“WIN”. What’s Important Now

Hope everyone in the Gold and Blue groups enjoy your day away from 🏊‍♀️ and you have your costumes ready for the evening.  You have probably heard this from Mom and Dad but stay with your group and be safe.  Please do your bodies a favor and watch that sugar intake over the next few days.  We all know it tastes good but the hours that follow a big increase in your sugar levels will not be kind, just ask Jackie. The next two weeks will be a busy time for all of us as we prepare for the Marlin Meet, and the all exciting Swim and Rock the following weekend.  As we get ready for this I thought I would spend a little time going over what we have been doing.  This serves as both a quick reminder to each of you and gives your parents some input so they know what you have been doing. One of the big things I have noticed in the first two weeks is our lack of aggressiveness with our walls.   We are always 👨🏻‍🏫👩🏻‍🏫talking to you and reminding you just how important your under water dolphin

It’s the season of ghosts, goblins, witches, and all kinds of other scary things.  In swimming have you ever thought about what scares you before a race?  Is it the possibility of failing, or is it the fear of pain (the good kind), maybe the thought of letting a coach or parent down.  Whatever it is everyone has come face to face with this fear from time to time. This may push some buttons with some, but I truly believe that society has become soft when dealing with failure especially when it comes to athletes and our youth.  Failure is inevitable, every athlete has to face coming up short of their goals sometime during their time in the sport.  You will miss that net in soccer, you will strike out, you will miss the basket, you will drop the ball and yes you will fall on the ice, and though you may not like it, I want you to understand that it is 👌.  It’s part of the journey through life and the ☀️ will rise the next day and everything in your world will be okay. If you do not come u

🏊As we start to get near our busy fall schedule of meets, we thought it useful to review your 📋warm ups and cool downs.  Remember that if you know what to do and are in control without coaches talking 🧟‍♂️“loudly” every time your at a wall it will go a long way to put you in a stress free situation.   The most important thing is to arrive on time.  It is unfair to your teammates and coaches to arrive late when we are in the middle of a planned warmup, and now you think I’ll just jump in, I don’t think so! Another item that came up this past weekend is the fact that we had “senior level swimmers”🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♀️ who did not know what they were swimming.  This makes it hard to do a positive check in not to mention that mentally you are not prepared to race and swim fast.  Again it comes back to the person in the mirror, so check it and take ownership.  MEET WARM UP: SENIOR PREP 400 swim (free and back) 4x50 free descending speed 200 kick 3x50 kick descending speed

I got to thinking after this weekends meet after hearing all the feedback given to swimmers after their races and started wondering how many of those swimmers go back to their training sessions and try to focus on that feedback.  A lot of the feed back I hear is on breakouts,breathing,turns, underwater dolphins, finishes, and being more aggressive.  With that said I would guess that coaches wonder if the athletes listened and truly heard what we were saying, because I venture to say the same mistakes are being made at the next practice. We all know what we should do as athletes to become better swimmers, but most of the time those only happen when it is convenient, when it’s comfortable or when it is going your way.  I would like to challenge all of the blue, gold and senior prep groups to turn those things we should do, into things that we MUST do and raise our standard as swimmers. When you go back to the pool raise your standards at every turn.  Yes you should have fast turns and lo

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦Whose job is it to be packing your swim bags 💼for practice and meets.  Mom’s, Dad’s brother or sisters,  I don’t like to answer with a question but the simple answer is “Who is doing the swimming?”  Again it is the person in the mirror and 😮 IT’s you.  Funny how it’s always you in the mirror!  Why even bring this subject up, simple we had some set backs this weekend at the meet ( no names will be mentioned).  Items to always have in your bag, 2 swim suits, 2 or more caps, ( they rip) 2 pairs of goggles (they break)2 shirts (they get wet) sweat shirt and paints (to stay warm)and a water bottle.  The old man ( not me ) said if it can go wrong it will so be prepared and it will avoid extra stress during the course of the meet.  Has to do with that thing called time management we have talked about. It’s your race nobody else’s and one of the first key to success is to take responsibility and own it, and it begins with being prepared to take the plunge, so pack those backpacks

We have worked for a couple of weeks now to prepare for this race, so what are we looking for?  The first thing is to relax and don’t stress over it and remember the ☀️ will rise from the east in the morning. REALLY it will! Let’s break it up into 4 races shall we! 🏊 The first leg is the fly and the big positive during this leg is that we start from a dive so we really won’t be doing a 100 fly.  The first thing We want you all to remember is to set that breathing patten immediately.  BREATHE-BREATHE-DON’T BEATHE !  It is very important to keep that flow of oxygen to your arms and especially your legs.  It’s a marathon in a way not a sprint.  The other key thing is We want to see your booty out of the water every time your arms enter forward and you press your chest, otherwise you are just dragging yourself through the water. That strong kick in fly takes the pressure off the shoulders saving them for the other legs in the race. 🏊🏻‍♂️🏊🏻‍♂️ The second leg is the backstroke and this

MEETS THIS WEEKEND OCTOBER OPEN HAS BEEN MOVED TO LEE DISTRICT POOL Friday night all the swimmers must have their own timers. Friday night all 400 IM and 200 Fly must positive check in by 6:00. If you are planning to arrive late and would like us to check you in PLEASE send Coach Wendy or myself a text by 12:00 noon and we will take care of it.  Also if you are going to scratch on Friday let us know so we are not looking for you. What happens to your mindset as you enter the 🏊🏻‍♂️water for practice and you come head to head with that cold chlorinated water, and that dreaded black tile line on the bottom of the pool that will guide you for the next 60-90 minutes of your life.  Do you stress🙀 on whether this training session will get you to your goals?  Are you stressed 😩with homework, what others think, or the weekend?  There are no guarantees that what you do today will take you to the place you want to be tomorrow, all we can do is to put you in the best position to get to that pl

 

Now that we have been in the water for four weeks it’s time to take a step back and see if we are on the same road for this journey.  We spent the first four weeks working on drills and techniques in all aspects of our swimming and as we move into the next part of our season, the training will increase for our Senior Prep group, and will increase slightly for the Gold and Blue groups.  The drills and technique work will continue but will be included more into the training sets.  Our performance at the first meet last weekend was outstanding, and I believe that we accomplished a lot of good things that we can build on throughout this journey.  As we talked about prior to the meet I wanted our focus to be not on our times but on the things that we had been working on in practice such as streamlines, our dolphin kicks off the walls, breathing patterns, and the way we executed our races especially in our longer events.  As we talked about in the weeks leading up to the meet our focus was t