PENGUIN BRIEFS

Penguins,

Let me take you back to January 2006, I was at a meet which is much like champs for the local year round teams. The last event of the meet was the 200 Freestyle Relay and Valley Splash was in a position to win the event against the powerhouse Santa Clara Swim Club. I was seeded to anchor the relay and it was turning out to be an extremely close race. Now I’m not one to be too nervous before a race but before this one I was definitely feeling it. Thankfully things went as planned and I swam a good race but we lost by .25 seconds. So why did I choose this race out of all of the races I have swam? Why not a race that I have won? The reason is because every race is a learning experience whether the race was a good one or a bad one. As swimmers we strive to have the perfect race, but much like life there are going to be some mistakes that we make. The key is to learn from those mistakes and improve on them rather than getting discouraged by them. Since we are racing against the clock, one that measures down to a hundredth of a second, there are a lot of things that can go right or wrong during a race. Having only sprinting events in our league means that each right or wrong thing we do in a race has a huge impact on our time. So what did I learn from that race? I learned how I react to pressure in a race, do I seize up or do I use it to fuel me? Another example is a 50 free that I swam in AZ in 2012, I had to look up for the wall for my flipturn because I wasn’t sure after which “T” the wall was after. Granted most pools don’t have  4 T’s right before the wall but the lesson that I learned was to make sure I know to find the spot I need to flip during my warm-ups. Learning to analyze a race for its positives and negatives is a crucial step to becoming a better swimmer. As you begin to analyze your race you can take advantage of the coaches to help you break down certain parts of your race that are good and other parts that could use some extra focus.

Until next week…

Coach Ryan

Penguins,

This is one of my favorite swimming topics. For many of you that watch swimming during the Olympics, you may catch yourself saying “wow they make it look so easy”. Sure they swim countless hours of the day and do other types of training, but it is also because professional athletes have “Easy Speed”. What is easy speed? It’s simple, easy speed is simply being efficient in the water. What happens every time you take a stroke? A lot of things actually, but we are going to focus on two things. These two things are, first and foremost you hopefully will move forward in the water when you take a stroke, second you use energy to move your arm through the water. Sadly humans don’t have an infinite amount of energy and every stroke you take you are using up the energy that you have. So it makes sense to use what energy you have wisely, right? Easy speed not only makes your race easier, it also makes you faster!

So lets break it down, each stroke has a catch, pull, and recovery. For this we will focus on freestyle. Just like most strokes the recovery doesn’t push you forward, the recovery is just used to get you back to the beginning of your pull. The two important parts are the catch and the pull, those are what help you move forward in the water. Since we are talking about easy speed and being efficient it I must address a commonly overlooked part of the stroke, the catch. In order to grab the water you have to adjust your hand so it is basically flat against the water so your hand and arm press against as much water as possible. In order to get as much from your pull you have to have a complete pull, meaning that you have to make a half circle from the top of the water (with your palm down) all the way back to your leg (with your palm up). One of the most common things that swimmers do is not finish their stroke, they are then forced to do more strokes to get across the pool. Lets say a swimmer is doing 75% of their pull and is able to get across the pool in 16 strokes. If that same swimmer was doing a full 100% pull they would only have to take 12 strokes! It is easier to take 12 strokes to go 25yds than it is to take 16 strokes. So having easy speed goes back to using your brain while you swim, if you use your brain and tell your muscles to finish your stroke rather than letting your tired muscles take the easy way and do 75% of the stroke, you will be faster and have more energy to use. So I urge my penguins to take long full strokes, but remember that you can take a long full stroke and move your arms at a fast tempo to go full speed.

Until next week…

Coach Ryan

Penguins,

To start off, I would like to say that to me this is the most important article so far. This week’s topic is based on my coaching philosophy, but it’s not just that, it’s mine and many swimmers philosophy around the world. I’ll give you a little background first, back when I was a 15yr old penguin I used to have an ugly freestyle. It was a water polo freestyle with my arms swinging out and around to the side, almost like a single butterfly arm stroke. My high school coach had videotaped my stroke and that was the first time I ever paid attention to how it looked. I can kind of picture the day that I decided to change my freestyle, I was in the LPAC pool and my brother was the coach and we were supposed to be doing a freestyle drill. My brother (Shawn) came up to me and asked what drill I was doing, I said “the make Ryan Hussey better at freestyle drill”. From that time on I would work on fixing my freestyle one step at a time. First I fixed my arms and did a lot of fingertip drag drill to get my elbows high, then I started rotating more so that I can go farther with each stroke. In the end I am very proud of my current freestyle and the effort that I have and continue to put into it. At that time I have learned the most important thing to becoming a good swimmer, THINK while you swim.

