Hapy New Year!

Welcome to 2011. I trust that everyone had a good holiday and are ready to kick it back into gear. A lot of visiting and visitors over the holidays with HHBF. Romana Matthews, Kira Patterson and Jen Ormiston (all visiting from University) stopped in to train with us while on break from their university programs. The Elite group also visited ROW, NYAC and BROCK to get some decent workouts in over the holidays. Last night (Monday January 3rd), HHBF returned the favor by allowing a few of the Mighty Tritons to train with HHBF while MTST could not find pool time for the day. It was nice to have them and coach Rick Madge visit and it felt even nicer to be able to extend the favor, the same way that NYAC, ROW and BROCK extended it to the Elite group (freeing up holiday training time for the younger groups).

Understandably, some athletes have a hard time keeping 100% attendance over the holidays. The thing to pay attention to is to avoid allowing your fear (of how bad it is going to feel after missing a workout or 2) keep you out of the pool. The degree of difficulty in the Elite and Platinum groups makes it difficult for swimmers to skip 1 or 2 days and then try to get back to work; the nature of the program is consitancy. The first day back after missing 2 workouts feels pretty brutal. As a result, the swimmer is likely to take an extra morning off to sleep in and "get better", which compounds the problem. The problem over time becomes consistency and what the program offers. If you cannot hit a consistent training rhythm and allow your body to break down, recover and adapt, you are missing the full benefit of the program: you are allowing yourself too much rest and as a result you're basically only maintaining aerobic fitness. That’s great if you swim an event where you swim at a constant pace until you can't swim anymore, but sadly, no such event exists right now. Lets make sure that we focus on consistency in training for 2011.

A lot of parents and swimmers made note that they wanted to qualify for nationals, provincials or Central Regions in 2011, but have now been slipping in attendance. I think since its the begining of a new year, every Bluefin should make the effort to renew their commitment to their goals and train to perform; perform to compete; and compete to win. Just remember that it all begins with TRAINING.

...any objections?


**eventhough the above video is in another language, you can still see some lightning fast 100FLY from World Championships in Dubai in December.