Project 20
Fri, Feb 14, 2025 7:35AM • 42:36
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coaching, energy, group dynamics, team performance, swimming, character, communication, mindset, training, pressure, internal reality, self-belief, competition, legacy, South Africa
SPEAKERS
Rocco Meiring, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
Oh, Rocco Mary. It's lovely to meet you. Welcome to the great coaches podcast.
Rocco Meiring 00:07
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Well, you're
Paul Barnett 00:09
over there in one of my favorite countries. Maybe you could start by just telling us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far. Today,
Rocco Meiring 00:20
I'm I'm in Pretoria in the northern part of South Africa, and the in in inland, and I'm based at the University of Pretoria. I'm employed there, and ja, I've already had one coaching session done this morning and getting ready for this afternoon. Well,
Paul Barnett 00:40
thanks for carving out a little bit of time to talk to us today. I'm going to we're going to get to the Olympics eventually, but we're going to go on a bit of a journey, I guess, with your back about your background before we get there. And I'd like to start by talking about some great coaches. Bill swetnam was the person that introduced us. I know that you know Bill, and I can see that you've worked or had experience with Dennis Cottrell and Ray Luz as well. But I wanted to start Rocco by asking you what you think the great coaches do differently in any sport that sets them apart?
Rocco Meiring 01:21
The first word that comes to mind is energy. Especially when I looked at a Dennis Cottrell coaching, you could just see the incredible amount of energy that he brings to the to the session. Bull sweet them, the energy that he has to innovate and to create new systems, new strategies, overcome obstacles is incredible. Just never stops. So I think the first thing is, is, is energy? I think the second thing is a very deep desire or intent to succeed. No matter what that mindset of it's it's going to happen. We're going to make it happen. Come Allah water. I think that's the second thing that that stands out to me. And then the third, third aspect is the ability to work with people to actually engage staff and engage athletes and make them understand, or make them believe what you believe, and make them understand what needs to be done, and make them believe that it can be done. I think those three are the main, main things that stand out from
Paul Barnett 02:53
Rocco you come from a very proud sporting nation. Of course, rugby is, is the, is one of the national obsessions. You were a rugby player before you became a swimming coach. And I'm wondering if, if that rugby background helped at all. When you turned your attention to swimming,
Rocco Meiring 03:15
it didn't help me much, except the part of working in a team and operating in a team, I do believe that there's a big difference between the dynamics of team sport and a team performance versus the more individual sports. But working with young people, I believe that the most powerful driver for an individual is the group. So if you can get the group to drive the group, my job becomes a herdsman, because I cannot be as strong as the group, as an older guy, an individual. So that group dynamic definitely, definitely helped. The only other thing that the benefit was I had to learn. I had to make a big effort of learning about swimming coaching and about swimming, I had to. I could take nothing for granted. I could, I didn't have anything to fall back on. So it, it forced me to learn quickly and to learn a lot
Paul Barnett 04:36
sport like swimming, where I know we have relay races, but essentially it is an individual activity. Where does, where does the power of the group help
Rocco Meiring 04:49
in the training? So I believe that the ultimate, the ultimate for a young athlete. It is to be accepted and to be respected by the group. And research has shown, actually, a couple of years ago, that the three things that young people want is, they want to be they want a sense of accomplishment. They want a sense of belonging and and they want to belong to a tribe. They want to belong to a unit that is unique. So I think that group dynamic, and that's something that we can learn from the Americans. When I look at the American swimming team, that's a team, and they will bleed for the team before anything else. So the group dynamic, I believe, is very strong, especially in training, when things are going when times are tough and it's going hard, and you have your teammates putting you on. You have off day. They feeling better, and you have that camaraderie and support within the group and within the lanes. It's definitely something that that I try and do that at my squad with the University team.[PB1] You've
Paul Barnett 06:11
been instrumental in building, not only your squad, but I think the professionalism of swimming in South Africa. And I'm, I'm interested to ask, What have you learned about building that sense of belonging in a group? Have you found some things that work better than others?
