Why the Mile? By John Leonard Those of you who have been with us for a while now realize that at SwimFast we emphasize the mile for young swimmers. A reasonable question is WHY? And there are multiple answers that are important for parents to understand. Here are the top 5. #1. The Mile demands continuing technically good swimming for an extended (18-30 minutes) period of time. IF you can learn to “hold stroke” for a mile, you can do it easily for every other distance. #2. The Mile is...

Why We Swim The Events That We Swim… By John Leonard A reasonable question for parents in swimming is how coaches select events for athletes at swim meets. There are a number of “methods and reasons”. For our team, here are the most common ones. “Swim Away from Success” – If Susie swims a great 100 fly one week, we’ll avoid that event for 3-6 weeks if we can….why? Because Susie needs time to both make new and improved technical changes before she races it again and also needs time...

A Winner Gets His Due By Don Swartz Last year when Yaroslav went to Cal Poly as a freshman he was denied a spot as a walk on. He was not deemed fast enough by the coach. He could have quit; could have made the excuse his shoulder was bothering him and thus he wasn’t fast enough. He persevered however. He swam on the club team and came home for the summer and trained and raced. Here is his story of the outcome. “This is your favorite Russian, also known...

Swimsuits: Why we Wear What We Wear By John Leonard Swimsuits – years ago, it was sooooo simple. Now, we have high tech suits (Technical suits) that focus on coverage and “compression of the body” that makes the athlete MUCH faster than without the “tech suits”. (roughly 1 second per 100). Those suits, as Mom or Dad (whomever buys the child’s swimsuits) are VERY expensive…$350-$500 per suit. Worse, the technical nature of the suit and the material, don’t last long at all…perhaps 10-15-20 swims, max, before they decline dramatically. That’s...

The Value and Virtue of Hard Work By John Leonard At SwimFast, our coaches all believe the value of Hard Work. In any field of endeavor, we believe a young person with a strong understanding of effort, consistent hard work and productivity, has a tremendous advantage. This is true from school, to pool, to college and to later working life. We value Hard Work for its own sake. The sheer fact of learning to work hard with great effort is a Life Skill of monumental importance in our society. In...

For Our Age Group Athletes: How to Have NO LIMITS on Your Future Performance. By John Leonard In presentations I provide to parents and coaches all over the world, the conversation comes to teaching strokes whenever I speak. The simple fact is that swimming is a “technique limited sport.” (similar to gymnastics, diving, tennis and golf.) This means that the primary goal with EVERY athlete is to create a great stroke technique for them. Not everyone’s stroke should be exactly the same, because not everyone’s body is EXACTLY the same....

The Most Important Factor in Swimmer Improvement By John Leonard Dear Parents, On our pool fence, we have a 40 foot sign that reads “the Immutable Rules of Improvement”. The First Rule is SHOW UP. Statistics show absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt that we can predict speed of improvement by the number of times a child attends practice. SHOW UP for Practice. My educated guess is that for older (12 and over) athletes, every day you miss a practice, you need two practices to “get back to where you were”. Missing two...

SwimFast swimmers broke a bunch of team records at Senior Champs and had two individual finalists. Geena Squartino finaled in 400 free, 1500 free, 200 fly and 400 IM setting records in all but the 1500 free which she won. Elad Fraiman finished 10th in the 1500 free knocking over a minute off his time. He finished 16th in the 100 and 200 breast strokes for new team records The Open girls 400 free relay of Allora Williams, Cameron Thomas, Tiffany Seto and Gena Squartino broke the team record and...

Jodi Kennedy won the 200 butterfly at the Junior Olympics meet in Plantation setting a new team record.

Jodi Kennedy broke the 11-12 girls 100 and 200 fly and 400 IM records. Allora Williams broke the 50 and 100 free and 50 and 100 back records. Julinna Villarta broke all the 13-14 girls breast stroke records. Cameron Thomas broke the 100 and 200 fly records in 13-14 girls. Quinn Roth broke the 13-14 boys 50 fly and 100 and 200 back records. The four girls consisting of Allora, Cameron, Julinna and Tiffany Seto broke all four records of the events they competed in. They swam the 200, 400...