Coach Mike`s Blog

New Contributor to the Blog

2012-03-01T17:51:00.001-08:00

I am always looking for new and exciting content for this blog and it is with great pride that I introduce new contributing member, Lindsay Seemann.

Lindsay is a 2008 Olympian who is currently a journalism on scholarship in Arizona. Lindsay has fought her way back from several illnesses and set backs and will swim at Olympic Trials in March. It is a great honor to have her contributing to this blog.

Here, she writes about her career from her perspective. Please join me in welcoming Lindsay.

I Swim for Me by Lindsay Seemann

The beauty and the curse of swimming is that no one can help you once the race starts. No one can fight your battles for you. In the water, you are all alone. This keeps your accomplishments close, and your failures closer. It always seems that we remember the bad races more than we remember the good ones.

Throughout my swimming career, I have seen the top of the podium and my name at the bottom of the results list. To quote one of my favorite movies, Friday Night Lights, “There isn't much difference between winning and losing, besides how the outside world treats you.”

It took me a long time to realize that the outside world isn't as a bad as our minds make it out to be. Swimming isn't a spectator sport, therefore very few people actually care about how well you perform. Your family, friends, coaches, and team mates only care because they want you to be happy. They witness determination and fear to see hard work go unanswered by your goals.

The past four years has been a roller coaster. I have had to fight a lot of battles and in swimming the only battles you fight are against yourself. There is no one tackling you at the one yard line, or cross checking you into the boards. The only opposition that can effect how fast you swim, is your own mind. In your lane there is nothing but water and a black line on the bottom.

There have been times I feel like this sport is rejecting me like a bad heart transplant. Coming back to swimming after having mononucleosis has been the hardest thing I have ever had to do in this sport. Constant hard work, with no pay off. I have been forced to celebrate small victory after small victory as I take steps towards achieving the level I used to be. I have to celebrate my progress instead of best times.

Results don't always add up. You may train hard, eat right, and still fail. Sometimes your best effort does not attain your goals. There is no answer for it. Its just a part of sport. I have been learning to happy with a race as long as I tried my best and know I did everything I could. How can I ask for more than my best effort? After all, the only expectations I want to live up to are my own.

“You have done it once, you can do it again,” is a haunting phrase I hear from the outside world. Just because you have done something before, doesn't make it an easier task, if anything it makes it harder.

Between the failures and small victories I have asked myself many times why I do this. Why do I swim? Through the pressure and stress, why do I swim? Because I am chasing a dream.

Making an Olympic team isn't easy, that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. If it were, the Olympic Games would not be anything special.

Before I made the 2008 Olympic team, I was just a girl with a dream. I dreamed big and without fear. As we approach 2012 Trials, I am an Olympian striving to repeat my past. I would do anything to go to just one more. The path I have taken the last four years has not been ideal, but I am only 19. Whether my next Olympics is 2012, 2016, or 2020, I would love to compete at that level again. Its not about attaching an Olympian title to my name, or earning the right to have a five-ringed tattoo. I already have those things. Its about chasing after a dream. Its about what makes me happy. I swim for me.

~Lindsay Seemann for Coach Mike's Blog

coachmikepodcast episode 15

2012-02-28T12:41:00.002-08:00

Very quick post: this week I interview Jamie Brough of the OSCC (Ontario Swim Coaches Committee) regarding the announcement of the changes to the Swim Ontario meet and schedule format for 2012-2016. While these are big changes and I have several strong opinions of my own, I strongly feel that this particular episode was not the place for them. The OSCC did not make any actual decisions, just consulted and recommended them, therefore, I allowed Jamie to speak and held my personal opinions to myself. Hopefully this helps to educate coaches, teams, swimmers and parents as to what to expect next season... and to entertain those headed up to Nepean and have a 6 hour car ride ahead of them.

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We need more years...

2012-02-23T09:49:00.003-08:00

When I took over HHBF about 4 years ago, there were many things on my "To Do" list; however, none more important than to find a way to get older athletes on our club. High pressure was for recruitment, but I didn't feel that, at the time, we had enough to offer in order to recruit a solid enough base of older athletes. My only viable option was to roll up my sleeves and sell, sell, sell.

The history of HHBF to that point was pretty simple: we were a feeder team to GDHS high school's team. This was for a couple of reasons including tradition. But more importantly, there was no perceived need for a team for kids 14 and older.

The high school was cheaper.
The high school only made you train a few times/week for 4 months.
Perhaps most importantly, it was easier. You could train up until the first day of grade 9, then beat the crap out of swimmers who had never swam a day in their life. You didn't have to achieve high standards to go to the championship meets AND you didn't even have to SWIM at those championship meets (you could have 7 people on a relay team as alternates).
Why would anyone in their right minds bust their humps for 10 months of the year and many practices/week to race against fast people and lose?? Many of these thoughts are portrayed in my article from last season OFSAA And The Damage It Does.

I began discouraging athletes from swimming for the high school in the 2008-2009 season for about 2 weeks... then I realized that it was a useless endeavour. I couldn't fight history and tradition. All I could do was sell the difference and the importance of staying in swimming... why swimming in Canada NEEDS you! I started bringing in guest speakers such as Joe Bartoch, Kristen Bradley, Lindsay Seemann and others to talk about their swimming experiences. I started blogging. I started opening up lines of communication and education for my club, swimmers and parents. They needed to understand why this was important.

Fast forward 4 years and see that we've been really successful. HHBF has 2 alumni swimmers in University, will send more next year and a TON the year after that. We succeeded in selling the reasons to swim and the need for our club to exist. We have fast age groupers... but now comes the need to educate about the next step in this development. We need more years on HHBF.

Dean Boles, Randy Bennett, Pierre Lafontaine and general statistics will tell you that the average age of athletes performing at a world level is raising. Very few 17 year olds are making it and so we need to keep athletes swimming longer. Universities will help us achieve this goal, but more importantly, WE need to prepare these athletes to be able to survive the student-athlete University experience so that they can continue their swimming careers; That is priority #1.

Priority #2 now is to support these athletes and encourage them to help HHBF succeed. This is a new priority for us, as we've never been in a position like this before. We recently had Elizabeth Skuriat represent HHBF at Eastern Canadian Championships and swimming faster than ever, with 2 pbs and breaking 2 club records at the meet. We have former Blue Fins that want to wear the Fin and represent our team. Very simply, WE NEED THESE ATHLETES.

