul Barnett 13:25
So from the meditative nature of swimming to music, because I know it plays a big part in your life and you try to listen to good music every day. So the articles online tell me, but I wanted to ask you about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and how that in particular impacts you.
Bob Bowman 13:44
Wow. Well, I think Beethoven's Ninth Symphony is an amazing Well, number one, if you ask people who know about such things, and I won't pretend to say I really no, but kinda know what the greatest musical works are, and certainly in the classical genre, and say, give me your top five, Beethoven's Ninth has to be in it. They might not have at first I would have a way up there. Okay. So it's one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. And the story behind it's amazing because near the end of his career, Beethoven basically became a wreck loose. He wasn't seen around this kind of this people were wondering what's going on. So finally, in Vienna, they said, okay, here, we're gonna have this premiere of the Ninth Symphony. So people came, it was a big deal. It was one of these back in the day they used to have, you know, we have music festivals now. And all these bands play it's like all day. Well, the classical concerts are like that they would do three or four symphonies and can last like four or five hours. So at the end of it was this Beethoven's Ninth? And it was a chorus was there were vocal soloists is a huge orchestra. And Beethoven came out when they started, and he sat in front of the conductor. The conductor had his back to the audience and was conducting and Beethoven sat with the score. As they played the Ninth Symphony, and it was amazing, right? It's just this incredible work about kind of ties up all the rest of his works, right. It's in the end, his last symphony. And the last movement has the Ode to Joy. Schiller wrote this beautiful poem about brotherhood and all these wonderful themes, and its song. And it's some of the most inspiring music ever. And the crowd was watching as Beethoven was sort of conducting himself and looking at the score. Well, at the end of this piece, it's tremendously it's moves quickly, it's very loud, is a lot of energy at the thing and it ends typically as Beethoven ends every piece, where the tonic chord is beat into your head for bars and bars, bars, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump a ball, you know, it's big. So the crowd went wild, it was a riot, it literally was categorized as a riot, because they gave three standing ovations if you did more than that, except for the king, it was a riot. And they had to clear the place. But so immediately, they started going crazy. And they looked down, and Beethoven was still going to the score and conducting, and then they realized he hadn't heard any of the music. Despite the fact that he was sitting in the orchestra, he was completely deaf. So the greatest music ever written at that time, most certainly have been written by a guy who never heard one note of it, it was just in his brain. So what it means to me is, what level of problem solving and resolve to continue on, would it take to do that? Certainly much more than anything we ever do in swimming. So if that is possible, then somebody a woman can swim 51 and 100 for it, for sure. We know that right? So that's kind of why it's special to me.[PB9]
Paul Barnett 16:54
I'm seeing this theme of reframing coming through time and time again. Bob, the famous football coach, Lou Holtz used to use the acronym weak. What's important now? Yeah, helped guide his athletes. Now I understand that you use this as well, I do. How does this help them?
Bob Bowman 17:09
Since I started, I always believed in that, because it's really true. It's mainly about taking care of your business, take care of the things that matter, and take care of the things that matter now, not sometime in the future. But what it really means. Now to me is this It reinforces this concept of being in the present moment. I don't know when it was, I'm gonna say probably 2011 2010 2011 Peter Carlyle, who was my agent, and Michael's agent, gave me a book by Eckhart Tolle called The Power of Now. And since then, I have read or listened to it 10 times. It's an amazing and life changing book. But what it's about is living in the present moment. And that's what when what's important now means to me, life happens right now. It doesn't happen tomorrow and yesterday is gone. So we need to focus our efforts or energy, our attention on the present moment and be as present as we can to really live fully or to achieve what we want to achieve. That's part of it. So that's what it means to me. Let's try to be as present as we can. What happens when you leave the present moment and go into the future? If you have too much focus on the future, you become anxious, nervous, right? What's going to happen if well, what if? If you have too much focus on the past, I really regret that I wish I had not done that. You could be depressed, right? President moment has none of those. Right now, as I sit here, I don't have a problem in the world. I have 15 of them once I get in that car and go down to the office. So that's how it works. But right now, I am in a great place. I'm present with you. Hopefully, I am enjoying this, and I'm getting something out of it. And hopefully your listeners are gonna get something out of it. So that's what it means to me.
