Easy Swimming at Practice develops habits

I talked to my group about how Easy Swimming at practice develops habits. Many times we do recovery type swims in practice, or stetch out aspects of the workout. In this time is where swimmers will develop their habits.

Good and Bad habits are frustrating. The bad need to be broken, the good need to be honed. Easy swims or stretch outs is where the swimmers are relaxed and have not a lot of things to worry about. This leads to them just flopping in the water at times. Broken Strokes due to no focus. The idea of these are not to relax the mind, but to relax the body.

My talk today was more of a lecture. Watching the swimmers execute skills that we have talked about practice to practice, and meet to meet. Easy Swims, this is the best time to think about these corrections. No clock to worry about. No care if people pass you. No interval to have to make. No drill motion to be sure to be doing. Just simply swimming. After some time of telling this for 300 Freestyles between sprints I ended practice with a 200 IM (Long Course). I told them that they need to think about at least one thing that I always talk to them about. That is all they need to worry about the entire lap. They were to take a few seconds on the wall to then think about the next stroke, and then swim the lap with only the one aspect in their focus.

It was some really good strokes. Less frustration on my part because they were all working on things that I have become tired of repeating on a regular basis. I decided they knew what they were to work on, and now I'd just setup the time for them to just focus on those things that they know they are working on. You've repeated this stuff enough times for them, I just finally gave them a chance to work on it on their own. It looked pretty good.