Accepting these athletes is one thing, but truly supporting them is another. These athletes that go to University are met with a plethora of options; teams trying to recruit them. Honestly, it would be pretty exciting for a former Blue Fin to swim for their University's club team... possibly be the 4th person on a Provincial or National medal winning relay and have their travel covered for the meet. So when it comes decision time for these athletes, the question that pops into their minds is simple: "whats in it for me?"

Supporting these athletes and bringing them back here is very important for our development as a team over the next quadrennial. The way to look at this is investing the return on the investment we made already. My long term goal with HHBF is to have a world class performance by a Blue Fin or a Blue Fin's alumni that we can all play a part in. My message this past season was all about team work and role play. Imagine how much excitement would ripple through our club, our community, Swim Ontario and Swim Canada, to have a Blue Fin make the 2015 Pan Pac team and perform on a world stage in front of a home crowd. Even if they were not with our team anymore (Training Centre, etc), imagine the excitement of former team mates knowing that they played a big part in getting him or her there. Imagine the satisfaction of the parents and executive knowing that their support ended up in such an outstanding achievement. That we played a part in Canada's resurgence into swimming world relevance.

Our responsibility to swimming in Canada (not to be confused with the organization; Swim Canada) is to be part of the success. Do everything we can to help Swim Ontario achieve their goal of an Olympic Medal produced from Ontario. To raise the bar for other clubs and all other athletes**. We need older athletes to do that. Very few 14-15 year olds will be in London this summer. What are our chances to achieve this goal if we don't have the years?

** Evidence: take a look at the role HHBF has played in raising the bar of 100BK in the 15-16 age group. Look how many athletes, chasing HHBF's Kyle Haas, made the top 50 times of all time this season. Take a look at 50BK.

Success never happens by accident... but neither does failure

2012-02-21T05:57:00.000-08:00

HHBF has done some remarkable work lately, and based on the number of hits I'm getting per day, I assume you want to read about them here:

HHBF finishes 18th @ Central Region Championships: Aysia Leckie wins High Point Trophy
Quite a few remarkable performances by our athletes at the Central Region Championships and a few athletes making the jump to another level. Aysia Leckie (the girl with a very unfortunate birthday) just missed out on qualifying for provincials in 3 events, but won the 50 and 100FR. Whats more impressive is that she also won the 400 and 800FR... impressive because she's a great natural sprinter; the endurance came from work and practice. Bronte McMaster also made a jump by qualifying for provincials (just missing Age Group Championships qualifications) in 200BK. A number of athletes made best times, made it to finals for the first time and gained valuable experience at this level of meet, which will serve them very well in their careers.
Top 8 finishers include:
Trevor Burwell (17) 8th 400FR
Britney Dortona (12) 3rd 100FR, 1st 200FR, 6th 50FR
Livy Olson 4th (11) 200FLY
Bjoern Ole-Schrader (13) 5th 200FLY
Emma Fender (13) 7th 200IM
Quinn Jaggard (13) 8th 100BK
AJ Tarczy (15) 8th 100BK
Mitchell Krafczek (16) 5th 200BR & 6th 100BK
Michael Jans (13) 6th 200BK
Aleks Plackoski (11) 8th 100BR
Bronte McMaster (14) 5th 200BK
Aaron Brautigam (17) 5th 50FR

As for the placing; its difficult to gage anything by results at this meet because we have athletes that are too fast to be there and swim their best events. 18th is a decent enough place to finish, although we lost to Milton by 1 point. Thats okay because the next weekend...

HHBF WINS HALTON CUP: final score HHBF 6087 - MMST 2709
Everyone who participated in this meet helped their team keep the cup in Georgetown. I'm very happy and proud of this victory. Congratulations to everyone! Wear your fins with pride!

HHBF Break Records at Eastern Canadian Championships:
Eastern Canadian Championships was a busy meet; about 850 swimmers including National Team members Mike Brown, Erica Morningstar, Pascal Wollach, Katerine Savard and Brittany Maclean. The pool is beautiful (see interactive 360 panoramic view HERE) and the atmosphere was intimidating, but that did not stop Kyle Haas, Matt Fox or Elizabeth Skuriat from performing well.

Matt Fox shattered 2 HHBF records in 200BK (2:09.32, now 2nd in the country) and 400IM (4:59.21) and took off a second in 100BK (1:00.57). These were remarkable performances, not only because the times were great, but also because Matt was one of the only men under the age of 15 at the meet. Matt finished 10th in 200BK out of 48 16&Unders and beat a lot of older swimmers as well. I m really proud of where Matt is going.

Elizabeth Skuriat also broke 2 club records in 400FR (4:36.57) and 800FR (18:03.52). Elizabeth set a great example that you can continue to get better through University and represent our team. You cannot put a value on this type of team help, you really can't.

Kyle Haas won the 50BK (27.10LC, HHBF CLUB RECORD) and 100BK (57.87LC) and finished4th in 200BK, 7th in 100FR and 8th in 50FLY (HHBF record in prelims 25.69sc). Kyle was not fully rested in this meet (his main focus will be Olympic Trials) but was competing against swimmers that were fully primed and rested. I felt the performances were a pretty good indication that all systems will be go at Olympic Trials in 36 days.

Despite having only 3 swimmers there, HHBF finished 32nd out of 81 teams: A very respectable ranking.
---------------------------------------

No one performed really well recently by accident and conversely, no one performed really poorly by accident. The final product is a combination of preparation and willingness to perform. Practice time is a big part of that; not just being there, but actually doing what is asked of you. No one is going to make you do anything because its your swimming... which means you are accountable for it. I think watching all of the success that we had over the last 2 months should have a lot of younger swimmers asking a very important question: "If they can do it, why not me?".

Central Regions post

2012-02-16T17:52:00.001-08:00

I've been exceptionally busy this week and was only able to write this to the paper. Enjoy: story here.

http://www.theifp.ca/sports/blue-fins-18th-at-central-region-meet/

Wednesday Links

2012-02-08T09:00:00.000-08:00

New Off The Deck: 60 Days Until Trials
I talk to GMAC's head coach, Don Burton; Cobra's head coach, Bill O'Tool and Oakville's head coach, Sean Baker. All about what these coaches are doing 60 days out from Olympic Trials. Video HERE.

