No classes / training on Sat 24 July 2010

Hi swimmers, the Youth Olympic Games team will be using the pool on Sat 24 July and as such we are unable to conduct our regular session. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Team SPORTinc

Schedule over Chinese New Year period

Dear swimmers,

Please note the training schedule for the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays:

Saturday 13 Feb : Closed
Wednesday 17 Feb: Only the Masters swim training class will be open. No stroke correction class.

Saturday 20 Feb:  All classes will resume as per normal on

WISHING YOU A HAPPY & PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Morning Squad Swim Training for Triathletes: Tue & Fri 6-730am

 

SPORTinc is pleased to announce the start our Swim Squad Morning Sessions for dedicated  triathletes and masters swimmers.  This is for Elite and Advanced Squads.   

TUESDAY + FRIDAY 6am- 730am (we encourage our swimmers to arrive at 6am but please come even if you oversleep and can only get to the pool at 630am)  

Elite Squad: This is catered for dedicated triathletes/swimmers who are targeting to do under 25min for the 1.5km swim, under 30min for the 1.8km and under 1hour for the 3km.  These are estimated times and we be delighted to work with you to achieve your goals.    

Elite Squad Guideline: 10 x 100m on 1min 40sec intervals  

Intermediate Squad: This is catered for dedicated triathletes/swimmers who are targeting to do under 30min for the 1.5km swim, under 38min for the 1.8km and under 1hour 15mins for the 3km.  These are estimated times and we be delighted to work with you to achieve your goals.    

Advanced Squad Guideline: 10 x 100m on 2min intervals 

We guarantee improvements.   Come train with the best!  We have ‘ironmen’, ex-national swimmers and Olympians!  

Don’t procrastinate – contact us at info@sportinc.net for more information and tell us your goals!  The following are some races our swimmers are training for this year! 

 

 

 

  

21 March – Singapore 70.3

1 May – Busselton Australia Half Ironman

June – Switzerland (double Olympic distance)

26 July – Putrajaya Malaysia 70.3 (just been postponed to 4 Oct)

22 August – Philippines 70.3

2 Oct – Desaru Malaysia Half Ironman

9 Oct – Kona Hawaii Ironman

5 Dec – Western Australia Ironman

Preparations Before Half and Full Ironman Races 

Training Phase 1 – base/endurance
Focus on base and endurance, mileage of about 4 to 5k per workout. This will consist of longer sets to get the mileage in (yes, unfortunately this will be boring but it gets more exciting once this is over!)

 

Training phase 2 – aerobic strength 

Focus on aerobic strength, mileage of about 3k to 4.5k per workout. We will do sets of various distances, to hold consistant times with minimal interval rest.  

Training phase 3 – speed 

Focus on speed work, mileage of about 2k to 3k. The focus here is to “play around” with race pace speed, with longer rest intervals compared to the aerobic sets.  

Training phase 4 – taper 

Taper, mileage of about 1k to 1.5k. Time to rest those muscles! This phrase is the most important aspect but often overlooked. Time to enjoy, relax and get ready to race!  

 

Tags: swimwith sportinc, swim, sportinc, triathlete, triathlon 

 

Swimming – Freestyle Kick – Basics

Hi squad team, we’ll be trying this at our next few sessions!

A Swimmer’s Different Strokes for Success – New York Times

Hi swimmers,

I came across an article today (thanks San!) and I thought you all would find it an interesting read! The article is on Ryan Lochte (an American swimmer who has won multiple Olympic Games gold medals and holds several world records), and his training methods. Please have a read and you’ll realize why we spend so much time working on drills and leg kicks during our swimming classes, and how important it is to have proper swimming techniques i.e. head/body/hips/legs positioning.

Rgds, Gerald

A Swimmer’s Different Strokes for Success – New York Times

Gregg Matthews for The New York Times

Ryan Lochte, perhaps the best American male swimmer not named Michael (Phelps, of course), reveals some of his training techniques.

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

Published: March 20, 2008

 

RYAN LOCHTE may be the best American male swimmer not named Michael. At the 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens, he won a silver medal in the 200-meter individual medley, losing only to that Michael (Phelps, of course).

 

He also earned a gold medal as part of the 4-by-200-meter freestyle relay in Athens. And at the 2007 World Championships last March, Lochte shattered the world record in the 200-meter backstroke on his way to capturing a gold medal, serving notice for what may come at the Beijing Olympics this summer.

Lochte (pronounced LOCK-tee) swims 3 to 5 miles most days, sometimes even twice a day. Few non-Olympic hopefuls could, or would want to, replicate that kind of distance. But other aspects of the 23-year-old Lochte’s training (such as his use of fins and buoys) and routines (his dryland exercises) can be adopted by recreational swimmers or athletes, and perhaps even by parent coaches facing a rough patch with their teenage protégés.

Even though Lochte has been swimming since he was 9, he has not yet perfected his strokes. “I spend more time on stroke mechanics now than I ever have,” he said.

He also spends part of each practice slowing things way down.

“The only way to really work on technique is to swim very slowly and really think about every little thing that you’re doing,” he said. “How your body is positioned, what your hips are doing, the positioning of your shoulders and hands and feet.”

His coach is mindful, too.

“I always make sure that he’s very straight and streamlined off the wall,” said Gregg Troy, the head coach of the University of Florida men’s and women’s swim teams in Gainesville, Fla., and Lochte’s personal coach. Lochte, a former Gator, still trains with the team.