Rocco Meiring 06:34
Well, number one is, I look for character. You know the famous saying of the big corporates, way higher for talent, and then we have to fire for lack of character. So characters is a very big, a very big component that I look for in the individuals. And you know, then you've gotta, you've gotta indoctrinate them. You gotta work with their minds. You gotta work with your language. You gotta work with your actions, with your communication. I communicate a lot with my group on WhatsApp, so there's a constant, constant communication, where the where the theme, basically, is, is culture is this is what we're about. This is what we stand for. This is what we want to achieve. This is who belongs here. This is what is not, that is not accepted here. And you then, as I said before, I view myself as a herdsman. I have to constantly work on the herd. I have to bring in better DNA into the herd, and I've gotta work the week the weaker ones, I've gotta work out. I've gotta constantly strengthen the group and the herd so that we can be competitive internationally. I don't know if that answers your question.[PB2]
Paul Barnett 07:56
No, it does. I like this idea of bringing better DNA into the herd. I I wonder, you know, I know you studied psychology and sports management and coaching back at university, but I wanted to flip that around Rocco and ask you, what did they not teach you at university that you had to learn the hard way?
Rocco Meiring 08:20
They didn't teach us. You know, I was at academic university. Academic universities are about research and and academic results. It's not, it's not a practical, a practical environment of learning. So I had to learn the entrepreneurial side of of the profession, which I think is critically important. You know, how do you how do you build something? How do you work with people? You know, they, they gave me the theoretical and academic background, which is very important. But these people are academics. They are institutionalized. In my opinion, they are far removed from reality. They think they know, but they don't know. I'm generalizing now, but that's my experience. But I was lucky to be working when I was a student, so I started coaching when I was a student, so I had the exposure of 910, year olds. It's like herding cats trying to get them just to do a common activity together in a relatively orderly manner. And then, you know, you progress, you go into older age groups, becomes a little bit more complex. You deal with parents, you deal with kids, expectations, you deal with all the normal human things that academics don't teach you. So I was lucky in that regard, because I was exposed to it early in my life, and it gave me a much better perspective of. How to what of the academic stuff is applicable, and how can I use it. But I had to learn in the streets. For lack of a better word, I had to learn in the streets how to, how to become a coach that wasn't taught to us.
Paul Barnett 10:18
Talk about learning in the streets. I know your career grew in South Africa, but there was a real inflection point when you headed over to Canada to spend some time. How did that experience shape you and propel you forward?
Rocco Meiring 10:36
It was one of the hardest things I did, because I come from a developing country, relatively unsophisticated, and I went into first world sophistication, immediately dealing with very sophisticated, educated coaches and sports administrators and trying not to look like an absolute idiot, you know when you deal with them. So that was that was difficult, but I learned a lot about planning and about the finer, finer workings of performance sport. But I also learned, most probably the important, most important thing is I learned how negative we are in South Africa, and how we perceive that we don't have what it's necessary to perform. We perceive that we are very inferior to other countries. And I never realized until I actually saw the challenges of the Canadians, even though it's a first world country, I never realized how much we actually had and that we are our own worst enemy in our mindset in South Africa, and we have a very negative culture, and we start believing what we are thinking. So it was a pivotal moment for me coming back from Canada, because I had to decide, am I going to stay there, or am I going to come back? And I decided I can be a lot more effective if I come back to South Africa, because there are so so much less limitations in South Africa compared to Canada, on me as an individual and the impact I can Make as a coach. So I came back with a totally different mindset. That was in 2016 and I must say, my performance, or the performance I had as a coach, was a lot better since I came back. We
Paul Barnett 12:59
mentioned, I mentioned to you, briefly off air, that I worked for South African breweries for a good decade. And I can't say I came across the negative mindset. They were, obviously, they were the biggest company, I think, one of the biggest companies in South Africa at the time, stoic, disciplined, yes, but not negative. How? How have you changed when it comes to engaging with your athletes? What? What's visible in that mindset change?