New coachmikepodcast:
Featuring SNC's CEO Pierre Lafontaine. Audio HERE. I usually announce when it is available on iTunes (likely tomorrow) on my twitter feed.

Helping Children Achieve Success and Learn from Failure:
Fascinating article from Ohio State University with an interesting concept.

Keep Our Child Athletes Safe:
Interesting piece from former Olympic Swimmer, Katherine Starr.

Follow up to last post.

2012-02-07T10:30:00.001-08:00

Sooo.... that went well. Thanks to everyone who visited and checked out my last post. It was VERY popular with over 500 visits on the first day... which kind of confirmed what I thought: This is a big issue and we need to spell out the reasons. Swimming is a great sport and a fantastic character builder. I don't want a single person to miss out on that experience in their lives.

Further to my last post, I think it should be said that being a good team mate is also important. By that I mean, being supportive. In the newest episode of coachmikepodcast (available today), CEO of Swimming Nataion Canada, Pierre Lafontaine talks about the importance of being a good family before we can be a good team. I had never thought of putting it that way, but it totally agree. We need to be just as supportive as a family. If you're brother gets a good mark, you don't talk badly about them or undermine the achievement. You don't make that person more nervous about things to come. You should be happy for them and are supportive of what comes next. That is the role of a family. Be a good family member: be a good team mate. It bothers me to think that athletes can be mean spirited towards the only people that can truly understand and support you. My point: If you're truly supportive, good for you! Keep up the great work. If you're not: get your head on straight. You cannot expect support unless you give it out. This is a learned trait that will add a lot of value to your life. LEARN IT!

Links:

SUPER BOWL: Great GRANTLAND article from Bill Simmons, broken hearted Patriots fan.

coachmikepodcast: New podcast featuring Pierre Lafontaine.

Swimmers in ads: first look at Annamay Pierce in her new Pantene ad. Congrats, Annamay!

Brent Hayden had better be ready: some VERY fast swimming happening in the world. And yet, Richard Weinberger somehow flies under the radar. Why isn't he a bigger name than he is..??

Why Should I Swim If I'm Not The Best?

2012-02-02T04:26:00.000-08:00

I think I've already covered this topic on this blog about 7 times already, but it still seems to be a big issue with age group swimmers all over the place. So I'll spend 1200 words covering it again because swimmers are still faced with a few different scenarios. The big ones are:
a.) I used to be a really fast 12 year old but now I'm not winning everything anymore so whats the point?
b.) I'm not the fastest and I'll never be the fastest so whats the point?
c.) The group of swimmers I used to be as fast as are now all national qualifiers and I'm not and I'm embarrassed by that so I don't want to swim.

Swimming means so much more than just winning. But how much value is truly put on amateur sports? For whatever reason, here in Ontario, clubs driven by parent volunteers, really want to see their kids do really well NOW, with very little long term thinking. What is going to keep these athletes involved in the sport long enough to truly succeed? Look around... how many 14-16 year olds were at World Championships this past summer? How many will be swimming at the Olympics this summer?

Sports has changed and athlete & parental mind sets must change as well. 20-30 years ago, it was normal to see a 16 year old girl or a high school aged boy swimming at the Olympics or breaking world records... and there was a reason for this: money. Years ago, amateur sports were truly amateur (loosely translated "for the love of the sport") and athletes could not afford to keep going past a certain age (the physical toll on their bodies was a lot higher as well with limited sports science knowledge). Now, there is lots of money through Universities, grants, endorsements, sponsorships, etc to keep athletes going. So what is YOUR plan to keep swimming after age 22? What is your club's plan to make sure that this will happen?

Here is my final whack at the question "Why should I swim if I'm not the best" (which I'm sure I will recycle a few times in the coming years). The 6 reasons to swim even if you're not the best.

1.) Sports is about role playing. Tobias Oriwol articulated this very well for the Halton Hills Blue Fins at their October Awards Banquet (audio can be found on coachmikepodcast episode 7). Basically, Tobias put it this way: in football the roles are clearly defined: you're a blocker, your job is to stop someone from interfering with a rush or pass play. Very little glory there; but you know that getting into it. In swimming its a little different. Training roles and competing roles exist and its important to figure out what role you play and how you make the TEAM better with you on it. If there was only room for world record holders, there would only be about 6 clubs in the world and those clubs on average would consist of 2 people each.

2.) Average age of champions is on the rise. Aside from USA's Missy Franklin, the top 150 swims in the world are not exactly littered with 18 and unders. Swimming has to exist after high school in order for Canada to succeed in the world... and High School Swimming is not helping. Stephen Clarke (Canada's best freestyler and flyer back in 1996-2000) didn't even qualify for Nationals under age 18. Rick Say didn't even really start swimming seriously until University. If you're 14 and not where you want to be yet: don't sweat it! Your career is very young.

3.) Its about the journey, not the end result: "Swimming produces some of the best and most well rounded people." ~ Dean Boles, Ontario Provincial Mentor Coach. Swimming can teach you so many things, amongst them, time management. Not many other sports demand as much training at inconvenient hours... as a result, swimmers have the opportunity to learn how to balance a busy and important school schedule with a long training schedule. I say the opportunity because it is very tempting to not train during exams or busy school time... and thus is the challenge and the lesson. I'll say (and be accountable for) the following statement: Swimmers are better people... but its a learned attribute. Rise to the challenges ahead of you.

4.) Self reliance:I swam for (what feels like) a life time. In that time I really learned a lot about myself. At age 15, I realized that I was a big wuss and it embarrassed me. Upon that realization, I decided I wanted to become more self reliant (in charge of my attendance, swimming, travel, etc). There were several times when my family was going away for a weekend and I stayed behind to train. There were many times when my mom would put me on a team bus or with another swimmer's family and wish me luck for the weekend. I was (with the exception of my coaches and team mates) on my own. At 19 I was still not very adventurous (I decided to stay in Ontario for University rather than scholarship) but I really feel that swimming kept me on track in University and made me University ready. Those opportunities are there for everyone in the sport. Here is a good read by Dick Hannula. EVERY swimmer should have it printed out and sitting next to their bed.

