KngLenny

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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)
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  • in reply to: Backstroke start #3120
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Kevin,

    Not sure if this is any help specifically, a lot is based on the individual, but here are a couple things we try to incorporate:

    1. Hips should be away from the heels, maybe this is oversimplifying, but I wouldn’t ask for someone to give me a max vertical jump by putting their hips on their heels. The hips should be at a distance that is comfortable for the athlete, I try to think athletic stance then turn them sideways onto the wall. I also think staggering the feet a bit helps with slipping on the wall.

    2. Head position again should be comfortable for the athlete. I like it as far back as possible while still maintaining good contact with the wall, any movement of the head towards the block is movement that must be reversed at the start, slowing them down, I compare this to doing a stand-up start and leaning back, weight should be forward and vice-versa on a backstroke start.

    3. Hips compared to water level all depend on the strength of your athlete, how well she can maintain good contact on the wall and her ability to enter cleanly. I think if you can get your hips all the way out while still maintaining a good enough grip to explode is ideal, but I find most of my athletes are putting the hips right at the water line. Again, we want as much of their force to be going outward as possible and limiting the upward force needed to clear the water with the hips.

    4. After all that it’s about entering cleanly with a good angle, which is the hardest part 🙂

    Probably not super helpful, but those are some key points I personally like. All that being said, I will freely admit I am not a backstroke start ‘guru’ I probably rank as ‘satisfactory’ when coaching backstroke starts 🙂

    in reply to: Suggestions? #3039
    KngLenny
    Participant

    when I say acceptable sets I mean sets that were not immediate or very close to immediate failures. I know our paces weren’t far off, most of them were training at slower than PB times.

    in reply to: Your Thoughts #2929
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Doc,

    I won’t be making any more adjustments this year, I was mostly just curious for the future. I did really like the 3 day rest, but I also felt it wasn’t enough for some of our guys. I think I will have to try something with those guys and really take great notes over the next several weeks.

    Matt,

    Looks interesting, this is my first year of USRPT but always during my coaching career I’ve had the taper mantra that it was better to be too rested than not rested enough.

    in reply to: Your Thoughts #2926
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Hey Everyone thanks for the help!

    We have made the adjustments and I think we are in a good place right now. I do have a question about lowering paces, I know the general rule is to lower the pace if they finish the set 2 times in a row. My question is this, let’s say they finish the first set of the day on Monday. Then we do the same set on Tuesday, but we do it second or third and they don’t make it to the end. Then we do the set 1st again on Wednesday and they finish the set. Now they didn’t finish the set twice in a row, but they did finish the set twice in a row when it was the first set of the day. Should we lower the pace time?

    We are closing in on our conference champs (4 weeks away) and we are training fast! I’m pumped if we can swim close to our pace times! For our midseason meet we rested 3 days and swam fairly well. I’ve seen the bad reviews for the Rushall 2 week rest, any other suggestions? Some will repeat the same rest as midseason, but I have a few swimmers that based on their midseason results need more rest. If you have any suggestions I would appreciate it!

    Cheers,

    Knglenny

    in reply to: Your Thoughts #2911
    KngLenny
    Participant

    I have to do a couple calculations which I hate. We train SCM and compete SCY. So I start with her yard time, we have been using 55.0, her best time is a 54.8. Then depending on what I am looking for I use several conversion factors. First, if we want just a straight 1/4 time I divide her time by the NCAA SCM conversion (55/.896=61.38) and divide that by 4 (61.38/4=15.35) and I now have her SCM time. If we are doing 2nd 50 I take her time and multiply it by .5178 (I like .4822 and .5178 for women) to get her 2nd 50 time of 28.48 then divide by .896 to get a pace of 31.79 for SCM. I know all the numbers and converting isn’t perfect, but we have found a way to make it work and most athletes have adjusted. However, I will freely admit that when we do get to swim yards at practice, they generally do better on their sets.

    in reply to: Your Thoughts #2907
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Amsepamse,

    I agree completely. We have had several conversations about preparing herself for the workout and finding the same mentality she uses doing races. We do probably warm-up too long in the water, and three days a week we do have a short dryland circuit before we get in the water.

