Tonight’s practice went really well. We had a really high turnout of kids for a Thursday during vacation week. It's nice to see so many folks committed to coming to practice after many of the kids have had their end of the season meet.
As we were walking down the stairs it was really nice to hear the kids talking about their goals. It was one of our focuses this year was to have kids use their goals more effectively. I think talking with their peers and hearing their goals said out loud from someone else allows them to not only hear more repetitions but reflect and think about what their peer is saying.
We focused a lot on flip turns tonight and the quality of sludk. One of the items we discussed from the regional meet was trying to get kids to do the same amount of sludk but use it more effectively. We had kids sludk consistently past the flags for two of our main focus sets. We do similar things for stroke count so we are now trying to incorporate it into our sludk.
Dry-land went really smoothly as well. We started doing some station work this week and the kids seem to really enjoy having the fast pace between the activities. The kids have enough knowledge about the basic dry-land exercises where we are now able mix up different varieties of activities!!!
Overall it was a great night! - Nick
Nick,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you. As the 12 and younger swimmers were walking through the office and onto the pool deck, I heard them sharing their goals. The whole process made me smile. First, they took the time to think about what they wanted to work on in training. Then, they practiced their listening skills and shared their goals with their teammates. Finally, they were able to approach training with an awareness of their focus for the night and with the knowledge that their teammates shared in their goal-setting process.
I think that the energy at practices has been great and I have been very pleased with our attendance numbers. It has also been fun to mix things up in dryland a little bit and see the kids challenge themselves in new and different ways.
Great job coach and great job swimmers!!!
Sincerely,
Laura Matuszak