5.) Fitness: I have 2 children under the age of 4 and its very easy to let fitness slip when you have children. However, I had done so much in the past that I was still able to fake general fitness for years... and when I got back into a gym, it didn't take me very long to get back into shape... AND I knew what I was going to do to get me there. This is my round about way of saying that the benefits of childhood fitness pay off. Trust me! Also, swimming is a life skill. You should always want to pass that skill to your kids... and then beat them in a race and gloat about it.

6.) What if you ARE the best and just don't know it? Above, I referenced Rick Say and Stephen Clarke, obvious late bloomers... but how would they know if they backed out at 13? You owe it to yourself to answer that question. Train and practice as if you already know the answer is "yes".

Far too many athletes give up too early because no one can give them an answer to that question. I've given you 6. See you at morning workout, right?

If you liked this post, please follow me on twitter @coachmikeswim and check out coachmikepodcast and Off the Deck.

Links of the Day:

2012-01-26T09:23:00.000-08:00

- I came across this document on line yesterday and I really like the wording of the roles of parents, coaches and athletes at swim meets. Its a good read.

- Todd Schmitz interview on The Morning Swim Show. I had the pleasure of chatting with Todd about a variety of topics from being a young coach, to club structure and politics, to nightmare stories. He also appears on my latest podcast. He's a great guy. This is a good interview:

- Exclusive video from the Austin Grand Prix: Michael Phelps winning 100Fly. Notice the timing of the breathing from all of the top 8 (Elite, Platinum and Regional development swimmers spent a lot of time on this lately).

- I have been asked about nutrition a lot since I returned from Texas. Here is a list of some good starting articles to read:
High Performance Nutrition For Swimmers
What Should My Swimmers Eat Before Their Next Meet?
Nutrition Between Prelims and Finals
Child and Teen Swimmer Nutrition
Dr. Greg Well's Take on Nutrition

- Top 10 doping scandals... I'm a little embarrassed that swimming has 2 on the top 10.

- Incase you haven't heard: Provincials have moved to Ottawa.

Q and A

2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-08:00

Q. If "B" times are regionals then what are the A times?

A. Regional times used to be "C" standards and were changed a few years ago (up graded to "B" standards). Outside of the Central Region, they are pretty insignificant (other regions, nationally, inter-nationally). The standards were developed around the provincial standards and worked backwards, basically as goal setting and identifying proximity to provincial level performances. An A standard quite simply mean that you're closer to a provincial performance, although, some meets (AGI in June, for example) will use these standards as entry times for their invitational meet.

Changes are coming to the provincial structure for next season which will kind of turn this on its head. More on that to come...

Q. If I finished 4th in preliminaries and 6th at finals, what was my final placing?

A. Final results come from FINALS so your placing there is your final placing. If you placed 6th at night, you finish 6th regardless if you went faster or placed better in the morning. However, times in the morning are still official... so if you had a best time in the morning, it still counts... just not towards your placing at that meet.

Q. Why didn't the Oakville Meet appear on our meet schedule? What happened to Ontario Cup and the AB Meet?

A. Our coaching staff is small and we're stretched fairly thin when meets come up. Sending me to Ontario Cup with a select number of athletes, sending Shannan to Brantford with her groups, leaves Chris in Etobicoke running a double ended meet all day on his own... obviously not ideal. Oakville offered a great environment for competitive racing (there were very few Blue Fin blow out races) and allowed for many of our athletes to gain valuable experience at Finals so they're not completely overwhelmed by the experience when they make it at Central Regions, Provincials, Easterns, Nationals, or even Divisions. There seemed to be some confusion and concern over this decision, but, as I planned, it worked out GREAT! We had more regional qualifiers added, a few more qualifiers for other meets, a ton of PBs and EVERYONE who showed up at finals had more fun than I can put into words. This was the best decision, by far; rather than splitting up the club and being severely under manned. Trust me; I know what I'm doing ;)

I'm Back

2012-01-18T07:49:00.000-08:00

Recently returned from my trip to Austin, TX with the Swim Ontario High Performance Team. My report from the trip (and newest podcast with interviews from the trip) can be found HERE.

This article was sent to me from Andrew Craven (Head Coach of LAC). It was originally published in the American Swim Coaches Association newsletter, but since the question has come up countless times in the past 7 years, I figured this would be a good read.

Attention to all who have read the Central Region SC Championships meet package: The Meet package qualification times appear incorrect, as they are inconsistent with the entry file and the agreement with the Central Region coaches made in September of 2010. As per the agreement, qualifications for Central Region Championships are a "B" standard. It appears that the package was recycled from an earlier version and the standards not changed. I have expressed my confusion and concerns to the region. Any further concerns from parents should be voiced to the Central Region Board.

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Christmas Training 2011-2012

2012-01-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

For most families, Christmas is time off and relaxation. For swimming families (and coaches families) its one of the busiest times of the year... In fact, any time there is no school, typically its a busy time because coaches can flood the swimmers schedule with training time. Ideally, its nice to get away during this time frame to some place warm and leave your regular life behind. Since I do not feel that we're quite there yet, I decided to try to keep it as interesting at home as possible. Similar to last year, I was able to get the Elite group out of GHIP and travel to a few other teams across Ontario (Brantford, Brock & ROW) to expose them to different training partners, different coaches and some long course meters. The changes this year included Elite, Platinum and Regional Development adding a bit of Yoga inspired flexibility and core training. Gold, Silver and Bronze were lucky enough to experience some dryland training/team building with Swim Ontario's Steve Topham as well as a guest speaking and skills session with former National team member (and great coach) Kristy Lyon.

Christmas Training has been really successful for most! Speaking about Regional Development, Platinum and Elite, specifically, I think that this season's domestic training was hugely successful and will prove to have been effective for those who made good use of it. Major success of note: attendance was up about 100%. Last season we would average about 17 people showing up for workouts. On Monday January 3rd, we had 35. It doesn't get much better than that for attendance. The swimmers that were able to participate, were run through some gruelling workouts which served to better a lot of habits and demanded focus and attention to the tasks. I believe that we have a lot of better swimmers as a result of the past 4 weeks of training. One thing that drastically needs improvement is season long attendance. Some swimmers were really struggling to complete the sets because they're attendance previous to the mini-camp was lower than it should have been and they were not in the shape that they were expected to be in. Even those swimmers. however, got major gains from attending and are now far superior than they were only weeks ago.

