[Coach Phil blogs...]
Senior level swimmers need to get into the habit of swimming in the morning and afternoon of a meet. When we swim in the morning before a meet on the weekend (i.e. when we swim from 8-9 AM before a meet that starts later in the afternoon), it is to get the swimmers used to this type of swimming pattern. When swimmers are at a championship meet (provincials, nationals, Ontario cup, etc), they swim a warm up from before prelims and then race in their preliminary session. They also have a warm up for finals and a final session which runs later in the evening.
Another reason why we swim in the morning is physiologically based. At this stage of the season, the level 1 swimmers need to keep their muscle physiology at a high training level until we prepare for the meets in July. During the year, the swimmers train and race under stress (until the week leading up to SCM provincials/nationals in the spring and the same for LCM provincials/nationals in the summer). What we mean by stress is they train without being able to recover their muscles. We as coaches are constantly trying to deplete the athletes muscle glycogen stores (the energy the muscles use for swimming) and have them perform under these conditions. When we start to decrease the volume of training leading up to the “big” meets, their muscles get to replenish their glycogen stores and they have more energy to perform. What throws a wrench into this preparation is when kids miss lots of training. Their muscle get to recover too much, too often not giving them the best possible training effects.
The training sessions the morning before meets are not grueling workouts by any means. They are set up to give the athletes a proper morning swim before a meet. Especially meets here in Sudbury. When the kids get a morning swim in, they do not have to accomplish as much during the afternoon warm up as their muscles have already had a swim. The pool gets very crowded for warm ups and our swimmers can get in right away, get their work done early and get out before it fills up. Instead of swimming 1800-2000 meters before the meet, the can just do 1400-1700 meters as they have prepared in the AM.
We coaches have no intent to set these kids up for failure. We are trying to constantly do what is best for the kids and swimming in the morning before a meet is what is best. I hope the parents understand this and consider what is best for their kid’s performances at these types of meets.
Coach Phil Parker
