First off , Do you have to be the best? No one said that you had to be, except maybe the person in the mirror, and that’s okay to strive for, but let’s face it there is only one person in the entire world that is the best. As long as you always focus on being the best version of you, and are doing the best that you can do, you’re always be a winner. Always focus on improving and at the end of the day be satisfied with being a better person and a swimmer than you were when the day began.
Second thing to remember is never let a negative comment or a bad swim define you as a person. There is no way that you as a swimmer can go race after race without stumbling and having that off day. Acknowledge that bad swims will happen and learn from mistakes that might have happened, take the positives from the swim ( surprise yes there can be positives in a bad swim) shake it off and move on to the next thing.
Third thing is to give it your all. Whether it’s practice or a meet always “go hard and leave it in the pool” . You don’t want to wake up one day with the age old question; “What if?” Whatever you’re doing own i and and take pride in doing it to the best of your ability and you will never have to look in the rear view mirror. There are no do overs in life.
Fourth thing is to treat your teammates like family. They are like a second family after all. As we have said before they are with you through thick and thin. Pick each other up after a bad practice or race and you may be surprised by the results. When all the medals and ribbons are forgotten these will be the memories that you will have for a lifetime. These are the people who will have your back day in and day out.
Fifth thing is to stop and thank the important ones, your parents. They are the ones who are making the big sacrifices to be there with support and encouragement through he both the goo and the bad times. Don’t forget them.
Above all never forget what it is all about and cherish every moment because if anything else we learned this year is what it’s like when it’s taken away. Enjoy every moment in the pool, at the meets, the day will come when you will have to hang the goggles up and move on. Hopefully you’ll be able to continue in one form or another, but it’s these friendships and memories that you will forever have to cherish throughout life.
So let’s have a little fun with this exercise shall we. Today we as in the senior prep swimmers were having a little trouble with the clock, seems we were still having a snow day, especially Caitlyn. Now in her defense she reported that she got confused with too much math. It’s at this point where I have to ask everyone else, Why is everyone just looking at each other asking, should we go 
This was not rocket science interval. Just pretty simple stuff like 4 rounds of 4x50 stroke@55 and 1x100 recovery @2:30. No extra rest between rounds as it is built into the set
Not even enough snow for a distance snow fight, but a good day to take the truck out to the mountains.
Enjoy your day off, see you all tomorrow.
One of the areas that we need to keep working on is our crossover turns if we are going to use them in competition. An official brought to my attention that we had some disqualifications on Saturday and as explained to me the problem is that we may be over rotating the body past 90 degrees before the hand actually hits the wall. A BIG NO NO. Apparently after talking with the referee all the DQ’s were pulled with the benefit going to you, the swimmer. It’s something that we want you to be aware of as we continue to move forward and this may be a good time to just review the video and really pay attention to that first step.
We were very pleased with our underwater work off the wall and as with anything else this is an area that can always be improved upon.
Those streamlines with the dolphins off the wall are a great way to gain an advantage over your competition and picking up valuable speed off the turns. You are not only moving faster while underwater but more efficiently, but you have to know when it’s time to breakout on the surface. To get that timing down takes a lot of work with repetition and that is why it is so important to treat every wall during practice like a race. That’s the only way they will improve. Don’t take that part of your race for granted. A lot of you believe you are doing it during practice but it is hard for you to understand that you need to be very aggressive with every wall during our training sessions.
With that in mind for your planning purposes this week, on the days you actually are swimming I think it would be alright to skip our practice that day. You’ve been going hard since June so I think it’s okay to take that little break. Talk to your high school coaches so that they are aware of your practice schedule. It will look a little different this year.
Let’s have a good week at practice.
This set started back in September and repeats about every 3rd week hopefully having it fall one week out from our upcoming meets. The Senior Prep/Blue group set consists of 50x50 while the Gold groups set consists of 40x50. The interval for the groups were set the first time we went through this and have been getting faster by a few seconds each time we repeat the set.
You may wonder why use a different clock, but in addition to changing the atmosphere it can be set to reset to 0 after each swim and allows each swimmer to pick up their time after each 50. For the Prep/Blue group their 50's are choice/free, with the only rule being that each 50 is the same for the entire set. The Gold group set is all free and again remains the same.
The swimmers are instructed that the purpose of this set is not only to give them confidence to swim fast when they are tired but also to be consistent and try to come in on the same number every time. They understand that it is time to put on their big girl, big boy suits and race that clock. There is no strategy here its just go fast immediately from that push, and race the entire 50.
As the little story says the clock will never lie and the coaches can see what your coming in at on every repeat. We also know who might be faster and are able to judge the effort levels. Their are no drills here just the simple race rules such as no breath turns, no breath at the finishes and always great streamlines with maximum under water dolphins with speed.
