“WIN”. What’s Important Now

  HAPPY EASTER TO ALL THE MAKO SWIMMERS AND YOUR FAMILIES.  Hope you get some rest today with families and friends.   For those of you getting ready to travel to Saint Petersburg this week for the age group Elite meet, safe travels.  We are waiting for you and look forward to a GREAT WEEK of swimming. Make sure to pack extra goggles, suits, caps.  LOTS OF SUNSCREEN .  You burn that first day you’re still swimming so plan accordingly.  Your sun time does not all have to be done on that first day.    WE ARE DOWN HERE TO WORK, RACE, AND THEN WE CAN PLAY. PRE-RACE MISTAKE #10 Allowing fear of failure to be top motivator   I had a rugby coach who used to preach to us that most of our games played safe.  What he meant was that we played not to win but played not to lose.  We were more afraid of the consequences of losing than what the consequences would be if we worked.  Once we worked through that our game took off because we were a lot less timid and tight and we could play in a more rela

  SELF-DOUBT- - When you are constantly having that battle between your ears about whether you can beat someone or that you can be successful in a particular race or event you are only setting yourself up for disaster.  While this battle goes on you are eroding your preparation, self confidence, effort, and focus. The bottom line is that for you to have any chance of success, YOU first have to BELIEVE.  Otherwise it's all noise.; PRE-RACE MISTAKE #7 Poor Plan or lack of Plan Entering a training session or competition is like throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping it sticks so you know your ready.  I get that sometimes swimmers will ask for a plan prior to a race but I think a lot but not always is a way for a swimmer to help with pre-race anxiety.  This plan includes a training program along with race strategies that are worked on during practice.  This plan is only as good as the swimmer who works it and then goes out and execute it.  PRE-RACE MISTAKE #8 Psyching yourself

 As a swimmer sometimes it becomes hard to park life issues at the door as you arrive to the pool 🏊‍♀️ for either a training session or a meet.  Remember this if you have done the work it becomes all mental. PRE-RACE MISTAKE #4 Carrying life issues onto the pool deck. Parking these issues at the door can be challenging be it; homework, gossip, a fight with a friend or any other number of hassles that smack you head on and sometimes they hit you when you least expect it like on a idle Tuesday afternoon.  One of your goals mentally has to be able to separate them from your swimming 🏊‍♀️. If you take life worries into training or competition you become distracted and not fully focused on the task at hand.  Do you allow life’s worries to influence your swimming? HAKUNA MATATA. "NO WORRIES"                                                 PRE-RACE MISTAKE #5 OVERTHINKING YOUR RACE BEFORE YOU STEP ONTO THE BLOCKS Are you a perfectionist who thinks about every part of your race ov

"The mind is a powerful thing and most people don't use it properly."   Mark Maguire Have you ever wonder where  those pre-race jitters or that knot in your stomach comes from as you are standing behind the blocks before your race. Sometimes all those pre race jitters can have a positive result on your race, however athletes can also turn those jitters into negative anxiety that can adversely affect your race. I read an article from Peak Performance (Dr. Patrick Cohn) over the weekend where some of this information comes from along with some of my own thoughts. Pre-race jitters will and always has been part of this sport as any swimmer knows as they stand behind the blocks alone in your thoughts, but in that moment if you allow those  jitters to turn into performance anxiety your body begins to tense up and you will not be able to perform at your best. Come on you all know what we are talking about here; the pit in your stomach, the fast breathing, the feeling of getting

  " The best  preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today." SPRING BREAK We will not be having practice next week during spring break.  Wherever spring break finds you next week we hope you have safe travels, enjoy your break with family and friends and take this time to recharge and come back ready to head into summer season with a great attitude.  Enjoy your spring break! For those of you swimming in St.Pete we will be holding practice next week and it is important that everyone attends so that we are ready to RACE in the meet.  If you are traveling during the break it is important that you find a pool and jump in and do some swimming at least 3 times during the week.  Try to avoid being out of the pool for more than 2 consecutive days.  I will post a few workouts here that you can refer to to help. GOOD SWIMMER or GREAT SWIMMER No we are not taking about the olympics, or necessary the "National Team".  We are talking about being "great" at your l

