Chicago Blue Dolphins is an adult aquatic fitness business providing state-of-the-art swim instruction and swim endurance and speed training to residents of the Chicago Metropolitan Area. Our clients range from those hoping to make swimming an activity for fitness and wellness, to those training for competitions such as triathlons or Masters short-course and long-course meets.
Chicago Blue Dolphins offers two major types of services to swimmers in the Chicago Metropolitan Area:
We will describe each in more detail below.
The Chicago Blue Dolphins Swim Studio is a one-of-a-kind environment for rapid delivery of swim instruction and training services. The Swim Studio is:
- A Dual-Propulsion Endless Pool for movement isolation, endless repetition, and refinement
- Floor, front, and ceiling mounted mirrors for real-time visual feedback
- Under- and above-water video recording and playback to aid in micro-adjustments to your stroke
The Swim Studio unifies visual, kinesthetic, and analytical feedback for the most effective stroke improvement in Chicago.
We provide a series of services in the Swim Studio, at pools around the city, and in the lake to improve your stroke.
A Swim Assessment is a one-on-one session with a CBD coach designed to help you identify areas for improvement in your stroke and a plan to tackle them in the proceeding months. A Swim Assessment includes:
50 minute pool session:
- Film and review six angles to identify areas of improvement -- left, right, and front views from above and below the surface
- Identify 2-3 key technical skills for you to work on in the next 3-4 months
- Video clips and descriptions of the drills to help you
25 minute out-of-water session:
- Set short-, medium-, and long-term goals and track progress
- Review your racing history and future racing plans
- Discuss your swim training plan and its effectiveness against performance sets and race splits
We will deliver the following to you at the conclusion of the Swim Assessment:
- Annotated versions of your video clips and sample drill clips including snap shots of key positions. For a sample, please click here.
- An overview of the Swim Assessment including items you are doing well, a summary of where you stand on your goals, two to three key items for improvement and why they are key, and a list of drills to help you feel those changes
- Three swim practices that include those drills that you can take to pool to help structure your technique work
The Swim Assessment is an excellent complement to the Swim Endurance and Speed Training program. The group swim practices will give you the benefits of group training while the Swim Assessment will give you the individual coach time to make sure you know your priorities.
- Goal: Develop comfort and relaxation in the water and learn the fundamentals of breathing, bouyancy, and posture that underpin each of the major swim strokes.
- Clinics/Lesson Sequences: Water Acclimation, Swim Mechanics 101, Swim Mechanics 102
- Target Group for Water Acclimation: Swimmers with no experience or fearful swimmers who want to learn to swim
- Target Group for Swim Mechanics: Swimmers comfortable in the water but who do not know the strokes
NOTE: Water Acclimation is our entry level sequence for those with no experience in the water. The Swim Mechanics sequence builds off the platform of comfort and relaxation from Water Acclimation and takes the skills toward movement and stroke development.
- Goal: Learn the basics of an efficient, smooth form. Refine your stroke in advanced classes. Feel the adjustments required to add speed to your strokes. Classes are available for all strokes.
- Clinics/Lesson Sequences: Freestyle 1; Freestyle 1 for Speed and Distance; Freestyle 2; Backstroke 1, Butterfly 1, Breaststroke 1
- Target Group: Swimmers who know the strokes but want to refine their form for improvement swim performance
- Goal: Hone your racing skills to improve your swim times. Learn racing starts, turns, and streamlines for all competitive strokes. Learn open-water racing skills such as sighting, drafting, water entry and exit
- Clinics/Lesson Sequences: Flip Turns 1 and 2, Racing Starts, Open Water Skills
- Target Group: Swimmers looking to fine tune their racing skills for improvement in performance times
- Goal: View video clips of your stroke from above the water, below the water, and at multiple angles. Understand what changes in the stroke provide the biggest opportunity for improvement. Clients receive a DVD with all clips.
- Clinics/Lesson Sequences: Swim Assessment
- Target Group: Swimmers looking to understand what's going on in their stroke to a much greater degree of detail
Pricing and Class Listings
For pricing and class listings, please refer to our Instruction page.
Chicago Blue Dolphins conducts more than 10 large group practices per week, including morning, evening, and weekend sessions at a variety of Chicago locations. The practices provide a structured training environment to hone skills learned in the clinics, execute them at faster speeds, and develop the endurance to nail them at race time.
The strength of Chicago Blue Dolphins' group practices lies in our ability to tailor the instructional, training, and pacing to the needs of new, intermediate, and advanced swimmers. Whatever level of mastery ; you bring into our program, we have classes in our progression and space in our practices to help you develop your swimming and racing skills as well as your overall fitness.
We feel that improvement in a swimmers' speed drives our from improvements in stroke mechanics. We feel that the improvement process is a three stage process:
- Do it Well - Learn to execute the stroke correctly - with ease, economy, and relaxation
- Do it Further - Learn to hold onto the movements for longer distances and on shorter rest
- Do it Faster - Learn to hold onto the form as you increase your tempo and swimming intensity
All of our swimmers share the pool during the practices, regardless of speed or skill level. As you might expect, this mixture requires some organization. We divide our pool lanes into pacing groups, or levels. Each of the pacing groups has its own practice structure that reflects its swimmers' current skills, conditioning levels and speeds. Our fastest level is Level 3.
We assign your Level based on a swimming effectiveness measurement called swimming golf. In a swimming golf set, you add your 50-yard pace in seconds to your stroke count for the entire 50 yards. For example, a score of 80 can be achieved with 45 seconds and 35 strokes or 40 seconds and 40 strokes.
Take a look at the descriptions below to determine where you fall and when you come by for a Trial Workout, tell the CBD coach where you think you should go. We'll take it from there.
Level 3
- You swam for your college team
- You were a strong high school or club swimmer but did not swim in college
- You can swim 100 yard repeats on 7-10 seconds rest holding a swimming golf score or 70 or lower (e.g., a 40 second 50-yard pace and 30 strokes per 50)
Level 2
- You were a middle of the pack swimmer on a high school or club team
- Your swim split for an Olympic distance triathlon is under 30 minutes
- You can swim 100 yard repeats on 7-10 seconds rest holding a swimming golf score or 80 or lower (e.g., a 45 second 50-yard pace and 35 strokes per 50)
Level 1
- You are comfortable in the water - deep water, treading, breathing into the water
- You can swim 300 yards of continuous freestyle in under 7 minutes
- Your swimming golf score for 100 yard repeats on 7-10 seconds rest is ANY SCORE HIGHER THAN 80 (e.g., a 55 second 50-yard pace and 40 strokes per 50 or a 42 second 50-yard pace and 45 strokes per 50)
If you don't fulfill the requirements of the Level 1 group, you should start with swim instruction at our Swim Studio (see above). Contact our office at 773.342.7250 or at info@chicagobluedolphins.com to determine which is the right clinic or lesson sequence for you.
IF YOU FALL INTO THE LEVEL 1 OR 2 PACING GROUPINGS, WE WILL REQUIRE YOU TO REGISTER FOR A FREESTYLE FOUNDATIONS STROKE CLINIC IN ADDITION TO PRACTICES WITH THE MASTERS SWIM TEAM. We are convinced that our lessons and clinics can improve your efficiency by 25-33% while making you faster and more fit by establishing a strong technical foundation.
To come by and try out our Masters Swim Team, head to our Practices page. Feel free to stop by, try out a practice session or two, and see if the Blue Dolphins are a good fit for you.
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