News
For
SWIM
PARENTS
Published by The American
Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200
Fort Lauderdale FL 33309
___________________________________________________________________
What’s We Do In Age Group
and Stroke School Practice
Written by the ASCA Staff (Who actually do coach senior, age group, and novice
swimmers every day.)
Parents,
you are always welcome to observe practice and if 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, their safety and
well being is our primary concern.
In
general, there are eight different things we do in practice, usually not all in
the same day. We work on skills including freestyle, backstroke,
breaststroke, butterfly, and starts and turns for each stroke. We do
drills which emphasize various aspects of each of the strokes. We race --
giving the swimmers a chance to swim fast which helps develop coordination,
strength, and racing strategies. We work on basic cardiovascular
conditioning 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. 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.
We present life skills sometimes during a pre-planned 5 to10 minute interactive
discussion and sometimes during an appropriate teaching moment. Topics
range from learning how to listen to instructions; to positive self talk, to
personal responsibility. We also offer dryland training which helps
increase coordination and strength. All of our dryland for age group and
novice is done without weight equipment and the greatest care is taken to use
proper technique and to be safe.
The final
ingredient, and our favorite, is to challenge the young people to do something
difficult -- something they might not have thought they can do. The role
of the coach is to set the appropriate challenge before them, to prepare them to
meet the challenge, to cheer them on, and finally to 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.
A Short Note
on Practice Times
Practice
starts on time every day. That means we begin the first exercise right at
the beginning of our practice time. If children are late, we welcome them
and get them going right away. If the work being done at the time they
arrive requires a warm-up we will accommodate that need in order to avoid any
risk of injury or strain. Practice also finishes on time. If your
child needs to leave earlier simply approach the coach directly and we will get
the child out of the water immediately. Please do not approach the
poolside to directly take your child out of the water – see the coach first.
You may also send a note with your child if they need to get out earlier.