MONEY IN THE BANK

 💰 Have you ever stopped and asked yourself this question; Am I improving as I travel 🏊‍♀️🏊🏻‍♂️along this black line on the bottom of the pool?  Sure everyone of you have your own goals and aspirations that you are trying to achieve as you make that journey back and forth, and no matter what they may be they are all important.

As competition day nears, you will be faced with this dilemma it’s time to pay 💰 the bill.  To be sure if you have been attending practice there will be something in that account to draw from, but how much you have to draw from will depend on the effort and focus to the details during those workouts. 

As you arrive at practice to make that deposit into your account, In say to you "Great Job", you've shown up.  In order to get the highest return on your investment the first and foremost thing staring you in the face is your the attitude you will have while making that deposit.

Is your plan for the workout go like so, show up, swim, get out and continue on my day.  I encourage you to honestly look at that plan and ask yourself, "Am I getting any return for my investment?  Yes it is an investment of your time and effort!  In monetary terms if you take $100.00 and put it in a 🐖 bank on your desk, when you go to spend it you have $100.00. 

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Let's break that down.  Put that $100.00 into an account where you can draw 5%interest.  you attend all your practices (for our purposes 3 a week 12 for the month) with a great attitude, great work ethic and focusing on all of the little things, your account will have grown to $254.00.  The interest you earn will be determined by how hard you work, the focus on the little things and the attitude you show up with.

Here are some  things that occur during a practice that will determine how much interest you will be able to get on your investment.  

• Breathing pattern.  It may be something as simple as not breathing off of your breakouts or into your finishes.  It may be more challenging such as breathing every 3 or 2-3-2 during our longer free sets or during fly our 1 up 2 down pattern and sticking with it even when your tired.
• Kick set.  Maybe you may not be there worlds greatest kicker but, you need those legs for body position and to be able to finish your races especially the longer ones.
• Turns. Oh yes the walls.  There are so many of them in fact I added up the walls from the Junior Gold workout last Monday.  
  
  There were 62 turns during a simple practice, 62 chances to make a deposit and draw interest for race day.  Instead of being lazy you might as well take ownership and do them all correctly not just when you feel like it.
• Drills.  These are built into the sets on a regular purpose and that is muscle memory.  Let your body and muscles memorize these movements so that on race day, all you need to do is show up and do what you do RACE!
  
  
  
• Warm Ups/Cool Down. Take ownership and prepare your body for what you are going to ask it to do.  Afterwards thank your body by preforming the Cool down properly.
• Streamlines.  How important are these.  Take a pencil and drop it into a bucket of water horizontally.  What happens?  Now the the pencil and drop it vertically.  Notice a difference? A streamline that isn't tight will make your body work harder and less efficient coming off those walls.

If you can take that step and change your attitude to one of taking ownership of YOUR swimming and make a commitment to excellence, I truly believe you will find a new love for your sport.  oh and by the way by choosing excellence you are making a great investment in a healthy life which will draw interest along the way.  It may also help on YOUR race day and instead of showing up and forcing yourself to swim well, it will come easily and naturally because of the investment that you have made.

Now that we have been in the water for a few weeks it’s time that we take stock and see how we are all doing.  We also want to give a glimpse of what is happening for your parents also being that it has been so long since they have seen you all in the pool.

I want to thank the coaches who took good care of all of you for those first two weeks while I was wrapping things up at the pool.  For those two weeks  I asked them to just focus on getting the procedures down and to just get you in the water and allow you to do some comfort swimming.  Everyone apparently did a great job because this past week as I started everyone knew their places, where to go and it could not have been smoother.

I have notice that we do have some issues that I need to address to help you all as you go through the workout.  The first thing that I knew was going to be an issue was the fact that the Senior Prep and Senior Blue group are very different groups.  Although we will probably be doing the same workouts they will be  different.  We will have different intervals for the groups which may also involve a difference in yardage, with the focus of the workout remaining the same for all.  This same scenario repeats itself on Monday where we have a combined Senior Prep and High School Group and so the same situation will probably play itself out.

