You are the Rules Dictator

Lindsey, I didn't see your question until now. Skip seems to have given you more than you probably realized possible but then again Skip has been doing that for a long time. I just have to add that I was priviledged to have know Coach Silvia. I attended the Pine Knoll Swim School in Springfield MA for a number of years in the mid 60's. (My mother first sent my brother and I so she could get some rest in the summer.) Coach was truly and extraordinary man and coach. The school was at his home where he had built a 6 lane 25 yard pool, a diving tank, a softball field, a soccer field, tennis courts and the like. Several hundred kids would come each day. There were some boarders there also. Most were not in the competitive program. The teachers were mainly college and high school coaches from around the northeast that were once affiliated with the Springfield College swim program. The morning and afternoon sessions were each broken into three, one-hour parts: lecture, swimming and some other sport (rotated through softball, tennis, etc.) The amazing thing was that Coach Silvia would lecture the campers (split into groups of 9 and unders and 10 and overs) about biomechanics every day. He had a huge library of films from international competitions and really concentrated on the very things that some of the other threads have spent a long time talking about. I still remember him putting up on the blackboard (me at age 10), the force diagram for a bent arm and mathmatically proving that you needed to bend the arm by showing the equation: F x FA = R x RA (F=force, FA = force arm, R = Resistance and RA = Resistance arm). All the while Doc Councilman was arguing S curves and the rest, Coach Silvia was working on efficient application of force. He was proud of the accomplishments of Bill Yorsk and we did see that film every couple of weeks as part of the stroke analysis. I could go on about Coach Silvia but I will leave that for another thread. Leo: Thanks for sharing your story about Coach Silva and your right we could go on and on and he was talked about by Terry and George on the freestyle stroke question thread and the explanation of Silva's "Big Four". What I will remember about him is the articles that he provided in the 1960's about the Fly stroke and how he experiemented scientifically with swimmers, mainly Bill Yorzyk to explain the concepts of this new stroke. I remember his explanations of the arm stroke movement, perfecting the kick, and the timing of the dolphin. I remember that he stressed that the power of the kick comes from the downward knee joint and not from the hips. With this action there is an upward movement of the hips, which forces the water backward to propel the swimmer forward. I also remember him suggesting to breath every other stroke and discouraged breathing on the side because he felt when a swimmer is fatigued, the side on which he is breathing will began to drop into the water and the swimmer will struggle and maybe disqualified because the shoulder will drop and not be horizontal. In my high school years when I was taking CPR and Water Safety instruction from the Red Cross to be certified as a life guard I came accross his name again. I learned that he was the first to embrace mouth to mouth restoration, the method of choice today for artifical respiration. Another point Leo mentions is that he had all his students do different sports and perhaps this is where he got some of his ideas about the scientific concepts that he applied to swimming. I know he was a baseball coach at Springfield College and perhaps he learned some things and applied them to the Pine Knoll and Springfield swimmers. I have never read anything about his background as a competitive swimmers and I really don't know if he ever swam competitively and perhaps that is why he was open to a lot of ideas that others were not experiementing with in his day. I remember when I competed at the Long Course Nationals in Buffalo, NY in 1988 and there was a coaches clinic from a coach that I never heard of at that time and was the coach of the University of Rochester that was nearby. Today he is regarded as one of the most famous and successful swimming consultants in swimming. His name is Bill Boomer and he had a series of successful videos out about 15 years ago. I remember him talking about cycle rates, stroke tempo, vessel shape like swimming to reduce drag and resistance, using speed buckets for power to create swimming velocity in sprinting racing and studing the axis of the body during swimming. I remember him saying that he went to Springfield College and thought maybe he was a mentor of Silva and asked him. He said he didn't even swim there but played basketball and soccer and coached those activities when he came to Rochester and was asked to be the swim coach without a competitive background because they needed one. I remember him saying that he came to swimming with free mind and that he wanted to experiement with advance concepts that no one was doing at the time. That at a small Division III program he could do this because he could get the type of swimmer who would not be set in his ways for experiementing. This type of coaching style was very similar to Silva's. I never did meet Coach Silva but I did meet Bill Yorzyk. At the 1983 Long Course Nationals at IUPUI, I saw him go in the low 2:30.00 range for the 200 Meter Fly and was impressed not so much for the time but at that time I had never seen such perfect form for fly swimming by someone who was over 50. I remember he got a standing ovation after his swim and would have won the two younger age groups below his. He used to come to the meets and hang out with Many Sanguily. I had heard shortly after this meet that his son David had died in a tragic car accident. I don't think he has swam in many years but I will always remember seeing him swim as a masters swimmer.

