Fall 2024 Week 3 Technical & Conditioning Focus

Fall 2024 Week 3 Technical & Conditioning Focus: September 15 – 21

Technical Focus: Recovery & Pull

Conditioning Focus: General Aerobic

Macrocycle: Fall 2024; Mesocycle: General Preparation; Microcycle: Recovery & Pull

Hello Swim Families!

Welcome to week 3!

This week’s technical focus will emphasize the recovery and pull phases of each of the four strokes, while the condition focus remains “general aerobic.”

What is recovery?

Recovery refers to what the arms do as the move forward in the stroke. In freestyle, butterfly, and backstroke, the arms go over the water, while in breaststroke, at the minimum, the elbows must remain in the water.

Pull refers to what the arm does under the water to move the body forward—regardless of which of the four strokes one is swimming, keeping a high elbow and engaging the muscles of the back is essential to having an efficient and powerful pull.

In freestyle, we will emphasize what I call dry armpit, as well as fast hands. In butterfly, we will emphasize forward deltoids and relaxed arms, relying on the momentum of other parts of the body to swing the arms forward over the water—the best butterflyers do not THROW their arms over the water; rather, they use other parts of their body to catapult them forward into each subsequent stroke cycle. In backstroke, we will emphasize fast hands and the ability to accelerate the hand throughout the arc of the recovery.

We will also focus on flipturns and forward-facing starts on Friday and Saturday; the White and Minnows groups will exclusively focus on turns, while Platinum and Blue will focus on both skills.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

See you at the pool!

-Coach Reid