The second issue is water 🚰🚰 for the swimmers out at the 10 m mark.  We will build in water breaks into the workouts along with a switch of positions so that the swimmer at the 10 meter mark has the opportunity to use the wall.  With that being said please remember to bring your water and drink it during practice.  You should not wait until you become thirsty, take sips as you go through the workout instead of waiting.  This will avoid stopping and siting on the wall.

The next issue I see for all of the groups is the communication of what we are doing, and yes I recognize this and knew that it was going to be an issue in the environment that we find ourselves.  While I do have my headsets I realize that the older kids do not enjoy using them that much.  Time to time is okay if I read you all correctly if not please let me know, I am open for suggestions.  

I know the first couple of weeks the coaches may have printed a workout for each of you which is fine but for the coaches that is 16 or 24 copies every day and there absolutely has to be a better way. For that reason after I organize the plan for the week and finalize the workouts I will

email them the senior blue and prep group as a whole.  You will have the workouts in advance and may print them out and put them at the end of the lane for reference.  I will still try to write on the board as much as I can.   The problem  with that is I spend more time running around writing which is of no value to you all the swimmers and quite frankly it drives me nuts.  With that said please understand that we will be flexible with the workout as sometimes things aren’t going well and when we arrive at that point adjustments need to be made to get back on track.

Last week we spent Monday with a long day of free work and followed it by a lot of IM work thru the rest of the week finishing it up with a sprint workout on Friday.  The purpose of the Friday set was to get a lot of fast swimming of your choice with ample rest so that could hold your time within a second on everyone of the repeats.  The set was not designed for you to just go back and forth.  The challenge was to hold the same time on all of them so you needed to stay focus.

A big advantage that I see in this new environment is the fact that all of our streamlines underwater’s and finishes should really improve.  With only 3 and 4 in a lane there is no excuse not to be doing it correctly every time and not only when you feel like it.  Take ownership of your swimming.   What’s this mean?  

1. Free no breath breakouts. No breath finish. Fingertips to wall
2. Back aggressive first stroke off breakouts. Head to 10meter mark off underwater.  Dive into finish.
3. Breaststroke good aggressive pullouts. Dive into turns and finishes.  That means being long into walls
4. Fly no breath breakouts. 1 up 2 down regardless long into turns and finishes

This week we want to spend time with our crossover turns. Refer to the post from July 7 and look over the video. Monday will be spent on step one setting the turn up and from there we will move to step two on Tuesday or Wednesday with the hope of putting it all together later in the week.  Two problems we were having during the summer were going past the 90 as we touch and not not bringing our chin to the knees on the transition.  Check it out. 

LET’s HAVE A GOOD WEEK WITH YOUR SCHOOL WORK AND YOUR SWIMMING TIME!

A NEW BEGINNING

 SENIOR BLUE  SENIOR PREP  JUNIOR GOLD GROUPS

As we embark upon our new journey into the 20-21 season things will seem different and even maybe a little strange, but the constant will be the smell of chlorine, goggle marks around the eyes and the joy of being immersed in your old friend “WATER”. 

You will once again experience the friendship and laughter that goes into working hard 😓  and all the wonderful pain and joy each of you will experience along the way.  As you prepare for this new season I want you to understand why you do it, Is it for the glory?  The awards?  The exercise?  The friends?  The challenge of seeing how far you can reach.   No matter what your individual reasons are they are all important as we enter this journey together as a group.  

As we start out. I also want you to ask yourself this one basic question, Am I just going to swim with the same bad habits or will I take responsibility and try to correct them.  A mistake is only a MISTAKE if you keep repeating it over and over!

This is the challenge I lay at each of your feet, Stop being a follower! Become a leader!

Unfortunately I will miss the first few practices and will have other coaches working with you.  I have to get things wrapped up from the summer until the 13th.  They will just be getting you into following a routine and do some basic swimming until we are ready to roll

Here is a video of Erin playing with her cap to get you started.