The Times They Are A Changin’

We have the pool for 3 hours this week, as the juniors won’t be there, so both sessions will last an hour and a half.  The first session will be 7am till 8:30am and the second session will run from 8:30am to 10am.  The extra time gives us chance to do a bit more distance, fit in some technique work focusing on EVF and rotation, include a nice pull set and swim a few different strokes at the end for fun.

Also, we will be changing the times for all saturday swimming session from next week onwards.  We will be running two equal length sessions of 65 minutes each so finishing 5 minutes earlier at 9:10am.  This change has been prompted by the need to get the lane ropes out promptly by 10am for swimming lessons and the Juniors have been having to cut short their session by 5 minutes to do this.  Giving the juniors 5 extra minutes back each week and making the senior sessions equally balanced has been agreed to be the best solution solution all round for the club.

See you Saturday!

Rob

Photo by Tristan Colangelo on Unsplash

Christmas Swim 2019

It’s Christmas Swim time again and this year we are going with 12-days of Christmas theme – based on an idea from Alex Bevis.  Both sessions are the same so the first session will start at 7:00am sharp and the second session at 8:05am sharp.  There will be lots of different strokes, speeds, turnaround times and it will be a challenge to complete the set in the time.  Think of it as a Crossfit session in the pool!  My advice is:

• Turn up early so you are in the water and starting on time
• Don’t add any extra rest or your lane won’t complete the set.  Miss out 50 if you miss a turnaround.
• Pace yourself as there is a lot of swimming to do across the different strokes in the 65 minutes
  • Lane 1 will be 3,550m
  • Lane 2 will be 3,150m
  • Lane 3 will be 3,000m
  • Lane 4 will be 2,550m
• Enjoy the challenge, be considerate to your fellow swimmers and let them go ahead if they catch you up

See you Saturday!

Rob

 

Hip Connection

Well done for your efforts last week working on rotation and especially hip connection.  We are going to do a bit more work on that this week to give you more chance to practise this so the theme for this week is hip-connection.

One thing to be aware of when thinking about rotation is avoiding over rotation and also avoiding over reaching, which is something I do see sometimes on Saturday.  A recent video from Brenton Ford at Effortless Swimming talks about this, and how to correct it, and I would recommend watching it here:

We will be doing some of the drills from last week – prone kick with rotation and hip-connector – as well as one of the  drills from Chloe Sutton’s video we didn’t do which is power rotation with kick board, so watch the video from last week if you need a reminder about this.  But in all the swims this week – technique set, main set and subset – please focus on hip-connector timing.  Engage your core and start your rotation as you start the catch of each stroke.  And please do use your kick timed with this hip-connector rotation to help – even when doing the pull set.

See you Saturday!

Rob

Rotation and timing

We have focused a lot on the catch over the last few weeks and I have seen some good improvements from many of you, especially in increased patience with the catch and avoiding wasted effort pushing down on the water.  I now want to focus on the transition to the power phase using rotation from your core – building on your patient catch.  The following video from Chloe Sutton is a good summary of what to think about and some drills we will be doing this week.

I’d like you to particularly focus on timing.  We will be doing the hip connector drill to help you focus on this.  We will also be doing quite a lot of work on the legs so really think about timing your kick to help with the rotation.  After the drills we will do an aerobic pyramid with some sprints to finish.

See you Saturday!

Rob