Discover your life aquatic

Key points:

• Check sessions notes after each session.
• Practice between pool sessions!
• Use them to help guide your practice by exploring what we covered in greater detail or working on things you feel you need more experience with.
• If you can't get to a pool between Tuesday and Thursday sessions, look to practice dry land drills at a minimum.
• You are looking to supply your coaches with more information on how you feel with the exercises and drills, sensations, questions and any obstacles, or successes you've experienced. Feel free to email or phone us to discuss!

Dryland

Review of Recovery

1. Review recovery, entry, and extension for common tendencies and obstacles. Importance on fluid and consistent motion and arrival in fundamental glide posture.

Breath Timing:

Practice in front of a mirror.

1. Arms by your sides, standing up straight, rotate with the same rhythm as you would in a nice relaxed stroke (1,2 hold glide position, then rotate on 3). Practice this until it is fluid. Add the arm movements and extended arm in glide once it feels very comfortable. Key point: Keep your head locked on the mirror, don't let it move from side to side with the rotations.

2. Arms by your sides, standing, rotate with the same rhythm. Slow it down, then after two or three "strokes", begin turning your head slightly toward your shoulder during the "1-2" count and then leave it there so that on "3" you end up looking behind you and your head is still in line with your spine.

3. After practicing the synchronized head turn timing, focus on returning your head to the neutral position on the "1-2" count. Your head should be looking at the mirror again (ie. bottom of the pool) before you count "3" and rotate again.

4. Put it all together with rhythm.

5. Try same sequence with arms involved.

Pool Focus

1. Breathing in Glide position

Review glide without breathing, first. Optimize your posture for breathing.

Focus Points for breathing in glide position:

• Play with different air exchange amounts, both inhale and exhale.
• Emphasize exhale to ensure reduction in CO2, which gives the sensations of breathlessness, anxiety, need for air, discomfort.
• Complete the exhale, ideally, as soon as mouth reaches air.
• Be aware that if you do not reach air, it is most likely due to your body position in glide.

2. Switches review and increasing flow (20 minutes)

Run through these key technique focuses one at a time (3-4 mini-laps per focus) first as switches with a nice long pause for adjusting and evaluating, then decreasing time spent in glide (pause) between switches.

Find a balance of flow and control as you work on your main areas for improvement the primary focus:

• returning to glide position
• keeping your head still and nose pointed down to the pool bottom
• equal degree of rotation on both sides (where do you feel the least tension in your body and best streamline?)
• for the recovery, ensure that your elbow leads the hand and forearm forward as far as is comfortable before your hand enters the water and you initiate the switch
• enter the water smoothly on an angle to drive your lead hand into the optimal catch position
• finish the switch with your lead arm relaxed and deep enough to balance your head-to-hip alignment; let finger tips hang down
• breathing in glide: take a breath during the pause in glide, alllowing sufficient time to rebalance if your breath throws you off balance. Then take another switch.

3. Flow in full stroke

• Establish rhythmic switches with less and less time pausing in glide. Repeat until your strokes are fluid (3-5 max, then rest), again, no breathing yet.
• Experiment with full stroke rhythm without any pauses in glide but ensure that you are still more from one streamlined position to the next.
• Recalibrate no and again with single switches (ie. full stroke going one way, and switches coming back)