WHAT is USA Swimming thinking?

Hey Cody. Oh hey there. What's up? You know what's a great idea? What? If USA Swimming changed Olympic Trials from long course to short course. Wait, so the Olympics is short course now? No. Then why would they change the format? Just seems like a good idea. Uhhh. You know what else is a good idea? What? If USA Swimming changed Summer Nationals, aka Long Course World Championship Trials, to short course. They should swim at short course. No. Shouldn't we just try to choose the best team possible? Choose a long course team based off of long course results? Select the Olympic team based off of the Olympic format? Doesn't that just make sense? To select a team based off of what they're going to be doing? No. This just seems really dumb. No, no, you see, there's precedent. It makes sense. They'd choose the short course world championship team based off of long course results. Right. Which just doesn't make any sense. Like why? Well, it's just how they do it. So there is a precedent. Uh huh. Team USA doesn't even have a trials for short course world championships. There's a better way to do this. Yep. That's just how it is. Would really suck to be just a short course swimmer. Team USA is the greatest team in swimming history. We are the most dominant. We have the most medals. And that includes the short course swimming world championships. Despite all of that success, USA swimming's selection criteria for the short course swimming world championships is dumb and stupid and could be a whole lot better. And in this video, I'm going to explain to you exactly why. But first I'm training to set a record in the 50 yard freestyle. So we're going to head to the pool and get a workout. Just a good old fashioned classic sprint day. Heavyweight in the well. We're going to take lots of time in between reps today. Oh, you're bouncing around because you're sitting on the trampoline over there. These pulleys are different than the other pulleys that we normally do. John restrung them. So there's less leverage. So the 80 pounds are going to pull across the pool is going to be a lot heavier than normal. So far, we've put in a good week of training. Let's see how we're feeling this morning. Oh, dude. The warm water feels refreshing. That's nice. Started with a max 25 butterfly. I'm training strictly freestyle right now with a little fly. Oh, long finish. 10 seconds. Let's go. That's good. I didn't think I was going to be that fast. Maximum power, dude. That felt great. Let me flash it up for you right there. Basically, that's going to be our main set. Maybe 10 maximum efforts at the most. Seeing how we feel pulling heavyweight. This stuff is just, it's just fun. Last night was one of those nights where I felt like I didn't get any sleep. I woke up. I felt like a zombie. My two year old came into my bed three times in the middle of the night, 3.30 AM. I'm laying there like, what the heck, man? But we still got to get after it. We got goals. Break in 20 seconds in a few weeks, early December. And that's why this stuff matters. Speed and power. Oh, wow. That'll get her up. John is trying to get under 10.2. We'll see if he can do it. 10.39. Short course world championships is coming up in about a month in Budapest, Hungary. And coach John Long over here is going to be the most fit and the fastest coach on the pool deck. Might as well put him on the relay. But in all seriousness, congratulate Mr. Long on making Team USA's world championship staff. It's been an honor getting him there, training him, pushing him. Just kidding. If I make one of those relays, it'll be a shock to the world. Lots of rest today. Just relaxed. Two, three minutes. Sit. Let the heart rate go all the way down. Watching the clips coach John filmed of me today, you can really tell that I'm just tired. For example, these underwater kicks here are just too slow. And I was trying as hard as I could. It's just they weren't quite snapping down. I'm also relatively low in the water and my turnover rate, not quite where it needs to be. It's not surprising given that, as I said, I did not sleep well and I came straight from the gym after lifting and it's the end of the week. So this is all fairly normal. In case you're wondering what the whole workout today is, it's right there. Lifted weights, played hacky sack for a solid 45 minutes. Now we're swimming less than 800 yards today, probably less than 500 yards. Too long. Yeah. Get up quicker. Think about just hitting the last kick and then trying to go into the stroke. Let's talk about this Shore Course World Championship selection criteria. If you want to know all the details, be a nerd. Go on Swim Swam. What I'm here to talk about is the fact that there is no trials. They just send out invites, as I said in my little jokey joke first minute of this video, to the fastest long course swimmers. I have a big issue with that. Shore Course World Championships is the greatest shore course swimming meet that there is. And therefore Team USA should assemble the absolute best possible team. And you're just not getting that with this selection criteria. Now before I go any further, I have to point out that historically Team USA does really well at this competition. In fact, most of the time, USA wins the total medal count as well as the gold medal count, with a few exceptions in the last 20 