“WIN”. What’s Important Now

So our first meet of our journey this season has arrived, AKUMA MATATA.   No problems, no worries this weekend.  We understand that all swimmers are looking for a best time, a lofty goal indeed.  Let’ s look at that a little closer.  Depending on your age and the level you are at, the last Big meet you were in, we may need to manage our expectations a bit.   For a lot of our 12 and under’s those fast swim seem like they will never end, like the energizer  bunny🐰 they just keep coming. For the  Senior Prep group we know what’s around the corner just waiting for us.  All I am saying is that remember the “process” that is the 🔐 key to unlocking those goals and dreams. The things I will be watching for at this meet are  How you approach and handle warmup and warm down How you handle that second warmup How well you keep warm waiting for your race Do you know your events, or do you have to ask Can you find your name, heat and lane on meet sheet, do you know your name (you’d be surprised ki

This past week as we were working through our workouts in the pool in both the Gold and the Prep group I heard this language come out of some of you, WHAT IF I CAN’T?  Think about that for a second.  I read and article recently by Oliver Leroy and so what I will attempt to do here is paraphrase what he was trying to get across for our purposes.  Think about this You are asked by a group of friends to go hang out but immediately you respond by saying, I can’t I have to go to practice.  Instead of looking at this situation in the concept of “I Have To” and understanding  that you don’t have to go to practice and work hard and that this is something that “You Get To Do”, your training will not only get better but you will also have more fun doing it.     Whatever you’re doing daily the language that you use can have a direct impact on your mindset in all your activities.  When you use the phrase I have to it, it has the connotation that a bit of effort will be involved that is going to

Now that we have gotten a few workouts in, we hope you have gotten rid of those late summer cobwebs settled into a regular routine that hopefully will take you to the place you envision yourself being in when March and April roll around.    The first week was spent on perfecting our techniques in the sport and this will be our focus for a couple of more weeks for all three groups.  The senior prep and junior gold groups will see increasingly harder sets that will focus on building that aerobic base towards the end of this week.  The junior blue group will be working on a lot of technical aspects of their strokes that will help them as they grow in the sport.   The major areas that we have been working on in our swimming is how to properly leave the wall.  Tight streamlines and what I refer to as our  "5 second rule”.  Let’s look at these two areas a little closer.   The Streamline , I have seen all of you working on this aspect really hard during the first few practices and th

Now that we have the first part of your year off to a GREAT start ( school) it’s time to get started in the pool    All our groups will start off their journeys in the pool on Monday, and unfortunately due to prior commitments I will be absent but we will have guest coaches on hand with the workout plans to help guide you through that first day in the pool. What I would like to ask from each of you  this weekend is to think about the upcoming season and after giving it some thought, sit down and write a letter (no computer ) to yourself.  Yes that’s right you are actually going to use pen/pencil and paper.  Date it up top and address it to Dear Ben/Mackenzie (use your name). In this letter be yourself and include how you would like this year to go. Let me go over a few things that you may want to include in this letter.   GOALS :  Dream big.  Have some realistic goals especially for early in the season to keep your confidence high, and write these goal on an index card and post it on y