Tag: Woodruff

Choose your weapon — back or breast

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Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

LCM.  Wanted to get some good swimming of both of these strokes in today.  Being within the best+30 goal on the 200s wasn’t a problem for most, and the conscientious ones were able to be within 20 for the most part.  Rest intervals allowed for good flexibility on lane assignments and stroke choices.  Swimmers had to stick with either stroke for a round before switching.

Butterfly Quality Control

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Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

With narrow lanes and lots of turbulence in our pool, I try to find ways for our swimmers to get in good quality fly sets without having to dodge teammates, do 1-arm strokes, or have to worry about getting hit in the face.  This set accomplished all of those objectives AND helped us deliver some fast performances at practice.  On the 25s, we were able to go :10 apart.  On the 75s, I would start the second heat when the first heat had finished about 60m (SCM pool).  For the 125s, the second heat would begin as soon as the first heat had finished about 110m.  This also produced a “chasing” effect that encouraged swimmers to finish their last 25 fast lest they get caught by a teammate in embarrassing fashion.

Fartlek Fun. Is that redundant?

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Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

This is 8:00 of continuous swimming with 1:00 rest.  Each time there are slightly different instructions.  “Deep” refers to deep practice, where I ask our swimmers to focus on one technical element and try to improve it.  On #4, they swim continuous backstroke until they hear me bang the wrench on the side of the pool. When they hear the bangs, they sprint br 2 walls (25-50m) and then return to swimming steady backstroke.

The Big Descend

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Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

This set went really well for our team.  I like that it forced them to really pay attention to their pace and demanded exceptional effort for the last few rounds.  We did 150s instead of 100s or 200s because there is less “mental baggage” attached to that distance — swimmers’ don’t have well-defined expectations of what their times for 150 should be.

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He has a great perspective on swimming

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

I had the privilege to listen to all-time great swimmer Aaron Peirsol speak to our Virginia Swimming athletes at our annual awards banquet yesterday.  His story is a compelling one, and I think many swimmers would benefit from hearing it.  I would highly recommend giving his podcast interview with former Stanford swimmer Rich Roll a listen.
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Backstroke Challenge Set for Underwater Kicking Habits

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Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA
 

The purpose of this backstroke set is for athletes to challenge themselves to hold near race pace while performing an increasing number of dolphin kicks off each wall.  In this case, on the first round swimmers were aiming for a time within 3.0 seconds of their 200 race pace (as shown on their pace cards) while doing at least 6 kicks off each wall for each of the two 50s.  If they were successful at that, they tried to hit the same pace while doing 8 or more kicks.  Third round… 10 or more kicks. Continue until nobody in the group can hit that pace while doing that many kicks.  Swimmers who fail to hit the target pace with a specified number of kicks simply tried to hit that number of kicks again on the next round.  For a shorter more demanding set, lower the +3.0 time standard to something faster.
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Back and Breaststroke Set

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Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

Our swimmers seemed to really like this set.  One thing sets it apart from many of the sets we do — the interval.  Typically, I write a highly structured practice with everything tightly interval-controlled.  This set had every swim @ ~:20 rest.  This allowed the swimmers to feel less interval pressure and the freedom to just do a good job, pay attention to the clock, and challenge themselves rather than feeling dragged along by the set.

1st round backstroke, 2nd round breaststroke with changes to the drills so they were suitable for br.

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Backstroke, Free Pull, and Hypoxic Speed

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Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA
 
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Editor’s note: Our goal for this year is to provide coaches around the world with a free new idea or set EVERY DAY this year! Can you help us reach that goal? Please send submissions to swimmingwizard@gmail.com.