years. So the results speak for themselves, generally speaking. If I was to propose what I'm about to say to someone at USA Swimming about making a change, they would just say, well, look at how good we are. And they would be right. My issue is there are phenomenal short course swimmers that just aren't that great at long course that never get to go to this competition because of the way they select the team. And it's just dumb. And there's no good argument against that. The best example, of course, just a few years ago, Coleman Stewart set the world record in the short course 100 meter backstroke in October, two months before the short course world championships. Didn't even make Team USA, wasn't even close to getting an invite from Team USA because he was ranked 11th in the United States in long course. And that's how they select it. It doesn't make any sense. It's dumb. My proposal is simple, host a short course nationals in the middle of November or even late November, instead of doing a U.S. Open at the beginning of December, which USA Swimming does, have a selection meet. Make it then. You know what? The majority of the athletes that are on this world championship team, they compete in the NCAA system, which means middle of November is the time that those programs are gearing up for their mid-season competition. The Georgia invite, the Ohio state invite, the competition in Minnesota, that happens in November. So these athletes that are training with NCAA programs are already geared to go fast at that time of the season. It just makes sense. So why not let us have a competition, see where the chips fall. Let's see if these Olympians from this summer are in as good a shape as we hope them to be. Let's put them to the test. Let's make them go through the gauntlet of having a meet. It's just you're never going to have the best possible team without a trials. That's why we do it at the Olympic trials the way we do it. That's why for long course world championships, we have a summer nationals, a trials, three weeks before the competition to see who the best is right now, because someone who went a time in February of this year in a long course event is now on a short course world championship team competing in December. It's like, and maybe they'll do great. And most likely they will because no shade on any of the athletes that are on team USA that are heading to Budapest in just a few weeks to represent team USA. They're amazing swimmers, but they were just given an invitation instead of earning the invitation, which is how I think we should do it. We could have a US nationals, make it short course yards or even short course meters. That'd be fun. They'd probably want it to be shorter shards, but whatever. I mean, it would. The other thing too is post grads, people who are swimming beyond their collegiate years, they don't get any short course yards meets. Give us a yards meet. Let us go to a US, you know, give us a reason to go to a yards meet. You get to go to this yards meet to earn a spot on the short course world team. It just makes sense. Now I understand I could play devil's advocate with myself. I understand all the reasons why this won't happen. I mean, I understand that the majority of the club teams prepare to go fast in December. So having it in the middle of November kind of screws that up a little bit. I understand logistically. I even understand financially why this is probably not going to happen. And that's a problem. That's a problem with the professional, the professionalization of swimming. That's a problem with holding it back. I personally think short course swimming is way more exciting and there should be more of an emphasis on this competition by USA swimming by, by a lot of different metrics. That's not happening. It's kind of a bummer because it's, it's exciting. But you know, you ask your average swimmer like, Hey, who's going to short course worlds? Who made the team? They're like, I don't know. Somebody that went to the Olympics, you know, you've got a lot of great short course swimmers that retire because they're just not as good long course. I mean, prime example, I'm a breaststroker, Max McHugh, the great two time NCAA champion, 49 and a hundred yard breaststroke. I'd love to see a guy like that go to short course world, see what he does, but he's never going to get an opportunity. And there's a lot of athletes like that. And that's my pitch. That's why we should have trials. That's what I'm thinking. More importantly, what do you all think? Leave a comment down there below. Let me know what you think. Am I crazy? Am I dumb? Does this make sense? Put it down there. Let me know. I'm going to wrap it up. Make sure you click that like button. If you'd like a personalized video from me to you or someone, you know, for whatever reason, it is championship meet season. The holidays are right around the corner. You want to pick me up? You want to pump me up? You want to marry Christmas? Whatever it is. I am available on Cameo. If you'd like to book me for a swim clinic or a speaking event or something like that, starting to book for later into next year, send me an email to Cody Miller show at gmail.com or head to ultimate swimmer.com request a clinic there. Maybe we'll be racing sometime soon. Thank you for joining me today. Until my next video, I will see you all later.