Gold Silver and Bronze all got to work with Steve Topham (Swim Ontario's strength and conditioning consultant) and had lots of fun doing it! Watching the session was a lot of fun for me as well. Not only is Steve extremely knowledgeable of human strength and kinetics, he is also masterful at bringing together kids for team building. Those athletes had a ton of fun there. We were also able to procure Kristie Lyon (former head coach of the Sarnia Rapids Swim Club) to work with these groups on dives turns and strokes. Elite, Regional Development and Platinum got to work with a former team mate of mine, Sara Havekes, doing some Yoga inspired strength and flexibility training.

The objective was to make sure that we were training effectively as well as having fun. Had we been away on a training camp, we would not have just done 1 or 2 practices per day: we would have had a day planned out. I wanted to make this as much like a training camp as possible; when you're away at a camp, the day doesn't stop at a couple of practices. I wanted to help the team do as many activities as possible to assist in team bonding and betterment in our key areas (a surprising 16 people showed up to toboggan and have fun in -20 degree weather). I am pleased with what we were able to put together and am sure that we're going to see some great things for 2012.

And now for a little fun...

2012-01-01T18:11:00.000-08:00

Come and join us for HHBF's family fun day. Details below.

MIssy Franklin on The Morning Swim Show

2011-12-30T07:07:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the embed code isn't working here... so see the LINK to Missy Franklin on The Morning Swim Show. She touches on the topic of swimming for Canada for anyone interested.

Stuff from the internet...

2011-12-21T07:38:00.001-08:00

Blue Fins in the News: article HERE

New Episode of coachmikepodcast:

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Pics of the Fundementals Camp held at Canada Cup (Featuring some Blue Fins): HERE

Links of the day...

2011-12-20T03:59:00.000-08:00

See a Legend in Person: Mark Tewksbury will speak in Toronto for the Toronto Board of Trade. If you've ever heard Mark speak, you'd know that he is fully worth the cost to see him. I encourage anyone who is serious about swimming to go. Details Here.

HHBF Getting attention from Olympians: I congratulated our record breakers from Saturday morning on Facebook and was met with some encouragement from 2008 Olympians Lindsay Seemann, and Joe Bartoch. Always nice to see important people paying attention to HHBF. Details Here.

Watch some video: I'm a little disappointed that this video has only garnered 125 views in the past 10 days (and most of them are from outside of Canada). This is FREE GOLD for all swimmers and coaches and it has fewer hits than conversation pieces with athletes and coaches. I'm telling you, check this out and thank me when you or your athletes get faster! Its FREE and all you have to do is watch it... what more do we have to do to get this message across??

Listen to some audio: This is a clip of audio from my interview with Randy Bennett I did some time ago and I think its particularly relevant for my groups going into Christmas training. Randy talks about the will to win vs. everyone else's. I think its a great message and something for my athletes to remember when they think they've done enough...

Blue Fins in the news: Story in Tuesday's Independent Free Press

Records Are Made To Be Broken

2011-12-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

Exciting morning at the 2nd Annual HHBF Record Breaker. I started this last year as an attempt to "clean up the record board"; meaning that we never swim 25s and 100IM so the record board was heavy with old default records (sorry Chris). The plan was to take down as many of those as possibe. Last season, it was relitivaly easy because they were old records. This season, it was a bit tougher; but the Blue Fins still found a way to break 10 more club records.

Congratulations to the following record breakers:

Britney Dortona Girls 11-12 25FLY
Mitchell Brearley Boys 13-14 25FLY
Matthew Fox boys 13-14 25BK (Chris Henderson's old record)
Kyle Haas Boys 15&0 25BK
Emma Fender Girls 11-12 25BR
Aaron Brautigam Boys 15&O 25BR
Matthew Fox Boys 13-14 25FR (Chris Henderson's old record)
Emma Fender Girls 11-12 100IM
Matthew Fox Boys 13-14 100IM (Chris Henderson's old record)
Kyle Haas Boys 15&O 100IM

**Sorry to pick on you so much, Chris!

I was really happy to see so many people taking the opportunity to RACE and swim fast! I think that many Blue Fins had fun and I think its a great opportunity to stand up and race hard in the shortest races possible.

I have put quite an emphasis on club records in the past 2 seasons, but what I am working on right now will expand that focus and help celebrate depth and acheievment. Currently, I am trying to compile the top 10 fastest perfromances in HHBF history for all age groups and all events (boys and girls) which will give us an idea of how deep we are complared to previous years. Clearly our records are better, but are we deep enough to have the top 10 performers in 200FR for boys and girls in HHBF history on our current roster? Check out the prelim work linked in the previous sentence and see where we are...

New Episode of "Off the Deck"

2011-12-15T10:45:00.001-08:00

I LOVE Jenna Lambert, so please check out the most recent episode of OFF THE DECK where she talks about her national team experience. Some of you may remember her from an earlier episode of coachmikepodcast.

Great Weekend for the Blue Fins

2011-12-12T05:56:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, the Blue Fins competed in the 23rd Annual Roy Jacobson Invitational in Vaughn and at the 2011 Paul Bergen Invitational in Portland, OR. There were 8 club records set this weekend, overall:

Emma Fender: girls 11-12 50BR (38.99) and 50FLY (33.42)
Kyle Haas: boys 15 & O 50FR (23.98), 100FR (52.34), 50BK (25.84), 100BK (55.43), 200BK (2:03.04), 200IM (2:09.35)

The meet started with some very solid 400FR and 400IM swims on Saturday afternoon. A few provincial prerequisites were obtained and a lot of personal bests were obtained. Saturday and Sunday were no different; Blue Fins taking off time everywhere. Of note, I think special recognition is deserved from these swims:

