I have always found that teaching breaststroke kick can be very challenging with new swimmers. Of course there are always those who naturally turn the ankles out, then it's easy to teach a good breaststroke kick. If you have taught young swimmers before you know that there are always those few who really have difficult time learning this skill.
I always start basic. Try to teach them with learn the ankle position in the setup of the kick. Then it is teaching the motion of the kick by moving the heels: up, out, and around. Emphasizing the backwards force during the around, and not including the out motion during the backwards force phase of the kick.
Only some kids grasp the kick at this point. I then try to tell them to spread their toes on the setup and during the force portion of the kick. I got this from Steve Haufler, and this method has worked really well, but some kids still don't get the spreading of the toes.
After the swimmer has done the kick wrong, and you have also been doing some other kicks in your practices; some have realized what it feels like to push water. My newest thing I've been using is having the swimmer try to only push water with the bottom of their feet, and never push with the top of the foot. I did this on accident the other day, but it worked for some of my swimmers who had trouble of being consistent legal breaststroke kickers. They surprised me that they could feel the difference in pushing with the bottom of their feet and the top of the foot, and being relatively new to the sport.
The other battle is with "diamond kicks." This is when the swimmer makes a diamond with their legs pushing their knees outward and their heels stay together as they bring their heels "up." I battle this with the basic breaststroke kick with a buoy. They'll hate it, but it will begin to teach them proper setup of the kick.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Relaxing during fly
Not sure how many times I talk about relaxing is a key aspect to becoming a really good swimmer. I have a swimmer who finally it clicked. Butterfly is a gruelly stroke, but when done right, it becomes easy. Knowing how to relax becomes very important to making it easier.
The back muscles must relax for the recovery. The lifting of the chin to breathe forward uses a lot of the upper back muscles. This lift occurs during the pull. As the hand finish the pull and come out of the water the body that you just lifted above the water during the pull, now tilts forward and the back muscles must relax to allow the shoulder to lift up and inward. If you tilt the body downward and continue to keep the face forward the upper back muscles tense up and makes it very difficult to rise the shoulders properly.
So, as the hands exit the water and the body tips forward you must relax the upper back and neck. Gravity will then drop the head (the head is very heavy), no need to force the head down. The shoulder can then rise above the spine and head, and the arms can swing around straight forward without a lot of force.
At the time of the entry, the chest should be pressed down and forward to help pop the hips upward to allow the water under the body to pass, and not create drag by going directly into the hips and lower abdomen.
Some swim Butterfly with a big body undulation that has the hands stay in front for a long glide phase. Many think that this will allow them to keep their arms fresh as they'll be doing less strokes. This is not the case though for butterfly. Reducing the strokes reduces the amount of recovery phases (the time the arms relax and swing over the water). It increases the amount of time that a swimmer will hold their hands above their slowing down and losing momentum in their stroke. The shoulders are working harder in this glide phase than the recovery.
The best thing to do in butterfly in regards to tempo is to maintain a continuous fluid stroke. You can increase tempo towards the end of a race, but do not create the long underwater glide phase. The shoulders will hurt just as bad, and you will be going much slower.
Important part of all strokes, as it is with butterfly, is to be able to relax while swimming the stroke.
The back muscles must relax for the recovery. The lifting of the chin to breathe forward uses a lot of the upper back muscles. This lift occurs during the pull. As the hand finish the pull and come out of the water the body that you just lifted above the water during the pull, now tilts forward and the back muscles must relax to allow the shoulder to lift up and inward. If you tilt the body downward and continue to keep the face forward the upper back muscles tense up and makes it very difficult to rise the shoulders properly.
So, as the hands exit the water and the body tips forward you must relax the upper back and neck. Gravity will then drop the head (the head is very heavy), no need to force the head down. The shoulder can then rise above the spine and head, and the arms can swing around straight forward without a lot of force.
At the time of the entry, the chest should be pressed down and forward to help pop the hips upward to allow the water under the body to pass, and not create drag by going directly into the hips and lower abdomen.
