As I was digging myself out of an email blizzard after being gone for a couple of weeks, I found this message from Rules Committee Chair, Kathy Casey on the USMS policy on swimming suits. If you own a racing suit, take a gander at the note below. You can…
When I was in Florida last month for the American Swim Coaches Association annual convention, I met some great coaches and had a chance to exchange some ideas. Out of these meetings came the idea for the Holiday Fitness Challenge, a way of keeping ourselves in shape over the holidays,…
Sorry that this post came in late… We do sets called “stroke elimination sets” periodically in practice. These are sets where we start off with a base stroke count and ask you to take strokes off the count when you swim. We do these sets as a way of getting…
I was at a fitness expo this weekend, and I got into a conversation with one of the trainers at Hi-Fi Personal Fitness about some complementary kettlebell classes this month. They will run on Monday October 19th and Monday October 26th at 7am. The classes will be about 45 minutes…
A variation of this practice will run on Tuesday October 6th in the 50 meter pool at UIC. Like last week, we’re working on feeling our T-pace and working at a faster pace. This time, we’re going to be working a pace that will push you up toward your anaerobic…
A group will be getting together to watch the Bears play the Cincinnati Bengals at Hawkeyes (1458 W. Taylor St.) on Sunday October 25th. Kickoff is at noon, so you can head over after the Sunday practices. Have some food and drinks, hang out with your teammates, and marvel at…
I thank Steve Tarpinian and his webinar “Swim Myths” for inspiring and providing some of the information in this post. I get asked a lot by my swimmers is they should swim with paddles to get stronger in the water. I’m not a big fan of this strategy mainly because…
As we insert learning flip turns into practice, we, the coaches, are starting to hear from our triathletes: “I don’t need to learn flip turns. I’m a triathlete. There are no walls in open water.” Many of these same triathletes take pride in the fact that they don’t push off…
If you are blind like me, swimming has always been a little challenging because I couldn’t see the pace clock, other swimmers, the practice on the board. Since I’ve started to do more stuff in open water with my team in the last 10 years, it’s…well…game over out there. The…
In the Monday practice, we’re going to work on some pacing exercises based off the 100 pace derived from our T-30’s or T-20’s last week, or the T-pace. When working with the T-pace, you’ll adjust the pace for the distance of the swim. If you hold a 1:30 pace for…
