Revised Mountain Climbers

Another one we recently did to stir things up at High School practice (created by Coach Brandon Darrington) — “Revised Mountain Climbers” — we did serpentine 25’s (swim down in lane 3, back in lane 4, down in lane 5, back in lane 6, etc.) until lane 8.  At the end of lane 7, they had to get out and do a dive-start on their 8th 25.  One of the coaches timed each swimmer from the dive (we ran around a lot!), and the swimmer had to guess to the hundredth their time.  If they guessed correctly to within 0.05 seconds, they got to warm down and be done with practice.  If not, they had to start the serpentine all over again.  The second round we let them guess to the nearest 0.10.  The third round to the nearest 0.20, etc.  It was surprising that even some of my best swimmers weren’t guessing as accurately as I thought they would, and that some of the less-seasoned swimmers were guessing correctly.  It was fun for most of the kids — I don’t think those who had to repeat 7-8 times were having as much fun!