A New Dive into the Future: Meet Our Expert Advisor Julian Bellan

Meet our new Expert Advisor for Swedish Diving, Julian Bellan, recruited last november as a new expert advisor for the newly launched project Sweden Diving Academy. Since November 1, he has been working closely with national team captain Sofia Garametsos Tärnhed to take the next step together with the associations and to improve the overall quality of Swedish diving. The collaboration currently spans a period of 10 months. From November 30 to December 8, Julian has been visiting clubs across Sweden to get to know the coaches, divers, and their operations.

Welcome to Sweden and to Sweden Aquatics. We are very interested in learning more about you and would therefore like to ask you a few questions. Which fundamental technical principles do you consider absolutely essential to establish early in young divers in order to reach international elite level?

The journey to becoming an elite international senior level diver is not seamless or simple. There are so many cogs to the wheel, we are in the business of developing human beings that perform complex skills requiring mental acuity and amazing physical capabilities. Building diving is like a complex wrist watch, we need to assemble the pieces with precision and patience.

I would say the most important foundation is physical preparation, without it, regardless of talent the journey will be challenging and limited. Elite athletes in all sports require specific physical preparation, but diving is an early specialisation sport. You can become Olympic champion at 14, but it is also possible to have a long career, spanning up to 5 Olympic cycles 20 years. At each stage of development physical preparation must be ahead of the technical and mental acquisition. Otherwise the learning and development will hit roadblocks.

I have a model of development that I use when discussing this with coaches. It is an attempt to make a complex process logical and clear. As you step through the development areas they layer up but you inevitably need to continue the cycle returning to the foundations to support the ever increasing complexity above.

How do you work on developing consistency and stability in high-difficulty dives, particularly under competitive pressure?

Again, bring this back to nuts and bolts of process not outcome. You cannot be consistent or even consider competition outcomes if you cannot deliver training consistency. This means the individual elements of a dive in themselves must be bullet proof. This means every repetition I training of even the most simple skills must be outstanding. Competitive composure will develop through appropriate exposure to the right level of competitions. This starts in practice sessions with micro doses of stress. Anything can be made into a competition to stress test a process movement or skill. It’s not about the outcome it’s about ensuring each of the layers, each of the cogs is connected and well oiled.

What are the most common mistakes you see among divers (or coaches) at national level, and how can these be corrected effectively?

That’s difficult to quantify, but ultimately I would say focussing on outcomes, just because a dive scores a 7 or 8 in a competition does not mean the job is done. In 2010 Jack Laugher from GBR was double junior world champion. But his technique lacked finesse and consistency. This resulted ultimately to his performances 2 years later at the London Olympics being so poor. He was undoubtedly an amazing talent, but under pressure the technical issues collapsed. 4 years later he became an Olympic champion. Not only because he learned to compete, but because he learned to prepare with technical refinement and precision. Going to lots of competitions early in a career can only compound flaws, the number of and timing of competitions must be part of a carefully composed annual plan. I always ask before doing a competition, what purpose does it serve.

How do you balance physical conditioning, technical development and mental preparation within a long-term training programme?

The technical complexity of diving becomes easier the better your physical preparation.At times it might feel you are not doing enough technical work. This is a puzzle which requires all the pieces coming together. First we do the corners, then the boarders. This is the physical foundations. We work towards the centre. The centre is our atet event of the year. The last piece of the puzzle.

From your experience, what distinguishes the world’s leading diving nations from the rest, and what concrete steps can Sweden take to move closer to that level?

I’ve been fortunate to travel to a great many of the worlds leading diving nations, observe training in a number of national training centres. China, Russia, Ukraine, GBR, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Germany and Mexico.

