What do we have tonight? Rhymes with "3am"

June 8 Practice Review

I mentioned in my previous post that I thought we would have a strong practice yesterday, and I was right.  Great job everyone!  Here is my last printed copy, which managed to make it through the rain:

A few points about the practice….

#1 -- The obvious difference between this practice and others you've seen is in the PRESENTATION, not the actual practice.  The times needed are in the face of the athlete.  The athlete simply has to have a goal, be able to read and/or hear instructions, and put some effort into the work.  Going 500 pace for 100s and 200 pace for 50s should be an "ALL DAY" type of thing for any finely-tuned athlete.

If you are an athlete, and you think, "I can't do those times"…that's ok.  What you can do is get closer to doing those times, and month by month chip away at it.  Keep the GOAL in mind, which is to become a TOP 8 JR National Finalist.  That's not easy!  So the training will not be easy.  It will probably be excruciating at times.  You have to get comfortable with your discomfort to get there.

#2 Notice the goals at the end of the warmup.  These paces are simply based off my experience…what I've seen from JR Nat "Top 8" - type swimmers who swim the 100-200-400-1500 Free, the 200-400 IM, and/or the 100-200 Back.  Breaststrokers who don't do much IM can probably add 3 seconds and it's the same type of range.

I noticed that in preparation to do the last 3 200s well, our lane leaders were f l o a t i n g through the first 3 200s of the warmup.  As a result, the body wasn't ready to go during 200s 7-8-9 (particularly on the first 2).  I want it to be easy to do these times!

Cole led the way with a 207, 205, 204.  Think about what it takes to start at 203 and get to 159.  The 203 is 59 for Free and 104 for Back, and the 159 is 57 for Free and 102 for Back.  WE CAN DO THIS, GUYS.  

So, here's a list of some other things I think we should do.  These two items should be "ALL DAY" easy for a prospective JR National "TOP 8" swimmer, in the Freestyle events (all of them, from a 100 to a 1500).

Guys should be able to swim :59 or better SCY / 1:08 or better LCM ALL DAY EVERY DAY

Girls should be able to swim 1:01 or better SCY / 1:10 or better LCM ALL DAY EVERY DAY

this type of goal is 'on the athlete'…coaches 'suggest', but athletes 'do'

All athletes should be able to push 3x50 (110) at the end of a 2000 warmup, and repeat 1 second under their 200 Pace, at a stroke count that correlates with their personal stroke count goal for pace swimming (athletes know what I'm talking about).  

I wouldn't ask for this every day, but even on a 'bad day' an athlete should be able to do this

Keep in mind, speed and practice performance -- like race performance -- is relative.  Particularly true for those who have been there, it's easy to see that the HS Region Championships we race in every year is a different meet than a Summer Junior National meet; it's the same idea with training performances.  Until you've seen people train fast -- or you simply BECOME THAT PERSON YOURSELF, it's hard to imagine how fast you can go -- and for how long. 

The mindset of "wearing people out" during practice and trying to "win the practice" (with all yardage counting toward the win) -- this is the way to our next great set of performances.

Tuesday/Wednesday Practices June 7-8

We got Tuesday's workout in (which didn't look good for a while!) -- and we did the workout we missed on Monday.  The main set was a 100-200-300-400-500-400-300-200-100 Ladder.  We were at varying degrees of fitness, particularly for those who hadn't trained since Saturday, Friday, or Thursday.  The workout went pretty well given that and the effort was high.  I can tell that we have athletes who know they need to get their fitness levels higher, and are working on it.  My advice: keep at it!  We are closer to breakout swims than we think.

Karen was very good on this set.  She was 5:06/4:05/3:00/1:56/53 on the ladder…great work for an athlete attempting to break through the 4:57 400IM Level.    

Thinking about "levels of performance" ….please take note of the set below, that we will do today.  There are some pretty specific goals throughout the workout and the main set's goals are directly below it.  I anticipate this practice going very well.

See you there!

