Learning how to Fly

We had a good number of kids at practice tonight, 29 swimmers...everyone is trying to work off all that holiday cooking...I know I have been working a little harder this week after eating all those cookies that were give to me for Christmas. I have been enjoying them...I am hoping the good turnout at practice is not just a New Years Resolution that will be around for a week or 2 and then dropped like so many other resolutions...

Got to practice today ready to give the kids a really cool butterfly workout. We started along that path, but had to get away from the plan. I was all ready to go with this workout, had some of the kids excited about the fly workout that they were getting. Went through a pretty good warmup and I thought they were ready. We started doing some fly kicking after the warmup. I gave them a small kick set to make sure that they had good rythum within their kick. Not too bad, I thought. We then put the fins on. We had to remind them where to initiate the kick. This seems to be a common problem with the kids, we throw fins on them and what they did without the fins tends to go out the window. We spent some time talking about how the kick should be initiated from the ribcage and not the fins. Being this is the first year with the fins, we are trying to get them to use the fins correctly. They put the fins on and they think the fins are going to do the work for them. The fins should just help them feel the snap with their feet. So after a brief time of instruction, we sent them off to do some kicking with the fins. Still really excited about the practice I had put together for them. We then moved onto the main set. This was it...I was ready...they looked like they were ready. After the first 3 fifties of the set, Coach Derrick and I realized this set would need to change. Their strokes were already falling apart, those who had a stroke that is. We switched the drill that we were doing and sent them on their way....well...that was not working because what we had talked about when we were kicking did not get brought over from the kicking set to the main set...Well, that is not something I can live with. I don't see the purpose with doing something...So Coach Derrick and I decided to go back to the basics of Butterfly and make sure they could FEEL where to initiate the movement of fly...We spent the last part of the practice going step by step what they should be feeling...and doing drills to make sure they were getting the message. Well, I think it worked...however, we only did a few laps of fly at the end of practice, those few laps looked good.
Now what comes next, tomorrows practice I will try to run a similar set to what I wanted to run tonight, and then we are going to finish practice with some starts. I did let them know that even though we were only doing 25s today, they should stop after each lap and think about how that felt and what they could do differently the next time to make it better or to put into practice what Coach Derrick and I had to say after that lap. I told them, this will help them with their starts, how you ask, well if they can picture themselves doing the drill we were working on correctly, they should be doing the same thing behind the block before their start. They should picture themselves going through their race from start to finish...Boy, I am looking foward to seeing these kids swim this weekend. They have been working hard in practice. Camp Tanguay will venture down to the hotel tomorrow night, after practice. See you all on the deck real soon.