Swim-Golf (Swolf)!

Swim-Golf is a great distance per stroke game you can play with your kids.  Some coaches call it Swolf.  I was first introduced to it years ago by my friend and fellow coach, Paul Mazzarelle.
It seems crazy to me that someone wouldn’t already know about this and perhaps that is why I never thought to post a blog about it.  However, there are plenty of new coaches out there, like myself when I began to use it, and maybe some old ones that have never heard of it.
This week I talked to the kids about counting their stokes and trying to take the least amount of strokes per lap possible.   Then we talked about tempo and how it relates to DPS in terms of overall speed and time.  At that point we jumped into playing the game.  I explained to them that there is a magic equation to fast swimming:
Optimum DPS + Optimum Tempo = FAST SWIMMING!
Swim-Golf is a tool to help them understand this concept...And it is a lot of fun.  Here is how you play:
-Have the kids swim 25 yards (or 50 meters) and count their stokes.
-They also need to get their times when they get to the wall.
-Take the number of stokes and add that to the time it took to swim the lap and you have your score.  Obviously, the lower the score the better (that is where the golf part comes in).  So, if Johnny gets 12 strokes for a 25 yard free and his time is 16 seconds, his score is 28.  After a lap we talk about how we can improve our score and we go again, and again, and again.  We go over every possible way to potentially bring the number down, including streamlining farther, pushing off the walls harder, breathing less, and a whole bunch of technical things that the kids understand as time improving, distance per stroke enhancing ideas.
This week was a little different.  I had the kids in teams.  We took the total score from each swimmer and added them up for an entire team score.  The team that had the lowest score won!  I thought this team-game was a lot more fun for the kids than the individualized version.  Either way, this is a great way to teach the relationship between DPS and tempo and how faster, more effective swimming is really done.
Any one else play SWOLF?

April Fools: Lane Ninja!

There have been a lot of good April Fools jokes around our pool deck over the last couple years.  We have had a kid in a sling saying he broke his arm skateboarding, a parent saying they were taking the family to another team (not funny), and many more.  Last year my kids got together and planned to do the opposite of everything I said until I lost my temper...that lasted 15 minutes before I was ready to blow.
This year I decided to send a “ninja” to another coaches lanes to see how long it would take the coach to notice.
My first two lane ninjas only lasted a couple minutes in the 11-12 Gold group because they got in the only lane that had two swimmers splitting...(not the smartest ninjas in the clan).
My other two lane ninjas successfully infiltrated the 11-12 Blue group, literally sneaking right in front of the coach, until one of the older kids shouted, “We’ve got 10 and unders in here!” and ruined it.
Then I sent a lone ninja to the 11-12 Silver group.  This one was a little harder as there were two coaches in this group.  So, I ran a little interference sparking up a conversation with the coaches while my ninja snuck right into a middle lane.  She lasted at least 15 minutes and would have gone longer if a different coach hadn’t spilled the beans.  My ninja was even going first and doing all the drills and everything.  It was pretty funny.
My final lane ninjas went up to the teaching pool with the novice groups.  This was going to be difficult to implement the infiltration and even harder to maintain covert operations.  There were 4 coaches here!  So, I ran interference again by asking some well thought out questions to confuse and disorient.  My expert assassins slid right behind the coaches and got into the water with no problems.  They didn’t last very long but how can you blame them...they went too fast!
It was a fun joke and all the coaches appreciated it.  My only concern is that I will have a target on my back for next year.  I will be watching my swimmers carefully.
Any good April fools jokes at your pool deck?