Practice + Pancakes: Swimming Lines and Get-Out Climbs with Club Wolverine

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.

Remember how Club Wolverine’s top group has over 50 swimmers? Obviously we had to see what a practice with that group was like. And it exceeded expectations. With the club practicing in the same pool as the Michigan swim team, and the coaches exchanging ideas on deck or using little things from one workout in their own, there’s a lot of collaboration that’s going on. This means that Club Wolverine does some pretty cool stuff that you might normally only see in a college environment.

The first thing they did that struck me as really cool was the stability work with equipment. They did all sorts of work where they would use one paddle/one fin, one wiffle ball/one fin, both pieces of equipment on the same side of the body, both on opposite sides of the body. It seemed like a great way to develop and work on feel for the water, especially when you’re trying to get in quality technique.

The main set they did is a classic. 16×50 every 4th fast. 12×50 every 3rd fast. 8×50 every other fast. 4×50 all fast. Intervals go up by chunk, so you’re getting more rest between faster swims as you’re getting less recovery swims. You also end the set with 5×50 fast, which is just brutal.

My favorite part, however, was the line swim. Especially for a group this big, I love that they took time at the end of practice to come together as a team for their warm down, and it was led by the seniors. When I see something like that, it makes sense how a group this big can function as one single unit.