Articles and Videos
Kick Your Kick into Shape
When it’s time for a kick set, many of us grab a kickboard and get kicking—that’s usually my modus operandi anyway. But is kicking with kickboards the safest way for us to get our kicks in? “From a postural perspective, using a kickboard encourages swimmers to arch their backs and that’s unnatural,” says Scott Bay, a U.S. Masters Swimming Level 4 coach, member of USMS’s Coaches Committee, and head coach of the Central Florida Y Masters, in Orlando. Using a kickboard can lead swimmers to kick in a downward direction, he says, and that slows a swimmer down and can strain the lower back.
Sculling Drills
Scott Bay, head coach of the Daytona Beach Masters, shares two of his favorite sculling drills.
Does Swimming Help With Weight Loss?
Swimming is an all-body workout that builds muscle strength and cardiovascular capacity and lowers blood pressure and risk of disease—all without the gravity-induced stress and joint pressure that athletes encounter on land.
No Blocks? No Problem!
If your local swimming pool doesn’t have starting blocks (or won’t let you dive off them), don’t despair. Here are some ways to ensure spectacular starts when it’s your turn to take your mark.
Easy Speed Part 2
There is such a thing as natural talent, but that physical and mental effort applied in the right areas can compensate for a lack of innate gifts. Let’s continue to examine that concept.
The Habit of Perfection—Working the Walls
Excellence is not accidental. While we might be able to perform any particular movement properly during a focused drill, it takes tons of practice to ensure that those skills become so ingrained we’ll perform them flawlessly when the pressure is on. DiRado didn’t impulsively decide to lunge for the wall for the first time in that one race; she developed the habit of finishing hard through years of practicing great touches.
USMS Elects Directors and Honors Members
U.S. Masters Swimming has concluded its annual meeting during the United States Aquatic Sports Convention. In addition to committee meetings and rules and legislation reviews, USMS held at-large director elections and honored many of its deserving volunteers with service awards.
Keep Your Kick Going!
Some people have great kicks, but when you take away the kick board and ask them to swim, their kick disappears faster than a fair weather swimmer on a cold day. So how do we get the lower half of the body to work with the upper half? Swimmers in my program have had great success with these two back-to-basics drills.
New USMS/ASCA Coach Certification Program a Huge Success
A coach is defined in The Oxford College Dictionary as “an athletic instructor or trainer.” While technically accurate, that description does not come close to conveying what a good coach really does for a swimmer. In addition to instructing and training, a coach also motivates, corrects, inspires, and leads. He or she plans workouts, acts as traffic cop and cheerleader, assists in goal setting and organizes participation in meets. These extra duties are particularly important in Masters swimming. Coaching adults is simply different than coaching children and teenagers in ways that are both rewarding and challenging.
Why One-Stroke-Cycle 25s Are the Key to Swimming Faster
The subtle transition from underwater to top-of-the-water swimming is your breakout. Breakouts occur after your start and turns and are important because after your start and turns, you’re traveling as fast as you’ll ever be during your race. If you can maintain some of that speed, you can drastically improve your times. If you have bad breakouts, you’re leaving speed on the table. Remember, it’s a lot easier to maintain speed than it is to accelerate to it. One-stroke 25s can help you improve your breakouts.
Why Swimmers Need to Use a Logbook to Optimize Their Training and Performance
When you started swimming, personal bests came to you regularly, whether it was monthly, weekly, or even daily. You might have looked at that improvement and thought it would go on like that forever. But it didn’t. When searching for answers, you might have come across a fitness tracker to start recording your sessions, to look for some reason why those improvements don’t just keep coming with the extra work. Looking at the data for intensity (intervals) or volume (yards swum in a session) tells you some things but doesn’t paint the whole picture. Other elements go into your performance and keeping a record of not just workouts but many of the other variables can help you make sense of the data. Here are a few of the key variables that you may want to keep in a swim log to help guide you to better results.
Busting 3 Myths About Fast Swimmers (and Revealing the Truths Behind Them)
If you watched the 2024 Olympics—and what an event that was—you were likely wowed by the athletic prowess of all the athletes, especially the swimmers. Maybe you went back to your Masters practice and marveled with all the swim geeks at your favorite performances. And eventually the talk turned to, “Why are these athletes so fast?”
What Are the Markings on the Bottom of the Pool For?
Competition pools have markings on the bottom and walls and in the lane lines. Most competitive swimmers learn what and where these are, but if you’ve never competed or are new to swimming, you might not know how to make best use of these markings to produce your fastest swims.
Use Your Head to Fix Your Body Position and Alignment
Your body position, which is affected by your head position, will determine how fast you can swim.
Busting 3 Triathlon Swim Training Myths
Many new triathletes believe that if they have a high level of fitness and endurance from another sport, that it carries over to swimming. But if you don’t have a swimming background, the experience of hopping into even a sprint triathlon swim can be quite an eye opener. Even experienced pool swimmers have had this experience and found it unsettling.
Which Breaststroke Pull Style Are You?
Breaststroke can be swum effectively and fast using many different styles and techniques. It’s also true that there are a tremendous number of ways to swim breaststroke poorly. Some swimmers are better breaststroke kickers than pullers, or better pullers than kickers. Some are good at pulling and kicking but have bad rhythm and timing. And there are those rare natural breaststrokers who have it all together and everything in the right place at the right time.
What Swimmers Need to Know About Fins
For most swimmers, there are two primary reasons for using fins.
How to Learn Dive Starts
If you’re new to swimming or have never competed but would like to try, you might be wondering how to learn a dive start. In Masters competitions, you’re not required to dive—you can start from in the water. But learning new skills keeps everything fun and interesting. if you decide you’d like to learn to dive in, there are some things to know first.
What Swimmers Need to Know About Paddles
If you’ve considered getting paddles, you’ve undoubtedly discovered that there are a variety of different sizes, and styles.
