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.
I went to visit the SMU Mustangs in Dallas recently (check out the carpool if you haven’t yet) and captured practices with both their men’s and women’s teams. The buzz on deck… was that the deck was brand new. SMU has a beautiful new facility that they just started using in November, and the team is loving it.
Currently, both teams are starting the comedown for their conference meet, and as both a coach and swimming fan I think it’s always interesting to see how the practices change between fall training, winter training, and now coming into the final stretch of the season. The women had a sprint group, a mid group, and a distance group, although around half of the mid group switched over to sprint half way through the practice. I covered the sprint and mid groups, in part because I think the changes in workouts are a little more noticeable.
In the mid group, they had a set of descend 50’s working on 200 pace feel. Nothing too crazy, but still getting them a little tired while practicing tempo, stroke count, and general feel for that 2nd 100. Sprint group was working on pure power and speed, which included 50’s with a rotating fast 25, 50 from a dive, power racks, and turns with a fast 15 burst.
Should do a Florida Men’s taper vid