Thank you, Dotmar!

I feel that I need to thank Jamie Crane @ Dotmar Fitness Equipment for helping me out with some equipment we need for training. Check out their store if you are considering buying some gym or workout equipment for your home, office etc. They carry everything from treadmills to bowflexes to weights, benches and heart rate monitors.

Dotmar Fitness Equipment
2555 Dixie Rd Unit 9
Mississauga, ON
905-272-3663


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Cobra Ca$h Challenge

A trend emerged this weekend in Brampton which really shouldn't suprise anyone: The people who trained through Christmas and who have been keeping good attendance swam really well. Those who are just returning from time off are going to find it difficult the first few weeks back because they're trying to catch up.

I was exceptionally surprised by the Elite and Platinum groups. The platinum group did quite a bit of distance this week, capped off with a 7.1km practice on Friday night and most of them were still hitting best times or coming very close. The Elite group did 7.7km on Friday night and most of them were swimming really well as well! Kudos to Aaron Brautigam who too almost 5 seconds off his 200IM and 2 seconds off of 100BK. Aaon's work ethic this season has been great and he should be enjoying his success. Among other standouts were:

Kyle Haas: who's 200FLY and 200BR were huge PBs and 100FR was within about a second of his best.

Mitchell Krafczek: 200BR was great (2:50.55) and both 200IM and 100FR were around best time.

Karl Massey: 200FLY was a first and 200BR pb by over 2 seconds. 100FR was around best.
Bjoern-Ole Schrader: 200FLY PB and a new club record by around 16 seconds. 200BR was a best time by around 13 seconds and 100FR was around best.

Keri-Lyn Copeland: 200IM was faster than best time and she showed that her 200BR could be competitve with a PB of 3:17.93.

Emma Fender: Slightly better 200IM, HUGE PB in 100BK and right on PB for 100FR. Pretty solid overall!

Nolan Haas: 23 second PB in 200FLY, 5 second PB in 200BR, 100FR was around his best.

Britney Dortona: After her nerves took her our of 200FLY, Britney took 13 seconds off of her 100BK (another central region qualification) and got down to 1:13 for 100FR. Hopefully she's starting to understand that she can tackel bigger obsticles.

Aysia Leckie: had another HUGE meet with another central region standard (100FLY) and several other PBs.

Paige Olmstead: Significant time being cut off of all events. She is narrowing down on B standards in 3 different events.

Total reults can be found at the link below: Simply choose our club from the drop down menu and click the "show" button.

https://www.swimming.ca/MeetTeamReport.aspx?mid=9870

Elite and Platinum took off to Waterloo on Sunday to train LC @ WLU... at least that was the plan. When we got there, no one was at the pool, everything was locked and no one knew where the keys were. Luckily Nandi from ROW texted me what to do. The Elite and Platinum groups worked together to move the bulkhead to 50m and change over the laneropes. We ended up losing about 21min of time but were able to stretch our workout about 17min longer so the time we lost was pretty insignificant. Luckliy, I used to work there and they haven't changed too much about where they keep the keys or equipment. It would have been terrible to have to send people home after driving all that way. Crisis averted... except I hurt my back moving the bulkhead. Grrrr...

It actually ended up being a great workout. Average distance, but some good swimming by everyone (which is not always easy after the distance/race combo we just did with no rest). It should be most helpful for Kyle Elizabeth and Karl, who will be representing HHBF @ Ontario Cup at UofT in a couple of weeks. It will be a long course meet.

The AB Meet in Etobicoke is coming up quick. For many this will be a pretty good look-see at what we'll see in February. It should be a good weekend.

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.

Busy Day for HHBF in the Media

Hi everyone. Kyle Haas, Matt Fox and I visited Russ Horton over at D-Moos radio this morning for some club promotion. Tune in over the next few days to hear the interviews and station IDs that we recorded. There is a link on this blog page to the left of this text, but incase you can't find it, you can listen online: http://d-moos.com. They also keep a daily blog of community news and events (that is actually kept very up to date). D-Moos is going to be very helpful to HHBF in getting news out for the future (hopefully some of it live from meets). Russ has a lot of really cool things planned and I am very excited about all of the possibilities. Help boost their listenership and listen to what our Bluefins have to say on the radio.







We are also in the news on www.insidehalton.com. Check out the story on the Gord Basset Invitational and some great pictures! http://www.insidehalton.com/sports/article/922459--blue-fins-dominate.

Happy New Year everyone!! See you next week.

One Arm Swimmer wins heat in 25m Fly at 2010 Nashville City Swim Meet

This video was sent to me by Jordan Horruzey of the Gold group. I suggest watching it, its really empowering. Not incredibly suprising that this kid would win the 25 since they all appear to be about 8 or 9 and the kid with 1 arm is using about 2/3 of the energy that the others are, but he also had a GREAT dive and a strong finish. You don't see his under water stroke in this video, but I'll bet it was the most efficient. Some solid evidence of the merrits of technique. I wonder how he would hold up in a longer race..?



