This workout was designed to reinforce a few recent lessons for my 12 & Under swimmers. First, high elbow freestyle. We just started doing a new drill, which I call “sword in sheath” to encourage leading with the elbows through recovery. Swimmers start with one arm by their side and the other fully extended in front, then they recover their “down arm” until their elbow is on the same plane as their shoulder, return the arm to their side, and then take a full stroke and repeat on the other side.
Next, fly to failure (listen to the Swimmer’s Ear titled “No Bad Fly” for more details on this topic). In the last two weeks I decided that rather than push my young athletes to swim full fly even if it was bad fly, I’d let them switch to freestyle once their stroke starts breaking down. This encourages the kids to be more self-aware, accountable, and honest about their efforts, and it ensures that I’m not encouraging bad fly for the sake of mileage.
Finally, over-rotation. Until recently, rotation was hit or miss with the kids. If I reminded them, they’d do it, but it would fall apart after about 50m. Now, I regularly do over-rotation drills with them to impress upon them the importance of rotating into their catch.
Workout
2 rounds of:
4 x 50 free as 25 sword in sheath/25 swim on 1:30
100 breast 1/6 on 3:00
4 x 25 back ! on :40
3 rounds with fins of:
2 x 50 free at 200 race pace on 1:15
2 x 25 fly to failure ! on :40
100 back over-rotate on 2:45
WORKOUT TOTAL: 4400
This workout was provided by Campbell River Killer Whales Assistant Head Coach Sarah MacDonald.
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