A Unique Swimming Program: The Glenmark Aquatic Foundation

A Unique Swimming Program: The Glenmark Aquatic Foundation – Mission and Inspiration

By Don Heidary – The World Swimming Coaches Association & Orinda Aquatics

I used to be requested to return to India to judge the Glenmark Aquatic Foundation program and provide any insights on improvement, with particular regard to the age-group program. Having spent the previous forty-five years (sure forty-five) pursuing elevated efficiency and tradition on the age-group degree, and dealing within the extremely aggressive world of USA Swimming, I felt that I may assist not directly. Twenty-four days and  eleven flights later, I’m dissecting a narrative that’s terribly highly effective and distinctive to the game in so some ways.

The journey supplied one other instance of the variety and inspiration on the earth. I’ve all the time seen sports activities because the youth neutralizer. Aside from occasional benefits, the majority of improvement comes from out there water, athletes prepared to decide to a program, and passionate coaches that supply construction and a pathway to improvement. This they’ve, and so way more.

I consider this will very effectively be probably the most inspirational (and biggest) story within the swimming world in the present day.

Let me start with the Glenmark group. The basis is a subsidiary of Glenmark Pharmaceuticals of India, and its outreach (CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility) car, which helps and subsidizes the game of swimming all through India. As the company founder was a pioneer in drugs, GAF is a pioneer in swimming. I hope you’re sitting down for this. Kids pay nothing. Everything is paid for by the muse – swimmers’ charges, learn-to-swim classes, swimming pools charges, workers salaries, journey, tools, and on and on. In a world of company condemnation or revenue mongering, you needn’t look right here. This is the mannequin that ought to exist all over the place; companies embedded within the communities, lifting kids up, and creating limitless alternatives the place they’re hardly ever discovered.

The program was spearheaded by Neha Saldanha. Swimming is in her household (daughter swam for Johns Hopkins), and in her blood. She is just not solely passionate, altruistic, however pushed to supply the highest swimmers in India and the broader area, and to vary the established order. This is a sea change in swimming in India and Neha, and her management group, are pushed to succeed.

The program is run by COO Vijay Bharadwaj, a former IT and sports activities advertising government. Although not a swimmer, he lives and breathes the game and this program. He is an infinitely smart and insightful “get-it-done” particular person and he’s on this 24/7, working the telephones, the room, the politics, the services, journey, and every little thing that touches the GAF.

Ian Els oversees the age-group program. He is a veteran coach from South Africa, and is a measured and considerate man, unduly devoted to younger athlete improvement. He is as caring as he’s smart and has a depth of sincerity that’s uncommon on the age-group degree, or anyplace. He oversees your complete improvement program, starting with learn-to-swim. Under his purview are some 1,000 swimmers that function in a stunningly organized and extremely environment friendly method.

Partha Majumder runs the nationwide improvement program. He got here extremely beneficial as one of many highest-level coaches in India. He was a lot extra. He is charismatic, agency, humorous, obsessive about the game, knowledge, and physiological purposes, and the James Earl Jones voice solely provides to his presence. He strikes an unimaginable stability of agency and nurturing, and the athletes reply.

Although I went to help Glenmark, I discovered myself in conferences with senior officers from The Sports Authority of India (SAI), aka, the federal government sports activities arm. They too are extremely motivated to develop swimming in India and are taking a look at Glenmark to take the lead.

While I visited 5 websites, I’ll contact on three that supplied profound inspiration, hope, and potential achievement of the Glenmark mission. And the inspiration that I point out, is just not solely inspiration to Glenmark or India, however for youth sports activities in entirety.

Delhi/Bangalore

The Bangalore web site, Partha’s, was house to a gaggle of 25(ish) athletes starting from 15 to 24 years of age. They have reached a degree of accomplishment that enables them to affix an elite group of athletes in a camp setting the place their major focus is coaching. They dwell on an SAI (Sports Authority of India) web site, one thing akin to the USOPC in Colorado Springs. Swimming (and faculty) is their life, and their teammates are their household. I gave a number of talks to his group and principally watched the circulation of Partha’s extremely well-constructed coaching periods that blended power programs (coronary heart charges), really feel and motion, inventive drills, and major units that have been as strategic as they have been difficult. And as well-thought and well-prepared as his periods have been, they have been executed even higher. I couldn’t inform whether or not or not the swimmers have been pushed extra for his or her coaching efficiency, or for the coach’s approval. This coach and this group provide unimaginable hope as the head of the Glenmark program, and a pathway to worldwide success.

