http://www.usaswimming.org/...d=643&ItemId=564 Club coach. Been at pool for 26 years. Used to coaching big numbers (130 kids). Separated from junior squad 8-10 athletes in elite squad. Attention to developing kids and working with those coaches. Pass on your expertise to other
Club philosophy is about having fun and selling the program to the younger kids. Kids have got to have technique early and keen to challenge themselves. Develop character in the young swimmer. Kids need to be self-regulated at an early age.
Good support group. Raylien Ryan assistant coach.
Now have to provide what used to come through PE and play with younger kids.
Grant came into program when he was six years old. Moved into senior program when he was 12 years old. Up until 14 coming 4-6 times per week. 15 came to attention of people in 1996 Trials where he placed 5th. Grant is now 21 years old.
Technique. Great age groupers don’t become great open swimmers without great technique.
His health doesn’t always hold up very well-has sinus problems and gets sick easily.
Only goes over 70K/week a couple of times a year-realize that is against the grain for a 1500 swimmer.
Only two weeks off in a year.
Made 1996 World short course championships-1996-97 first time he trained 10-11 sessions per week. Starting to develop specific endurance. Firmly believes in seven-month training time with no competitions-tries to do this from May to December.
Three sessions dryland per week in 96-97
Had some troubles from sponsor appearances in 1998. 1998 broke 1st world record in short course worlds 1500. Tried to keep kick up with six beat kick the whole way.
Added two weight sessions for the 1st time in 1998 while he was 18 years old. Did this to add some power for him to swim the 200 also. Very difficult balance to achieve this.
200 was looking very good in 1999. After Pan Pac’s he was up and roaring to go.
Kicked the volume up in 2000. His body wouldn’t take the high volumes at distance training camps-he’d tried to win everything and come back sick.
Was sick for 200, 400 and 1500 in Olympic Trials. He did Qualify in individual events
2 x 3 x 100 (1:50, 1:40, 1:30) 57.1 58.2
56.1 57.6
52.5 51.2 THEN
4 x 100 on 2:00 dive 53.23 52.11 52.39 51.71
Got real sick after this set
Macrocyle is between 12-18 weeks.
Mesocyle is 3 weeks in length
Microcyle is 1 week
Build in a ½ week adaptation period after 2½ to 3 weeks.
Basis of a lot of work is short rest interval challenge. Grant would often challenge himself so would change the work to max. VO2 from pace.
Use test set of 10x300 or 6x500 almost every Monday (will do this 2 out of 3 weeks in a mesocycle).
Any distance needs some base speed including the 1500.
Saturday morning some type of pace set
Challenge the athletes so they are chasing the clock. Find out what the kids limits are then challenge them to chase that time. Put in small digestible chunks, but repeat it a couple of times. Have to know your athletes, what they’re capable of and what they’re capable of that day. Easy to manipulate the overload factor.
Need to keep pounding the legs for over distance kicking.
Likes to spend some time training in the 6-8 ml. mole range for lactate tolerance. If you can get an athlete to train in that range can increase buffering so athlete gets used to swimming with lactates similar to the 2nd & 3rd 100 of a 400.
Huge problems after Trials. Had five wisdom teeth pulled. Started weight program with his brother that Denis didn’t know about. Very susceptible to infection and was not recovering properly. Made decision to train for the 1500 about 10 weeks ago. Didn’t tell him about the lactates and lied to him also about his stroke rates. Couldn’t race anaerobically at the Olympics. Trying to be too powerful in the middle of the 200. All starts in the top of the stroke worked with pull buoy, then pull buoy with soft legs.