Some swim Butterfly with a big body undulation that has the hands stay in front for a long glide phase. Many think that this will allow them to keep their arms fresh as they'll be doing less strokes. This is not the case though for butterfly. Reducing the strokes reduces the amount of recovery phases (the time the arms relax and swing over the water). It increases the amount of time that a swimmer will hold their hands above their slowing down and losing momentum in their stroke. The shoulders are working harder in this glide phase than the recovery.
The best thing to do in butterfly in regards to tempo is to maintain a continuous fluid stroke. You can increase tempo towards the end of a race, but do not create the long underwater glide phase. The shoulders will hurt just as bad, and you will be going much slower.
Important part of all strokes, as it is with butterfly, is to be able to relax while swimming the stroke.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
4 hour rule
So, I write periodically parent ed articles for the members of my team. They are sometimes just quick writes by me, or sometimes I include articles from other sources to help educate the swim parents on our team. I find it very important to educate parents of the sport as many things in our sport are not intuitive, but many times we as coaches feel like they are. My last two have been about time standards and divisions at swim meets, and then about the different formats at championship meets (Timed Finals and Prelim/Finals). I won't write another one for at least another month, but I wanted to put some up here on my blog as I know some parents do read the blog. I want to explain the 4 hour rule with some opinion as well.
The 4 hour rule is some what simple. One Session of a swim meet can not exceed 4 hours that has swimmers 12 years old or younger. This is why a large LSC like Southern California Swimming has most of their meets as two sessions on a single day, to allow for more swimmers to participate. This rule does not apply to meets that are designated championship meets.
The origin of this rule is based on a great concept. 12 and under swimmers and their parents don't want to be at the old style marathon meets of 6 to 8 hours for two days. It was an effort to promote the sport at the younger level. This rule was estlablished around 2000 and has done a great job to make meets more tolerable, and has been great to getting people to be more willing to participate in swim meets.
What went wrong? The sport exploded. Now there are so many swimmers, that there aren't enough meets to provide a good opportunity to all of them. If more teams hosted meets, then the problem comes up that we don't have enough officials to do all the swim meets because of the rules regulating how many officials need to be officiating a swim meet.
What else has suffered? Distance Events for the most part. 11 - 12 swimmers have less opportunities to do the longer more challenging events, as they take up a lot of time, and expand a timeline. We have discovered that most of our best swimmers had early success in longer events, but when do they have the opportunity to try the event out? Let alone, trying to excel at a longer event.
We are lucky, as our team has a good amount of officials that we can run a Intrasquad meet that only has distance events. We have a good relationship with another team that helps put on meets that are geared towards the non-JO swimmer, so the longer events don't have time standards on them. Still, the 4 hour rule does affect our other regular BRW Meets.
The rule is a great concept, but we have to adapt to make it be effective with the boom in numbers for our sport. We need more volunteers to be officials, so that teams can run more meets at the same time within an LSC (or Section in our case). We have to clearly identify swimmers who should be attending the meets geared towards developmental swimmers, and other swimmers who need to attend meets that are designed for racing faster competiiton. (This also goes back to the blog post of picking events for particular meets).
I hope that explains what the rule is and why it was created. The meets that you've attended and you might have noticed the frustrations that I indicated. Know that they exist because of the rule, but it isn't the rule that needs to go; it is the adapting to make the rule effective that needs to happen. So coaches need learn to identify meets, and parents need to consider volunteering to be an official (especially if you're one of those parents who doesn't want to coach your child, but you want to be involved in childs acitivity. This takes you away from possibly coaching your child at a meet, and gives you a purpose to be at meets, and to give to the sport your child participating.
The 4 hour rule is some what simple. One Session of a swim meet can not exceed 4 hours that has swimmers 12 years old or younger. This is why a large LSC like Southern California Swimming has most of their meets as two sessions on a single day, to allow for more swimmers to participate. This rule does not apply to meets that are designated championship meets.
