Wink Wink Nudge Nudge

Just because the season has come to an end doesn’t mean your workouts have to. While it’s best to get in the pool it’s not always possible. Here will be exercises/workouts you can do every day at home, in the dorm even outside.

Push Ups

1          Lie chest-down with your hands at shoulder level, palms flat on the floor and slightly more than shoulder-width apart, your feet together and parallel to each other.

2          Look forward rather than down at the floor. The first contact you make with the floor with any part of the face should be your chin, not your nose.

3          Keep your legs straight and your toes tucked under your feet.

4          Straighten your arms as you push your body up off the floor. Keep your palms fixed at the same position and keep your body straight. Try not to bend or arch your upper or lower back as you push up.

5          Exhale as your arms straighten out.

6          Pause for a moment.

7          Lower your body slowly towards the floor. Bend your arms and keep your palms in fixed position. Keep body straight and feet together.

8          Lower body until chest touches the floor. Try not to bend your back. Keep your knees off the floor, and inhale as you bend your arms.

9          Pause for a moment. Begin straightening your arms for a second push-up. Exhale as you raise your body.

http://www.ehow.com/how_3190_proper-push-up.html

Doing 100 or more push ups a day (A DAY= can be spread out throughout the day) will help keep you strong.

Every Good Thing Must Come To An End

The season has come to an end. We’d like to take a moment and say good bye to our two graduating seniors Darci Schultz and Ken Otton. It has been a pleasure having you on the team and we wish you luck with all of your future endeavors.

Now it is time to start looking toward next year. Already you ask? Yes already, the start of next season will be here before you know it. Don’t get caught in the “I’ll can just get in tomorrow”. Stay loose, stay active!

Maintaing Turn Speed

Maintaining Your Speed Out of a Turn

by BR

One battle that we face on a daily basis is the battle against resistance of the water out of a turn. It is widely known that one of the easiest ways to drop time is to improve your times is to improve your streamline. It's easy for a coach to say tighten up your streamline. I'm sure you hear it all the time. But what we sometimes forget is making sure that our break out strokes from the streamline don't fall flat.

An efficient streamline helps us reduce the amount of resistance which in turn, helps maintain and maximize that speed. If we can hold that speed longer, we will go faster. Seems simple enough, but what about when you begin to slow down?

Freestyle breakouts are something that we do very often in practice, and yet we take for granted daily. There seem to be very few swimmers that have mastered this skill. I know our college kids struggle all of the time, especially as they get tired. The very first stroke you take after a flip turn can determine how much of your speed you maintain, depending on how it is executed.

After a flip turn, swimmers are often winded and are really looking forward to replenishing the oxygen they were unable to get when they were under the water, so as soon as they surface they go right into a breath in their first stroke. I’m not going to say that breathing on your first stroke in Freestyle is a bad thing, if you breathe efficiently. Many times as coaches we get hung up on the idea that we have to not breath going into or out of the wall. But what we sometimes forget is that in trying not to breath in or out of the wall we put ourselves in such great oxygen debt that we may not be able to overcome it in certain situations. If you want to focus on not breathing start with not breathing into your turns. But it is still important to think about how you are breathing coming out of your streamline. We want to make sure that the bottom arm (the arm closest to the black line) is taking the first stroke. This will allow you to maximize your first pull as well as help the body rotate through the streamline. Those first two or three strokes off of a wall can really help you maximize your walls and may even help you distance yourself from an opponent or catch one. Most importantly always remember to tighten up your streamlines. They will undoubtedly be the make or break of a great swim!!