Coaching Tips
Medals are being won and lost this month at the Trials and World Championships based on the quality of swimmers starts and turns. Working on these are one of the best ways to improve your times, so follow the tips below and work on them EVERY DAY:
Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect!
Starts and turns are a real skill, they can make up to around 30% of each race, depending on what you're doing.
You don't even need to add any extra time to your workouts to work on your starts and turns, you just need a bit more attention to detail and to think a bit more. Starts and turns need to be an integral part of your training, all the time!
Here's three key things to work on:
- Fast reaction time. You need to be able to focus 100% on hearing the starting signal and block out all other thoughts. There are reaction drills that you can do on land to practice your speed of movement. Even playing PC games can result in a small amount of improvement in reaction times (so now you've got a real excuse!), but remember that training and your homework are more important than PC games (of course)!
- Quality under water streamlining. You need to be flexible but the biggest mistake is to over stretch under the water so your head drops too low and you are no longer streamlined. A good marker is that your triceps should touch your ears.
- Speed around the walls. On back stroke and front crawl the key is rotation speed and getting your feet to strike the wall as quickly as possible so that you can get moving again quickly. On breast stroke and butterfly you need to have as little time as possible from your hands touching the wall to your feet pushing off again.
Practice all these things in training, don't wait for a big race because when you're under pressure that's when you're most likely to make mistakes!
