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Showing posts from October, 2020

A HALLOWEEN MESSAGE

  We hope that this Halloween brings each of you Happy haunting.  This Halloween coincides with a full moon which should make for a nice crisp night to be outside with family or even maybe a few close friends.  The last time we had a full moon on Halloween was 2001 and all you swimmers had not even been born. Let's take a moment away from the pool and take a look at October 31, which started out being know as "All Hallow's Eve" or what you have come to know as Halloween.   This very special day began centuries ago at what was know at the time as the Celtic festival.  It was a time that coincided with the end of their harvest season along with the end of summer and goodbye to the long warm sunny day and the preparation for the dark cold days that lay ahead.  It was believed to be a good time to communicate with the deadened divine (having supernatural or magical insight) future. Now that we have an understanding of this day, let's look at some of the traditions of

MONDAY PRACTICE

Good Monday workout from all the groups. The Junior Gold group worked really hard on getting our head position corrected in free and back while at the same time trying to work on extending our strokes so that we were able to swim “tall” and thus more efficient and faster.  You guys were great with your focus on what we were trying to get you to do.  We also reminded you of our “5 second” rule off the turns and when you all applied it to your swimming, your walls improved tremendously.   Great effort! Why the 5 seconds?  Do we expect that in you races?  At your level and age at the moment 5 seconds is a lot to ask for, we agree, but if we can commit to 5 seconds in practice we believe that would translate to 2 seconds, maybe more when we are racing which would be a very good thing to strive for.  The more time we can be under water the better off we are as long as we are doing it efficiently.  So keep at it because it takes time to develop and become comfortable doing. The Senior Prep a

More than You Think

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

MEET FEEDBACK

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

First Meet Back

  Yes it may be the season of witches, ghosts and goblins but this is no trick, we will be allowed to hold our first meet in over 7 months this coming weekend. 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

Doing Things Correctly

A lot of times this sport requires more than just showing up depending on the level your at in the sport/program. We know that we have touched on this subject before, but sometimes it is important to keep putting the message out until we get it.  After todays Junior Gold/Blue workout Coach Wendy and I thought this would be a good time to repeat the message. We only have only so much time in each workout session and so many things to work on that at times it can overwhelm not only the swimmers but coaches πŸ˜• too as the time runs on. This morning and without calling anyone out things that we observed during practice were lazy turns, with lazy streamlines and underwater kicking.  Many of you were pulling with shallow arms off the turns with a breath.  While working through our backstroke sets there was a lot of shallow pulling with straight arms, and not a lot underwater kicking happening.   When you started this sport most of your time was spent practicing dills for the strokes along wit

BACK TO RACING

  Fall has arrived and with it comes the annual show put on by Mother Nature.  I hope this year with our free weekends you all find time to venture outside, maybe even a trip to the mountains or my favorite a kayak trip down the Shenandoah River. If nothing else even a walk around the neighborhood to take in the show FALL MEET "The whistle blows I take my spot on the block I look down through the water An old friend The "T" It beckons me to dive in Cap on ✅ Goggles set ✅ Muscles relaxed ✅ Ready Thoughts race through my mind Win the heat Win the event Beat my seed time Just race A familiar command "Take Your Mark" Thoughts stop, as I fly off The blocks It's all coming back to me now Wall, flip, streamline kick  Get up and go Stop breathing one last stroke Fingers on the wall Place, time doesn't matter this time All that mattered is I raced I'm home" Now that the events for our fall meet have been posted a lot of you have asked what events you sh

WHY DO THE CROSS OVER

Today the Gold group @7:00 took their shot at our wheel.  Happy πŸ˜ƒ to report that no one from this group had a time out issued to them, OUTSTANDING. Your results  4x100 @ 1:51 4x100 @ 2:00 4x100 @ 1:53 4x100 @1:48 3x100 @ 1:50 So why are we going to work on the crossover turn, simply said because we can and it’s a perfect time to do it.   What seems so long ago was the discussion we had about your tool box and what should be in it.  Well this is just something to add to it.   Quite frankly I get tired of watching swimmers do what they think is the turn and in reality it’s just something you think is 😎 cool, and other than that you really don’t have a “legitimate” reason for do it.   As I see it there are two advantages if done with precision, one being that it allows you reach further and get there sooner which is what all swimmers are trying to do.   The second involves the law of inertia, which simply means your body wants to keep moving in the same direction and this turn allows yo

JUNIOR GOLD CROSSOVER

Hey JUNIOR GOLD SWIMMERS WATCH THIS VIDEO AS WE PREPARE TO WORK ON THE CROSSOVER AND CARRY IT THROUGH OUR HOLIDAY TRAINING. Okay guys here is the crossover turn for back to breast.  There are many variations that people use but this is the correct one and Chloe Sutton breaks it down very nicely for you all.  Watch this and on Friday we will start work on the first part of this turn and that is touching the wall over your head with your shoulder up.  Next week we will move to the next step if we can master this without getting DQ πŸ‘Ž and I am the stroke and turn judge.