Slow down and pay attention

Boy, the Y was the place to be last night. There was a Trinity swim meet going on when I arrived at 4:45. AGC and AGA had practice right after that finished until 7:30, then Pre-Senior and Senior practice came in after that. When the meet was going on it was hard to move around the deck. But while practice was going on, it was hard to move in the pool. I love to see all this action in the Y.

We did not do much yardage at AGC practice. When the kids are at practice they have to put out physical energy, mental energy or both. As a result of recent meets and practices, Coach Derrick and I figured it was time to do a practice that focused on mental energy. This involves making the kids think more about a particular skill than going fast. For some of our swimmers then is a sad occasion, some of our kids don't like to slow and think about what their body is doing in the water (right Anna). For others this is a welcomed change, these are the kids that only like to go fast for a VERY short amount of time (right Henry). In either case, it is an important part of a swimmers life.

Last night we took the time to talk about our breakout stroke and when to breath with it. Talked at length about which arm should pull first out of a streamline. This is a difficult concept to get across to some of the swimmers. I believe it is very critical that the swimmers first pull out of streamline should be the arm that is closest to the bottom of the pool. This will rotate the body in the direction of the pull, if we pull with the arm that is closest to the surface of the water, it is a wasted stroke, because we don't get the rotation from the pull. This is a fundamental concept in competitive swimming but one that I don't think has enough attention drawn to it. Don't want to 'beat a dead horse,' so I will stop here.

The important thing to take out of last night's practice is, sometimes you need to slow down to make sure you are doing a skill correctly, and that is OK.