Paul Barnett 19:00
Well, let's build on this idea of being present. Because you also talk about not so much coaching, you talk a lot about partnerships. You talk about this partnership between the coach and the athlete listening to you talk about it's very egalitarian. It sounds almost, it sounds symbiotic. Very balanced. Yeah. And I'm wondering if you could share a story and I know there's many famous ones about Michael and I'm very happy to hear about it. But I'm wondering if there's another story where you've unlocked this partnership, and it's ultimately led to improve performance perhaps for you, but definitely for the athlete was a good
Bob Bowman 19:36
one. Allison Schmitt, I started coaching Allison when she was 15. Yeah, she was in high school. But favorite story about that is she came in before practice and I wanted to kind of start her on dry land program, like an exercise program. And I was like, well, let's just try a couple of things and get Get a feel for where you are on this. And she's like, Okay, I was like, do a push up for me. So she gets down on the ground. And she can't do one push up. I was like, Have you done your push? She's like, that's all I got. I'm like, okay, so you can't do a push up. That's amazing, right? Somebody who would end up being an Olympic champion, but so that's I always laugh. We always laugh about that. So in the beginning, it was pretty obvious that we had this very kind of stereotypical coach athlete role. She was a young girl, I was her coach, I said, Jump, she asked how high right? I told her everything to do. And she just wanted to do it and did it. But as she grew, and we stayed together, that really shifted, instead of me just saying, here's what we're going to do you do it, and then making decisions myself, based on what I saw, I started trying to get feedback from her. How do you feel when this happens? What are you feeling before this race? So it very much became two sided. It wasn't just me giving out information. And her taking it, it was her giving information me taking it, us working together, trying to figure out the best path for it taken by the time she took a year out of college to come train with me for the 2012 Olympics. And I would say we were very much at that point. In a partnership, where every day I was trying to get some feedback from her on where she was really maybe even personally, not even just the swimming. How are you feeling about this today? Is there anything that we needed to kind of discuss all of these sort of things, and we got very good at having discussions that when I was younger coach you just don't like to have? I'm feeling this? Can you help me with that. And we had a couple of hiccups in the road in her Olympic preparation that were like, very eye opening for me, in that Allison has always kind of sunny, happy person, always, almost always. And I'd see her be a little sad sometimes. But it was usually like very temporary, I didn't do well on that I wish I could do better, okay, and she'd move on. And we're in a training camp in Colorado Springs. And she got out one day of the pool, and just was streaming tears down her face, like hysterically. And I was like, Whoa, not sure what to do here. And that was the first time that she taught me a very important lesson. Because what did I do as a typical man, I wanted to fix it, right? Okay, what can we do? I'll get you this, we can do this, we'll see this, what do we need to do. And finally, she said to me in that moment, she's like, I don't need you to do anything, I just need you to be here for me. And that's what I did. And I was like, Okay, I'm here, whatever you need to say, say it, and then we'll start working towards it. So then we were kind of much more I think, on even footing and what was going on in her path. That was what really crystallized it for me is like, it's not me just sitting up here telling people what to do. And then they go do well, we're walking this path together. And I saw Allison last night, we're playing with my grandchildren, we're closer than any swimmer and coach, we're like family, she's like my daughter, I guess she kind of is one of them. But it's that kind of, I believe, commitment to the person that you're working with, which will ultimately help them succeed. She had as good an Olympics as a person can have in 2012. And then came back and 16 and came back in 21, which is remarkable to even do that. So that's a good example, I guess of that.
And I have a hard time with my college people now, right? Because when they walk in the door, they think because they've read about me or had seen her podcast with me that somehow I'm the All Knowing right, I got an answer for everything. And I'm just going to fix their problems. And I'm going to give them the magic dust, I'm going to sprinkle it on them, and they're going to be good. So we have to go through a process of them learning that they're driving the bus, I'm just with them. I'm their copilot, I hopefully keep them from making too many wrong turns or going too fast or too slow. But I just guide the process. I am not the process they are and the more that they understand that the better they are, then the better they swim.[PB10]
Paul Barnett 24:17
Visualization is something I've heard you talk a lot about as well. And this was something I know that Michael Phelps was able to do quite well he was able to visualize the race going exactly the way he wants when he was preparing. Are there any particular methods that you've found better than others? When it comes to using visualization?
