Tag Archives for turns

Coaching IM

According to my Meta Plan for the year I coach IM in the first week of the month – so a bit of everything.

The set of always written in advance, the metres totted up and times calculated. I like to jot down how this goes on the whiteboard so that I can make later adjustments for future sets.

PC1 IM

This has more changes in it than usual.

Having introduced the Backstroke to Breaststroke turn I then took the opportunity to add Butterfly to Backstroke and Breaststroke to Front Crawl.

I then wanted some sprints, and to push them a bit. So include 2 x 50m with 3 or 4 swimmers against each other.

My second 90 minutes took in two teaching groups. Teaching Breaststroke can often be a challenge but today was the first time in 20 years of doing this that I had all 7 swimmers unable to do a breaststroke whipkick. This will take some unpicking and a whole raft of ideas to fix: kick with one float, then two, running through the kick in the side of the pool, kick in back, old English backstroke and so on. We managed to for in some dicing too.

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Starts and Turns

Fig.1. The importance of streamlining. “Dead Swimmer’ sequence from ‘The Swim Drills Book’ Ruben Guzman

Warm Up

50s FC and BC with emphasis on smooth swimming and long legs. I run through in a multitude of adjectives:

  • Slinky
  • Smooth
  • Silent
I draw on drills from Ruben Guzman’s ‘The Swim Drill Book’
  • Smooth
  • Sneaky

Send them on a secret mission

What works wonders with the younger swimmers is to tell them that they are ‘secret agents’ on a ‘secret mission’ and have to swim in the dark without being seen or heard.The result can be highly controlled, smooth swimming – just the kind of thing you’d hope for from a squad rather than a teaching group.

I centre everything on streamlining in starts and turns so start off where I usually end with a streamlined bounce, a handstand with emphasis on long legs and pointy toes, then a cannon ball and somersault.

Fun activities include:

  • Streamlined bounce off the bottom. Jack in the box style trying to touch the 5m flags, or the length of the pool.
  • Mushroom float
  • Summersault
  • Canon-ball summersault over the side of the pool – taught in an ASA Course
  • Canon-ball backwards fall over the side of the pool
  • Sea Otter – a series of playful duck dives the length of the pool

The formal sequence into starts and turns:

  • glide out to the flags (or beyond)
  • glide and add a few dolphin kicks
  • then glide, dolphin kick a single stroke of FC and tumble (flip)
  • then glide, dolphin kick and two strokes.
  • do Fly here as it is appropriate to do so

Repeat on the back with backstroke

Then with breastroke.

From the centre of the pool do turns into the wall, potentially with swimmers heading off to opposite ends of the pool and meeting in the middle. This can be done as a relay. A large float can be used for bouyancy.

Fig.2 Dive, flight, entry, glide. From ‘The Swim Drill Book’ by Ruben Guzman.

From a dive:

  • Glide
  • Glide and add the BR underwater stroke
  • the full BR transition
  • And from 10 m out all the turns.

And with time spare some fun activities and efforts to fault correct.

Teaching FC and FC Turns to 7-12 year old

Saturday 11th April, WC 13/4/15 MSM SC Teaching FC and FC Turns

Our Grades 3-6. This is my cheat sheet with added notes.

Streamlining – from ‘The Swim Drills Book.’

Against the wall
Ensure ankles are against the walls, shoulders are against the wall, then stretch into the streamlined position – arms above the head. Check that one hand is over the other and they can lock this.

Also, in another session, to help with diving and turns, they jump on the spot in this position – away from the wall.

Correct Flutter Kick – from ‘The Swim Drills Book.’
Feet dipped in the pool – if feasible. Buttocks on the edge of the pool, legs long and straight, toes pointed and ‘make the water boil’ … slowly speed up and try to limit any cycling of the legs.

Then enter the water

Warm Up
FC kick – with a kicker float held in front
BC kick with float over knees – if it jiggles about they are cycling their legs.
FC kick with long arm doggie paddle – correct hand shape, head steady.

Push and glide – from ‘The Swim Drills Book.’
Bounce – standing jump in the streamlined position.
Handstand – with long legs and pointed toes
Push off the wall – one hand in the gutter, the other in front. Push and glide.
Tumble against the wall – somersault more than an arm’s length from the wall. Place feet on wall. Push off the wall into a streamlined position.

For the next session add:
Add dolphin kick
Add FC kick
Add three kicks and flip
Swim to the end. End ‘feet on wall.’

Sea Otter – all important ‘fun one’
Six duck dives over 25m by another name. A game. They pretend to be a sea otter pulling up mussels from the seabed. They swim doggie paddle, duck dive, retrieve their mussels, comes to the surface, turn on their back to smash open the shells and eat the contents, then roll back onto their fronts, swim along and repeat 🙂

FC full stoke
Smooth, silent, slinky …
Swim along the black line – keeping it symmetrical, as if down a pipe.
Bilateral breathing
FC zip it up drill – envisaging a zip on their hip that they zip up to the ear.

Dead Swimmer into FC – from ‘The Swim Drills Book.’
On the ‘T’ at the end of the lane go into ‘dead swimmer’.
From this floating position slowly raise the arms, then the legs until streamlined.
Then add a dolphin kick and turn it into 25m of FC.

