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 😕 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 with a lot of time spent on turns and underwater work. As you get older and more proficient in your skills we can start to increase your training intensity during the workouts. Often as swimmers move up I hear a lot of coaches say "they work really hard" and yes that is a good habit to have, but while you're working hard you have to work smart or you may never reach your true potential. At the younger age it boils down to working smarter and for an example we will use our streamlines off the wall today. We observed a lot of lazy walls today with swimmers not getting their heads to the flags on the underwater dolphins. Some of us were taking multiple strokes before we got to the flags and at one point we saw people pushing off on there stomachs. All this amounts to is lack of discipline which will always hold you back not only in life but definitely in this sport. You have to be able to find that discipline to want to do it correctly each and every time and not only when it’s convenient. Most of your good swimmers will not only do things correctly when someone is watching, they will also be doing things correctly when no one is around and watching.
During a race everything boils down to having a strategy worked out and then being able to react when the race starts. Being able to react to the race begins at practice with paying attention to the little things with starts, strokes, turns and finishes. The only way to become proficient in these areas is through repeating the movement over and over until it becomes second nature. The next step in the process is to increase the intensity of the workout with more training while at the same time being able to stay proficient as the work load increases. Only at that time will your full potential be realized
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