The origin of this rule is based on a great concept. 12 and under swimmers and their parents don't want to be at the old style marathon meets of 6 to 8 hours for two days. It was an effort to promote the sport at the younger level. This rule was estlablished around 2000 and has done a great job to make meets more tolerable, and has been great to getting people to be more willing to participate in swim meets.
What went wrong? The sport exploded. Now there are so many swimmers, that there aren't enough meets to provide a good opportunity to all of them. If more teams hosted meets, then the problem comes up that we don't have enough officials to do all the swim meets because of the rules regulating how many officials need to be officiating a swim meet.
What else has suffered? Distance Events for the most part. 11 - 12 swimmers have less opportunities to do the longer more challenging events, as they take up a lot of time, and expand a timeline. We have discovered that most of our best swimmers had early success in longer events, but when do they have the opportunity to try the event out? Let alone, trying to excel at a longer event.
We are lucky, as our team has a good amount of officials that we can run a Intrasquad meet that only has distance events. We have a good relationship with another team that helps put on meets that are geared towards the non-JO swimmer, so the longer events don't have time standards on them. Still, the 4 hour rule does affect our other regular BRW Meets.
The rule is a great concept, but we have to adapt to make it be effective with the boom in numbers for our sport. We need more volunteers to be officials, so that teams can run more meets at the same time within an LSC (or Section in our case). We have to clearly identify swimmers who should be attending the meets geared towards developmental swimmers, and other swimmers who need to attend meets that are designed for racing faster competiiton. (This also goes back to the blog post of picking events for particular meets).
I hope that explains what the rule is and why it was created. The meets that you've attended and you might have noticed the frustrations that I indicated. Know that they exist because of the rule, but it isn't the rule that needs to go; it is the adapting to make the rule effective that needs to happen. So coaches need learn to identify meets, and parents need to consider volunteering to be an official (especially if you're one of those parents who doesn't want to coach your child, but you want to be involved in childs acitivity. This takes you away from possibly coaching your child at a meet, and gives you a purpose to be at meets, and to give to the sport your child participating.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Developing a swim team
I have to say that I have seen the development of two teams, and they were very different, and I have not seen them all the way through, but what I have learned from going through the process.
The first thing is that you must figure out what you want to do with your team. Not all swim teams are equal, and they don't all have the same focus. Knowing what you want to create is a step many forget, and just decide in their mind that they want to be the best swim team.
With what you want your team to be, what kind of numbers do you need to develop what you want your team to be. When I first sat down with my Head Coach at CSSC, this was the biggest things that we created in our minds about the future. What kind of numbers. We reached our goal much faster than we thought we were going to, which makes right now really exciting. Numbers are important. There will not be 100% retention. Look at the national statistics, across the country retention to the sport of swimming is not 100% and not even in the 90's. You can only develop with what you have on your team.
Set your philosphy next. I asked my Head Coach, what is our team culture now? and what is the culture we ultimately want? This was not a straight forward answer, but a converstation that made me understand where she was coming from. I then told her my philosphy, and how we can adjust to make our philosophys work well together. From there we made choices based on what we wanted the culture to become.
You do need to look at performance as well. We looked at the team's performance and realized that there was some good performance on the team, but it lacked depth. This was a byproduct of lack of numbers in our developmental part of the team. We knew that numbers would come first, and to stay consistent with our performance as we re-develop a base. Well, we soon were outperforming very quickly.
Choices you make are many times financially connected. Both teams I have been on, I have come in with bad financial situations. It is hard to limit things because of money, and even harder to realize something is really important for the future of the team, and then have to sell the idea to a parent board. But this is how it must be done. Financial choices become hard and excruciating, and can delay a teams progress at times.
One thing I learned about the first go around was that there are going to bumps. Sometimes really big ones. I wasn't ready for that in the first go around, and I handle them much better now. I was also there to help my new Head Coach through some of those hard bumps on this go around. Funny thing though, sometimes it is a big bump in the road, that really helps push you to the next level.
