Beginning the new season with two different groups

We started our new season yesterday, and I am coaching a beginning level and the advanced Age-Group Level now. It is crazy how different these seasons start, and how the level makes a huge difference of what we are doing in the first few weeks of practice.

First thing was our beginning groups. Jen and I are coaching these groups together and so our two bottom level groups are beginning together. We did some stretching and some side body position out of water for our dryland, and then we hit the water. I think we did about 300 yards total for this entire workout. We went over take-offs, and freestyle kick on the side. Thank Goodness most of these kids have been taught some kind of streamline that we actually got to the take offs. (Streamlines still need a lot of work because they break or loosen many times after a take off).

The next group is my Blue Group (Which is the 4th of 6 levels for our team). Here we began with me doing some talking to the group about the upcoming season; our training looking forward; performance goals and training goals; as well as the new group at our other site. We did some arm rotations and just a little bit of abs and upper body strength for dryland. We ended up swimming only about 2800 yards, 1200 of which was kicking and 400 of drills. The rest was warm-up, breathing pattern swimming, and push off wall work.

The Blue Group was about normal for this time of season, and the Green and White Group was different mainly because Jen and I did not run this group before. We know what these kids need to progress into the later groups, and allow us to make more out of the higher groups because the kids know the little things and we won't have to teach it, but just review it.

I know that it is the beginning of the season for everyone, and for those parents who read the blog and you have swimmers in the beginning level groups for your swim team. You may be wondering why your child only did 12 laps in that whole workout, but as the season moves on and the swimmers learn the fundamental skills; they will be doing more laps. You've joined a year round swim team, and we develop swimmers at a pace to maximize results later in the season, and later in their careers. It takes some patience and a realization that your 8 year old has a quite a long career to become fast and it isn't going to be made in a month.