PRACTICE GOALS

What in the world is going on in practice?
By Coach Tom

You are always welcome to observe practices from the balcony and when you do you might see two or three different ability levels doing different things depending on the objectives for that day for each group. Above all else, the safety and well being of our swimmers is our primary concern.

In general, there are eight different things we do in practice, but not all in the same day. We work on skills including freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, the IM, and starts, finishes, and turns for each stroke. We do drills which emphasize various aspects of each of the strokes as well as turns.

We incorporate drills throughout the season just like they do at Stanford and Auburn and the best club teams in the world. Remember, ours is the most complicated cyclical sport of those included in the Olympic Games. We seek elegance and efficiency by stressing stroke length and proper mechanics. Our goal is to reach the half-way point of races with fewer heart beats and strokes than our opponents and to switch gears during the back half of the race to “bring it home strong!” Thus, we agree with the great Australian swim coach, Bill Sweetenham, a drill done one percent incorrectly is one-hundred percent incorrect!

We race! — We give the swimmers a chance to swim fast which helps develop coordination, strength, and racing strategies. But we don’t allow swimmers to swim with poor mechanics. We work on basic cardiovascular conditioning while drilling and while doing longer swims of 200 to 1000 yards at a time depending on ability or by doing "sets" of shorter swims with limited rest, for example swimming ten times 50 yards with 15 seconds rest between each swim; that’s a 500 yard “set.”

We have fun — we play a game once or twice a week or we do relays. Fun can mean more than playing a game; it can also mean learning something new or swimming farther or faster. We provide opportunities for fun every day.

Our coaches teach life skills sometimes during a pre-planned 10-minute discussion and sometime during an appropriate teaching moment. Topics range from learning how to listen to instructions; to positive self talk, to personal responsibility. We may even do some skits teaching our athletes how to cope with peers who encourage destructive behavior and activities.

We also offer dryland training which helps increase coordination and strength. All of our dryland is done without weight equipment and the greatest care is taken to use proper technique and to be safe. We do basic Yoga, Pilates, simple plyometrics, aerobic and anaerobic activities as well as partner and team activities. Frankly, it’s a riot and we can’t understand how anyone would want to be left out.

The final ingredient, and our favorite, is to challenge our swimmers to do something difficult, something they might not have thought they can do or to solve problems in the water. Our coaching style is to require our swimmers to think about what they are doing during practices. Our coaches set the appropriate challenge before them, prepare them to meet the challenge, cheer them on, and finally praise them for a job well done.

Stroke Work, Stroke Drills, Racing and Speed Work, Cardiovascular Conditioning, Fun and Games, Dryland Training, Life skills, and Challenge: these make up our day-to-day practice routine.

The single most important thing you can do to help the swimmers to improve is to have them consistently attend practices and meets. Our coaches have a lot of experience and we know that those who have great attendance and listening skills will improve the fastest and the most.