Practice You must simulate race conditions in practice to get better at racing. This includes having a plan for a general warm-up, perhaps an event-specific warm-up, what to do if no warm-up pool or lanes are available during the meet, what your athletes need with them behind the blocks (goggles, a relay card (?), a […]
Now is the time of year when everything counts. Hopefully, your swimmers have trained well and if they haven’t well then last call. Taper time is a well thought out process of preparing your swimmers for championships. Taper means QUALITY work and QUALITY recovery just to begin. Race Pace, Variable Speed swimming and kicking, Understanding […]
Coaches – please remember when the core of your training is aerobic you don’t need to lift with an aerobic agenda. Your swimmers are raising their heart rate a lot more than you think while lifting so just lift for speed and strength. Make sure that your swimmers maintain flexibility after lifting. Stretching after any […]
There are many, maybe even countless, methods to achieve athletic success. However, the principles of athletic success are few. Said another way, by someone much smarter than I – “Methods are many, principles are few; methods always change, principles never do.” Follow the principles listed below throughout your athletic career and find success. I suppose […]
MECHANICS: There are five categories and I am going to elaborate on #4 Momentum as it could be the most important to understand. The others are talked about in the Coaches Guide. Back of the hand mechanics with “arm and hand” as one-paddle. The catch and finish of each stroke. Body position and reducing drag […]
To feel comfortable in the water. To know stroke counts (per lap) for all strokes. To understand timing of all strokes. To have excellent walls and turns. To practice with proper stroke mechanics. A swimmer also needs experience racing and that takes, a long time and hundreds of races for mechanics and strategies of each […]
Participants in this ongoing study were five healthy students on the Stanford University men’s and women’s swimming teams. For the first two weeks of the study, the students maintained their usual sleep-wake pattern. The athletes then extended their sleep to 10 hours per day for six to seven weeks. Athletic performance was assessed after each regularly scheduled […]
The athlete must be in aerobic shape and strong before you start fine-tuning or “taper”. Tapering needs more attention and understanding in our sport. What is the most important part of the season to you? Aerobic phase, anaerobic training, weights, deck based dryland and kicking? The truth is, they all are essential and coaches/swimmers need […]
Coaches I feel we need to voice our opinions about a few issues at the Grand Prix meets. I was recently at the Indy Grand Prix meet in March. As some of you know they have capped the meets at 700 swimmers. One of the Grand Prix meets closed in hours. The B flight was […]
I feel the culture of quick gratification and instant success is the main thing coaches have to learn to coach around is the number one problem facing the sport. We can outsmart the younger generation by creating daily, weekly and more creative test sets that helps the young athlete feel good about their efforts. Demanding […]