with a fantastic effort posted some unbelievable times.  We want to take advantage of the remaining meets and continue to race hard.  You never want to waste an opportunity to practice your events and prepare yourself for the championship meet.

 

If we can train together as a team, encourage each other and push one another for these next few weeks and also take advantage of the remaining meets to practice our racing – we will be setting ourselves up for an exciting championship

 

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It’s the end of January and the season is winding down.  I can’t believe that in a few weeks we will be tapering for the championship meets.  The swimmers have done an outstanding job with their training.  During the holidays the practices were incredible.  Every lane did a terrific job.  Every practice the coaches would stand on the deck, watch a lane finish a swim, look at the clock, then look at each other and say “did they really go that fast?”!  Or, “I can’t believe they just did that!”, and it was the entire pool.

 

I’ve been coaching for a long time and have had some great groups of trainers, but I can honestly say I have never had a group train better than this one.  I know that we have alumni of the program who check the website to see how things are going and I want them to know they can be proud of this team, because not only did they

continue the tradition of intense training over the holiday, which was established in the late 80s and into the new millennium – but they raised the bar.  The swimmers have continued their tremendous training and are doing an excellent job with the broken swim, which develops speed for the championships.  We need to now work as a team more than ever and encourage each other so we can increase the intensity of our trains even more as we head toward the taper.

 

Our swim meet performances have been almost as impressive as our training.  When you train as hard as we have been training, a lot of times the swimmers get to the broken down to swim fast.  At the last couple of meets the plan was to train as hard as we could, go to the meet as tired and broken down as possible and swim as fast as we could being tired.  The swimmers did just that and

Bob’s Byline

Chris’s Corner

We are on the home stretch of our season.  The championship season will begin in one month which means our swimmers who are focusing on our conference meet or Regional meet (A State) will begin to taper during mid to late February.

 

What can we do between now and then? Consistency is

a key ingredient to your success. It is vital that swimmers take care of themselves both in and out of the pool. In the pool, swimmers need to put an extra focus on the details of swimming. Don’t just show up each day and expect to improve. Show up each day with a goal for that day. Plan to work on your turns, to improve your repeat

times, to practice your breathing patterns for race day. Look for improvement in everything that you do.

 

Out of the pool swimmers need to take care of themselves and their environment. Dress appropriately for the season. As this article is being written, the high temperature for today is 14 degrees.

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THE WAVE: The Official Newsletter of the Wheaton Swim Club

JANUARY, 2005

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

The Wave

Items of Interest in This Issue:

· Christmas training summary

· End-of-Year Forecast

· Home Meet Info

· Relay Information

· Truths and Myths about Tapering

· Swim Camps

· Gold, Silver, and Bronze Group Warm-ups