In my personal pantheon of coaching heroes, Doc Counsilman stands alone. I first knew of him only incidentally - his son had been the head coach of my club team when I started swimming. It wasn't until the summer of 2004 that I would truly discover the wisdom of Doc.

That summer I was charged with what was at first an overwhelming task: to look through 20 years of ASCA speeches and publications and pull them into one coherent document. I was to make a manual for introducing novice coaches to the sport. The reason I had been given the task was two-fold. My boss knew that despite the warnings of my elders, I truly wanted to be a swim coach. He thought I would learn a lot by putting it together, and that it would help those that came after me.

As I poured over the speeches and essays, I quickly found ways to disqualify certain items. Many were incredibly dated - coaches spinning yarns about who they were training at the time and how fast they were. But above all others, there was one guy who wrote prolifically and timelessly: James Edward "Doc" Counsilman.

Doc had concrete advice on how to coach. He covered wide ranges of topics, suggested sets, referenced sports psychology. He had the whole package. He was a swim coaching renaissance man. I never finished the manual that I set out to put together in the first place, but I certainly learned a lot in the process.

I was reminded of Doc last week when I picked up an ASCA magazine from 2008. Inside was an incredibly fascinating reprint of an article entitled "All That Yardage." I had never read it. It was essentially a rambling rebuke of the theories put forth by a young coach who Doc admitted had smarts but was certainly wrong. The name of the young coach? David Salo. Salo had just published an article entitled "The Distance Myth" where he had set out to disprove that everyone needed 10,000-20,000 yards a day.

It's absolutely fascinating to read now. Being a current admirer of Dr. Dave, I have to say that reading an intellectual battle between the two is sort of like watching a fight between two super heroes: completely awesome but you don't want either to lose.

Doc's argument against Salo has three prongs. First, he argues that Salo is relying on research that isn't good (it comes from trials on rats). He then cites his own data supporting his thesis, and of course doesn't fail to mention that he is relying on human data. The rest is essentially completely anecdotal. Doc asks: "Is it possible to build endurance by doing nothing but a series of sprints? I doubt it because I tried it about 25 years ago with disastrous results." Later he cherry picks some of the best swimmers of the time to prove his yardage thesis. Matt Biondi? 12-15k a day. Dave Wharton? 16-20k a day? Janet Evans? 13k a day.

In the end, Doc gives credit where credit is due. He stops short of saying that it's impossible that Salo could be right while maintaining his position. Twenty years later, the debate rages on. To me, this begs the essential life question: can't we all just get along?

Earlier this week, a former senior coach of mine (as a coach, not a swimmer), Chuck Batchelor, had a set of his featured on this web site. The set was 50x400. Predictably, some guys from the Collegeswimming.com message boards got fired up about it. Brett Hawke refused to recruit any swimmers from Batchelor's team. And the Low Effort Swimming Society (LESS) demanded an immediate apology from Batchelor. Also, I made two of those last three things up.

As much as I'd like to pretend this is a debate you only find among bored college swimming fans, it's not.  Does any coach really measure effort purely on yardage alone? Can't we admit by now that Batchelor's approach really seems to work for some people, and Salo's also seems to really work for some other people. How similar is Michael Phelps' physiology to that of your average age grouper? In some ways, very similar in that they are both Homo Sapiens. In other ways, they couldn't be more different. Maybe both coaches have the "right" approach.

Nevermind, screw it. Chuck's DEFINTELY wrong.