- Bronte McMaster 200BK: took off almost 17 seconds for 2:40... and did it by sticking to the plan (which wasn't an easy one).
- Brooklyn Shelley 200BR: Brooklyn obtained the Central Region standard in this event, again, by sticking to the plan. 5 second PB.
- Jason Reid 200BR: first ever Central Region standard (17 second PB too). Jason was on fire this weekend and VERY focused on what he wanted to do. Good example for everyone! Congrats!
- Shannon Jickling 50FR: got her 13 year old regional time in this event. Well done!
- Heather Bradshaw 200BK: WOW!! Again, sticking to the race plan pays off... I'm sensing a real theme here.
- Loren O'Brien Egesborg 200FR, 400FR, 200BK, 400FR: Loren had a great weekend, mostly by sticking to race plans, but also her training this season has been exceptional.
- Keri-Lyn Copland 100FR: first PB in this event since last January. She was able to really get herself going.
- Aaron Brautigam 100BR: HUGE PB in this event. Way ahead of where we were last season in terms of speed.
- Mitchell Krafczek 100BR: No idea where this came from, but its a significant time and quite a pleasant surprise.
- Jenna Galea, EVERYTHING: What a great start to the season for this youngster! Fantastic racing this weekend!
- Darian Zuraw, Kate Erdely, Simone Fong, Daniel Stott, Michael Jickling: Great showing from all of our 10&U kids, especially in 50FR! Huge drops!
- Quinn Jagard, 400IM: Quinn got the prereq in this event after working so hard for it. Very proud of him!
- Carter DeForest 200FR, 100FR: Great weekend for Carter! Lots of PBs and a few extra regional qualifications.
- Paige Olmstead: broke 1:10 for 100FR and a 13 year old regional time!
- Alexander Plaskoski everything: great weekend for this youngster! Look for great things from him in the new year.
- Quinn West 100FLY: First time under 2:00.
- EVERYONE 100FR: this used to be a good measuring stick for where we were as a club and we used to get really excited when we had people under 1:20 (2-3 years ago). Now there are so many under 1:15, I can't even count...

I was very pleased to see lots of best times from Blue Fins: Sam Ceci, Trevor Burwell, AJ Tarczy, Simon Olsen, Everett White, Avery Jans, Justin Lochert, Krista Lochert, Jordan Horruzey, Mitchell Brearley, Victoria Plaskoska, Nicole Waddick, Emillie Knighton, Philipe Escobar, Zach Henderson, Shannon Kent, Quinn Koehler, Katherine Peel, Megan Brosseau, Loren Monhemius, Jordon Stott, Mackenzie Murphay, Dana Payne, Angie Wallace, Erika Charbonneau, Livy Olson, Britney Dortona, Tatyana Austrie, Isaac West, Eric Siegfriedt, Bjoern-Ole Schrader, Aysia Leckie, Chris Zanewycz, Anthony Hartsink, Emily Maldrum, Rachel Ironside, Ted Mosoi, Matt Fox, Ashton Sicard and many others. My apologies if I did not mention your name; there are just too many Blue Fins competing at this level for me to remember while I'm typing (which is a wonderful thing!).

One of the things that I noticed and realize that we need to work over the next 5-6 weeks (speaking of everyone, but my groups specifically) is toughness. A lot of swimmers were just allowing themselves to lose speed by allowing their arms to slow down, then not understanding why they lost speed... then looking at me like I was crazy when I suggested that they needed to keep their arm speed up ("..what are you, nuts..? Thats hard...!). An interesting reminder for some that these abilities are trained at practice... not in a race for the first time. This same aspect showed up during BR, FLY and BK races throughout the weekend. Walls were mistimed in all 3 of these strokes, especially backstroke (where there really is no excuse, given that the flags are there to help you). The reason for this is likely that people are not swimming fast in practice. They're not used to the number of strokes they take then they're travelling fast because they do not practice it enough. We can't continually try to figure these things out in races.

I move that (for the next 5-6 weeks, at least) we stop calling our practices "workouts". We are clearly getting the "work" done; what we're not doing is practicing the small skills well enough. These are the small skills that make the difference between doing pretty good and doing great. For the next 5-6 weeks, we'll be going to "practice" to practice these things, not "workout" to workout.

UPDATE: as of right now, we have 24 qualifiers for Central Regions (2 over qualified) and it's only December. Nice job, folks!

*********************

Meanwhile, in Portland, OR, HHBF's Kyle Haas had 2 4th place finishes (50BK and 100BK) where he broke the HHBF record in both and was the youngest person in the A final in both events. He was also 8th in 200BK (HHBF CR) and made the B final in 100FR, 50FR and 200IM. He also assisted Team Ontario to bronze medals in both the 4x100FR Relay and the 4x100 Medley Relay (he split a scorching fast 50.88 on the FR relay, going 3rd... you could argue that was the difference maker). This was a great experience for Kyle and he represented Ontario and HHBF very well. He will return to the pool tomorrow, please join me in congratulating him for a job well done!

2011 Paul Bergen Jr International - 12/9/2011 to 12/11/2011

2011-12-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned briefly last week, HHBF's Kyle Haas was added to this roster and is currently swimming pretty well. As of now, Kyle is going into the A final for 100BK in 4th place with a prelims time of 56.31 (only 0.01 seconds off of his best from Canada Cup).

Live Results can be found HERE
Some interviews from swimmers at the meet can be found HERE
The Team Ontario roster and team info can be found HERE

#coachmikepodcast episode 11

2011-12-07T19:26:00.000-08:00

If you listen to only 1 episode, listen to this one!!! Great interview with legendary swim coach, Paul Bergen where we talk about age group swimming in North America, the future and the history behind the sport. Also, Sean Baker of the Oakville Aquatic Club checks in to talk about another legendary coach, Brian Bond and his current health concerns. This is a great episode!
Don't forget to follow me on twitter (@coachmikeswim)

UPDATE: Podbean seems to be working again which means that iTunes will pick it up again tonight. Sorry for the inconvenience. I am removing it from the temporary dropbox link.

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Off the Deck - with Dean Boles and Allan Wrigley

2011-12-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty proud of this episode because I feel that we've been able to capture and deliver so much important information to EVERYONE; swimmers who were not eligible for the camp; coaches who could not make it to the camp; anyone with a general interest in swimming mechanics. Please watch (especially HHBF swimmers) you'll be better and smarter for it.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE!

2011-12-03T13:12:00.000-08:00

I want to take this opportunity to say Happy Birthday to my Father-in-law, Dave Vince. He's a great guy and deserves all the happiness he has! Sorry I can't be there with you today.

On a non-family member birthday note: I guess that I can announce now that Kyle Haas has been added to the Ontario Tour Team headed to the Bergen Invitational in Portland, Oregon. Kyle will leave on Wednesday December 7th for competition with Ontario's best against swimmers from Mexico, France, Germany and the USA. Lets all extend our congratulations to Kyle on his selection and wish him luck. He will return on Monday December 12th with all the details.

Also, Congrats and good luck to Richard Hortness, who made the final in the mens 100FR at US Nationals earlier today with a PB of 50.00 seconds. Good luck tonight, Rich!

