OCTOBER OPEN MEET WRAP UP

We were very encouraged with the effort that was put out by all of our Junior Blue, Junior Gold and Senior Prep groups in the meet this past weekend.  The hard work that each of you are putting in shows in the way you raced over the weekend.  The way you approached those blocks and the way all of you exploded off into your starts showed us you came to race.  Great Effort.

We saw a big improvement with your underwater dolphins and streamlines, and make no mistake about it this is an area that needs your focus and constant attention during practice.  The coaches can not watch every single turn and it is easy for you to fall into the trap of taking a wall off.  I would say to you that if this is you, the old saying applies “You are only cheating yourself” and it will show up when you least expect it.  Take ownership these are your races to win or lose, no one else’s.  Perfect those streamlines and dolphin kicks.  The next natural progression now is to put in that good breakout stroke to carry your speed off the starts and turns.

We notice a couple of things on our turns that need our attention.  One of the big things is to get more aggressive in and out of those walls.  The wall is not one of those rest stops you see around the highways.  We need to get in and out of those turns as fast as we can, the reason, nothing good happens around the walls.  Coach Logan reminded me of something I use to try and get her to do, and that is increase your kick a little around those walls.  The reason.  Simple it will increase your speed to help you get in and out of that area.  The other thing we need to do is to work on setting up your last breath a couple of strokes away from the wall as to maintain that speed into the turn.  And for goodness sake pull with your bottom arm and breathe on the second stroke off the turn.  Let’s approach your turns in practice with a little more urgency to improve our races.

We are having a little trouble with our head position when executing our short axis (breast fly and IM) turns.  After we make contact and begin our transition our head should keep looking into the wall until our hand leaves the wall.  This is important and will allow you to get into a tighter streamline when pushing off.    Below is a short video to help you better understand.

Let’s keep up the good work at practice as we head into the month of November and the Marlin and Swim and Rock meets!   As the weather starts to turn let’s also make sure we have those sweatshirts on and hoods on to keep us warm.  We what to keep those germs away so we are not missing school and practice, and wash those hands a lot and do not share water bottles.