crmejean
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We are at our LC Champs, and our results are not good. So far, we have had only two PB out of nine swims. I am not sure what the issue is. I think my kids may have been ready for the season to end a couple of weeks ago. I will be rereading everything about the psychology aspect and peaking. I think this may be my mistake.
Hopefully, our next three swims will be better!
My three swimmers have spent the summer also swimming with an AAU team. For our 4-5 sessions a week, we do USRPT with 3 sets. For their 3-4 AAU practices, they have done no more than 1,000 yards with heavy emphasis on technique. We did not taper for this meet, but we have reduced our sets this week to two per session. Our LC championships are this weekend. Only the two boys will swim. When I say 45% PB, I mean that he swam best times in 45% of his races. We have not done any “endurance” training. I am very anxious to see how championships go.
We went to another meet. We are sticking with USRPT, but we are concerned about endurance. Any thoughts would be appreciated! Our technique focus going into this meet was turns.
13 year old – 45% PB. He was out of the water for three weeks and in for one week before this meet. (Two weeks of camp and an additional week for injury. He cut off the tip of his thumb.) He dropped 8 in his 400 IM in three weeks.
11 year old – 54% PB. He missed one week of training, but had two weeks back in leading up to the meet. He dropped almost 19 in his 400 IM in three weeks. He also did his first 1500 under his goal.
11 year old – 18% PB. She didn’t miss any training. The drops she did have were not huge. Some of her gains were minuscule, but some were big. (8+ in 100 BK and 100 Fly.)
Their performance does not reflect what they have been doing in practice at all. All three of them have been training at 2-7% under PB times. I think we may have more of a mental/pressure issue when it comes time to perform in a meet. Our summer league championships are tomorrow and LSC LC championships are next weekend. We are hoping to get this resolved and see them perform well at the meets!
He ended up swimming all best times at the mini meet, but only a few at the weekend long meet. I have also realized that we have been too focused on results. He had some good swims and executed some of the things we have been working on in practice. I think your verbiage really helped change his focus a little bit. Our summer league chamionship meet is this Saturday with our LSC Chamionships the following weekend. It is hard to believe this season is almost over! We are going to be more intentional about focusing on just swimming without getting so wrapped up in QTs and PBs.
Thanks! I have not verbalized it to him that way, but I will. We actually have a mini meet tomorrow. Your verbiage is encouraging. He has had a defeatist attitude. I think I will review some video and pick one technique from each race that I will be looking for tomorrow. We’ll make those things our “wins.”
We went to our second LC meet of the season and did not have the same results. The first was two weeks ago. The 10 year olds had 100% PB, and the 13 year old had 87% PB. Several factors may have played into this meet not being as successful.
We have recently joined an AAU summer league team. They are practicing 1 1/2 hours 3-4 mornings a week in addition to our normal USRPT sessions. I know this falls under the “mixed training = mixed results” mantra. We chose to make a trade-off. They have missed being part of a team, and this is a relaxed, fun atmosphere. They do the conditioning exercises Rushall describes and focus a lot on technique. They have done one meet with this team and are having a blast. I keep telling myself that I am making sure they are having fun.
Two swimmers (10) had been away at camp until the day before.
We left at 5 am and drove six hours.
The 10 year olds had 37% & 25% PB. In all but two races, the boy had no competition. He was half the length of the pool or more ahead in the other races. Is having someone to race an intangible that I can not quantify?
The 13 year old trained as usual. He had 50% PB. His first race was the 1500, and he dropped over 16 seconds in eight weeks. I was greatly encouraged by his first day because he swam 100% PB. The meet ended up being very small with turn around times of around 15-20 minutes. He ended up swimming in 16 events. He made it through – even posting a PB in 200 Fly as his last event. He was hurting so bad that he asked me to scratch which he has never done. I think I made the right decision in getting him to dig deep and push through. He proved to himself that he could do it.
Did those factors really make an impact? We are supposed to go to an outdoor meet in four weeks. The first two of those, the 13 year old is out of town. The second week, the 10 year old boy will also be gone. I need to decide if we should still go. It is a 5-6 hour drive. I don’t want to set them up for failure. I would love feedback from you guys!
We did not taper at all before out first meet. We did spend an entire session the week of the meet on starts, underwaters, turns, and finishes. We teach our kids to attack every wall and take 3-4 strokes like their life depends on it when they surface. I could see them pull ahead at every turn. They averaged 8.2% drops from last season’s times. We have another LC meet this weekend. The rest of this month training will be inconsistent with them going out of town for camps. We will get two full weeks in before our July meet. I will continue to post results as we compete. Good luck to you and your kids!