Anti-Doping: Educate yourself

2011-12-02T06:08:00.000-08:00

Doping is a serious issue in amateur and professional sports. It is very important to educate yourself on the processes and consequences. I feel it important to provide links to the necessary information.

WADA (World Anti Doping Agency) website
2011 Prohibited Substance List
Therapeutic Use Exemptions: Athletes, like all others, may have illnesses or conditions that require them to take particular medications.
Doping Quiz: Test your knowledge and understanding. This is actually kind of fun!
Education and Awareness page
FUNDAMENTAL RATIONALE FOR THE CODE AND FINA’S ANTI-DOPING RULES
FINA's Anti-Doping statistics

I think that these videos explain things better than I can, so I'll let them do that talking. I spent some time on the topic with the Elite group (the only group that this will likely affect at this point) but feel that its good to provide this information to everyone, so that you can go through it at your own pace, on your own time. It is everyone's responsibility to take this seriously.

Links to check out...

2011-12-01T06:23:00.000-08:00

1.) US Nationals in Atlanta, GA start today and there are a whole host of Canadians going down including Tobias Oriwol, Brittany MacLean, Joe Bartoch, Annamay Pierce, Martha McCabe and others. Watch the webcast LIVE HERE. There is going to be some great racing!

2.) IMPORTANT: Gord Bassett Invitational session change. Please check the HHBF Website to make sure that you have all the current information.

3.) New episode of coachmikepodcast up on the podbean server and will be on iTunes at 9pm tonight. Pretty good interview with Kevin Anderson (new head coach of Mississauga Aquatic Club).

4.) If you haven't already, check out the newest episode of "Off the Deck" on the Swim Ontario page. New episode coming very soon.

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Canada Cup days 2 & 3

2011-11-28T06:10:00.001-08:00

What an exhausting weekend! Sorry I was unable to post here regularly, but those of you who follow me on twitter (@coachmikeswim) were able to get live updates as the weekend went on. I can do that from my phone and don't have to be in front of a keyboard so its a lot more convenient.

Saturday was a busy blur as Kyle made the B final in 100BK with a best time and club record of 56.30 sc, which officially beats my best sc time :(. He entered the B final at 13th and came out 11th with a lc time slightly slower than his best from the summer, but still a fantastic race for this early in the season (aside from slipping on the start and playing catch up for the first 30m). A special thanks to everyone who came down to support us on Saturday night, including: Michael Jans, Avery Jans, Bronte McMaster, Brooklyn Shelley, Asyia Leckie, Quinn Jaggard, Britney Dortona, Loren O'Brien-Egesborg, Keri-Lyn Copeland and more (Saturday was such a blur, sorry if I forgot to mention your name). Kyle also swam 200IM that morning and beat the club record, but backed off in order to have a decent 50FR. 50FR ended up being less than ideal but a solid morning swim.

Sunday held on 50bk for HHBF and Kyle swam very well in the morning. Well enough, in fact, to place 6th and make the A final in 6th place. 26.16 in the morning (sc) is very solid swim. One of the things that I really wanted for him this weekend was finals experience and experience in the A final. I'm very glad that it worked out. Mentally, it is very nerve racking to spend time in the ready room and march out to the lanes with so many big names. Kyle's race was only slightly slower than his time in the summer but he was still able to move up to 5th place, even after a very deep start. I am very proud of what he was able to accomplish this weekend. He represented HHBF very well and so did the people that came down to watch and lend their support. Carter DeForest and Katherine Peel came down on Sunday night to watch (and so did my wife and kids) so I was able to send some athletes up to the stands to give some autographs. Hopefully they enjoyed that.

Tobias Oriwol's 200FR win is below.

Some Fast Swimmin' @ Canada Cup

2011-11-25T19:04:00.000-08:00

Some great racing tonight. My favourite to watch was the show down in 200BK between Matthew Swanston and Tobias Oriwol (below). Check it out! ...And come down to watch in person!

Canada Cup Day 1

2011-11-25T10:40:00.000-08:00

100FR and 200BK today. Since Kyle is not really rested for this meet, we're working on putting up solid performances in the morning in the hopes of making a couple of finals this weekend. This morning was a good start. He hadn't been under 53 seconds in 100FR since last February, so 52.78 is quite good for a morning swim. That netted him 53rd place. 200BK was also very solid (especially the under water kick and splitting). Kyle ended up in 23rd place (which is quite good for a not #1 race) and was only .08 seconds off of his best time a couple of weeks ago @ Swim International in Brantford (final time today of 2:03.36). An excellent morning swim and the top 16 and under finish in the event. It is very easy to go into a meet where you're the top dog and focus on swimming well in the final. Its totally different to come to a meet like this and swim fast in the morning. This is the aspect we're working on this weekend, as he will need to to make it into the final. Today was excellent in that regard.

I'm going to head back to watch finals and warm-up Kyle in the LC pool. Should be some excellent racing this weekend based on what we've seen so far. Live results can be found HERE.
Warm-up for finals on the weekend is 4pm for a 6pm start. I encourage everyone to come down to watch some world class racing. Hope to see you there.

UPDATE: Live webcast available HERE if you are not able to make it down to Etobicoke.

coachmikepodcast episode 9

2011-11-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

I'm back this week with 1996 Canadian Olympian, Casey Barrett, talking about his blog site capandgoggles.com. Also spend some time with 2012 Canadian Olympic Team Hopeful and class act, Hassan Abdel Khalik. Check it!
Follow me on Twitter @coachmikeswim and check out my blog whenever you get a chance! Check it out on iTunes or listen live below.

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Breaststroke - Separation Drill

2011-11-22T11:16:00.000-08:00

Platinum and Elite Swimmers will want to look at this drill in advance of Thursday morning's Breaststroke Extravaganza workout. Watch it a couple of times so that you're familiar with it before we give it a shot Thursday morning.

The Fast and the Furious

2011-11-21T06:06:00.000-08:00

I remember seeing this video countless times when I was a young swimmer in the late 80s/early 90s and I have looked for it everywhere... but few people I knew had copies. I recently came across a copy on Youtube. If you have 50min, check this out. Its SUCH a good video!

New Webisode of "Off The Deck" w/ Tobias Oriwol

2011-11-18T10:14:00.000-08:00

Things to see on the internet...