Wednesday's Main Set:

3x:       100 Free (120)* + 100 easy (140)                       

4x:       75 Stroke (105)** + 100 easy (145)                      

6x:       50 Stroke (50)*** + 100 easy (150)

                      

100s Free at 1*         Expectation    500 pace +1, 500 pace, 500 pace -1

425 (53) / 430 (54) / 435 (55) / 440 (56) / 445 (57) / 450 (58) / 455 (59)

50s Stroke at 3*s       Expectation    200 pace -1 on #3, #5, #6 with matching STR CT

1:40 (24.0) / 1:44 (25.0) / 1:48 (26.0) / 1:52 (27.0) / 1:56 (28.0) / 2:00 (29.0)

2:04 (30.0) / 2:08 (31.0) / 2:12 (32.0) / 2:16 (33.0) / 2:20 (34.0) / 2:24 (35.0)

Training Example, Proper Stroke Count Training Within a Set

This video is an example of proper training.  Karen is working on her Fly, check it out!

The Set:

1x100 (1:30) {50 Backstroke Kick + 50 Fly Drill}

1x50 (1:00) {50 Fly Swim}

The Drill must be done exactly the same way for each 25: 3 right arm strokes, 3 left arm strokes, 2 full strokes.  

The Swim 50 should also be done with a predicted stroke count (the athlete has an idea going in what the count is going to be), and that stroke count should get consistent toward the last half of the set.  In this video, you'll see Karen do a 28.0, going 7 strokes down and 7 strokes back (so that's 14 strokes in 28 seconds -- right on the proper stroke count, which is half of the 50 time).  Karen also knows that she is going to kick 7 kicks off each wall to make this happen.

Karen settled into a 1:12-1:10 Kick-Drill 100, followed by a 29.0-27.7 50 Fly, with stroke counts that were the exact same as you see on the video for the last 15 minutes of the set.   This is consistent training.

We are pretty good, as a team, at hitting the ideal stroke counts on "stand-alone" 25s and 50s.  The next step for us is to develop these abilities outside of single swims, and put them into a training set.  This type of training set is a good example of the type of set we will attack….it was relatively short, the rest intervals allowed for good, aggressive kicking off the walls, and the distances I asked for were a single 50 at a time (everyone's 100 was made of 2 separate 50s).

Here's the video.  You can see lots of people doing well on this set, although the video is focused on Karen.

Reducing Stroke Count During Training Sets

Here is a video from yesterday's practice.  We did a set of 10x100 Free on (1:30) with descending strokes per 25 on each 100.  So, for example, if you start with 18, you have to go 17, 16, 15 on the next three 25s.  That set of 100s was followed by a single 100, going a little faster with the same stroke count.

We then went 10x50s, with the idea being that we would go just a bit faster, with less strokes than the final 50 of the 100s.  So, if the 100s were 18, 17, 16, 15 at 1:05 -- then the 50s had to be 15, 14 at :30.

We are going to get more efficient this month.  It's going to take diligent work and focus BEYOND what is heard on deck (in other words, let's have a mind that is focused on stroke count and its relationship to time, as much as possible during practices).

Efficiency/Speed and Cardio Mix

Training athletes, you have to balance many things.  Three of the most important items to balance are:

1. Efficiency/Speed (these two qualities are like two sides of the same coin)
2. Endurance Potential (base aerobic/cardio training)

I have thought quite a bit about our last competition, and I've concluded that we are a Team full of athletes who are either

A. pretty good at #1 and not so good at #2, or
B. pretty good at #2 and not so good at #1

The efficiency of strokes and walls is probably the most important aspect of swimming.  Stroke Count 50s, breath control stuff, negative splitting, drills….all of this directly helps an athlete with efficiency.  These are the main items we are going to work on for ALL athletes over the next few weeks.

The following post you see on an old blog I've written goes over this type of mentality in detail.  Many of you have read this…so this is for those of you who have not.  There's probably no better description of T2's training philosophy than this:  Volume vs Velocity Blog

There is not an implicit focus on Stroke Count Swimming in this article, but keep in mind: most of the time we work on speed, we want to use a stroke count that makes sense for us during the training set.

Video from Last week

This is a video from about a week ago.  Here you can see Jack and Matt leading the way on the end of a FreeIM set.  Jack 201 and Matt 204 (just cut off before the finish).   Lots of good work on this day.