Coaches rely on technology

Conspiracy theorists may be dismayed to find out that Big Brother isn't watching over the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center. The wall-mounted cameras on the diving side of the facility and the extensive array of portable video equipment on the swimming side may suggest otherwise, but, rest assured, are only the markings of both squads' coaches' dedication to applying improved technology to improving athletic performance. \n"It can be very, very beneficial to give the athletes feedback on little things that the athletes are doing that they may not realize they're doing," swimming head coach Kris Kirchner said. "When you can't watch yourself, you may not think you're doing a certain habit to try and manipulate it. They say it takes 60 days to create a habit or break a habit physiologically. It's not easy. It takes constant feedback, constant work and constant reminders and video can speed it up without a doubt." \nVideo has been a staple of Kirchner's coaching style since the medium was available, but the technological improvements it has undergone since then allow the team to tackle improvement from whole new perspectives. The team now regularly uses a portable underwater camera to capture and analyze views that can more accurately depict how they propel themselves through the water. \n"The video is very good underwater in getting our strokes," freshman Richard Bryant said. "It's helped me a lot, especially when my turns have been all over the place. It shows where you've gone wrong and how you can improve it. It's a great tool." \nOther times, Kirchner sets up a camera on the edge of the pool to analyze starts or finishes. In each instance, improved technology plays another crucial role in slowing down the images in order to better understand them. \n"It's getting more high tech now. We have a digital recorder system that has tremendous slow motion," Kirchner said. "Just watching swimmers swim fast looks like arms and legs in a loose path. But if you slow it down, break it down and get a chance to look at it frame by frame, there are a lot of things that you can look at."\nTechnology is used even more extensively on the diving side of the competition, where the handheld video of volunteer assistant coach Doc Lewis is accompanied by a state-of-the-art Tivo filming system. \n"I think the training and the coaching is important, but when you can give a kid immediate, very detailed feedback, it's terrific," diving head coach Jeff Huber said. "A lot of research has shown that feedback like that, particularly if it's immediate, is very, very beneficial to learning. That's one of the reasons that we do it."\nThe Tivo system, installed last fall, encompasses a pair of ceiling mounted cameras underneath the stands of the Billingsley diving center hooked up to a TV monitor behind the diving boards. There, the divers can review their dives as soon as they're out of the water.\n"We're really, really glad that the Indiana University Athletics Department is willing to back me up in realizing the importance of the system," Huber said. "I know every coach that has come here this year has said 'Man, we've got to do something like this in our pool.' It's terrific."\nBut Huber doesn't rely on the Tivo system alone. Lewis films from multiple angles with a handheld camera and displays the recordings on a set of televisions set up on the side of the diving pool. \n"It's hard to imagine how much that pays off," Huber said. "The Tivos are kind of a set, in-house system that you can't move around, but Doc can move and get some other angles. We then put them on the TVs and we can put one tape in and compare it to another. It's just a great, great learning environment for the athletes, and that's one of the things that we try and promote to recruits."\nSophomore Marc Carlton said filming dives is a necessity in the sport.\n"When we change a body movement on a board, it feels like a lot more than it actually is," Carlton said. "When we get to see it every time, we get to see exactly how much we changed (from) the last dive. We know exactly where we are every day and where we've got to be."\nIn the future, Lewis said he hopes to upgrade to a state of the art computer system capable of analyzing dives and burning DVDs of all the footage he shoots.\n"We think that (the) art of what made us a champion for four years straight is that we have done more filming on videotape than any other team in the nation does," Lewis said. "And that we've had stars develop. Not just one -- one star develops and moves on, another star develops and another star develops. We think a good part of that is they really get an understanding of what the totality of that dive looks and feels like"