News For
SWIM PARENTS
Published
by The American Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21
Ave.,
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Practice Objectives And Routines - What To Expect
Notes to Parents from the Coaching
Staff
Practices for our advanced
age group swimmers are planned in advance based upon short term and long term
goals. Short term goals are usually eight weeks to 26 weeks in time and
revolve around increasing the quantity of work, improving the quality (times)
achieved in practice, skill development, and progressing towards competition
time standards. Long term goals can be summarized by simply saying we are
preparing the children for higher levels of practice ability and higher levels
of competition.
There is another aspect of
practices beyond the improvement of physical abilities. We strive to
teach and to provide opportunities for young people to learn responsibility,
self reliance, team support, ability to face challenges, and satisfaction from
meeting and exceeding challenges.
In general, on some days we
focus on developing aerobic ability. Practices range from 3000 yards to
6000 yards in 90 minutes depending on ability. The practice is divided
into "sets" of swims lasting 10 minutes to, sometimes, one
hour. Within the set we will do a series of distances ranging from 25
yards to 1000 yards non-stop; for example, 12 times 100 yard freestyle leaving
every 1 minute and 40 seconds. We work on all strokes during the course
of a workout. We teach the swimmers to read a pace clock, to calculate
their times, and to swim with control. Most sets are designed so that
swimmers will descend (go faster) with each swim. Learning to use the
pace clock and report their times to the coach helps the swimmers become
accountable and to focus on their efforts. Coaches also make stroke
corrections between swims.
In general, on other days,
we do extended dryland work, then
warm up swimming, then stroke drills, and then race pace or sprint work.
These days are shorter in yardage, typically 2000 to 3000 yards, but very
intense on quality of times as swimmers are challenged to achieve and exceed
race pace times. It’s not unusual to also do relays or possibly a game
that improves speed, coordination, and team dynamics on these days as well.
Bottom line: We seek
to create an environment where children are challenged, happy, and improving.
Thoughts About
Leadership In the Pool
Coach Mark Schubert: "If you want to raise
the level of your team, you have to center your workout around the best
swimmers on the team. You don't ignore the other swimmers, but you tailor
the workouts to challenge the best swimmers, so the others tag along and raise
their level. You can set tough intervals, and adjust the way the sets are
done for slower swimmers, but you certainly don't motivate the better swimmers
by having them go a lesser workout centered around the
majority of the team. I also feel that by giving extra attention to the
better swimmers, you motivate the lesser swimmers to strive to be better, so
they get that attention. As you gradually raise the team level, you will
have people breaking through and challenging the good swimmers."
Coach Ira Klein of the
Some coaches, such as Chris Martin
formerly with the