"WHY DO WE DO IT"

 During practice on Monday I was asked why we were doing open turns.  For the past couple of weeks we have work through sets that involved some open turns while doing 75's (50 free/ 25 back and 50 free/ 24 breast or fly). Why do we do them?  I have notice during the last few meets that some of us are losing momentum at the walls on our exchanges.  We our not getting our hips and legs into the walls fast enough which hurts our speed coming off of them.  I wanted to come up with something that would help our speed  into the walls with the hope of helping you all get your hips and legs into the walls.   I decided that if we swim in free which is faster and perform open turns the result might be faster exchanges for the breast and fly, and also for the IM events.   Think about it there are seven turns in swimming and two of them are flips (free and back) which we do all the time.  The other five turns involve the IM, breast and fly Oh,and by the way are open turns.  Alot of time when we do these exchanges in practice, they are done at slower speeds.   The other two things are the 10 minute kick (00-40 easy and 40- 00 SUPER FAST BIL FREE KICK), and the 10-10-5 burst and stop kicks.  Why?  Watching the races I see two things at the walls, first we relax going into the turns and at the finish we just swim to the wall.  WE DON't FINISH the race, again with our legs.  That last 25 its come down to HEART!  That finish has to be set up coming off that last turn and build all the way to the wall.  A lot of this comes from those legs and by the way that 25 should take less than 20 seconds.  Do you see where I am going with those two kick sets?  If we expect to do it in our races WE need to first do it at every practice and not just when you want to to.

The Junior gold on the easy cycle of the 10 minute kick.

The 20 second fast cycle.   Stay healthy!   Mike