We had a couple of practices when my kids seemed very tired and were not making very many reps. I ended up abandoning those and focusing on attacking the walls, turns, and underwaters. The next session was much better. This happened maybe 2-3 times in the four weeks leading up to our first LC meet last weekend. The three swimmers averaged a drop of just over 8% from last season’s times. I am not sure how that compares to the norm, but I think allowing them to swim slow those days would have had a negative effect. I took a very positive tone with them and stressed what great progress they made on their skills.
I have two swimmers doing the 1500 July 12th. One is almost 14, and the other will have just turned 11 and be doing it for the first time. A few months ago he did the 800 in 12:00. During the morning session the day of the 1500 he will swim 700M. He will be able to rest during the afternoon session before the 1500 in the evening. In the four weeks leading up to the meet he will not train at all in week two. My original plan was to do one session per week of 1500 training. We try to repeat sets within 48 hours, but we have only done the 1500 set once per week a few times. In this meet he will swim 15 events for a total of 3900M. Doing a 1500 session means practicing at 5 am outside in a 50M pool. Is once a week enough prep for this race? Each week we will do 4-5 RP sessions of around 2000 yards in the afternoons, and he will do 3 morning sessions with an AAU team that focuses mostly on technique. We also do one session each week focusing on starts, turns, and underwaters. He is very well conditioned and does not seem to tire at all. I guess I am having trouble breaking that traditional training thought process and am concerned about so much less yardage than we used to do. Opinions greatly appreciated!
Perhaps I should also note that the 13 year old was given the award for the hardest worker during the 2012-2013 season. His performance was not a lack of effort.
We averaged over 8% drops from last season. This is how the last three seasons have compared:
13 yo – 2011-2012 = 8.63%, 2012-2013 = 1.2% drop, 2013-2014 = 7.5% drop
10 yo – 2011-2012 = 15.6%, 2012-2013 = 7.4% drop, 2013-2014 = 9.25% drop
10 yo – 2011-2012 = 12.4%, 2012-2013 = 4% drop, 2013-2014 = 8.8% dropWe had a coaching change after the 2012 LC season and again in October of 2013. When I look back at the history, the 2011 and 2012 seasons showed steady improvement. 2012-2013 did not show as much. During the 2013 season the 13 year old gained in more events than he dropped. It was all traditional training until March of 2014. How much does the coach contribute to the improvement? Are the higher numbers for the ten year olds in 2011-2012 because they had been swimming just a year and dropping in greater amounts? I think these numbers support our switch to USRPT. Will it be better to look at our 2014 seasonal drops? What numbers do you all compare?
Thanks for the input. I like the idea of having them choose one to emphasize. I do correct technique (as well as a non-swimmer can) all throughout our practices. I go by what Rushall’s curriculum teaches. This is very difficult to do since I can not perform these strokes myself! I guess we are doing okay. Our season to season drops after the first LC meet averaged 8.2% per event. I have no idea how that compares to where we should be. I do see a trend to greater drops in time than between the 2012-2013 season when we used traditional training. Over the 2013 season, one of my swimmers gained time in several events. We left the team in October 2013 but continued with traditional training. We made the transition to USRPT in March and April. I am anxious to see how we do in our next meet this weekend. Two of the kids will have missed training the entire week.
DrPaul, check out the updated paper #49. He makes some clarifications on distances to train. 200 & under is 5-6 times the event distance.
We ended up with PB times in 19/22 swims in our first LC meet of the season. We had 2 DQs for false start on fly and underwater finish on back. Both races would have also been significant drops. We dropped a total of 190 seconds in the 19 races. I am in the process of compiling a comparison of season to season drops for the last three years. We had a coaching change in between 2012-2013, but both were traditional training. Another coaching change in Oct of 2013 and switch to USRPT in March of 2014. I am not sure how those changes would impact the evaluation of how well USRPT works. Thoughts?
We are at our first LC meet of the season. Out of 11 races, we have had one slight gain of .32 in a 200 Free. I will post full details Monday, but so far they are doing great.
200 IM – one drop of 9% and one of 7%
200 Free – 3% drop
100 Fly – 12.5% drop
200 BR – 9% drop
100 BK – 8%
100 BR – 6% & 2% drops
50 BK – 4% drop
50 Fly – 4%
100 Free – 5% & 3%They kids also say they do not feel as tired. I am excited to see what happens tomorrow!