Rocco Meiring 13:31
Well, first I just want to say on that comment you made about, you know, if you think about South African rap and so on, we, there are certain, certain areas in the world where we back ourselves, but not in swimming. Swimming is a very small sport. Our Olympic sports do not do that well compared to rugby and cricket internationally. So it's very much part of the culture as well. And you must remember, most of our swimmers still leave for the US when they finish school, so they go to US colleges on swimming scholarships, believing that you can't make it in South Africa, it can't be done. We don't have this. We don't have that, etc. When I came back from from Canada, one of the first things I did was I interviewed all the staff my university gave me a sabbatical. My director, he knew that I was going to suss things out and to determine whether I want to stay or come back. So he gave me a two year sabbatical when I came back, the first thing I did was I I interviewed all our staff, all the coaches in our swimming system at the university, to try and determine what really goes on in the heads. What are you doing here? What are your aspirations? What value do you bring to our. A club program, because we're a club, etc, which is a very good thing that I did, because it actually gave me a very clear idea of who should stay and who should go. Some of the coaches felt they don't need to be interviewed. Who am I to interview them? And my position at university. My day job is, I'm a sports manager responsible for some of the sports clubs, of which swimming is one. So I had the mandate to do it. I coach before and after work. I actually am a sports manager to enable me to do what I really want to do, which is coaching before and after work.
So the first thing I did was I got rid of I got rid of the negative influence in the road, which were leadership positions, because they are coaches, and the team will take the persona of the coach. I believe very strongly in that it's one of the first things bull sweet come taught me many years ago, the team will take the persona of the coach. So that data pivotal effect on our program, because there were some of them that were very prominent coaches. [PB3]
The second part was, I started with the communication, a lot more effectively communicating with the swimmers and the coaches on what are we trying to achieve? How are we going to get there? What are the root marks? And at that time, Tatiana came back to me, because I coached until she was 16, and then in the time that she that I was away, she was with other coaches, and when I when I returned, she came back to me, and it was a good match. She was in a very bad state as a 18 year old, but she's talented, so she started performing quite quickly, so people could see the success of what I'm trying to do is mandating in Tatiana's performances. So it was just the perpetual, never ending indoctrination of the group of where we're going, what is accepted, what is not accepted, etc, as I've said before, and that's another thing that I've learned from from Bill. It's every day. Bill knock England every day, on the every single day. And it was just relentless. They just had to comply or to break.
Paul Barnett 17:44
Can I come back to Tatiana for a minute? She now has two Olympic golds, world records. It's it's a tremendous story for an emerging sport in South Africa. But I could I ask you, Rocco, what your time with Tatiana has taught you about the partnership between a coach and an athlete.
Rocco Meiring 18:11
That's a very good question.
So with that, Your Honor, it was a it was a situation of she wanted to give up in her first year at age 19, in 2016 and I said to her, you're never going to forgive yourself. First, just see whether you can love the sport again. I'm here to help you. This is your journey. This is something that you need to do for you, and I'm here to help you. And when you are down, I'm up. When you are up, I'm invisible. So I try to get that your honor to understand, to take ownership and to take responsibility and to have a clear vision of what is possible. And that is something that we fell back on many times, because no relationship goes without without some hiccups. But every. Time we came back to the ground rules of this is not my journey. You're not a ticket for me. I'm happy to be a club coach. This is for you, and when your needs and what I can give you overlap, it will work when you outgrow me, you have my blessing to go look for another coach that can take you where you need to be. [PB4]
So I think that's the most important thing, is the fact that for once, that you honor, had to face herself in the sense of, I've got to make this decision. I've got to take the ownership. I have the support, I have what I need, but the ball is in my court, and I just try to keep that ball in her court all the time and trying to nudge her in the right direction so that she knew this guy's got my best, my best intentions at all.
Paul Barnett 20:58
Rocco got this quote from you, I'd like to play play to you, and then I'd ask you the question. You say, very few swimmers get it right because of the pressure at the Olympics. Now, your first Olympics was way back in 2000 so you've been to a few. What do you think the best do when it comes to handling Olympic star pressure.
