The Way

Jones Wins The Showdown In Charlotte

The winner of the showdown in Charlotte last week was Cullen Jones, 22.24 over Josh Schneider, 22.28. Good race, as you can see from the video Jones got out to the better start and Schneider did all he could to close the distance but once you're behind in the a 50FR it's tough to make up ground.

A nice event, good drama, kudos to USA Swimming

The First Big Race Of 2011

Kudos to USA Swimming for allowing tonight's swim-off showdown between Cullen Jones and Josh Schneider to happen.

Tonight at the Charlotte UltraSwim Grand Prix Cullen Jones and Josh Schneider finally settle a debate brewing since the summer when the SwimMAC teammates tied at the US World Championships Trials. It's been about 9 months since that tie and it's perfectly fitting that they will settle the score in their home pool in front of what should be a madhouse of fans.

Local Charlotte TV did the promos, I'll let them set the stage...

Jones insists that last summer wasn't the best Cullen Jones and now he's ready to go and Schneider plays the role of the natural finally dedicated to the sport. Blah blah blah... I'll shut up and let the men settle the score.

PREDICTION: Jones... and both men go faster then the 21.97 they went last summer.

Great Article - 'Bring In The Experts'

I wrote an article for the Team Aquatic Supplies Blog called 'Bring In The Experts' that featured a workout with my good friend Cam Cummings coming in and doing a backstroke focused seminar with my group.

Response from the article has been overwhelming positive and I'm grateful for the feedback I have been receiving. To be honest, the positive feedback should be more appropriately directed at some of the great young men and women I've had come in and give their time to my group. It's not just been Cam but I'll get to a lessons learned from special guests post at a later date.

This post is sort of a 'behind the article' type of post, with a look at the video taken during the practice and some more of the photos...

I had to cut the video a little abruptly, one of the precocious Bronze swimmers was demanding why I was taking a video and sometimes the inquiries of 9 year olds can not be ignored.



I love this video, this is Petr showing off his spin drill skills. He gets right into the drill, which is symptomatic of why he's one of the most improved swimmers in my group this year. He jumps right into skill and tries them with no hesitation of feat that he'll "look silly". Great stuff!

This clip was featured on the TAS blog and I put it there because it simply shows everything that was good about this workout. Organization, enthusiasm, skill focus and improvement. This is why bringing in the big guns is a must.

Evan and Graham (above) both dialed in and listening actively. I love seeing this!

This photo above shows that we're working in a pool at Harbord that has quite narrow lanes, which is ideal for working on backstroke. I get the most out of the space because trying to go fly or breast in such narrow lanes with 4-5 teenagers per lane would be a lot more difficult then backstroke in the same space.

A good Monday PM practice and something I was happy to share with the TAS blog and hopefully eyeballs are fixed on what's going on here at TSC!

Freestyle Re-Think

This is freestyle at it's most masterful technically thought out and a wonderful resource.

I've been watching these The Race Club and Mike Bottom videos for months, breaking them down and applying, assessing, tweaking, and reassessing with my swimmers. The truth is that my group is obviously nowhere near as talented as some of the young men and women that Bottom is working with but if you can breakdown the strokes and scale the techniques into teachable segments then you can start to implement.

I have a group that is far from a complete project but freestyle times are coming down at a good rate with more qualifiers at every level - regional, provincial, and semi-national (not quite coaching National level talent at this point in time).

I recommend these techniques and these videos to any coaching looking to increase the technical focus of their freestylers.

Closing The Book On Peirsol

Aaron Peirsol's retirement in his own words.

What a star. Prior to Peirsol taking over the backstroke world in the early 2000s the man in the backstroke was fellow American Lenny Krayzelburg, and as Peirsol came up to break Krayzelburg's 200BK World Record in 2002 and 100BK World Record in 2004 it's amazing to think that Peirsol has essentially made people forget about how amazing a swimmer Krayzelburg actually was during his run. It is like Michael Jordan coming along and overshadowing the greatness of Magic Johnson.

There's nothing more that needs to be said about Peirsol, watch the video, he's an icon of swimming that's on his way to the Hall of Fame as soon as he's eligible.