The Value of a Straight Line

Two weekends ago we raced at a local senior meet. Of the many observations we noted that some of our swimmers swim in “circles”. Some of these circles are more pronounced than others. We asked Audrey, since she has some brain power! – to figure out how much extra yardage is navigated when something other than a straight line is swum. Some of your swimmers might be interested in the chart below. 

One other thing, we looked everywhere and couldn’t find any “cuts” for a 510.864 swim. 

Extra Distance from Circle Swimming*

	50 yards	100 yards	200 yards	500 yards	1000 yards	1650 yards
3” from line	0.030	0.061	0.122	0.304	0.608	1.003
6” from line	0.155	0.311	0.623	1.556	3.113	5.136
1’ from line	0.545	1.089	2.179	5.447	10.893	17.974
1.5’ from line	1.086	2.173	4.346	10.864	21.729	35.852
2’ from line	1.753	3.506	7.013	17.532	35.064	57.856

* Distances are in yards

Santa Clara XLIV International June 2011

Overheard on the deck while at this meet…

Coach, I want to make Olympic Trials

Move it from your head to your heart

And this one…

Boomers vs Millennials

Get on their page (this is the toughest lift)

A Set Sampler

We had a good workout on Sunday and thought we’d share the ideas with you. Our intention is to craft training sessions so that everyone has an opportunity to “latch onto” some work of value. We look at our club team of teenagers as being all sprinters while dividing them into long, mid and short sprinter sub groups.

The sets below came after about 50 minutes of warm-up and technique work. We measure the benefit in the moment by how much talking goes on while they are on the wall…less chatter, more grit being developed…at least that’s our bias. We’ll know down the road in a couple of months if we are correct.

Long sprinters 500/7 then 3x100/1:40 fast] 12 x 5 rds = 60 min

Long sprinters 500/6 then 3x100/1:40 fast] 11 x 6 rds = 66min

Long sprinters 500/5 then 3x100/1:40 fast] 10 x 6 rds = 60 min

Long sprinters 400IM/6 then 3x100IM/1.40 fast] 11 x 6 rds = 66 min

The 500’s are NS (negative split) by time and the IM’s NS by effort

Mid sprinters     

200fr/2:30 then 4x50/1 stroke fast then 200 stroke/3 then 4x50fr/1 fast] 13.5 x 4 rds =52

Flyers did laps 1,4,8 fly on the stroke 200; Breasters did 1st and 4^th 50 breast

Short sprinters

3x100/1:30 NS w dolph kks off each wall

Then all fast: 2x25/.30 then 2x50/1 then 1x75/1:30] 9 x 6 rd=54

This group went any stroke they wanted on the 25’s, 50’s and 75

We needed to keep encouraging them to go fast on the fast stuff since the natural tendency was to use the longer rests to go easier. Once they bought in, the lane chatter went away…no rest between rounds.

The Never Ending Quest

As coaches we are forever striving to hit the correct phrase to flip the proverbial switch with our swimmers…the switch that leads them to the promised land of success and fulfillment…sounds a little like snake oil but what the heck…

This week we came up with the following…

There are really only 3 types of swimmers

1 – The swimmer who works diligently and is in darn good shape

2 – The swimmer who refines her skill set and has fabulous technique

3 – The swimmer who has both skills and conditioning

Those who fall into group 3 are far more often than not the ones swimming up front. No single athlete is in the third group all the time. Life gets in the way and they move around and yet we have on our team – and so do you! – those who consistently live in group 3. By far the largest group is probably group 1. We have very few in group 2…that one requires a fair amount of brain power and connectedness.

As club coaches we never give up striving for large percentages in group 3. We have found that once a swimmer experiences group 3 they won’t want to leave…and that is the Promised Land.

Footnote: there is a group 4…those who have neither but our experience is that by 13 or 14 they self-select out of our sport because it takes too much work and so group 4 usually only exists in 12 and unders