Rocco Meiring 21:33
I'll start by this. We all sing best in the shower. Very few of us can deliver a similar or better performance on the stage in front of a crowd. I can't quantify. I wish I could, but I can't quantify what exactly that is that makes some people just deliver up to the standard or better when the pressure is most and others can't. If I could coach that, I would be a much more successful coach. I do think, though, that you've got to have a very good reason when you are under such pressure, you got to know your why? Why? Why do I have to focus? Why do I have to perform when the pressures at its most? In Tatiana's case, at the 2021 Olympics, Tatiana is a very devout Christian. So to her, it was all about to glorify God. She had a very clear why, and that helped her deal with the deal with a with a pressure there was, you know, if it's God's will, I will do well, I can just do my best. I have faith that God will be with me, and God will determine the result. Now, for Christians, it's not a controversial statement. For non Christians, it's a lot more controversial, a lot more for a for a coach like me. You know, yes, I believe in God, but I'm sure God has got bigger problems than I think, to determine when they're going to win the Olympics. But I don't want to get in that discussion with you, but I'm just giving you an idea of what I experienced that you're on a second Olympics, much harder, very different pressure is on her a lot more because she's expected to perform a lot less enjoyable for her and her. Why was not clear. It was not clear she was not a rookie anymore, and I could see the pressure weighing down on her, but her deep inside her DNA, she's a competitor, and she likes To compete, and that's a primal it's a primal instinct. It's when I saw her, when she was in primary school, at 1011, year old. I always saw this girl racing fearless. It was just somebody that there was no caution when she raised and in her last Olympics that came out in the 100 breaststroke, which he won unexpectedly. It was that primal. I'm going to give it my best shot. I'm going to fight until the end. And it's actually fun. It's actually enjoyable. So I think those things are things that help you a lot in dealing with the pressure isn't. Your why? And secondly, do you actually like the challenge? Do you actually enjoy the competition? Or is it, have you forgotten what that's like, and it's all about the result. If it's all about the result, you're swimming with a lot of weights, with a lot of weight on your back.
Paul Barnett 25:22
Rocco it's a terrific answer. I love that idea with swimming with weight on your back. I I want to sort of take this into this. I want to take this idea of preparation and dealing with pressure into the way that you structure your training. Because reading about you, I understand that you were quite influenced by a lady called Kathy Ric stand in an American Coach when it came to using competitiveness in training. Could you? Could you tell us a little bit about what you learned from, from, from Kathy?
Rocco Meiring 25:55
Yeah, the influence Kathy had, to me, was not so much the training it was dealing with females. So she opened a whole new world to me of understanding the difference of coaching males and females. And she gave me practical, practical advice on as a male, you know what you should do with females, and how females operate and work compared to males. And at the time that I spoke to her, South Africa was struggling to produce Olympic female swimmers that would qualify on the eighth time, and that became an issue. And in South Africa, the belief was we're not working our females hard enough. We're too soft on them, and all of those things were actually wrong, because our females showed us. A, we don't know how to work with females and B, we have problems in our coaching, in our training, and because females mature faster than males, they show us our mistakes sooner, but we chose to ignore it and to say, No, we're not hard enough. It's not as simple as that. It's a lot more complex than that. So that's the influence that Cathy weeks train had on me, and Tatiana then became the first female Olympic eight qualifier for two Olympic cycles. So for eight years, we couldn't produce anyone, and as soon as Tatiana qualified, we soon had other goals qualifying. She broke that voodoo, just like Roger Banister broke the Voodoo of the four minute mile, as everybody knows, and after him, quite a few guys went under under four minutes. So we just needed that, that one, to make us believe that no we can do it and can be done.
Paul Barnett 27:59
Rocco, could I play back another quote from you, and this one's an interesting one. You say I and I think a mistake I made was you try and be too safe all the time, and you're not prepared to lose something. You want to gain something, but you don't want to lose something. It just, it just caught my eye. It was, it's, it's interesting, because safety is such an issue psychological safety is such a an issue these days, creating safe spaces. I it was, it was, it was intriguing to me, and I, I wondered if there was a moment or an event or something that that helped you form the opinion that you that you talk about in this quote.
