Reply To: Question for Age Group Coaches
I train 7-9 as well as 9-11 yo age groupers
What are drills?
If one swimmer is well positioned and has low breathing freestyle, does that swimmer need to kick the same superman drill as some other swimmer? Does one-armed butterfly improve your butterfly? Is two-kick-one-pull breaststroke appropriate? Maybe if you do it just for the fun of it…
What do you want to achieve with your swimmer doing drills? I see it often enough with drills having the opposite effect because the follow-up is insufficient.
I tend to pick one swimmer to the side working specifically on something that needs fixing. This of course requires a free water space and other coaches that can cover for you.
Instead of one-goggle breathing, I would like to propose freestyle breathing with both ears in the water…
We just started with USRPT (second week), and what we observed is that many slow-swimming technical issues seem to resolve themselves with fast swimming. Especially with butterfly and breaststroke. Freestyle breathing was also greatly improved for some of the worst example swimmers when fast swimming was introduced.
