Swim coach who took Ariarne Titmus to the top learns less is more during coronavirus lockdown
A master motivator, Dean Boxall’s first instinct was to keep pushing his athletes during the COVID-19 lockdown. But instead he pulled back, realising they needed a break – from him.
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After almost two decades of barking orders from the pool deck, Australian swimming’s hottest and most eccentric coach has done the one thing that goes against all his impulses: he’s stepped back and gone quiet.
Like seasoned television commentators who instinctively know when to say nothing because the events speak for themselves, Queensland super coach Dean Boxall has quietly slipped into the background during the COVID-19 lockdown.
A master motivator, Boxall’s natural temptation was to keep pushing his star swimmers, including teen sensation Ariarne Titmus, so they would remain focused on preparing for the postponed 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
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But he curbed his instincts and went the other way after realising they needed a break – from him.
“I know what I’m good at and I know what I’m not good at and my positives and my negatives and my pros and cons,” he said.
“I know what the kids struggle with under me and one of the things is I’m pretty intense if I’m in their face a bit.
“So I just made sure through this period that they were having a break, but they were doing exercise, they did set things up that were very different to what other people had set up but I was never on Zoom.”
Named Australian Coach of the Year on Friday, Boxall is a notorious hard taskmaster who wears his heart on his sleeve. He has succeeded in getting the best out of his athletes through sheer hard work and his energetic personality.
He was the mastermind behind Titmus’ stunning win over the seemingly unbeatable Katie Ledecky at last year’s world championships in South Korea and also got Mitch Larkin and Clyde Lewis on the medal podium.
It’s those experiences that have also taught him when to back off and Boxall hopes his decision to give his young swimmers some breathing space during the coronavirus shutdown could pay off down the track.
“I had to make sure they were looking forward to being in the program, being with me, and that couldn’t be done if I was going to be really on their back over this eight weeks,’ he said.
“That would have caused grief and problems and I don’t know whether I would have had the solutions over the next 14 months if I was not giving them their freedom and their autonomy and I learnt that.”
Finally allowed back in the pool this week, Boxall is already seeing the positive effects the break has had on his swimmers, even though they all know the hard work is still ahead of them to peak at Tokyo in July 2021.
“This has been a really good period actually,” he said.
“Most of my athletes are young, they are still on a trajectory moving forward, in the ascendancy, and have never had the opportunity to have that much of a break and have a bit of a reprieve so that’s the exciting part.
“They are just in good spirits at the moment. I know they are going to fall back into a hole but you’ve got heaps of time so it’s good.
“The group is excited so gradually we’ll let them build up and have fun with it. More fitness, no demand on time cycles. Just swimming.”