Trivandrum

This web site, within the south of India, additionally resides on an SAI web site. The facility is older and reveals its put on, with cement and tiled blocks, flags with no flags, precise ropes for brief course coaching (and with no flags in that route – and nobody minds). While the coaches are nonetheless youthful and growing, they function at excessive ranges of professionalism; immediate, well mannered, keen to assist, keen (virtually begging) to be taught, and hurrying to fill any want.

And then there have been the children. The worst factor they did in my two days/4 periods was overlook to say, “good morning Sir”, and “thank you Sir”. They have been on time, together with each AM (5 senior and three age-group – notice, that’s 11-14). I by no means noticed a touch of demonstrable fatigue, apathy, negativity, and the idea of something resembling disrespect was not in anybody’s DNA. They have been, nevertheless, very quiet, reserved, if not guarded. As far as coaching, it was machine-like, for everybody at all ages and skill. In my 4 periods, not one swimmer stopped, rested, or had a problem of any sort. It was virtually just like the idea of not leaving on a send-off was utterly overseas or illogical, due to this fact it was by no means even contemplated.

My first exercise was a morning session. We arrived at midnight and I watched children stroll onto the deck at 5:00AM. What I assumed could be the senior group was in reality each group – the senior group, three junior (age-group developmental) teams, and, await it, the learn-to-swim program. Yes, LTS at 5:30. That was a primary for me. Each group ran a self-led pre-workout dryland activation, impeccably executed, in unison, no speaking or socializing, and extremely targeted.

The whole 50-meter pool was occupied with teams operating the 25-meter width, from LTS within the shallow finish to senior within the deep finish. They swim fairly a bit (in our phrases) with regard to quantity, with exercises as much as 6,000 meters at eight to 9 periods per week, for age-group swimmers.

This web site may develop and be an anchor web site to the Glenmark system.

Bhubaneswar

I subsequent flew to Bhubaneswar, within the east. There I met the co-head coaches of this system, Hussain and Afra. They drove to the resort to provide me an outline of this system the night earlier than the primary session. They are a younger couple, former nationwide degree swimmers for India, and now accountable for some 700 kids. All I knew was that it was a big web site – 500ish aggressive swimmers and 200+ learn-to-swim members.

As they described their program, I couldn’t assist however suppose a documentary movie ought to be made. I had by no means heard the phrase “tribal” to explain a swim group roster, however it was the very core of theirs. If you have been sitting down for the “Glenmark covers all expenses”, chances are you’ll wish to lay down for this. This program is housed on the Kalinga Institute for Social Sciences (KISS – look it up), a really huge entity that boasts a Medical School and several other schools underneath their prestigious University umbrella. It additionally offers education from kindergarten by means of highschool, and school, for indigenous or tribal kids, who come from households that can’t correctly look after them. I requested what number of. “Thirty thousand”. I now understood how this program was so giant.

I can solely understate this campus. Think Cal instances 5, with each athletic facility/stadium possible, and state-of-the-art, together with the aquatic facility used for coaching, and a few fifteen different swimming pools all through the campus. When I requested the place the founder, Dr. Achyuta Samanta “got his billions of dollars from” (I assumed a tech startup or one thing), I used to be instructed that he himself grew up as a tribal baby, in poverty. He went on to earn a Ph.D. and labored within the Indian Parliament. To “give back”, he began a single group house, which has since grown within the behemoth that’s KISS and KIIT (the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology). Also search for the e book, The Art of Giving, A Away of Life, by Dr. Samanta himself.

The kids dwell in hostels, get three meals a day, full education, and have the chance to take part and compete in an enormous array of sports activities. Enter Glenmark and its workers, some twenty coaches, which might be all on the deck at 5:00AM and able to fill any want for these children, together with offering supplementary diet after each exercise (for 2 to 3 hundred children). They not solely educate swimming expertise however life expertise as effectively. They go to the hostile and stroll the limitless line of younger athletes to the pool, assist them find their goggles, caps, and fits (all held on the facility), and organize them for the exercise, feed them after,  pack up the goggles, cap, and swimsuit, and stroll them again, one to 2 instances every day. Personal notice – these children are completely treasured, all seven hundred of them!

And whereas a program (shockingly) in its infancy, it’s effectively organized and staffed, and poised to turn into the engine of swimming in India.

Let me shut by saying that one of many main take-aways for me was that the “character first” idea of athlete and youth tradition, that we work each day to acquire, is NA on this program, i.e., not relevant. The children are off-the-chart respectful, humble, useful, grateful, and resilient, each one. If something, they can educate the teachings of character and values to anybody who needs to see an actual world demonstration. It was really an honor to witness the Glenmark mission. I will probably be honored to help in any method I can, and I’ll incorporate classes that I realized into our program, and into my very own life.