Last night I delivered the first of my own sessions to the swimmers I usually coach as part of the post-course work for the Swimming Coach qualification.
Friday evening is just an hour session for my group and as my intention is to work on breaststroke/butterfly turns for the six sessions required by the course, I planned a test set timing the swimmers from flags to turn to flags for both strokes. We’ll compare the timings for those we get in six weeks after I’ve worked on their turn technique.
As it happened due to illness we were short of coaches and I had more swimmers than I’d planned for and didn’t have someone to time the interval between hands hitting the wall and feet leaving the wall which I was hoping to get in addition to the time between the flags. Such is life. I guess that’s why they caution us to be flexible about plans on the course itself. In the end I had to settle for just timing the breaststroke turns between the flags and skipping the butterfly set. That’s a good enough place to start though. Perhaps I’ll see if I can get the extra timings another day.
Most pleasing of all, the swimmers generally seemed to enjoy the session. They were keen to know their times and clearly up for improving, not to mention starting to compete against each other 🙂