Dive and glide into FC
Jumps – ‘Hamster thing’ – jumping in and not getting your head wet! Pencil jump. Star jump. – from ‘The Swim Drills Book.’
Tumbles – somersaults
Dives and glides – push and glide, dive and glide into a kick.

 

Starts and Turns (Our Grades 4,5,6,7) Amateur Swimming Association National Plan for Teaching Swimming Grades 7-10

From Swimming

Fig.1. The importance of streamlining

Grades 5,4 and 7 in that order. The first two kind of go together, but the grades 7 are well ahead with several of them turning into potential mini-squad swimmers.

A warm up 50s FC and BC with emphasis on smooth swimming. I run through in a multitude of adjectives:

  • Slinky
  • Smooth
  • Silent
I draw on drills from Ruben Guzman’s ‘The Swim Drill Book’
  • Smooth
  • Sneaky

What works wonders with the younger swimmers is to tell them that they are ‘secret agents’ on a ‘secret mission’ and have to swim in the dark without being seen or heard. The result can be highly controlled, smooth swimming – just the kind of thing you’d hope for from a squad rather than a teaching group.

I centre everything on streamlining in starts and turns so start off where I usually end with a streamlined bounce, a handstand with emphasis on long legs and pointy toes, then a cannon ball and somersault.

The sequence into the turns starts with pushing off and:

  • glide out to the flags (or beyond)
  • glide and add a few dolphin kicks
  • then glide, dolphin kick a single stroke of FC and tumble (flip)
  • then glide, dolphin kick and two strokes.
  • The something similar on the back.

Streamline bounce along the black line all the way to the deep end.

Push and glide on BC using the block

Then with a dolphin kick.

From a dive:

  • Glide
  • Glide and add the BR underwater stroke
  • the full BR transition
  • And from 10 m out all the turns.

An IM with correct turns and transition

With assessments coming up the Grade 7s did an 800m set too.

And with time spare some fun activities and efforts to fault correct.

Starts and Turns with Grade 5 swimmers (age 8 to 11)

Sleeping dolphin in captivity. A tail kick ref...

Sleeping dolphin in captivity. A tail kick reflex keeps the dolphin’s blowhole above the water if necessary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Starts and Turns with Grade 5 swimmers (age 8 to 11)

Starts and turns today.

Also Half Term when typically, as today a good few may not show. Easier for me to take two groups too, both Grade 5. I was able to have five boys in one lane and five girls in the other.

A warm up of 50m FC. ‘Long legs’ was my command, with a long glide off the wall and out of the turn too. Then 50m BC.

Then into a mushroom float. Then the sequence ‘dead swimmer, straightening up into the streamlined position’ with a dolphin kick into FC and away. X25m of these starting well away from the wall on the ‘T’ at the end of the lane line , and from the Deep End under the flags.

Then a push and glide, seeing how far they can get. Adding a dolphin kick, on both front and back. Then a tumble turn, on front and back. With BC we counted the strokes from the flags to the wall, most did this in 7 strokes so knew to roll onto their front to tumble on the 6th stroke.

With breaststroke BS, I wanted a pivot turn and the correct transition, so a 3 second glide, keyhole arms and a 2 second glide, then sneak the arms up and away.

Having done all the turns I sent them to the Deep End doing a streamlined bounce the whole way.

At the Deep end they got out. To start off they did a jump from the block, legs apart, toes over the edge swinging their arms to jump as far as they can. Then I asked them to topple forwards like a tree and jump. Finally I asked them to topple and ‘jump dive’. Then, as in the shallow end a dive and glide, then a dive and glide with a dolphin kick. Afterwards a dive into BS with the transition. And from in the water a BC start.

We ended, if we handed run out of time, with somersaults, or sitting on the bottom of the pool..

I repeated this, more or less for three sessions. I only had one swimmer in the second session so he had a private lesson in effect. As he still drops his arms to his side on BS I hsd s go and tackling this in various ways, from a Woggle under the arms, to sculling and 2 kicks one arm pull

Related articles

T2T3 and MINI, One hour. IM with work on turns.

T2T3 and MINI

A mixed 45 mins to 60 mins aerobic session based on IM, with  emphasis on turns.

WARM UP + fins

Mini as 75s. T2T3 as 100s.

3x 75m as 25m FC kick, 25m FC drill, 25m FC swim                          45/60

3 x 75m as 25m BC kick, 25m Bc Drill, 25m BC swim                         45/60

600m

Emphasis on streamlined drive off the wall with extended UW phase in turns

1 x25m FC UW for as far as possible, scull to breathe.

8 x 50m in IM order as 50m of each twice: (Possibly lane clear/or as a relay so up to 2 mins rest between each)

FLY

BC

BR

FC

1 x25m FC UW for as far as possible, scull to breathe.

450m

From the blocks for a competitive  start and aim for a technically correct and competitive turn every time.

FC 4 x 100m

1 x 100m FC kick                                                                             r.10

1 x 100m FC Zip up drill                                                              r.10

1 x 100m FC arms only                                                                 r.10

1 x 100m FC swim                                                                            r.10

400m

TURNS

3 x fc

3 x bc

3 x br

3 x fly

(RELAYS IF THERE IS TIME/or 25m sprints)

SWIMDOWN

100/200m as 2 x 50 or 2 x 100 as reduced stroke on FC

or Silent swimming on FC/BC