YOU HAVE TO HAVE A VISION

 "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 first thing you need to do is look no further than you daily swimming, and instead of thinking of it as "swimming practice" think of this as "swim training" which is what we are doing at all levels, Junior Blue, Junior Gold, and Senior Prep.  Depending on which level your at we are trying to train you and give you techniques that will help you with your races.  It could be something as simple as repeating your streamlines over and over again, it could be repeating a set over and over again until it is performed successfully.  You may not like it but if we can not do it in practice, what makes you think you can do it in race conditions.

Once you buy into this and start approaching each day of swimming as a training session you will be one step closer to realizing your vision. 

NUTRITIONAL TIP THIS WEEK

The watermelon popsicle.  This is an easy way to keep you hydrated during competitions and is really easy to make.  It also is a different and cool way to have a watermelon treat.

PRESIDENT DAY PRACTICE

This week we had 2 different types of practices in honor of presidents day.  The first was with the Gold Group who had the following set 46x25 and on each of the 25 they had to give us the name of a president. Parents, you will be happy to know that they named 41 of the 46 which Jackson and I were surprised to see.  A shout out to Ella Kim who named the most on the list.

With the senior prep group each person of the lane got a index card with a statement on it and they had the choice of picking which one they wanted to answer with the name of the president.  If right they got the easier of the two sets.  Of the 5 games they played they answered all 5 correctly.  We did go through the rest of them and they got all but 14 of them.  

SET OF THE WEEK

4x25 IMO (ready position, strong first 3 first strokes)

4x50 free @40/45/50/55 (intervals different for gold and blue). no breath out no breath in

3x100 IM (walk arounds) looking for streamlines off starts fast 25 to a fast finish)

FUN FACTS EVERY SWIMMERS HAVE IN TRAINING

 

THE BAKERS DOZEN

How many sound like you?

1. Can we do relays? 
2. When did I start singing this song?
3. I wonder what's  for dinner?
4. Wait, who was the 16 th president? 
5. What ifs I said this instead....?
6. What number Arte we on?What time is it?
7. I wonder if I could fall asleep while swimming?
8. What are we leaving on?
9. I wish I was a diver?
10. Who invented swimming?
11. I wonder if the coach saw that?
12. Why?
13. Please stay off my feet...