“WIN”. What’s Important Now

This past weekend 12 of our Mako swimmers spent the weekend at UMD with swimmers from all over the North East.  This meet is a true test of where the swimmers rank in the country.  Swimmers were required to swim the full complement of events, over the three days.  All the 11 and over athletes began the meet early Friday afternoon with the 500 free. Saturday events were the 200 fly, 200 breaststroke, and the 200 IM for the 13 and over swimmers. The events that day for the 12 and under’s were the 100 fly and the 100 breast. The 10 and under’s also swam the 200 free to start the afternoon.   We returned Sunday morning to swim the 200 back and 400 IM for the 13 and over age group.  The 12 and under’s arrived in the afternoon to finish their meet with the 100 backstroke and the 200 IM. Your teammates represented the Mako swim team well with their efforts over the three days.  Not only did they swim well, but they were on time for warmup, and proceeded to go through their warmup with a

We hope you all are looking forward to the IMX meet this weekend, it’s a chance to get in all your long events over a three day period.  This meet is vital for you 8th graders as you prepare for High School swimming.  This is the point in he season where high school swimmers are preparing for district, regional and state championships, all preliminary and final meets.  At the same time they are looking forward to Junior/Senior champs and National meets.  At the same time they are maintaining their school work.  Indeed it’s a lot on the plate but with good preparation and time management everything is possible.  Look at everything as a learning experience that will help you in moving forward.  Now a closer look at how to prepare for the meet. WARM UP TIMES  13 and over Saturday 6:30-7:00. Sunday 7:00-7:30 12 and under Saturday 12:30-1:00 Sunday 1:00-1:30 First let’s suit up for this meet! Second get your warmups and warm down done especially before leaving for the day. Third pac

Another Saturday with no practice because of a college meet.  It’s that time of the year, but if your sitting around in a corner bored silly, maybe you can find a way to a pool and get in a short workout.  Yes I know it might snow but around here that chance of real bad weather means there’s a good chance it won’t be too bad. Anyway here is a workout for your bucket.  The gold group did it this afternoon with headsets. I have adjusted the intervals for the senior prep. WARM UP (1000) 300 swim 25 free fast feet to wall. 25 backstroke get those stroke counts and fast dolphins 200 kick with snorkels 4x25 kick fast with snorkels @40 4x25 kick fast with snorkels @35 4x25 kick fast with snorkels @30 200 pull with paddles (add for prep) PACING SET WE KNOW HOW TO SWIM. LETS LEARN TO RACE NOW 3 rounds (1200/ 2200) 1x200 free@3:00 (strong /build and maintain/ race hold on to speed/ finish strong )x50’s 1x100 free @1:45 strong/ race middle 50/ get home strong 2x50 free race A5 @

What an interesting Monday we had, first with the prep group in the morning followed by the gold group in the afternoon. The past couple of Monday’s we have been doing a cycle set for a couple of reason, first as part of our training and the second to help you understand how to train hard and race fast. Often there are times that we tend to believe we are doing things correctly when in fact we are missing something that we are unaware of. We discussed our effort level at both the morning and afternoon workouts and tried to explain our chart of A1 to A5. A5 is race speed and it drops off as you go down with A2 being warmup and warm down. A3 are normally recovery swims. Now unless you are watching the clock on the A4-A5 and getting your times you are just lap swimming and you may or may not improve.  Your choice but keep that thought when you come up short at the next meet.  Coach Shannon drew up a chart for you to help better understand this concept For the coaches it’s f

So at practice today as we were finishing our dry land, a couple of you brought up that 🐘 elephant in the room and that is, Should I wear my tech suit to get my cuts?  Simple answer is NO!   Let’s dive into this issue just a little. First off if you get a cut this weekend it is because you have worked hard and have earned it, not because of a suit.   Those suits are meant for 2-3 meets a year.  That’s it. You are to wear them at championship meets when you want to have every advantage under the sun.   At the qualifying meets in February we will bring them out if we are swimming for cuts, because if we don’t get them at those meets it won’t matter in March. The last point I would like to reinforce is our talk about controlling the things you can control.  Don’t get wrapped up into what other swimmers are doing.  Focus on what you are doing. I hope this finally puts that 🐘elephant to bed.

This past weekend a few of us made the trip down to Lee District to swim our 1000 and 1650 freestyle events.  I was thrilled that many of you accepted this challenge and participated. As a coach I really believe that these are two events that swimmers in our gold and prep groups need to face once a year.  If you trained during our holiday break, I have always looked at this meet as a perfect way to end this part of your training and a signal that it is now time for that push towards championship season. Sometimes in order to see success later and to get some needed balance in your other events it’s important to open other doors once in a while and take a risk. Often times when I see the meet entry reports I notice that swimmers are always signing up for the same events and my first thought is, clearly there is no plan that this swimmer is following.  Sometimes the comforts and security that those events give you are the same reasons why you can’t take that next step on your way

                           Well guys I guess by now you know that our practice has been cancelled for this evening, and although you may be excited and jumping for joy, let’s remember the season we are in.  This is a time when we need to get all the hard training done leading into all the championship meets.  Not a time when we want to be getting excited about missing workout sessions, and yes the coaches do not enjoy missing these workouts either, let’s stay focus on our goals and stay sharpe. That being said let’s also remember that Mason will be closed periodically over the next two because of scheduled meets.  They will also be having the High School State meet in the middle of May, so let’s have a plan so that your hard work pays off. Here is a go to workout that you can use if you miss practice.  I will post one throughout January that can be used any time you need to, keep them in your buckets to plug any leaks. AEROBIC MAINTENANCE FREE WARM UP (1200) 400 swim mixer 300 kick wit

Below are the approximate times that you will be swimming this weekend.  The first number is your heat as of today and the time that heat will swim.  It could change a little due to scratches but the affect will be minimal. This can be found on the web site.  We will be swimming a 10 lane course mixed gender.  Try to arrive at least 1 hour before.  Check in right away and proceed to do your warmup.  They will seed you in as soon as they have a lane.  Get a good long stretch out to start and don’t forget to do some kicking.  Everyone should have a interval they would like to hold in their heads from Thursday practice.  Go through some 50’s using the clock on a minute just to get a feel for what your speed should feel like. Do these 50’s to a flip to get a true race feel.  Do about 6-8 of these and you should be good.  If the race starts to hurt think of yourself as a rock because a rock feel no pain.   HAVE FUN WITH IT!

We hope you all had a great holiday season, and got some much needed rest over your break.  It was great to see all of you who made an effort to get in your training sessions.  As of today we have had a bunch of you make all the workouts and I would like to thank you for that effort. We had some great work mixing in a distance workout followed by a sprint workout.  You all put forth an outstanding effort as we worked through these workouts. As for myself I took a little time to read over your letters that you wrote back in September with your goals and dreams, and to also see how we are doing as a group in chasing those goals.  After reading through all of them I proceeded to chart out the next 5 weeks of our season starting on January 6 and we will refer to it as the Mako 5 week cycle set. Yes this is a new year and let’s face it, since the start of time people of all walks of life make resolutions that are for the most part hard to keep.  For us in the swimming community it