Reply To: Taper for Distance Swimmers
Billratio,
Yes it is. If you keep at this coaching thing long you’re going to have a lot more and it always seems to be the ones that just bust their butt in practice, never miss and are just flat out nice kids. At our parent meetings with the group I go over this very thing. They get it mentally, but struggle emotionally.
I have an idea. If you have the lane space try this. It’s the 2nd strategy of the Parametric System and it might work at least for mental massage. Drop down to having her go 8 x 25 on 1:00, 8 x 50 on 50/1:00 and 5 x 100 on 1:30/2:00. You will need to time and record each repeat and figure standard deviation (Excel can do this). This is “distance constant and speed increasing” she should get faster e.g. she has been holding 33.1 on her 50s, now doing only 8 she should be able to lower that to say 32.7 (1%) or better. Same would go for the 25s. If you’ve not been doing 100s then maybe just do 3 x 100. Each time she does the sets you have to have her avg and st. dev. ready from the last test so she knows she is trying to go faster again.
You can do the 25s and 100s at the same practice with a long recovery between or 25s and 50s. I’d stay away from 50s and 100s at the same practice. Too close in energy systems. Figure back from meet and start maybe ten days out doing 1 to 2 tests sets each practice with a technical /recovery day in between. I’d be careful of doing the sets more than twice in the ten days. They tend to start not being able to lower the avg. and that just starts another “emotional event”
it’s worht a try and it may help with her confidence and you can build off that.
hope this make sense
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