Lindsey, I didn't see your question until now. Skip seems to have given you more than you probably realized possible but then again Skip has been doing that for a long time. I just have to add that I was priviledged to have know Coach Silvia. I attended the Pine Knoll Swim School in Springfield MA for a number of years in the mid 60's. (My mother first sent my brother and I so she could get some rest in the summer.) Coach was truly and extraordinary man and coach. The school was at his home where he had built a 6 lane 25 yard pool, a diving tank, a softball field, a soccer field, tennis courts and the like. Several hundred kids would come each day. There were some boarders there also. Most were not in the competitive program. The teachers were mainly college and high school coaches from around the northeast that were once affiliated with the Springfield College swim program. The morning and afternoon sessions were each broken into three, one-hour parts: lecture, swimming and some other sport (rotated through softball, tennis, etc.) The amazing thing was that Coach Silvia would lecture the campers (split into groups of 9 and unders and 10 and overs) about biomechanics every day. He had a huge library of films from international competitions and really concentrated on the very things that some of the other threads have spent a long time talking about. I still remember him putting up on the blackboard (me at age 10), the force diagram for a bent arm and mathmatically proving that you needed to bend the arm by showing the equation: F x FA = R x RA (F=force, FA = force arm, R = Resistance and RA = Resistance arm). All the while Doc Councilman was arguing S curves and the rest, Coach Silvia was working on efficient application of force. He was proud of the accomplishments of Bill Yorsk and we did see that film every couple of weeks as part of the stroke analysis. I could go on about Coach Silvia but I will leave that for another thread. Leo: Thanks for sharing your story about Coach Silva and your right we could go on and on and he was talked about by Terry and George on the freestyle stroke question thread and the explanation of Silva's "Big Four". What I will remember about him is the articles that he provided in the 1960's about the Fly stroke and how he experiemented scientifically with swimmers, mainly Bill Yorzyk to explain the concepts of this new stroke. I remember his explanations of the arm stroke movement, perfecting the kick, and the timing of the dolphin. I remember that he stressed that the power of the kick comes from the downward knee joint and not from the hips. With this action there is an upward movement of the hips, which forces the water backward to propel the swimmer forward. I also remember him suggesting to breath every other stroke and discouraged breathing on the side because he felt when a swimmer is fatigued, the side on which he is breathing will began to drop into the water and the swimmer will struggle and maybe disqualified because the shoulder will drop and not be horizontal. In my high school years when I was taking CPR and Water Safety instruction from the Red Cross to be certified as a life guard I came accross his name again. I learned that he was the first to embrace mouth to mouth restoration, the method of choice today for artifical respiration. Another point Leo mentions is that he had all his students do different sports and perhaps this is where he got some of his ideas about the scientific concepts that he applied to swimming. I know he was a baseball coach at Springfield College and perhaps he learned some things and applied them to the Pine Knoll and Springfield swimmers. I have never read anything about his background as a competitive swimmers and I really don't know if he ever swam competitively and perhaps that is why he was open to a lot of ideas that others were not experiementing with in his day. I remember when I competed at the Long Course Nationals in Buffalo, NY in 1988 and there was a coaches clinic from a coach that I never heard of at that time and was the coach of the University of Rochester that was nearby. Today he is regarded as one of the most famous and successful swimming consultants in swimming. His name is Bill Boomer and he had a series of successful videos out about 15 years ago. I remember him talking about cycle rates, stroke tempo, vessel shape like swimming to reduce drag and resistance, using speed buckets for power to create swimming velocity in sprinting racing and studing the axis of the body during swimming. I remember him saying that he went to Springfield College and thought maybe he was a mentor of Silva and asked him. He said he didn't even swim there but played basketball and soccer and coached those activities when he came to Rochester and was asked to be the swim coach without a competitive background because they needed one. I remember him saying that he came to swimming with free mind and that he wanted to experiement with advance concepts that no one was doing at the time. That at a small Division III program he could do this because he could get the type of swimmer who would not be set in his ways for experiementing. This type of coaching style was very similar to Silva's. I never did meet Coach Silva but I did meet Bill Yorzyk. At the 1983 Long Course Nationals at IUPUI, I saw him go in the low 2:30.00 range for the 200 Meter Fly and was impressed not so much for the time but at that time I had never seen such perfect form for fly swimming by someone who was over 50. I remember he got a standing ovation after his swim and would have won the two younger age groups below his. He used to come to the meets and hang out with Many Sanguily. I had heard shortly after this meet that his son David had died in a tragic car accident. I don't think he has swam in many years but I will always remember seeing him swim as a masters swimmer.