Each country will have cultural strengths, Sweden cannot be China or Russia. But it can learn from its European neighbours and develop a bespoke programme which is fit for Swedish life. The biggest challenge is getting children into our beautiful sport. In the UK is established a world leading talent identification and development programme. Since it began in 2002 in excess of 0.5million children have been through the programme. By this I mean coaches from the leading clubs go to schools and run a diving class in the school sports hall. They identify children of the physical stature to come to the local clubs and experience diving. This is not a traumatic experience, far from it, it’s fun, and everyone is given the opportunity to try if they want. But diving is a small participation sport, small membership levels compared to gymnastics, swimming and football. With limited facilities we need to bring the children to the clubs and give them a great experience. We did this and 20+ years on the clubs in the UK have incredible relationships with schools that they return to every year, so that a new generation of children get to experience our beautiful sport.

This programme discovered many of the Olympic squad I the UK. Thel likes of Matty Lee 2021 Olympic champion were discovered in this way.

How did England strategically work to increase the number of active divers, and which measures proved to be the most effective?

The Talent programme in England supports the leading clubs to visit schools. Initially this was only one or two clubs a year, but know the clubs with divers consistently placing on the national team are funded. This money comes from the government from the national lottery. It pays for the coaches, the facilities and scholarships for individuals who might be financially challenged. Each club will typically go to the schools in their immediate locality each September and October away from the competition season. 10 clubs will see 2000-3000 children each year. That’s 25k children that are not currently diving. This will establish training groups maybe 15-20 children per club. 1%. In 2 years these children will go to therapy ’Talent Games’. From that programme the top 10-15 children from England will be selected into the national development squad. So 0.1%

This is how in 25 years 500,000 children have been given opportunity to try diving. This in turn makes healthier clubs. Many of the diving clubs in the UK have in excess of 500 divers, with some nearing 800-1000 active divers. To support this the biggest challenge was having enough energetic coaches, but also coaches with technical expertise. This required a coach education and development programme. The coaches who started doing schools talent searches 10-15 years ago are now the current Olympic coaches. The system for all is based around reward for effort.

In your opinion, what is more important: early specialisation or building a broad participation base, and how has England balanced the two?

The go hand in hand, early specialisation sports need a broad base of participation. Not every talent is immediately realised. We must provide entry points for talent that sometimes is not realised or noticed. In countries like Australia traditionally their national team comes from sport transfer programmes. The AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) actively promotes the transfer from like acrobatic sports like trampoline, tumbling or gymnastics into diving. This his where there likes Matthew Mitcham (2008 Olympic champion) and Cassiel Rousseau World champion and olympic medalist come from.

How have you approached coach education and mentoring to ensure high-quality coaching across the country, not only at elite centres?

Just like developing your athletes, developing coaches in a pragmatic way is fundamental to success. Every time a group of coaches comes together it is an opportunity to collaborate and learn. I believe in energising and accelerating the journey of coaches who should the commitment to improve. This is about supporting their emotional and technical journey. Becoming a knowledgeable coach is only one part of the puzzle. The challenges faced by coaches are numerous, it’s often the non technical noise which disrupts the careers. Lifestyle balance, communication, personal health, managing conflicts and I can go on. Building a support network around a coach or a team of coaches is essential The journey is not a solo flight.

If you were to give three concrete recommendations to the Swedish Swimming Federation to strengthen the future of diving, what would they be?

1. Establish funding for a consistent national team. If the national team spends its time trying to secure resource it is not working with laser focus on the national team. Of course there must be scrutiny and accountability, but technical experts need to be technical experts and not bean counters.
2. Support the development of a short, medium and long term vision that is about developing a posit system and the people in it. While our eyes look to LA in 2.5 years time we are also driving the cars to Brisbane 2032 and 2036 Olympic Games. The UK system evolved over many Olympic cycles. But from 2002 it had structure and direction. The results really started to come 10-12 years into this system being established.
3. Tricky as I think we have more than 3. But I feel where Sweden can move is investment in facilities. I have heard on my recent travels of new pool builds on the horizon. But the horizon for these new pools is 5-8 years away. There a few good facilities, but they are massively outdated and lack the dry-dive to prepare the divers. The UK went through a revolution at the end of 2000’s. The new pools were built with extensive dry dives. The gymnastic and technical preparation is key as previously mentioned. You only need to look at the world’s leading nations, China, Russia and Mexico in terms of dry land facilities. The foundations of developing athletes starts with infrastructure.