So Lochte tries to streamline underwater for at least 15 meters off each flip turn.

“If a swimmer pushes hard off the wall and remains streamlined underwater,” Troy said, “that means you’ll transition into your stroke with much more momentum. It’s almost as if you’re swimming downhill, not uphill. That’s very important.”

So is body position.

“I work a lot on staying high in the water, not fighting the water, moving with the water,” Lochte said.

To that end, he concentrates on keeping his belly above the water during his backstroke and he also frequently practices with a piece of buoyant foam (or pull buoy) between his legs. Using a buoy, Troy said, can be useful for swimmers, because “you start to feel proper body positioning, then you replicate that” without the buoy.

Grab the Kickboard

Perhaps the single biggest change in Lochte’s swimming routine from days past is the amount of pure kicking he does, sometimes with fins (his are standard, long fins) or a kickboard, sometimes without.

“Kicking stabilizes the body,” Troy said. “You achieve correct body position far more with the legs than the arms.”

Leg muscles require far more oxygen than the arms do, he added, so the legs “must be fit” or a swimmer risks early exhaustion.

“The amount of kicking that most elite swimmers do in practice has gone up at least 20 percent in the past few years,” Troy said.

He said that coaches used to have athletes kicking less because “it takes more time in the practices to kick than to swim,” so you get “less overall swimming volume.” But most of them have come to realize that less volume with more kicking produces world records.

Building Muscle

Unlike many young swimmers, Lochte did not work out with weights in high school. His father, Steven Lochte, who coached him for five years when Ryan was a teenager and who remains the head coach at Daytona Beach Swimming, a competitive swimming club, didn’t believe in it for such a young person. “You should wait until the bones are fused and skeletal growth is finished,” Steven Lochte said.

Now the 6-foot-2-inch Ryan Lochte turns up, if not avidly at least punctually, in the weight room at the University of Florida pool complex. “Three times a week,” he said, “for an hour and a half, two hours.”

Using free weights and machines, he concentrates on his shoulders (which have tendinitis), his legs and his back. “I was already pushing myself in the pool as hard as I could,” he said. “So I had to find another way to make pushing myself possible.”

Before every pool session, Lochte (below right) and his Florida teammates pass around the medicine ball, do multiple sets of push-ups and 500 abdominal crunches.

“Ryan does probably 30 to 45 minutes of core body exercises three times a week.” Troy said. For mortals, “20 minutes probably twice a week should be fine.”

Bring It On

“I love competition,” Lochte said. “I always have. That’s my idea of fun, to compete against your teammates, to compete in races, to compete against yourself.”

Competition was necessary, in fact, to keep him engaged during practice as a teenager.

“He’d coast through the easy parts” his father said, sighing even now. “But the minute I said we were going to do time trials or races, he’d be the first one in the water.”

Now, Lochte is his own best rival.

“Every day in practice I like to see if I can maybe kick an extra meter farther underwater than I did yesterday or beat something that I did before,” he said.

He also advises setting attainable goals, perhaps one of the more overlooked elements of a fitness regimen.

“After the 2004 Olympics, I went and sat down in my coach’s office and we listed all the goals I wanted to meet before Beijing,” Lochte said.

On the list was setting a world record, and defeating Phelps, at least a few times. Done and done.

The moral: Even if you’re a fitness swimmer, incorporate competition and goal-setting into your routine. You don’t necessarily have to sign up for races, but aim to reach the far wall a smidgen faster than you did the day before, or try to break a minute in the 100-meter freestyle, a good benchmark for speed. Lochte’s best time in that event is 49.04 seconds, a mark he set Saturday at the USA Swimming Sectionals competition in Orlando, Fla. He said he would like to bring it down to 48.2.

“There’s a lot of doing the same thing in swimming,” Lochte said. “I’d go crazy if I didn’t race parts of it.”

“Of course,” he added wickedly, “it helps that I usually win.”

This is the first in a series featuring Beijing Olympic hopefuls, who will offer training tips and fitness advice for recreational athletes.

Work those abs!

We had a great turnout yesterday with a couple of newbies joining the group. Welcome all!

We look forward to getting you doing your best ever swim in Western Australia ironman at the end of the year!

Swim with SPORTinc Open Water Clinics & Training Oct / Nov 09

Our Open Water Swim Programs are crafted for both beginner and seasonsed swimmers/triathletes:

Program (1) Beginner Triathletes : Tips on how to swim in the open water including proper dive in, navigation, drafting, threading water etc. and Practical application of the tips and techniques of open water swimming. We recommend beginners and those with little open water swimming experience to join our pool sessions prior to attending our open water sessions.

Program (2) Seasoned / ‘More’ Competitive Triathletes : Program cathers to seasoned and more experienced triathletes who will be competing in upcoming triathlons – whether you will be racing 1.5km (Olympic Distance), 1.8km (half-ironman) and 3.8km (ironman) swim distances, we will get you sufficiently ready. Be prepared to swim intensively both at the pool and in our open water session (which will be led by one of our ex-olympian swimmers). Swimmers in this category should be able to complete a 1.5km open water swim in less than 35mins.

The Pool Sessions will be conducted together with our Masters Swim Academy – but with certain drills and sets crafted for swimmers who register as Open Water Swimmers.

Call or email us for more information – limited capacity.

SIGN UP NOW! For more info on fees, click here.

Read about our program in the Straits Times.