Fall 2024 Week 9 Technical and Conditioning Focus
Fall 2024 Week 9 Technical & Conditioning Focus: October 28 – November 2
Technical Focuses: Catch & Breakouts
Conditioning Focus: Anaerobic Threshold
Macrocycle: Fall 2024; Mesocycle: Power & Resistance; Microcycle: Aerobic Power + Burst Speed
Hello Swim Families!
Welcome to Fall 2024 week 9!
Let’s discuss the elephant in the… pool.
This week is plagued by unsafely cold water; therefore, our original plans for the week have been thrown off. Nonetheless, adaptability is the name of the game for a swim coach—I promise, despite these setbacks, we will be fine!
On Tuesday, October 29th, please join us on the second-floor basketball courts at Genesis from 4:00 – 6:00 pm for some dryland, games, and team building activities!
ALL GROUPS ARE INVITED TO GENESIS TOMORROW!
PLATINUM SWIMMERS… STEP UP AND LEAD!
Consider Tuesday a special Halloween practice. Encourage your swimmers to wear their Halloween costumes to practice on Tuesday!
We already know the water will be too cold to swim tomorrow, so we will do this instead.
So, just what is too cold? Today, our Platinum swimmers had a hard time at 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature dropped since that 3:15 pm practice time.
As World Aquatics puts it, “The water temperature shall be 25º to 28º Centigrade” (World Aquatics, 2024) during competition, which in Fahrenheit is 77 degrees to 82.4 degrees, respectively.
From USA Swimming, “athletes are acclimatized to an 80-degree pool… [and] may eventually acclimate to lower temperatures over time, but this process can take several weeks and can only be accomplished by incrementally increasing the time in the water.” Furthermore, this is USA Swimming's best practices for open water swimming, not the pool, and in this case they recommend swimmers wear a wetsuit.
Therefore, sudden drops in temperature can be jarring.
Random aside: most ice baths/cold plunge tubs are kept at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and no one spends more than 5-7 minutes in one of those.
Based on my conversations with Genesis, I am confident that we will be back to normal by the end of the week. I understand the frustrations of having our practice schedule temporarily derailed, though I know that Genesis does not want to have their pool in such a state either.
When we can get back in the water, we will do both aerobic power and burst speed as well as some unintended aerobic work to make of for the days we have been out of the water. These will be fun yet challenging practices.
Please let me know if you have any questions, and I’ll see you at the pool!
-Coach Reid
References
USA Swimming. Safety Management for Open Water Workouts. (2024). chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.usaswimming.org/docs/default-source/open-water-resources/safety-management-for-open-water-workouts.pdf
World Aquatics. Swimming Pool Certification. (2004). chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://resources.fina.org/fina/document/2024/06/28/dcaceb72-3012-4b65-90fb-e4dda53a3132/AQUA-Pool-Certification-Swimming_NEW.pdf