As you in motion with executing your plan, you may get ahead of the timeline. That has occurred here at CSSC. We have now had conversation about where do we go now. We can't just sit around and be stable with no new vision once we already reach one point. It is good to re-evaluate where you are now, and whether you need to make adjustments according to where you have come. We know what we want to accomplish now, even though we were slightly ahead of schedule. We put higher goals on the table now, and we continue to push to accomplish the higher goals.
Vision is the most important thing. Know the details of that vision, and then monitor how those details are doing within that long term vision to see what changes or adjustments need to be made. Sounds similar to the goal setting process that we teach our swimmers. Because it is the same, it is how we feel you can become successful in everything: swimming, developing a team, school, and any other activity you wish to succeed in.
The first thing is that you must figure out what you want to do with your team. Not all swim teams are equal, and they don't all have the same focus. Knowing what you want to create is a step many forget, and just decide in their mind that they want to be the best swim team.
With what you want your team to be, what kind of numbers do you need to develop what you want your team to be. When I first sat down with my Head Coach at CSSC, this was the biggest things that we created in our minds about the future. What kind of numbers. We reached our goal much faster than we thought we were going to, which makes right now really exciting. Numbers are important. There will not be 100% retention. Look at the national statistics, across the country retention to the sport of swimming is not 100% and not even in the 90's. You can only develop with what you have on your team.
Set your philosphy next. I asked my Head Coach, what is our team culture now? and what is the culture we ultimately want? This was not a straight forward answer, but a converstation that made me understand where she was coming from. I then told her my philosphy, and how we can adjust to make our philosophys work well together. From there we made choices based on what we wanted the culture to become.
You do need to look at performance as well. We looked at the team's performance and realized that there was some good performance on the team, but it lacked depth. This was a byproduct of lack of numbers in our developmental part of the team. We knew that numbers would come first, and to stay consistent with our performance as we re-develop a base. Well, we soon were outperforming very quickly.
Choices you make are many times financially connected. Both teams I have been on, I have come in with bad financial situations. It is hard to limit things because of money, and even harder to realize something is really important for the future of the team, and then have to sell the idea to a parent board. But this is how it must be done. Financial choices become hard and excruciating, and can delay a teams progress at times.
One thing I learned about the first go around was that there are going to bumps. Sometimes really big ones. I wasn't ready for that in the first go around, and I handle them much better now. I was also there to help my new Head Coach through some of those hard bumps on this go around. Funny thing though, sometimes it is a big bump in the road, that really helps push you to the next level.
As you in motion with executing your plan, you may get ahead of the timeline. That has occurred here at CSSC. We have now had conversation about where do we go now. We can't just sit around and be stable with no new vision once we already reach one point. It is good to re-evaluate where you are now, and whether you need to make adjustments according to where you have come. We know what we want to accomplish now, even though we were slightly ahead of schedule. We put higher goals on the table now, and we continue to push to accomplish the higher goals.
Vision is the most important thing. Know the details of that vision, and then monitor how those details are doing within that long term vision to see what changes or adjustments need to be made. Sounds similar to the goal setting process that we teach our swimmers. Because it is the same, it is how we feel you can become successful in everything: swimming, developing a team, school, and any other activity you wish to succeed in.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Picking Swim Meet Events
There are so many different ways events are picked. Biggest suggestion is for coaches to pick the swimmers events. This makes it so the coach needs to pay attention to the rules of the entries that are indicated on the Fact Sheet. If your team uses Team Unify, this is easy, as all you have to do is commit to the event, and then leave a note for the coach. The coach has to approve entries anyway, so if they see a swimmer no events, they go in, check the note left, and then pick the event. If your team doesn't use team unify, contact the coach via e-mail or after practice.
So, coaches how do you pick events? There is no perfect way to select events. There are some guidelines to be sure that you are developing a good age-group swimmer. The biggest one is be sure that they swim all 4 strokes. Don't allow a swimmer to decide that they are only going to do their best event, as this is not in the best interest of the swimmer in the long run.
