Profile
of a High School Swimmer Molly is a sophomore and an extremely talented
athlete. I had to wait until the cross country season was over before
Molly started training for the season. She began the season three
months later than the rest of her competition at the High School
State Level.
It took at least two months before Molly started to achieve the
Race Pace work needed to compete at the State Level in the 200 IM
and the 500 free. Molly did the workouts as written that many of
you have received thru the weekly FasterSwimming workouts written
for the 23 week program. View
information about the workouts here.
She was trained with all the Race Pace work to hold 1:01.. She swam
a 5:08.55 – :58.5, 1:02.1, 1:03.4, 1:03.1, 1:00.2 and finaled
at States. Did Molly train the traditional way for the 500 free,
NO. Could she have started the season earlier and been faster, YES.
Would a different style of training help, it has worked for decades,
YES. Given all the information above I believe that we did the best
for her in a very short amount of time.
Now Molly will be swimming year round so
“Katie bar the door”! The only thing I will change in
training her will be longer sets (not necessarily longer distances)
at goal Race Pace in the 500, 1000, 1650 etc… The send offs
and rest intervals will become faster as her ability to hold Race
Pace longer improves.
I rested (with the sprinters) Molly an additional 3 weeks to swim
at the USA Sectional meet with just a few sets holding 500 Race
Pace. I decided that Molly should just stay strong in the water
knowing that she will swim the 400 IM and the 1650 free at the meet.
She just missed her US OPEN cut in the 400
IM by a few tenths and placed 2nd in the mile. Her splits in the
mile averaged 1:03. high. 1st 500 @ 5:16.14, 2nd 500 @ 5:20.07,
3rd 500 @ 5:20.68 with her last 50 28.8 totaling 17:28.91. I do
know that wasn’t a record of any type but a testament to Molly’s
training and the importance of Race Pace.
Molly did a great job of sprint kicking off each wall. She maintained
the desired warm-up Race Pace of 1:03, less than 8 minutes previous
to the swim. She added more kicking to her swimming as the race
continued based on her fitness level. Now the goal is to maintain
a faster Race Pace goal in practice and hold for longer periods
of time.
I encourage any comments. Discussion always leads to better swimming
and coaching.
We are offering the 14 week book and the Faster Swimming book as a bundle for our Holiday Sale. The Faster Swimming book offers the mechanics of each stroke, race strategies for competition, nutrition and details on how to set up your dryland program.
The 14 week book offers all the swimming and dryland workouts needed to get your High School and Middle School swimmers in shape, increase aerobic capacity, teaching them how to sprint and then tapering them for Championships.