There are so many things to think about while swimming and if a swimmer doesn’t think about them his/her body will do whatever is easier. So what does a swimmer think about? Here are just a few things: their kick, are their arms finishing, are they pulling water, is their head down, how often are they breathing, are they reaching out in front. This is just a short list, a swimmer may also think about what they are doing later that day, they may be singing a song in their head, or just any other random thought that pops into their head. So why is thinking so important? In order to obtain perfect technique a swimmer has to be willing to make some changes to his/her stroke. This is no easy task because that swimmer may have done hundreds if not thousands of laps of that certain stroke, so the body develops a muscle memory and is able to do that stroke without much thought. In order to make a change a swimmer must think about the steps needed to perfect their stroke. First and foremost a swimmer needs to recognize that that there is a problem in their stroke. Then it is important to be persistent in making changes, it works best to work on one problem at a time. Let’s say for example a swimmer throws his arm around for freestyle instead of bending his arm and keeping his elbow high. That swimmer should continue to do drills such as finger tip drag drill, zipper drill, or sharkfin drill (all of which work on high elbows) and continue to work on that drill for multiple practices. The more you think about your stroke the more you will notice any imperfections in it. Scott has a story about Olympic gold medalist Natalie Coughlin, at a meet she got DQ’d because she popped up after the 15m mark and then started swimming, after she said she was happy because she did the same amount of dolphin kicks that she normally does but got farther. The point is that she has thought about her breakout so much that she knows exactly how many dolphin kicks it takes her to get to the 15m mark and since she went past this time with the same amount of kicks she realized that she is moving at a faster/stronger pace. So I encourage all penguins out there to start thinking about all of the little details that go in to the sport of swimming.

Until next week…

Coach Ryan

Penguins,

Swim meets are upon us and with it comes loads of tri-tip sandwiches and breakfast burritos, no wait I mean lots of fast races and tons of fun. Behind the scenes however is a lot of chaos. The coaches work day and night to develop the entries for the upcoming meet. Now because I am a coach I guess it is my duty to plug this into this article, it is very important to let the coaches know as early as possible if your child is not going to be at the meet, this has a huge impact on entries. A coach uses the number of swimmers to plan on what events to put kids in and more importantly who is on which relay. Now that I have done my duty as a coach I’ll get to the good part.

First we are in one of the best leagues in the area. Why? Is it the fastest? Most fun? While I can’t confirm or deny the last two I can tell you that this league includes everyone and not just the kids that can swim the fastest. If that was how our league operated then our team of 150 penguins would only need about 24 swimmers, because that’s all that would contribute to the scoring right? Instead our league embraces the fact that not everyone is the next Ryan Lochte or Missy Franklin. More importantly our league recognizes its main attribute that should revolve around all cabana swim teams, yes swimming is a competitive sport, but it can also be a very fun sport. A summer league should focus on fun first and foremost and then the competitive aspect after. So what does our league do differently? Our league takes a percentage of placement point and adds them to the percentage of improved swims. So to get technical for a second the placement points are established by taking a team’s total score and dividing it by a “perfect meet” (the total number of points a team can possibly score in an entire meet if they were to win every single event). This means that EVERYONE plays a part in scoring for the team.

So what is the purpose behind me revealing the secrets that go on “behind the scenes”? It’s quite simple, the purpose is to make everyone aware that every race counts. Countless times I have heard “I’m just going to swim slow because I’m not going to win.” Try on every race! Usually improvement points are what determine the end result of each meet.

One last thing swimmers, don’t forget that the coaches put countless hours into creating the events. It takes that long because each and every meet there is a strategy behind it, so yes sometimes you may have to swim your off strokes. I hate backstroke but I didn’t complain when the coaches put me in it.

In the end lets have some fun at our upcoming dual meets and lets swim every race with our all!

Until next week…

Coach Ryan

Penguins,

This week’s topic is on head and body position. Before I begin I want everyone to imagine a speed boat in a lake. If that speed boat is parked on a dock the boat sits low, once that boat starts moving to the middle of the lake the boat becomes a little bit higher. After the boat has passed the buoys and the boat is moving quickly the front of the boat rises and there is only a small amount of the boat riding in the water. The same concept somewhat occurs while swimming. The reason why this is important is because at sea level air is 784 times less dense than water. For all of the six year olds think of it this way, which one can you move through faster, water or air? Air of course that’s why we can run faster than we can swim.

Back to the boat now, in order for the boat to move faster it rises out of the water so that more of its hull is pushing against air. Swimming is the same way, the higher in the water you are, the faster you will go. So you may be thinking to yourself what does this have to do with head and body position? If your head is too high your feet will sink, if your head is too low your shoulders will start to bury. Getting your head in the right body position is one of the easiest most overlooked piece of swimming. The most important thing to keep in mind is that while changing something in the water it is going to feel weird. Since swimming is a repetitive sport your muscles develop a memory, so if you change something your muscles aren’t going to like it until they develop a new memory. So in the end embrace the weird!

Until next week…

Coach Ryan

Penguins,

It is an exciting time of the year, a time I have looked forward to for many years. I am very happy to have all of our families, new and old. We will be having an eventful year, as always, we have already welcomed 29 new penguins. However challenging it may seem, the coaches are very excited to have all of these brand new swimmers. I joined the team when I was five and didn’t make my first lap across the pool until my very first swim meet, ever since then I have been hooked to the wonderful sport of swimming. I joined my first year round team when I was eight and have swam in a number of meets around the nation.

Over the years I have accumulated a broad knowledge of the sport of swimming. In the past the coaches used to write little briefs to the team on various topics (i.e. team performance, the importance of tapering, stroke technique, etc.). With the start of the year I would like to bring this back, with the limited amount of pool time we have I would like to extend a resource outside of the pool. Each week I will be writing on various technique tips, what I encourage each family to do is read the brief and then try the tips the next time they’re in the pool. Swimming is not just a physical sport, for any who may think that will be left in the wake of the swimmers who use both their muscles and their brains. A swimmer’s greatest resource is his/her brain, without it a swimmer’s muscles will just go for the easiest route. So for this week the first tip is to always think while swimming, this is my biggest philosophy as a coach. Things just become easier when you use your head.

Until next week….

Coach Ryan