I hope that everyone had a great Christmas and is ready to get back to some work before New Years. All the best!

Mike

The Program Needs/Hours Retraint Conundrum

As I have discussed before (although I am not so sure how much of a "discussion" it is when I just post something and you read it..?) our programs struggle with the pool space available to us. 6 lanes and 25m for 1 swim club, 2 high school teams, a synchro team, public swim and town programs and only 7 days in a week. People have to go to school between 8am-3pm and likely wont come from 9pm-5am, so we're also restricted there. That leaves a total of 70hours of total pool time available to these 6 different entities... and NO ONE wants to share pool time with HHBF (in fairness, the high school teams are not allowed to... thank you very much, OFSAA). Therefore, we have to be extremely creative with what we get.

For younger competitive athletes, this is pretty easy. Most of them (Intro-comp - Silver) need most work on technique and learning things about the sport. Basic aerobic needs can be met with the amount of hours that they have. There are no real issues here. For the intro level athletes (Intro & minifins), 1 hour of instruction is perfect. They don't need much aerobic capacity yet and will phase into it as they progress through the program.

With the athletes that are older (Gold/Regional Development/Platinum) things get trickier.

GOLD
At the Gold level, these athletes are balancing the difference between technique, strength, speed and aerobic capacity. The amount of hours they have and the rest they have between workouts is perfect for conditioning what they will need to move ahead in the club and also what they will need to compete. Meets are a crucial part of this training program, because these athletes need to race. Athletes aged 11-13 are growing and developing the enzymes required to sprint effectively; racing becomes very important in their mental and physical development. I do not see a practice missed to go to a meet as a negative thing at all: these athletes would be spending tons of time resting at our pool while recovering from race pace work. That time is much better spent working on skills and aerobic capacity. The meet environment is much better suited for race work.

REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT/PLATINUM:
These athletes technically need to race more than anyone else because their focus is qualifying for Central Region Championships and/or performing at them. And, of course, to advance and move ahead in their careers which requires higher qualifications. I we do not give these athletes the most amount of chances to compete, we are simply setting them up to fail. We have spent much of the time this season teaching them how to be fast, teaching them how to be better, we cannot disallow them to compete. These athletes need the most opportunity.

ELITE:
The elite program is geared towards athletes who are at a Provincial, National or International level and are training to be competitive and relevant at that level. The climax of their season is in June-August so training becomes most important throughout the season. This group will occasionally enter a meet for 1 day to get some racing done, then do an extra practice on the Sunday to recover or overload (depending on the time of the season). The goals of this group are different than the other groups: This group already will be competing at the end of the season because they have the qualifications to. They spend less time trying to qualify for events and more time training for the main event at the end of the season.

Comparing these three groups is very difficult when you understand the goals of each group and what they each are after. The Elite group requires more training time than the other groups. Due to the age of the athletes, Regional Development and Platinum require about 80% of the training time that the Elite group will need. Gold requires slightly less than what they are getting, but they need to be s stepping stone to the groups above them (and they have clearly been benefiting from the extra time).

Since most groups (aside from Gold) are only getting about exactly what they need, attendance becomes very important. For example, I said before, Regional Development and Platinum require about 80% of what the Elite group has in order to be successful... this means that their entire schedule is baselined mandatory in order to be in prime shape... so 80% attendance in the Platinum group is actually lower than it appears. Remember, we're competing against other teams that have more pool time; we need to do everything we can in order to remain competitive.

Gym Attendance is also quite crucial. It is important to remember that our dryland training is not something to do in addition to our training; it is a major part of our training. People that choose not to attend gym workouts are doing just as much damage if they were to miss a water workout. The reason: We don't need to be in the water to train athletic abilities such as balance, coordination, flexibility, power, speed of limb movement, spacial orientation, agility... so why not maximize it outside of the pool..? Athletes who dimish its value because it is not pool time are making a mistake and missing prime opportunity to better themselves.

Our sport is about more than just swimming up and down a black line. Its about more than just basic aerobic capacity. The age group game is about development and making your self as good as possible before the jump to adolescence, and later, to University age (where most athletes will swim faster than they ever have before). I have developed a plan to make HHBF athletes as good as possible so they can enter uncharted territory with the best possible tools. Please remember these 2 things, especially as we approach 2011:

1.) There is no reason why HHBF can't be as good or better than most other teams in Ontario. We've proven that we're becoming a threat, we cannot back away from that now.
2.) Its easier to get to your destination when you know where you're headed... if you don't know where you're going it doesn't matter which way you go.

Please plan to be a part of this team's success. Clear eyes and full hearts can't lose.

Follow me on twitter

Hey folks. Not sure if any of you do the twitter thing but no one follows me :(

@CoachMikeHHBF

Most recently; read about how I crazy glued my face... No I'm not kidding sadly.