START THEM YOUNG

Here is my grandson’s first swimming lesson.  My daughter thought maybe baby pool first.  I laughed 🤭 at her “you really think that’s where you started.  The guards had you in the competition pool.

It wasn’t even a hard workout, yet he could not stay awake for lunch

MAKO FOLLIES

So here are your videos of the cross over turns.  Some are really good, some not so good but we all have a good foundation to work with.

DON’T FORGET THE PARENTS

Gold group working on exploding into streamlines.  We need help!

We know that a lot of the parents have been missing the opportunity to have the little glimpse of their 🏊‍♀️ swimmer in the pool, be it catching a practice, watching a race or even maybe working the tables or on that hot deck.  Come on you may think Saturday’s have been calm and relaxing 😎 but you know that you miss that organized chaos that all of you participate in.  Without giving away age I will say that this is thefirst summer that have not had  a meet to go to since I was 6 and it was probably a few more years as I had older siblings who were on the team, but my guess is those early years were spent at the snack bars or in the 👶 kiddie pools across the league.

Anyway I thought I would try and update all of you on what your swimmers have been doing in the pool as to make you feel like your still involved especially since some of them may not share as much as others.  As I approached this summer and started working with these kids I had to switch the way I prepared workouts for the groups.  We all know how hard it is for all athletes to have a goal to work toward and for most of them it’s comes down to “ game day” or for swimmers race day.  It’s all about them shooting off the wall or the blocks and getting those fingers back to the finish wall as fast as they can.  So we had to really design some workouts that are different, challenging, new, fun.  We have I introduced the crossover turn for the IM transition which has been interesting 🧐 to see the progress which as you can imagine runs the gamut.  However some have picked it up really well, others are progressing, some are struggling but keep trying, but all have an understanding of it and continue working on it with some kind of set each practice.

 Senior prep working on Distance per stroke

This past week we have reintroduced the old tempo trainer which some swimmers love and others view as a nagging coach in their ears, a constant reminder of how you are doing against yourself.  We have shown them how to use them in a variety of ways that can be both challenging and motivational while at the same time help with their racing techniques.  We have used them in some kicking sets showing them how to have little bursts of speed within their races.  Today we had a little contest where we all set our trainers on the same time and had to beat that beep to the wall in a 25 free.  Everyone would lower it to what I decided until we had one left swimming.   As you missed your beep it was time to exit the pool, you were done.  Talk about watching kids swimming fast and putting forth a great effort.  Parents you would have been proud of all the swimmers.  We actually ended 10 minutes late (sorry parents) but even the kids who were out stayed to watch our final two Rece and Ryan go for the grand prize. You didn’t think I’d tell you who won did you, I’ll let the kids tell you.  

HOW ARE WE DOING

So swimmers and parents we are now into the second week of working on this crossover turns and you would be so proud of your kids.  They are open to learning it and are doing well in its execution, some better than others but that’s ok.  It’s new and it can be very challenging.  The areas that we need a lot of help with are, one making sure we don’t go past the 90 degree before our hand hits the wall, but this is no different than a normal back to breast turn.  The second area is getting our knees to our chins a little faster and getting enough air to get our pullout done correctly.

We will do work every day with this by incorporating it into our sets during practice.  The gold group may spend more time doing 25’s each day until they we feel comfortable going into that wall.

This Thursday our senior prep swimmers will done tempo trainers to see if we can help their stroke rates.  Some of you SLUGGO’s are in for a treat with this workout.  Maybe I’m kidding myself, nah I have faith in all of you.  So buckle your goggle straps and caps and be ready to go.  

SPIN FOR YOUR INTERVAL

Todays practice went a little smoother than I was expecting with our spin wheel.  Yesterday our focus was all on our body positions and swimming with great technique.  You guys were amazing as you worked through the short IM set.  

Your technique was great and the distance per stroke was outstanding.  Today we turned our attention to short racing/sprint sets with repeats of 100's ALL OUT, picking up your time of each one.  There was some outstanding effort and one in particular was Charlotte Dixon who was hitting 1:11-1:14 on each repeat.  The set was set up with the clock resetting on each repeat to make it easy for you to get your times and gauge your effort level.

This set was meant to be challenging both physically and mentally.  How challenging was entirely up to you and what you wanted to accomplish out of it.  Now the three groups did have some swimmers who were placed on the UNABLE TO CONTINUE LIST, which included 10 pushups 3 times and sitting out for the completion of the current round.  Included in that little village we had Erin, Ben, Chaz, Luca, Helena, and Race.

SENIOR PREP @ 7 RESULTS

5x100@1:57

4x100 @1:52

4x100@ 1:54

4x100 @1:51

4x100@1:58

TOTAL 2100

SENIOR PREP @8 RESULTS

4X100 @1:58

4X100 @1:56

4X100 @1:53

4X100 @1:59

4X100 @1:52

TOITAL 2000

JUNIOR GOLD @9 RESULTS

4X100 @1:58

4X100 @2:00 DUDE WAS THE ONLY ONE TO SPIN A 2 MINUTE INTERVAL

4X100 @1:57

4X100 @1:48

TOTAL 1600

GREAT JOB