Bob Bowman 24:37
Yes. And Michael taught me this and I didn't even know it until after the Beijing Olympics. Michael would not only visualize the race, the ideal race, he would visualize scenarios in which the race didn't go the way he had planned. Somebody went out faster than he thought he missed a turn something would happen right? And then he would Use that to formulate a plan if something happened, what he would do to correct it. And I thought that was very powerful. And listening now to a lot of sports psychologists or people who are specialists in this field, that's a very good perspective to have. Because things don't just always go the way you know, you can swim your race the way you want to swim it, but other people are in their swimming. And there is a dynamic that you don't always understand. So having a variety of scenarios, sort of programmed in your brain is a great way to be prepared for what happens, but anything that could happen. And that's what Michael would say, he was like, I would visualize the way I wanted my race to go the way it could go. And what would happen if it didn't go the way I wanted, you know, all the ways they could go. And I thought that was very good. And I try to encourage people to do that as well. [PB11]
It's kind of goes back to a concept that I was just, I actually can't remember what brought it up. I was reading a book, I guess, they interviewed people who were prisoners of war, Vietnam, John McCain was one of them, I guess, John McCain's book? I don't know. But, and they said, who were the people who got through that? Were survivors, right? Who did that? Who were the ones that made it? And you would think that the ones who made it would be the optimist, right? They look on the bright side. But that wasn't true. Because what would happen to the optimists was, they would say, we're going to be out of here by Christmas, and they look forward to that Christmas would come and go while we're be out. By Easter, Easter would come and go. And after a while, they just couldn't keep doing that. Right? They were heartbroken, right? The realist who said this is tough. And I don't know how long it's gonna last. But today, I'm going to do the best I can present moment, right? They were the ones who made it. And I think that's it same in racing. The realists are the ones who do the best, not the ones who have some fantasy about, well, I'm going to swim a certain world record, maybe you will, but you'd be better off to think about I want to swim my race at a certain pace, at a certain stroke rate, with certain kicks underwater. And at this speed, and if something changes that up, I want to be able to adapt to that. So I can still win a gold medal. I think those are somehow similar in my mind that if you have a more pragmatic view of it, you will do better in the long run.
Paul Barnett 27:25
I think it's an amazing quote I've heard. I've heard it attributed to Stockdale.
Bob Bowman 27:29
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Stockdale paradox. That's what we're talking about. Got it.
Paul Barnett 27:34
I wonder whether you were listening to my last podcast because they had a podcast on resilience. And Tom Ryan, who coaches wrestling in Ohio, who's this force of nature, when his son was five, he had a heart attack at the dinner table and, and died. Oh, my God, and Tom Robbins. He's gone on to win NCAA championships time and time again. And he's written many books. And he's a really in demand speaker because his message comes from a place of sorrow. Yeah. And he's married this sorrow with success. And he talks about this perfect balance between realism and optimism. And when he shared it, it profoundly impacted me actually profoundly impacted me as a as a father, with two daughters out there. So it's a wonderful story. I mean, anytime we talk about John McCain is a good time as far as I'm concerned.
I'm gonna ask one final question, Bob. Okay. So Bob, you've been very generous with your time today. And I, even though it's only early, you've probably got many more laps of the pool to swim. And I'd like to just frame the final question by playing back what Michael Phelps wrote, In the foreword to your book. And in that, he says, Without Bob, I have no shot at achieving the records I've achieved, or winning the medals that I've won. It's an amazing, it's an amazing endorsement from one of the greatest or the greatest Olympian depending on which way you look at it of all time. But I wondered, in your words, what is the legacy that you hope you've left as a coach? Because I'm fairly sure it's more than those metals?
Bob Bowman 29:03
Yeah. So a lot more, I hope. I think the legacy I want to leave is that everyone can achieve something beyond what people say is reasonable. And everyone can do something special here. We're here for a really short time. And it's important that everybody find that Avenue, and they find a community that they can work towards things with, and that they can ultimately be able to know that they have basically unlimited potential, and they can turn it into actual if they want to work hard enough and consistently pursue their goals. That's it.[PB12]
Paul Barnett 29:46
unlimited potential is a really good way to finish. Bob, it's been a real treat for me spending this 45 minutes with you today. I appreciate you setting the time across the site for me and I wish you all the best On the road towards Paris
Bob Bowman 30:01
Thank you Paul enjoyed it