SETTING THE TONE

 

We hope that your first couple weeks of school went well and you’ve settled into a routine.  In another week we will be starting our workouts/training for the 2024-25 short course season.  The coaches are ready and eager to welcome back our returning swimmers, and look forward to meeting and getting to know our new swimmers to MAKOS.

We look forward to an exciting and successful season ahead.

As we start our new competitive swim season it is important for all swimmers to be prepared both physically and mentally from day 1.  Set yourself up to be successful this year from that first workout.

WAYS TO GET OFF TO A GOOD START.

1. GOOD ATTITUDE - 😃 Everyone will have the blues once in a while.  It's human nature.  On those days leave all the outside noise and distractions at the door, don't bring them onto the pool deck.  It will set a bad tone for you, the group and the coach.  Let the feel of the water encompasses your own body and get to work.
2. STUDENT/ATHLETE- It's a privilege to be able to swim which can be gone in a instant.  Your school work always comes first, so do yourself a favor and stay on top of all your assignments.  It's called time management. The week has 168 hours in it.  You sleep 56 hours a week(based on 8 hours a night).  You are in school for 30 hours a week (based on a 6 hour day).  You have 12.5 hours of home work a week (based on 2.5 a night m-f).  You have 6 hours of swimming a week (based on 1.5 4 times a week).  That leaves 63.5 hours a week for whatever.  In other words swimming does not take up all your time so don't use it as an excuse.  Manage your time wisely.
3. SLEEP-😴 Your body needs to rest so it is ready for the next day.  Get use to having an internal clock that tells you each day when you need to go to bed.  Set a time and stick to it no matter what.  If you miss 4 hours one night, you can't make it up.  Those hours are gone forever.  Your feel better and you will avoid illness if you maintain that regular schedule.
4. HYDRATE--The one thing you can control is your water intake.  Bring your water bottles with you everywhere that you are allowed and constantly drink from it.  Especially during workout or any other physical activity.  You need more water at those times.  Just like sleep I f you become de-hydrated it's very hard to catch up and you start to feel the effects very quickly.  So drink.
5. NUTRITION-- Garbage in = Garbage out.  Treat your body as the fine tune machine that it is.  You have all these dreams and goals in this sport so don't sabotage them by feeding the machine with garbage.  If your parents used bad fuel in the family car it would start to perform badly.  You need a variety of food groups to fuel your performances, including carbohydrates, protein, healthy fats, vegetables 🥒 (yes the green things), fruits and of course your fluids.
6. BE ON TIME-- When you get to the pool deck start preparing your body for what you are about to ask it to go through.  Set up a 5-10 minute routine for some dynamic stretching that will actually help you.  Stop just plopping yourself on the ground.  Being on time means getting into the pool with the WHOLE GROUP and not on your schedule.
7. ORGANIZATION-- Have all your equipment on the deck in front of your lane.  We do not want to waste time getting out to get it.
8. LISTENING--  Be prepared to listen to what we are focusing on and trying to get accomplished in the sets.
9. GETTING BETTER-- Every workout, every warm up, every set, every repeat, every streamline, every turn, every underwater, every breath, and every finish is an opportunity for you to grow and get better.  Don't waste even one of those opportunity, it just may be the one that costs you that .01 you need later in the season.
10. SHOW UP--  You can't accomplish your goal if you don't show up.  A workout missed is a workout lost forever.  Stay on your schedules.

TAKE AWAYS FROM 2024 OLYMPIC SWIMMING

 

My take away from the Olympic swim meet is that from we got to see a lot of great racing from some extraordinary athletes.  If it was world records or Olympic records that you were looking for you might have been a little disappointed.  There were 17 Olympic records and 4 World records broken during the Paris games.  You would have to go back to the 1996 Atlanta games  to see so few world records broken. That year there were also fewer Olympic records (13 ) set.   I was fortunate enough to witness those 96 games and person and  saw some outstanding races during the week.

You may wonder which Olympics saw the most world records broken.  You would only have to go back to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing in which the world saw 25 World records fall and an another 65 Olympic records fall.  

That year the Speedo sponsored swimmers wore what they referred to as the LZR racer suit made of polyethylene and neoprene material appropriately nicknamed the “shark skin suit” which was developed jointly with an Italian company, the Australian Institute of sport and yes NASA.  In 2010 the suits were banned ant the athletes had to go back to suits made solely of textiles.  Is that the reason we don’t see the records falling as much, 

Instead of seeing the records fall you got to witness some exciting races where anyone who could find a way to get back to the final eight, had a chance to get to the podium regardless of the lane you were in.  Races that swimmers led from start to finish and other races were if you could find that next gear coming out of the last turn you just might have found yourself on the podium maybe even on the top.  

