Most of you have heard me say it again and again, but here it goes ONE MORE TIME. The greatest asset a swimmer can bring to a race [apart from developed skill and race speed training] is a RESTED/FRESH body ready to swim fast. How many times have we seen a swimmer come back from vacation or even an illness only to swim his/her best race. If you’ve been around swimming and other forms of athletics you’ve seen it before. While certainly not “rocket science” it is a fact often overlooked. Sometimes it would appear that kids have endless energy but PEAK performance can only be attained with a physically fresh body.
How to apply it (I’ll make it simple) FOR OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE:
- DON’T swim or practice the day before a meet. [ B swimmers should not swim a practice the morning of a B-meet, NOR should they spend the day at the pool.
- The practice TWO days before the meet should be a "tune-up" and contain ONLY race specific elements...ahh yes... the muscle memory thing again.
- As you've heard before, the warm up the day of the meet should be BRIEF and to the point [ A TUNE UP ]. General lap swimming is a WASTE of time and often fatigues the swimmer not to mention de-tunes/contaminates her/his “race speed memory”. This is the stuff, unfortunately, some have been doing since “dirt was young”.
These suggestions WILL probably go against the grain of some coaches and team reps, BUT I’m writing this to help the kids …not to support old training concepts. GIVE IT A TRY and let me know how it works. Over time, I’ll bet the kids do better. I’ll be waiting for the results.