SwimSwam wants to give you an inside look at what a normal day-in-the-life looks like for any given swimmer, and how that differs from team to team or city to city. We send our head of production, Coleman Hodges, to be a fly on the wall at practice, then relay what he discovered back to you over pancakes. Or at least breakfast.
At this point, it’s practically a halloween tradition that I drive down the road from my home in Austin and see what the Texas A&M men are up to in College Station. They set the bar pretty high with a scary fast off the blocks set last year, and this year they followed it up well. They again started with dryland, which consisted of boxing, somersaults into squat jumps and push ups, and a myriad of creative med ball throws. My personal favorite were the rope climbs which the immediately followed up with weighted dolphin kicks in a plank (weight on their lower back) or weighted flutter kicks on their back (weights on their ankles).
The warm up was 1,000 loosen followed by 6×100 @ 1:15 desc 1-3, 4-6. Pretty standard. The kicker? You had to kick half way off of every wall or be beheaded (proverbially, in most cases) by the CHORD. I think every swim team needs a chord.
The main set was 3 round of 4×75 @ 1:15 with paddles and ankle band (25 fast-25 ez-25 fast) followed by 10×50 200 pace @ :50 (:55 for breaststroke). You finish each round with 100 ex @ 2:00, then 8×25 FAST @ :20. The A&M men had done this set 3 weeks in a row now, with slight variation thrown into it each week, and it’s an old fashioned how tough can you get set. It’s one that was fun to watch, and I’m guessing not quite as fun to swim.
How do teams get away with post-grads swimming with them, the NCAA 14.2.1.6. says “A former student at the certifying institution (e.g., former student-athlete) may participate in an organized practice session on an occasional basis, provided the institution does not publicize the participation of the former student at any time before the practice session.”
50x50s@50 has a better ring to it