What's happening with the HOGS this week?

A great week full of training and kickball!

The fall continues to progress and we are preparing for the first few meets. We have once again stepped up the intensity of the training and have seen instant results. We have split up into training groups and begun to concentrate on specific events. Generally we split into three training groups- distance, middle distance and sprints. As many of our swimmers are versatile enough to swim different length events, the groups are never set in stone. About half of our team train in more than one group based on an individual weekly schedule.

This week, the sprinters began to concentrate on lactate training with lots of breath control. Early in the week, their intensity was really high while the intervals were fairly gernerous. They also spent some time using training snorkels. There are two major benefits of snorkel training. First, as they allow a swimmer to breathe without turning thier head, they can concentrate on perfect technique without the normal stroke variation that comes with breathing. Second, snorkels slightly restrict oxygen training thus making all training a bit hypoxic.

The middle distance has been focusing on pace training. This group has set early season goal times with splits. Many of the sets that we did this week were designed to train the athletes to hit those goal splits in fatigued situations. For example, if a swimmer’s goal split forthe last 50 of a 200 freestyleis a 27.5, thenthat swimmer wouldneed to learn how to swim their goal when theywere already astired astheywouldnormallybe after 150yards in a race.

Finally, the distancegroup had one practice that focused on pace training as well. This time of season however, the rest of the week is dedicated to over distance training. By the end of the week, the distance group was tired but was surprisingly swimmer as fast or faster than the beginning of the week. This indicates that their areobic capacity is where we want it and that we are on the right track.

The divers have also stepped up the training as they have moved up to the 10 meter.On the tower, they are still working fundamentals and plan on increasing the degree of difficulty next week.

Outside of the pool we had a little fun this week. On Monday afternoon, we decided to wind down after a long recruiting weekend by playing a game during practice. We all headed out to Ladyback Yard and played a few innings of "Slip-n-Slide kickball." We play on the outfield in bare feet and have a few modified kickball rules. The most obvious change in rules is that all the bases are little blowup swimming pools. To reach a base, a runner has to slide in head first on a wet tarp. There really is no way to describe how fun this game actually is! As everyone in the game is a competitve athlete, we all took it pretty seriously.

At the end of the game, we did a full team cheer as we always remember that we all always on the same side. Everyone was wet, grassy and looking forward to the next game!

Although we spend so much time training, the activities that we do together outside of the pool are really crucial to building and maintaining our team bonds.

Personal Notes:

Happy Birthday to Freshman Tori Kennedy on Monday. Congratulations to Senior and Captain Lisa Petry on an outstanding training week!

Check back next week to see what’s happening with the H2OGS!