    in reply to: Update #2878
    KngLenny
    Participant

    We didn’t mean to rest but we did end up with rest before our bigger meet. Our better meet was on a Friday so we went 3 hard/normal days plus we only did 2 sets on Thursday offering 50% of usual numbers. We usually train scm but always change to scy the day before a meet, so that week we enter 3 days plus one shorter. For the slow meet we went 4 hard/normal days and we added some harder sets, 50s at back 1/2 100 pace and 25s at 1St 50 100 pace. On Friday we did 2 sets yards, one at 75% and one at 50% usual numbers offered. The slower meet also had a 10 am start time after a bus ride while at the faster meet we were at home on a Friday night. I think a lot of factors played into our being slower, tougher training week, more practices, travel, meet time.

    We have a tough meet this Saturday against a d1 program, should be a close meet and it is at home in the afternoon. I expect we will bounce back, we will see on Saturday.

    in reply to: Update #2875
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Well we went from lights out last week to terrible this week. We were on the road against a team we were going to rout, but we had our worst swims of the year. I actually think it was a lack of focus, even though we told prepared them for what they would need to do mentally to swim fast. We were really fast yesterday and even went a little lighter, but today was really bad.

    Couple of examples

    Female 50/100 last week 25.0, 56.0, this week 26.6, 59.5
    Male 50/100 last week 21.9/48.5, this week 23.0, 51.8

    Ouch!

    in reply to: Update #2872
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Good to know we aren’t the only ones! Thanks bilratio

    in reply to: Update #2870
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Thanks bilratio.

    Anyone ever run into the “Mundays?” Gave our kids Sat and Sun off after a great meet Friday night. Monday morning wakeup swim was good, but all aerobic and technique. This afternoon was wretched, I had a 50 set, 100 set and 200 set planned. We barreled through the 50 set and got a few 25’s into the 100, nobody ,add more than one, most and none. No paces changed, I shut it down and did ez swimming and technique for the rest of practice? Is this a common thing off 2 days rest or did they all have a great Halloween weekend?

    in reply to: Tech suits #2867
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Hey guys,

    As a college coach for the better part of a decade I think it comes down to coaches wanting a fair playing field. That being said if I could afford to put my kids in tech suits for every race I would. I have found that most coaches are okay with it if they know ahead of time, in my experience all coaches are okay with it if they are going for something, record, cut, etc. But some coaches always are going to be upset about having a tech suit in nonchampionship meets just because that is the way it has always been. Whatevr, do what is best for your swimmers first.

    in reply to: Workout Share #2857
    KngLenny
    Participant

    100% agree. Now if I can convince the kids……Also a lot of kids don’t give the tech suit credit, but you can see their race mentality change when they get to wear one, real confidence booster.

    in reply to: Workout Share #2855
    KngLenny
    Participant

    bilratio,

    All best times I posted were with tech. suits, all times from this year so far are without. Thanks for the insight, we will continue to build volume, though we have our biggest meet of the semester in 3 weeks, which we will do that 3-day rest for that oldschool helped me find via the search function. Quick side note thank you to oldschool that search function has had me all over this forum and I love it, all the information!!!!!!

    Anyway, I don’t think we will see any major results until february with more training time, but we are hoping for season bests.

    Again thanks so much, and if I remember correctly you have a bigger meet this weekend, so good luck.

    in reply to: Workout Share #2853
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Bilratio,

    Yesterday is bad example, of my two returning girls one missed most of practice for a midterm and the other told me at end she was/is sick when I asked why she had such an off day (thought I was going to need to give her some extra recovery).

    So far my top girl is a tough nut to crack, she was 54 mid as a jr in high school and slower her senior year. As a freshman last year she was 55 low doing traditional training. She is swimming faster this year in meets so far, 25.4 and 56.5 in our last meet. She is currently training at a 56.0 pace. The problem we run into is at 14.0 she generally misses 1 or none but at a faster pace she can’t seem to put together a good set, usually is done around 12 including 4 mulligans. The other girl is having a much harder time adjusting, similar times at the end of the year 24.6/55 low and was 25.6/57.2 at our last meet. However she is training at a 14.3 pace and usually is at or below the average for the group, but who knows how long she has been battling this illness.

