Wednesday Video & General Thoughts

I would like to start this post by asking you NEVER to click on another Google ad EVER again! Google has suspended my ad account because I have been asking people to click on ads, which I find ridiculous, since they benefited from the traffic no matter how they were clicked. Anyway, Google refuses to pay me for the past 5 months of having those ads on my site and the clicks and I cannot do anything about it... except tell you all how Google is refusing ro pay me and ask that you never click on another Google ad again as long as you live. Thanks to everyone who supported me by clicking on ads in the past few months.

The Elite group is exhausted due to an upage in distance since Friday. Last night, I could tell that things were not going well as they were having trouble kicking off of walls and generally had little energy. It has forced me to rewrite my week and tweek this cycle of the season a bit, but I'd rather do that than realize that I've pushed too hard too far down the road. I have to hand it to these 12 swimmers, they really have committed themselves to the program this season and are training very well. I had a few comments from those swimmers saying that they were reluctant to cut down on the work this week even though they were tired, which I appreciate, but I don't want people beat down too early in the season. We have another 9 months left; we can afford to take it slow.

Today's video takes a look at backstroke starts in slow motion from the 2004 Olympics from both over water and under water POV. Backstroke starts have always been interesting to me because I feel that they are taught in too many different ways... most of them wrong. As you can see in the video below, every single one of these athletes has a different type of start: different start position, differenthead position on the start, different order of body parts leaving the wall... but they all have 1 thing in common: everyone's hips stay still until they lift from the water and everyone's butt and knees completely clear the water on the start. Watch...


Now take a look at this one...


In both cases, the athletes use the starting bar as leverage to get themselves off the blocks and ABOVE the water. Backstroke starts (as much as I am told I am wrong by some other coaches) are dives off the wall. Like the other starts, legs are a major part of it but if your arms do not drive you upwards, you just meet water resistance right away when you let go.

This was something that I never truely mastered when I swam, even though I was a pretty good backstroker. Its funny now when I break down movements I think "Well, if someone would have just explaned it to me like this, I would have been 55.50 instead of 56.50 for my 100BK."