Rocco Meiring 28:45
Again, it came back to training. I watched tajana And I went to the 2019, World Championships. It was her first world championships, and we watched the leaking race, the dominant breaststroker in the world, and if I'm over and it was clear that Lily King is so aggressive and so good that she creates chaos in the race. She goes out so fast that while she's busy with the second 50 coming back, the other girls are still swimming towards the turn. Now that happens all race plans and Sunday out the window. Doesn't matter what you train. That creates chaos. And I realized that your honor is not fast enough. If she wants to perform at the Olympics, we need to improve her scheme. I then brought in coach by the name of Scott Volkers, who taught me a lot about speed and but he warned me that while you are pursuing speed improvement, temporarily you're going to lose speed endurance. I. I had no choice. I then worked on 30 on her speed. It took a lot longer than what I thought, and we didn't know how much speed endurance she's actually going to lose. And in February of 2021 we are six months away from the Olympics, Tatiana swam her best times in the 1500 breaststroke, but she was very average in the 200 so she lost all confidence in her main event, which is a 200 breaststroke, even though she swam fastest times on the 50 and 100 and she was in tears, and she said to me, I destroyed her 200 breaststroke. I destroyed her confidence in the 200 breaststroke. She's got no confidence how to swim at anymore. Now you can imagine, as a coach who's six months out of the Olympics in your top athlete tells you that she's got no confidence swimming or maybe LinkedIn. So we had to adjust the training, because we were going to go another eight weeks of speed work, and we had to adjust the training, and eight weeks later, fortunately, she she then swam her best time in the 200 because we adjusted the training. I'm lucky, because talent is measured by how much and how quickly the athlete responds to the training stimulus. She's very talented, so I was lucky. She responded quite quickly to the training stimulus, especially the one that she knew, which was her speed endurance and not the speed. So that's what I meant with that's what I meant with that statement, from a training point of view, from a psychological point of view, where, where I want the athletes to compete, I need to take their minds to a place where they don't think they they belong you. I often say to them, you have to, you have to absolutely taste and see and hear and feel the sensation of international success before you can get there. You've got to see it. It's got to be in your imagination. You've got to have a very clear picture with all the senses highlighted to be able to get we don't have top competition in South Africa. We're very isolated, as you well know. So we have to find another way of of creating that image and making that image real, of what, what it really, what it's really like. If you start taking people's minds to that, you do lose some because some just don't have that ability. They just do not have the ability to see it and to feel it and to believe it, and that is called your I'll think of the name now the psychological term, term, but successful people believe good things will happen To them, and not many people actually believe it. Internal reality is a psychological term. Your internal reality. Why do women go to abusive relationships? Deep down, they believe they deserve it, or they don't deserve anything better, the internal reality is such that it pulls them back into those situations. And successful athletes need to have a positive internal reality. But as I said, if you take people to that point, you must be willing to lose some talented athletes, because you push them to that point, even though they have the physical talent, mentally, they just can't see it. And I believe, personally, that's what I believe, you're then going to have a hell of a hard time getting them to perform. It's a internal reality is not at that level,
Paul Barnett 34:23
talking about internal reality. If I could take you back and introduce you to you know, the the young man, the young person you were running around the rugby field, what would you say to that person? To shape positively, shape their internal reality.
Rocco Meiring 34:50
Be patient. I was a very aspiring rugby player. I was okay. I wasn't great. I. I wanted to be a lot better than what I was. I didn't understand any of these things, because in South Africa, there is an abundance of rugby talent. If the one falls, there are a long queue of others that take the place. So in our coaching system in South Africa. We don't really have to look that much. We don't really have to look that well after the talent that we've got, because we have so much. Nobody really spent any time supporting me or helping me or giving me any understanding of the process of the route map, I just went to practice, hoped I got selected. Played. If you didn't play well, you're on the bench. If you played well, we're still in the team. But there was no real long term plan or route that anybody assisted any of us in trying to understand, what are we busy with? What are the things that we need to do? What are the things that pitfalls that we need to be aware of? So one of the things I would say to myself is, number one, patience. I wasn't patient enough.