How does that translate to swimming at our level.  Having said this before and I’ll say it again now and that is this; we put so much emphasis on that final result (the time)  both leading up to the race and when we come crashing into the wall at the finish that we are so tight we forget to just race and have fun with our sport.  

Let’s talk about the things you can take away that will help each of you in your swim competitions.  The first is that I hope when Rowdy Gaines kept pointing out the underwater off those starts and turns that you took notice and have a better understanding of how important they are especially off those last turn when every muscle in your body says NO.  The next thing that he kept pointing out is that you need to stay in your lane and swim your race.  The last thing that I would like to point out is how he kept talking about finishing the race with an explosive kick and a crashing into the wall.

These are all things that we can all get better with but you need to buy into it and commit yourself during every workout.  

If you listened to any of these swimmers especially the veterans who may have taken some time off in the last four years the key message I took away is this; remember why you got into this sport, and have fun with it and enjoy the moment.  Swimming is a part of your life don’t let it become bigger than you are and remember enjoy the process and have fun with it.

Let’s spend a little time over the next few days and start preparing for our school year coming up.  Let’s not wait until Sunday night to start thinking about.  Enjoy that first day and don’t’ forget that means you’re one day closer to the summer of 25. 

We will see you next week.

VACATION TIME

 

Now that swimming and diving all stars ⭐️ is over it’s time to get away from the pools for a while.  You’ve worked hard and now it’s time to give those bodies a chance to recover. 

It’s time to recharge both physically and mentally so that we return to the pools refresh and ready to go.

If you get a little anxious during this time how about some strength training especially your cores.  Something that will benefit you when you get back in the pool.

Wherever you are headed have fun and be safe.

We will see you in a few weeks.

COACH MIKE

WRAPPING IT UP

 With a weekend of fast swimming at all the Long Course and summer league championships it is time to put this season in the books.  Take a needed break away from the pool and spend some time having fun being a kid with nothing to do.   Before you blink it will be time to refocus and turn our attention to a new journey with new goals and aspirations.  

Before we do that take the time to write in your journals about your journey this past season.  Share with yourself the goals you had, with both your successes and failure.  Both are important and vital for your growth in the sport.

CHAMP WEEK SET ( MEET WARM UP EACH DAY)

TUESDAY 

12x50 (4 25 MRS/ 25 free) (4 MRS) (4 25 kick 25 free)@1:00

WEDNESDAY 

9x50 (3 25 MRS/25 free) ( 3 MRS) (3 25 kick 25 free) @1:15

THURSDAY 

6x50 ( 2 25 MRS/25 free) ( 2 MRS) (2 25 kick 25 free) @1:30

FRIDAY

BRING IT ALL TO GETHER 

STARTS TURNS BREAKOUTS FINISHES 

SATURDAY 

OWN YOUR RACE!  NO OUTSIDE NOISES!!  CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL!!

This will be the last post until we near the season sometime in mid August.

NO IDLING

 

The ability to accomplish your goals first comes down to how discipline and committed you are, and saying you are without the actions is like an empty promise.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s school, swimming or life the bridge 🌉 between wishing and accomplishing is discipline.  The discipline to know what you need to do, how to do it right and executing your plan consistently.

You just idle around in your lane doing things inconsistently like getting In late weak warmup, bad turns and the beat goes on if you get my drift……

The three essential things that any athlete needs to succeed in sports are,

1. A hunger and passion to succeed
2. The mindset to handle pressure.
3. The self-discipline to do the hard stuff….The stuff others won’t do.

Without that hunger and passion, the mental toughness when things go wrong or get hard  and the discipline to do the hard stuff, your journey becomes longer and the climb steeper.

The consistent swimmers are the ones who understand that to reach their goals takes a high level of commitment and self discipline.  It doesn’t come from doing easy or average work.  If you do average work I dare say you should not expect anything but average results.

“You can either suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret—-the choice is yours.”   Discipline is not a punishment either, it is what’s needed to achieve success.

Excuses make today easy, but tomorrow hard.  Discipline makes today hard, but tomorrow easy.

SWIM SET FOR THE WEEK

3 ROUNDS (2nd round kick)

1x100 Cruise 25 MRS 25 free

2x50 @1:00  (25 fast MRS /25 cruise free)

4x25 @1:00 MRS BUILDING SPEED ON EACH 25. WORK ON BREAKOUT AND FINISH (10 seconds apart ). 