The last 50 of the set is done from a dive in heats. The dive is important so that they can "hog "that lane and not circle swim. Yes we do not have blocks, but I look at the positives that we can still get from the dive, like the forward thrust we get from a little height with our legs, the streamline as we enter the water and just the overall feeling of moving through the water from the start. that dive is like first impressions in life such as eye contact, the old firm hand shake know now as a good elbow bump, the first scene of a movie or even that first paragraph in papers you write. It sets the scene just as the dive sets your race up especially the shorter ones. Great dives can go a long way.
This past Thursday we had a real good effort on that last 50 with many of the swimmers setting their best time of the set.....thus WINNING THE DAY...... We do have to give a shout out to one of our Junior Gold swimmers who yesterday swam like a "Big Dog" and won every one of her repeats. Sophia Speidell accepted the challenge and really stepped up and took it to the other 7 swimmers in her group. She knocked on their doors let herself in before they even knew what happened. Now we have to say that Luca and Ken gave her a bit of a challenge but in the end Sophia's fingers were on the wall first every time.
Let’s keep up our great effort as we prepare for the meet this upcoming weekend.
We will try to answer a few questions here in the hopes that it will help you. The first thing to discuss is what suit should I wear. Our suggestion is that do what ever is going to make you comfortable and be able to race fast. You all know what the right thing to do is.
Now when picking your events as we said, be smart. Notice that on Saturday the 13-14 year old events are both in the morning and evening. Sunday it changes to allow the 15 and over swimmers to swim both in the morning and evening. The reason for this is to allow us to get more events in and give a feel of a championship meet, where we are swimming both in the morning and evening. Do I need to swim both sessions on Saturday or Sunday? We highly recommend that you do to get the feel of a championship meet.
Now you should look at your best events and go from there. Be smart here, don’t bite of more than you can handle.
You don’t want to put events back to back if you can avoid it. For an example a swimmer who talked with me asked about swimming the 100 free and the 200 back on Sunday, and unfortunately those events were back to back. She had a vey good argument for swimming he 100 free, as it is a good event for her and she has not done it this year. What she decided was that she really wanted to give the 100 free and since it was before the 200 back, it was decided to swim both and we will take what ever comes in the 200 back. What we are tying to get you all to do it start looking at events and the order they fall. If you have one of your best events that you really want to do well in, but it falls after an event that you want to do, you may want to give that a second look. This is the type of meet that you want to do your very best events and just because it says that you can do 3 each session or 6 for your meet total, you don’t have to if you don’t think you have time to recover. There are other meets for that. If you have any questions at all please feel free to email me and I will try to help guide you through the process.
Of course one of the first items to check off is what’s in your swim bag, 2 pairs of goggles, extra caps, and of course an extra suit. An extra towel and sweatshirt is always nice to snuggle in and stay warm during the meet.
When this meet appeared on our calendar, we decided to look at it as a training meet. This being said what we are looking for as coaches is being able to put together what we have been doing in practice and applying it to your races. What this all means is that we are looking for great underwater’s (5 second rule), our middle 50’s, our 3rd 25’s and of course our overall approach and the total efforts put into the races.
For your part we would like you over the next few days it would be great if you could sit down and write your 2 or 3 events down on a piece of events. Write down a specific goal that you would like to accomplish in each event. Now some of you may put down a “ time” and that’s okay, it’s human nature, but if you are that one we would like you to be a little more specific. What that means is, how are you going to get to that time. Is it working your walls, or maybe your going to work the middle of the race a little more. Whatever it is I think the message is pretty clear, you can’t just throw a time out there, you need a plan of how to get there. Just something to think about.
Last week as we worked through our test sets in the Prep and Gold group we would periodically look at the clock to check on everyone’s effort as the set evolved. You may have figured out, or maybe not that the green clock also helps the coaches keep track of the groups effort with more consistency. It makes it harder for you all to ZONE OUT during the set, and you all know what we mean.
We were amazed to watch the last (5) 50’s in the test set when we asked you to really work some magic and drop some time. We were expecting some 1 and 2 second drops. The problem arose when we were seeing over 5 second drops in a 50 at the end of a test set. I’m not sure what you were waiting for other than the fact that you were at that fork in the road with 2 paths to choose from, the easy path or the harder path that involved a little more work and a big effort along the entire path. If the thought crossed your mind that we were going to get in and help you down the pool, you might want to rethink your approach.
You really don’t want to get caught from behind or maybe you enjoy being shark food.
The December meet will be our first 2 day meet since last February and in any other week it falls on the same week as the Sports Fair meet which is our fall championship meet. We will approach that meet with a championship attitude. We will practice with that meet ⭕️ on our calendar. We will continue to prepare for that meet and when the date nears, we will taper a little, we will suit up, we will swim our best events and we will have a good time, be successful and walk away happy 😃 .