Some teams mandate meets. If your team does this, then the coach will know exactly how many meets they are attending, what meets, and how to configure a great schedule that will allow multiple opportunities in their main 5 - 6 events, and also be sure that they do all the events in a season. Some teams also mandate events. This is where a group is required to swim particular events, and then they choose the other events that they want to do for the meet.
If you are a team like I coach, participation in meets is purely optional. It does make event selection a little harder, but you can still use some ideas to select the best events. First thing, swim max events almost all the time. Forget about the kid not having the energy to do 4 or 5 events in a day. There is time between events, and kids have a lot of energy. Get them use to the long event schedule. Next have a variety of strokes. Again, best to develop IMers at the age-group level and beginning senior level. Next, always try to push the envelope when it comes to longer events. This makes them tougher both physically, and most importantly, mentally. If a swimmer is going to a lot of meets that season, you can put tough events with a smaller event schedule. Other swimmers you want to push them a little more and mix the long events in with the longer event schedule.
The toughest thing is to balance, long-term success with challenging events and opportunities in best events to try to make a time standard. Due to my philosophy, I'd rather develop long-term than to provide opportunity, but I do give in at times to focus on events they are close to making a cut in, especially those that only go to a smaller number of meets.
I think that IMR and IMX programs by USA Swimming are good programs to help get kids to swim the events they may not want to do. Swimmers who have high goals in the sport, should be trying to make it to select camps, where they can train with some of the other fast swimmers in the Zone. This is done by being the top time in a zone for an event, or having one of the higher IMX scores in the zone. USA Swimming believes that swimmers who are good at the IMX eveents, are the swimmers who will be the fast swimmers in the long run, and that is why they have developed the camp system with this format.
Selecting events can be tough, and you are going to give in at times, but do your best to stay within the guidelines. Be sure to get swimmers to realize that challenging themselves to new events when their coach feels they are ready, is good thing for their development as a swimmer.
So, coaches how do you pick events? There is no perfect way to select events. There are some guidelines to be sure that you are developing a good age-group swimmer. The biggest one is be sure that they swim all 4 strokes. Don't allow a swimmer to decide that they are only going to do their best event, as this is not in the best interest of the swimmer in the long run.
Some teams mandate meets. If your team does this, then the coach will know exactly how many meets they are attending, what meets, and how to configure a great schedule that will allow multiple opportunities in their main 5 - 6 events, and also be sure that they do all the events in a season. Some teams also mandate events. This is where a group is required to swim particular events, and then they choose the other events that they want to do for the meet.
If you are a team like I coach, participation in meets is purely optional. It does make event selection a little harder, but you can still use some ideas to select the best events. First thing, swim max events almost all the time. Forget about the kid not having the energy to do 4 or 5 events in a day. There is time between events, and kids have a lot of energy. Get them use to the long event schedule. Next have a variety of strokes. Again, best to develop IMers at the age-group level and beginning senior level. Next, always try to push the envelope when it comes to longer events. This makes them tougher both physically, and most importantly, mentally. If a swimmer is going to a lot of meets that season, you can put tough events with a smaller event schedule. Other swimmers you want to push them a little more and mix the long events in with the longer event schedule.
The toughest thing is to balance, long-term success with challenging events and opportunities in best events to try to make a time standard. Due to my philosophy, I'd rather develop long-term than to provide opportunity, but I do give in at times to focus on events they are close to making a cut in, especially those that only go to a smaller number of meets.
I think that IMR and IMX programs by USA Swimming are good programs to help get kids to swim the events they may not want to do. Swimmers who have high goals in the sport, should be trying to make it to select camps, where they can train with some of the other fast swimmers in the Zone. This is done by being the top time in a zone for an event, or having one of the higher IMX scores in the zone. USA Swimming believes that swimmers who are good at the IMX eveents, are the swimmers who will be the fast swimmers in the long run, and that is why they have developed the camp system with this format.
Selecting events can be tough, and you are going to give in at times, but do your best to stay within the guidelines. Be sure to get swimmers to realize that challenging themselves to new events when their coach feels they are ready, is good thing for their development as a swimmer.
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