The second thing is not to be so self critical, because to me, I always wanted to prove to myself that I'm good enough. It didn't come from an internal reality of belief. Came from while you played well, you got player of the match, or you assisted in some ties. I played front row as a number two. I was a hooker, so I wasn't supposed to be a Gloria boy in the back line. But anyway, so the second thing was, you know is that belief Be patient and believe that you can, you can make it. Instead of having no belief and having to live daily on trying to prove to yourself that you're good enough, it becomes a very destructive a destructive mindset. And thirdly, for the size that I am and the way that I played, I should have chosen a different environment, a different team, post school, because where I came from, it was all about how big you are, and that was the style of play. So I didn't understand that I had to match what I was good at with a team that was actually playing that way and trying that way to to get myself to higher representative again. It came back to advice. It came back to to understanding the process and understanding the route map, which I didn't have[PB5]
Paul Barnett 37:53
you talked about being self critical then, and I I wonder if that's something that you work with with your own athletes,
Rocco Meiring 38:05
all the time, all the time. It is, it is an ongoing process. Is working with them in terms of what thoughts, what's going on in your head? What is your self talk? What are your thoughts? Is it real? Should you entertain it? Is it not real? What should you rather focus on? It's it's a continuous, continuous battle.
Paul Barnett 38:33
It's fascinating, because I know in the corporate world, I don't talk to people about their self talk and self belief, and even in a family, sometimes it's difficult to to approach a conversation like that, but it seems that in your world, it's an everyday conversation.
Rocco Meiring 38:55
Yeah, it is a if it's if it's not a conversation, is a message.
So whether I send the messages in writing on WhatsApp, or whether it is comments we make on the pool deck, or whether it is situations we create in training where they are under pressure, it's it's absolutely integrated and linked to the physical side of the training is, is that? Is that thought process? Is that? What are you thinking now? What are you saying to yourself? What should I be saying to myself? What should I be focusing on? Should I be saying anything? And my experience with the Olympians I coach, I was astounded to see to what level they are. They actually doubt themselves and they act or they don't know how to think. I I have a term that I say to the athletes, how you think will determine what you think and what you. Think will determine how you perform. But we tend to stop focus on what to think, but we don't. We should rather understand, how are they thinking about things that makes them think the way they do, what they think? Do you understand what I'm saying? No, I do and often and often they don't know how to think. They don't know how to think. Nobody's helped them on how to think about things.[PB6]
Paul Barnett 40:26
But I think they're alone. I think there's many of us that could benefit from the performance psychology aspect of elite sport and what that teaches you about. I've heard people say that it's it's not the internal voice itself, but how you respond to it that matters, and it should be a dialog, not a monolog.
Rocco Meiring 40:48
Yeah, yeah.
Paul Barnett 40:50
Rocco, you've been very generous with your time. I can I sense there's, uh, another swimming lesson ahead, or there's a class or something you need to get to. So I'll just ask one last question, and I I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I'll ask it anyway, and it's, what's the legacy that you got you hope you're leaving as a coach.
Rocco Meiring 41:19
I don't work to leave a legacy. A legacy is not something that I think about. It's not at all in my head. I would like those people in South Africa to believe that it can be done here, that we are not inferior, but also to understand that, they have to do a lot of learning and experimenting and putting their their reputations or whatever on the block. Comes with risk. We can't play it safe, but if you not going to be, if you're okay with not being in a safe space, you might just surprise yourself that you can be competitive internationally.
Paul Barnett 42:15
I think challenging people about how they think about safe spaces is a great, great way for it to finish so Rocco, thank you for your time today. It's been a it's been a master class, a terrific interview, and I thank you for the preparation that went into it, and I thank you for the very thoughtful responses you shared.
Rocco Meiring 42:33
Thank you very much for having you.