But coach what about our November meet? Well guys this is what we call a training meet therefore there will be NO SUITING UP , no exceptions. When signing up for your events let’s steer clear of your best events. What’s that mean coach? Let’s say one of your best events is the 100 fly, well then why not swim a 200 fly and work on your turns and under waters. For you 100 freestylers let’s make a go of the 200 free. I think you get the picture and if not ask us, we don’t bite. Sometimes I think you don’t ask because you already know the answer and don’t want to hear the same thing coming out of our mouths. Put yourself in a good position to allow yourself to achieve great results. Sometimes the correct path you choose can be hard and though there may be bigger pitfalls, the rewards at the end of that path will be greater.
JUST A THOUGHT!
So kiddos today is the last day of your 4 day weekend and it just so happens that it coincides with Election Day. Have you ever wondered why Election Day falls on the second Tuesday in November giving you a day off from school every year. Why not the first Monday or for that matter any other day of the week, of any other month.
Although it's become more and more easy to vote early sometimes a couple of months before, the first Tuesday of November remains the official day. But Why November? Do you remember how Halloween came to be? Harvest Time. Yes it has to do with the same thing. It was that time of the year when all the work for the year had been completed. Why Tuesday? Well long before polling places were far away and people had to travel long distances to vote. For religious reasons people did not want to travel on Sunday and did not want it on Monday for those same travel reasons, thus we land on Tuesday. Another reason for that first Tuesday is because November 1st is all Saint's Day and it is also the day that many shop owners balanced their books for the last month.
And so that is why Election Day will never fall before November 2nd of any given year and why you never go to school on the first Tuesday of any year.
Today’s workout
at the 200 as 4 races within itself. Here is a formula we found learns ago that goes a long way in understanding when looking at the 200. It goes something like this, X + (x+1.7) + (x+1.6) + (x+1.5) = time. Let’s break it down so that our fellow teammates will understand. What is the x ? Simply this is that first 50 from a dive. As you get into that second 50 there is just a little drop off, not much and is usually from the fact that we lose the dive. A big mistake a lot of swimmers make here is that they back off too much and can’t recover. You have to find that easy comfortable speed in that first 100 which hopefully will only be 3-4 second off your best 100 time and set you up for a great second 100. As you can see that 3rd 50 is faster than your second. This 50 is really when a lot of swimmers slow down, but it’s also the time where you can take over the race be it another swimmer or the clock. This is where you have to decide to race. It’s a mental thing now. You either want to be average today or great. You decide at that moment. It’s your decision. On to that last 50 now and this is where you have to really believe in yourself and the training that you have been doing. If you have been honest with your training that 4th 50 will be there and you will get your hand to that wall in record time. In order to get the results that you are looking for you have to put in the work. Notice I did not say putting in the time anyone can do that, what you do with that time at practice is the true answer to all your swimming problems.We had a really good week of practice cumulating with our challenge sets on Thursday and Friday. As Tony said on Friday "I don't like when you bring that clock out." Hold on for a second that clock is your coach for the day and is a tool to motivate each and every one of you.
Sunday started with a lot of good work on trying to lengthen our strokes. For the time being we are going to use the long course format on Sunday to really focus in on our strokes so that when we get to our races we can just go. Yes it can be harder, and requires more stamina but it does help you become a better swimmer. Age groupers will find that if you have weak spots in your stroke, they surface very quickly in a long course pool. In a short course pool flaws can be hidden especially if you have strong walls and underwater dolphin kicks.
Think about that for a second. If you are swimming in our groups on Sunday you have the best of both worlds. A long course pool where you can really work on the flaws in your strokes, but only if you embrace that thought and really focus. In the short course pool it becomes vital to perform all of your turns and underwater dolphins as if you are racing. Why?, because most if not all age groupers are still developing their stroke and therefore flaws do exist. Your walls are a way to overcome some of those flaws.
On Tuesday and Wednesday we got some good stroke and IM work in with a couple of good kick sets. yes everyone may have that favorite stroke they enjoy doing but the coaches really feel that it is vital to have a good IM in your tool box, therefore lets really get some outstanding efforts in the future as we work through our season.
We finished off our week with our challenge sets on Thursday and Friday. This set built off of our previous sets and what we were asking you all to do was simple, CHALLENGE YOURSELF on every repeat. Again we are trying to help you learn how to race. Sure it is always easy to drift in and drift out of a set, go fast when I feel like it, go easy on some and catch my breath. This does not work in a race and that is what we are trying to teach you. We are looking for consistency with the set, in short the same time on every repeat. We believe with this type of set we are starting to realize that we have more in the tank than we thought.
