Discover your life aquatic

Key points:

• Practice between pool sessions!
• Use session notes 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 Stroke Recovery, Entry, and Extension

At this stage, continue to go through each phase of the stroke movement, step by step, from recovery, aim, and entry & rotation back into glide. Then look to run through them all as a fluid motion. Using a mirror will really help you pay attention to some key points we identified on deck:

• keeping your eyes and face looking straight ahead at all times (especially after the rotation): try the body rotations drill (keeping your eyes locked on your face in the mirror, eliminate any movement side to side of your nose)
• lifting the elbow as high as it will comfortably go
• keeping your wrist and fingers relaxed during the recovery phase
• maintaining your glide position until your arm is ready for the entry
• extending your hand into the "water" and getting back to the glide position

Run through the key points one at a time.

Pool Focus: Review of glide and switch skills

1. Glide review with focus on head turn and breath movement (15 minutes)

• Head alignment (relaxed neck, nose down)
• Degree of torso rotation
• Arms in position (front arm extended but not reaching, other arm relaxed but held close to hip and thigh)
• Head turns while maintaining neck and spine alignment
• Exhaling during head turn through nose and mouth

Review the cues or feedback you received from your coach and get to know them in detail.

2. Switches and Flowing Switches (30 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 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; your hand engaging the writs and fingers with the minimal tension required to keep a straight form
• finish the switch with your lead arm relaxed and deep enough to balance your head-to-hip alignment; let finger tips hang down if not straight out
• 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.