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These articles are not intended to be a substitute for medical care. If you are concerned about a particular medical condition or injury, please see your health care provider for evaluation and care.
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May 15, 2012
Teaching Triathletes to Catch
By Coach Sue Sotir, Minuteman Masters
Triathletes offer an interesting combination of challenges for masters swim coaches. We must always coach the individual in front of us, but, as a group, triathletes share some common characteristics. Many triathletes believe that more effort will lead to more speed, which works on land but in the water, is not always true. In addition, they often come to us with good lungs, low shoulder and ankle flexibility, a preconceived notion of what swimming looks like, little to no “feel” for the water, and an impending goal race where they want to be ready to attack the swim. How can we, as coaches, overcome previous misconceptions and accelerate technique development? We can get quicker results by increasing feedback.
February 17, 2012
1-2-3 Streamlines
By Scott Bay, Coaches Committee Chair
For competitive swimmers, one of the biggest areas of opportunity for improvement is in streamlines, transitions and breakouts. An effective way to coach this technique is to break it down into three parts, teach each component, and then work on putting the whole thing together. Make adjustments to everything based on the athlete who is in the water.
January 20, 2012
Kicking and Screaming
By Scott Bay, Coaches Committee Chair
We can probably all agree that kicking makes a huge difference in swimming across all distances and abilities. One of the things we have struggled with in our program is explaining the necessity of kick sets for our triathletes and our distance and open water swimmers. I adopted a few thoughts that I learned from the excellent speakers at the World Clinic.
December 16, 2011
Kick Drills for All
By Lisa Wolf, ANCM and DCAC Masters
January is fast approaching and the number of swimmers at practice may grow as the triathletes reemerge from their recovery stage and swimmers with New Year's resolutions and maybe a few regulars make their way back to the pool. What's a coach to do? ... DRILL!
January 18, 2011
Tempo Trainer Workout #2: Long Axis Focus
By Cokie Lepinski, Head Coach, Marin Pirates Masters
Warm Up
Be sure and do a thorough warm up of 400-700 yards.
Following sets use Mode 1 of the Tempo Trainer (TT)
November 26, 2010
A-lign-ment
By Coach Hermine Terhorst, Santa Rosa Masters
Alignment, AKA: a lign ment, AKA: I Ment to be in A Lign
The coolest thing about being a Masters coach is the diversity of swimmers that you coach in any workout. From the beginners in lane one to swimmers who have spent their entire lives coming to workouts in lane 5.
From the deck the most obvious difference between lane 1 and 5 is alignment. If Michael Phelps is the 100% bar, than a typical masters elite lane would be 70-85%, intermediate 60-70%, beginner/intermediate 40-60%, beginner 0-40%. No matter the motivation to train a swimmer should always be looking to increase their percentage of good alignment. It does not take more fitness to go faster, it takes less drag! Bad alignment = drag.
November 12, 2010
Tempo Trainer Workout #1: Basic Intro to the Tempo Trainer
By Cokie Lepinski, Head Coach, Marin Pirates Masters
Warm Up
Be sure and do a thorough warm up of 400-700 yards.
February 22, 2010
Free/Back Combo Drill
By Kerry O'Brien, Walnut Creek Masters
This Free/Back Combo Drill is a drill that anyone can incorporate into their training. We’ve mentioned time and time again the importance of head position and body alignment and this drill focuses on both of these elements as it transitions between freestyle based and backstroke based swimming. You can use this drill during your warm up or cool down before or after a backstroke set and is great for triathletes as an opportunity to “take a break” from the typical all-freestyle triathlon workout. This drill can be swum short course or long course.
January 6, 2010
Perfecting Your Breaststroke Glide: The Hanging Streamline Drill
By Chris Colburn, Academy Bullets Masters
Though the streamline position may seem easy to accomplish, even the best swimmers in the world continue to practice and train themselves to master the technique. There are many simple exercises that can assist you in mastering the streamline position. One simple drill actually takes place on dry land; the Hanging Streamline is straightforward and can be practiced alone or with a partner.
December 18, 2009
Teaching Masters to Master the Butterfly: West Side Fly Progression
By Nate McBride
Several years ago I was desperate to find a way to teach butterfly to adult swimmers … from scratch. I had a lot of adults who, over the years, had lost ankle flexibility, core strength and rhythm. There wasn’t much I could do about the first two except for dryland work whenever I could fit it in and ankle flexibility exercises. And rhythm … you either have it or you don’t. If you don’t, it’s a constant struggle to do fly well but you can get there. These swimmers had been hounding me to teach them, and I was getting more and more frustrated by the fact that I could not give them fly sets in workout.
I kept coming back to the possibility that I could teach them the same way I had taught my age groupers, but then always rejected the idea because of the silliness/simplicity of those drills. Eventually though, desperation gave way to having no other choice. The results astounded me.
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