Transitioning the focus, and maintaining what you have built

As I wrote in a previous post, the season began with stroke development, and lately we have been taking those developed strokes and trying to create power and feeling the strength used in those developed strokes. Although I do have a focus for the specific parts of a season, I do delineate from the focus to have reminders of the different phases that I cover, and not to make it seem like all we do is one concentration.

Today, we did a set where we did a combo of the phases. Freestyle set of 3 x 400 free pull. The first and third being with paddles where they are still focusing on the power aspect of the stroke, and the second 400 free pull without paddles working more on a fast turnover for the entire 400 Free. After the set we talked about what we have worked on, and what we need to do now with what we have previously worked on.

This phase is the speed phase of the season and it will occur right in time to for the swim meet. This will be the first meet where we have a covered the different phases, and the best performances of the season hopefully occur here. It is just the beginning of the speed phase so I do expect to still develop more speed as we progress through this phase, but at least this meet will be have some speed aspects developed at the practice.

Hopefully, most of the swims have already been done this year, so that I can check to see how the speed phase is working in the beginning of the phase. Some of the kids though haven't swam the event for quite awhile, so they will go faster, which is great, but we'll have to wait for Cerritos and Holiday Meet to evaluate what is happening with the practices having full effect on the performance.

Now to give an example of how I'd utilize stroke development in the speed phase of the season. You want to maximize the speed of the stroke, so there won't be a lot of altering the stroke with actual correction, but rather trying to create subtle changes through drills and quick reminders that I have created throughout the season, so the swimmers know what a short two to three word phrase means. With speed work, comes rest, as work to rest ratio needs to remain. With the higher intensity, it normally leads to more rest in the ratio because the extra work done in that short period of time. This gives plenty of opportunity to do drills, as drills should be done at a slower (rest) pace. Subtle changes won't effect the stroke too much, so it shouldn't cause a slow down in times.

Age-Groupers ages 11 - 17 still need to maintain the aerobic development. (This is one of the main reason why I made my group minimum age to be 11, or at least close to 11.) During this phase I will continue to provide the aerobic development sets despite the focus being speed, and mixed in with rest through drills. Stopping the aerobic altogether would develop the speed, as it is the focus, but would hurt the longer events, and begin to lower the base that you have built up to that point, which will effect them in the future seasons. (Building the Base is important, but keeping the base is also important. It doesn't take quite as much time as building it, so you don't have to dedicate as much time to it as the initial part, but maintenance should be continued throughout.)