    We are still transitioning and they are working hard to figure it out. But they are the recipients of a coach who is still figuring it out so we are still looking for that “groove”. A feshman girls who’s top time is 56 high is training at 57 pace and has God and bad days.

    A better example are my guys, they are all pretty much training at very close to their best time paces we are still working on building volume. My top guy was 47 high last year as a sr in high school. He trains consistently well at a 48 low pace, I think he made it to 21 yesterday, so he completed 4x race distance total. However his times are not translating in Meets yet, he is consistently 50 low (22 low in meets this year, best time of 21.6) I think it is an adjustment and body composition thing right now, he is heavy with muscle and is really flagging on the back end.

    The best translation is iny 200 strokes which are all guys. They are training at best time speeds and generally making it close to the offered 16 x 50 or finishing the set, but have yet to make it to two completions in a row. Their training times are 203 and they have been 207,207 and 209 (out way to hard in 2 fly last 50 we all saw the piano fall). So 207 is within half a second of 3% of their lifetime bests.

    Thus far my biggest struggle is finding a consistant microcycle or weekly plan to follow, and that is on me but the last 3 to 4 weeks has been about adjusting, building to speed and now building volume. We have meet tomorrow so that will give me more data, but I plan on working on aicrocycle that we can consistently use moving forward (adjusting as needed) to beore consistant. The problem I run into is most are training for 3 or 4 events. Right now I leaning towards something like this for my 50-100-100 stroke, we do other skill sets, I just list them because they are at a high speed is 4 x 4 turns at race pace or 12 x 12.5 focustomers on breakouts.

    Monday 50-100-100 stroke
    Tuesday skill-100 stroke-200 free
    Wednesday 100-50-200
    Thursday skill-100 stroke-200 free
    Friday 50-skill-100

    My other thought was to break it up by 50 and 100 days
    Monday 100-100 stroke-200
    Tuesday 50-skill-50 stroke
    Wednesday 100 stroke-100-200
    Thursday 50 stroke-skill-50
    Friday 50 skill 100 or 200

    Anyway that is a long ramble, hope that gave you some insight. Do you think I should be slowing down their paces and offeringore or keep the paces closer to best time and take the weeks needed to build volume. I was more inclined to build volume because our big meet isn’t until February. We will rest in a couple weeks for a midseason meet, but that isn’t nearly as important, it’s more about experience in preparation for February.

    in reply to: Workout Share #2849
    KngLenny
    Participant

    Yesterday we did 3 sets, long to short.

    Set #1 = 16 x 50 (1) 1/4 200 pace, average made was 9.

    Set #2 = 24 x 25 (40) 1/4 100 pace, average made was 11.

    Set #3 = 12 x 25 (1) 1st 50 of 100 pace, average made was 8

    I have a tracking question. For instance, when we did the 24 x 25 we had 4 mulligans. I don’t really have my swimmers pay attention to their times there, mostly focus on technical skills to get themselves mentally ready for the rest of the set. So in essence we did 4 x 25 preset and 20 x 25 “live” We track the 1st miss, and the knockout miss. From that I get their total number made, i.e. last miss number 18, missed 3, sat out 2 (1 after first miss and one after second miss) so 18-5 is 13. To this point I have been saying they made 13, should that number really be 9 (13-4 mulligans)?

    If that is the case, then our numbers minus mulligans change to averages of 6, 7, 4 respectively which seems worrisome, even knowing that many of the swimmers make some or most of the mulligans.

    Looking at those numbers including the mulligans they seem okay (correct me if I am wrong) with 9 = 2.25 race distance, 11 = 2.75 race distance and 8 = 2 x race distance (or 4 x race distance because it is a first 50 focus). Aren’t we looking to swim 3 x race distance at race pace, on average (including mulligans) we were just a little short.

    Please critique/criticize any and all of my rambling.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 23 total)