CONCENTRATION

 

Concentration.  What is it? How can it affect your race or your workouts?  One of your greatest strengths as a swimmer is your ability to eliminate distractions and be focused and present in the moment, but it takes as much practice as your time in the pool.  However it is often overlooked by many swimmers in today’s world.

I believe that we agree that as swimmers we are often distracted by both

internal and external things both in practice as well as competition.  These are things that take away our focus and our ability to stay on task and remain in the present.

What you focus on will determine how calm and loose you are, the level of confidence you have going into your race and how quickly you are able to rebound from set backs.  Without the ability to focus on the the now your vulnerable to falling into mental traps.

Concentration is the ability of going into a race and finding what is important and letting go of everything else.  Some of these distractions are external such as the pool, the officials,your teammates and sometimes it's the noise in your head that you need to learn how to let go of.

When an athlete goes into a competition athletes tend to be all over the place, they are thinking about the out come, making a mistake, who's watching basically too many things to focus on and not letting go of it all and finding what is important now.

Try this exercise to test your  concentration.  Take 10 different color markers and throw them in the air and see how many you can catch.  Now put a blue one in the middle of the markers and throw them in the air.  Catch only the BLUE one.  Now you have let go of all the other distractions and what is important is catching the BLUE MARKER.  How did you do?

Focus in the NOW.  Not the Past (past races). Not in the FUTURE (the outcome).  Practice focusing in the moment (the now).  You can't be in the past or the future, you can only think about it.  

Stay in the NOW and keep you focus on the right thing, Your JOB which is to race.  When you get distracted you need to be able to catch yourself and c one back to the NOW.  I know in most of my competitions if I felt myself drifting and getting distracted I always used this phrase when I felt like I was being distracted and losing focus, (THE PROCESS).  It always brought me back to the now and it worked it school also.

Find a trigger word that will help you concentrate and as I say you need to practice this as much as you do swimming.

FIREWORK WORKOUT JULY 4th

13 and over triathlon 

RUN 1 mile come thru emergency gate read time off clock coaches will record quickly transitioning move into COMPETITION POOL 

KICK WITH BOARD 300. Read running time coaches record transition to the other pool 

SWIM 500 

When finish cheer your teammates to finish line

9-12 year olds do a biathlon after stretching

Kick 150/ swim 300

Best part is that they cheered for everyone until they crossed the finish line

BRINGING GOALS INTO YOUR RACE

 

Before we get into this I want to make it clear that I believe that having goals and setting them is very important for athletes.  However goals should never be brought into a competition.  Competition takes place in the present and goals are futuristic and should remain in the future.

In other words you take the wrong goals into the race.  For swimmers, I would say the two biggest goals that you you take up to the start is one, winning and two a best time.  Those two goals are by-products of doing everything right in your race.  

If those are your two goals as you step up on the blocks you might be setting yourself up for failure.  Goals and expectations are tools for your tool box.  They help motivate you during training and provide a blueprint for you to work with during practice.  When you take those goals and expectations into competition you get tight, your anxiety levels rise and you end up creating a sense of urgency.  That sense of urgency creates a certain head set, "I have to",  "I've got to", "I need to", "What happens if I don't",  your focus is on the outcome and not the competition.  You start trying too hard and you intuitively start making mistakes. Your reaction on the start may be slow, Your turn is off, your breathing more, your stroke gets short, any number of things might happen.

Your goals and expectations are the things you work toward during practice.  Practice is where you program your computer so that when you step up onto the blocks, all you have to do is hit print and go.  The outcome is in the future and out of your control.  Stay in the present and work the process.

8&under PRACTICE FROM LAST WEEK

WARM UP 300 mix

2x50 (25 breast kick with 3 second dolphin glide 

4x25 (12.5 IMO/12.5 free 1 breath)

2x50 (25 streamline back kick 25 backstroke. STROKE COUNTS)

MINI DOLPHIN READY SET beat the clock with fins

6x25 fast free @1:30. (Clock resets to00 every 90 seconds.  Try to beat your time

TODAYS WORK WORK YOUR DIVES  8 minutes in each lane with a coach

LANE 2 back.  Swim back in 1 same stroke to finish

LANE 4 breast swim back in 3 same stroke to finish 

LANE 6 fly swim back in 5 same stroke finish

RING THE BELL FINISH

1x25 free no breath (can you beat last weeks spot) Go all the way and ring the bell