 "NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.  THE WORD ITSELF SAYS 'I'M POSSIBLE." Audrey Hepburn CHAMP MEET WRAP UP Congratulations to all the swimmers from all three groups that participated in the Mako meet over the weekend.  Although I could not watch you all swim in person I followed each of you on Meet Mobile.  It  looks like all of you rose to the occasion and had some great races and I hope some of the things we have been working on were evident in your races.  Those of you who tried new events and distances should be very proud of yourselves for stepping out of your comfort zones.  It will help you tremendously as we move forward. We had a Great weekend also out at UMD with some great races and some good relays.  Some of you were very good about taking our feed back after a race and applying it in your very next race.  Very exciting to see that response from all of you. FINALS Cindy Cai 50 Fly Maddie Carroll 200 back/ 100 free  Tyler Harris 100 Free/ 50 Fly Evan Moh 50 Breast An

  "Talk doesn't cook rice."   Chinese Proverb It's easy to say things especially in today's world the real work starts bye going out and doing! For the past two weeks we have given you all a huge amount of sets to try and help each group with their UNDERWATER DOLPHINS off the walls or as we like to say using your fifth stroke. Adapting the strong underwater dolphin kick to human bodies isn't easy, but it is very effective.  Swimmers are limited by our "bow wave",  that little wave in front of us that travels down the pool with us.  Unlike dolphins who can literally jump over that wave 🌊 swimmers aren't capable of getting over or around it, but we can get under it and the longer we can stay under it the better off we are.   The debate for swimmers is whether the mastery of this stroke comes with a loss of speed.  That is the question,  at what point does using that kick affect your speed and thus your time.  Luckily rules are in place that you c

  “WIN”  WHAT’S IMPORTANT NOW So maybe that streamline or UW dolphin kick aren’t important to you in training today.  Maybe today isn’t the day you want to really work hard.  You’ve made up your mind that today isn’t the day but someday it will be. I only have one question for you which is, Where is someday on this calendar and where does it fall into the week?  I’ve checked all my calendar’s at the house at the pool and I can’t find one that has someday in it. If your putting off something today waiting for someday it’s going to be a long…long wait. Looking for a healthy snack for that appetite after a swimming session?  After that training session or meet you need to feed that monster with some healthy food.   Remember you need to fuel your body with "high octane food" if you want it to perform at high level.  Don't forget junk in = junk out.   It is important for swimmers to refuel after every 90 minutes of swimming g activity.  It is also important to snack before dur

 "If January is the month of change, February is the month of lasting change." Always swim tall, swim fast in and out of your turns and always finish to the hand on the wall. Without a vision you are swimming blind not much different than swimming with water in your goggles. Although swimmers have the vision of "big races, fast times and ultimate success" their vision often becomes blurred and hard to see.  I truly believe that most swimmers look at swimming as "swimming practice" and they think by attending practice and just swim that they will get the results they want.  This may be true in a young swimmers development but with each birthday those results become harder to attain especially as your times get faster.   So what can you do? The first thing is to have a vision of where you are headed and a plan on how to get there.  (Certainly you want to have a better plan than Coach Heather and I or else you never know where you'll end up")  The fi

  SENIOR PREP So, yesterday Dude and Anna had their birthday swims where they were ask to guess their times in a 50 free within 1.0 seconds up or down.  The reason I like doing this is twofold, first to see what your confidence level is and second to show you what it takes to swim fast. This 50 took place at the end of practice and after we did those 6x100 and 6x50 all out at a tight interval.  Forward to the guess (Dude 27.7 and Anna 27.9) and at first thought I wanted them to think about it, because at first thought I knew they were probably guessing high and being safe.  Let me repeat that “being safe”. THE RESULTS ARE IN —-The two of them finished in a dead heat coming in at 25.90 on my watch.  Compensating for human error let’s say 26.3 and so by playing safe they were outside of that 1.0 second of their guess. What’s your point coach?  It’s simple CONFIDENCE. The swimmer who is confident will have a much easier path towards their goals and it starts with how you talk to yourself

"If you're scared to lose rather than excited to win, then that's the wrong way to approach a race." CATE CAMPBELL... That one quote says a lot about what we as coaches observe while watching swimmers walk around the deck during a swim meet.  I venture to guess that the elephant in the room that most scares you is that final result that appears on the scoreboard be it the place, the time or both.  In your fantasy world you may think you can control that board but in reality all you can do is believe in yourself and the work you have put in and just race.  That’s how you control that board.  Put the pen to the paper and write your story.   We've talked about controllable and uncontrollable in previous sessions and now I want to put this question out there, Can you control the uncontrollable?  To an extent I would says but it takes practice just like anything else.  Swimming like life moves fast.  Situations happen, things go wrong and your ability to manage those