Sometimes we think too much about racing and how fast to go and what we are trying to teach is to get out faster at the front of your race. You all are pretty smart and mentally your brain will not allow you to go out too fast so lets not worry about holding back, it may very well backfire. And when you have a chance to race, Ask yourself "Why Not Me?" and for for it wether be it a meet or practice.
Be the BEST version of YOURSELF
We hope that all of you enjoyed yourselves yesterday with the opportunity to get back to what sports is all about, being able to compete. Remember to send a little thank you to Coach Heather and also Mrs. Lim for all the hard work that they put in to afford all of you with the opportunity to get back to some racing. We would also like to thank all of our parents for helping us with the meet. It was much appreciated.
We were so proud of each and every one of you for following all the safety precautions that were in place to allow us this opportunity. You all took care of your warmups flawlessly with no issues and most of this was done on your own, and guess what no missed swims.
THE MEET
First observation was that within our groups we had no DQ's and this was with a lot of you executing your crossover turns in the IM. Apparently a few of you still feel a little uncomfortable with the turn and that's okay as we will continue to work on it to help you get there.
The personal best times that were posted yesterday was great to see and even those that were not best times fell right near your lifetime best. The feedback that I got from you after your races was mostly positive and ran the gamut. The majority of you were happy and we were excited to see those expressions. Some although happy mentioned that their expectations were higher which we completely understand. I would say this to all of you, take a step back and think about how far you have come and the work that was put in to get you back to this point.
An area of your race that can always use improvement are the walls and by that we mean being aggressive in and out of those turns. That's not real fast water around the walls in the first place especially when 8 swimmers are churning it up causing all that turbulence around the walls. To be able to beat that you need to get in, get out as fast as you can in a tight streamline working the fast deep water.
Another area is how aggressively you approach the race. I read an article this morning that reinforces what we have been teaching you for years. When you set expectations that may be high you need together out fast enough to give yourself a chance to meet those expectations. With that, you need to be smart about that first part of your race. This article stated what we have been teaching you for what seems like forever and that is "almost every one slows down on the 3rd 50 of the 200 or 3rd 25 of a 100." Now if you are that one oddball who decides to rock that boat you just might b e in a better position than the rest of the field as you head for home.
SENIOR PREP PRACTICE THURSDAY
What were we trying to accomplish with our test set from last Thursday? It was all about challenging yourself on every repeat and learning out how to race. The coaches are trying to get you to be a little more aggressive during the front part of your races and building as the race evolves. Our GREEN clock was your stop watch as you went through the set and the objective was to swim all out and have consistent times throughout the set. Now if your times were bouncing all over it became obvious that we were either holding back or having a mental block, be it thinking you were tired and you were building in your own rest period. During a race you do get tired and we need to help you get through that both mentally and physically. We will attempt a similar set in a couple of week.
As we prepare for this meet we would like to impress upon everyone in our groups how important it is to follow the guidelines that have been set up for everyones health and safety.
It is important to remember that while not swimming we are not going to be able to sit around in little groups socializing. we need to keep are masks on and keep that distance between ourselves.
Yes its is a small sacrifice that will keep us safe and hopefully will allow all of us to stay in the water and participate in future meets.
Not knowing what the future holds we hope everyone has entered their best events for this meet. Yes, you heard correctly lets swim our best events and have fun with this meet. We would like to see you suit up for the meet and take the mental approach of a "mini" championship meet. Prepare yourself mentally and physically to swim back, don't take this meet for granted. If you have learned anything during the last 7 months it is that you cannot take your races for granted. Tomorrow is never a given and this sport can be snatched away in a moment so approach every race as it could be your last and enjoy that moment of the water engulfing your body as you move through it like a fish. Relish that felling and have fun.
With all of that and the new precautions being taken warmups may look and feel a little different. Our groups know the basic meet warmup which we do every Wednesday at practice. Stay mentally focused and do the best you can to warmup and stay warm during the meet.
Some typical mistakes made by age group swimmers involve both physical and nutrition, the first being hydration and keeping your body hydrated through the meet. It is important to drink and keep drinking before your thirsty. Stay away from the sodas, fried food and all sugars.
Warmups, it is important to understand you may need a second shorter warmup before your race if you have sat around a lot. Along those lines the warm down post race is very important and the timing is critical. If you put it off to talk to your friends or watch your friends swim the window for success throughout the meet begins closing, so do it immediately to start preparing for that next race, and do it properly.
Bottom line the WARMUP and WARM DOWN are useless if they are not done properly and that involves the timing of when they are done.
Yes that dreaded disqualification, a little yellow piece of paper that is signed by the officials and in most cases given to the coach exp...