2011-11-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

For those of you unaware of the Pro Swim League, its an exciting new initiative by USA Swimming (I have no idea why they chose to do this for the first time in an Olympic year.?) which debuts tonight in Michigan. Since Wednesday night TV sucks*, be sure to tune in at 8pm to see some exciting racing from some of the worlds best. The WEST team includes friends of HHBF (and Canadian Olympians), Joe Bartoch and Richard Hortness of LAC. Webcast begins at 8pm, check out the website.

Meanwhile HHBF's own, Kyle Haas is listed amongst some of Canada's best athletes for 25 fly kick underwater. Check out Dean Boles of Swim Ontario and his new challenge.

*Yes, I watch Survivor, Modern Family and Happy Endings religiously... but its not as good as fast racing!!

Swim International 2011

2011-11-15T06:19:00.001-08:00

This weekend also marked Brantford's annual Swim International meet. Brantford has struggled with air quality for a few years. Although this was better than previous years, I'm still feeling it today (Tuesday).... and I'd do it again. I LOVE that pool! So fast! Sacrificing a couple days of health is worth it.

A few exciting things about the weekend.

Top Stories:

1.) PARENT SAVES DROWNING BOY: During 13-14 200fly, a boy came off the wall, choked on water, panicked and was in legitamite trouble. None of the lifeguards saw this happen and none were available to help so a random parent dived into the water to save the boy. Perhaps more amazing than the event itself is that, with so many races being video taped no one got the actual event on video and uploaded it to youtube or contacted the media. What an incredible turn of events! Hats off to you, brave and selfless spectator!

2.) BROKEN RECORDS: 2 more club records this weekend by Kyle Haas - 100BK (56.57) and 200BK (2:03.28, which is also a Swim International meet record). Matt Fox and Kyle Haas both won all backstroke events for 14 year old boys (Matt Fox's 1:01.38 100BK and 2:14.46 200BK are very competitive Nationally) and 15-16 boys. A lot of best times and top 8 places in other events. Well swum by everyone!

3.) NEW BABY: Congratulations to Chris Henderson and his wife, Mallory, on the birth of their first child, Sophie. We're all very happy for the arrival of this beautiful 7lb alarm clock. In all seriousness, congratulations guys! I couldn't be happier for you!

As far as the weekend went, HHBF represented itself well with lots of individual races, PBs, top 8 finishes and relay top 8, finishes. It was pretty evident to me that, at a meet of this calibre, were up against athletes that aren't afraid to get up and race, something that our club is still learning to master (many admitted that the atmosphere was freaking them out a little). 2 more things that I also noticed were the amount of time that it took for many of our athletes to change direction in their turns was much longer than other teams (ie: flip time) and the drop off in splits from first half to second half also seemed much higher on our team compared to others. These are things that I intend to focus on intensely before our next tests in December.

Our athletes swam well (Sam Burwell and Clancy Harris first time under 1:10 for 100FR was a great example of this) and we continued our spirit and team support through the meet. I've gotta say; so far, I'm very impressed with HHBF swimming. The key now is to continue to get faster through attention to detail; Lets make sure this happens.

Off The Deck - new webisode

2011-11-11T05:40:00.001-08:00

Milton Dash for Cash Weekend

2011-11-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

What a fantastic weekend in Milton! It has been a long 6 week preparation period for meet season and we focused on doing a couple of things better than anyone else coming into our competitions:

1.) Be better under water than the other teams.
2.) Cheer louder than the other teams.
3.) Have more fun than the other teams doing 1.) and 2.)

I've got great examples of each point, but I won't belabour the topic.

1.) EVERYONE was fantastic working on kicking and streamlining underwater this past weekend. This is certainly what we wanted to achieve with all the work we put in for about 6 weeks (drills, sets, video analysis, better feedback, etc) and in many cases it lead to significant best times. Avery Jans is a great example here in her 800FR. Avery took off almost 2 min and was able to make it to about 6 or 7 metres off of every wall (about 3m further than the girl from Milton that she was racing). As a result, Avery ended up taking about 70 less strokes than her competitor in the race. Her competitor was swimming a little quicker, but Avery was moving faster and easier under water fro each wall. In the end, Avery had more energy left, won her heat and dropped a ton of time. Sticking to the plan pays off!

2.) During Sunday's medal presentations, not only was HHBF the only team involved and cheering, but we were making a statement to the other teams; we are proud of and support those who wear the fin. I felt overwhelming pride to be part of the team this weekend and I'm sure athletes and parents felt the same way (and there were likely some envious people on other teams too).

3.) Lots of smiles and happiness all around from parents and athletes. Very successful weekend in this regard.

Across the weekend, we saw 4 club records (Kyle Haas - 50BR; Emma Fender - 50BR and 100BR, Matt Fox - 400IM & 50BK), a few new regional times (Paige Olmstead, Shannon Jickling, Aleks Plackoski) and too many people within arms grasp to mention. HHBF won the meet, followed closely by Milton. Regardless of the results, Chris, Shannan and myself were unbelievably proud of this team and feel that we got off to the great start we were hoping for.

I was surprised, however, by how many parents were taken in by the new facility. Yes, new facilities are nice, but we're still producing some very good athletes with what we have. Does it contain water? Yes. Is it regulation length? You bet! Add Jaclyn in charge of town aquatics, a renewed desire to win and some team cohesion, we're going to continue to do great regardless what facility we're training out of. I encourage all of you to listen to the upcoming episode 8 of coachmikepodcast where I speak to Nancy Sweetnham about becoming one of the worlds best out of a small program and 6lane/25m pool; she has many relevant things to say.

A few more notes:

- Next weekend is Swim International in Brantford for the Elite and Platinum groups where we hope to keep the momentum going with great swims and equally good team support.
- As a result of SI in Brantford, Friday night's Elite and Platinum workout is cancelled. Swimmers not swimming in Brantford can join the Friday morning groups.
- Keep tuning in to my podcast. I have some OUTSTANDING guests coming up. A lot of downloads outside of Georgetown too; its great, but don't let other teams benefit from this more than we do!

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Message to HHBF Elite and Platinum Parents

2011-11-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

Attention all Elite and Platinum Group Swimmers and Parents,

Due to repairs at the GHIP, we will be truncating our usual workout on Friday night. Start time for November 4th, 2011 will be at 5pm and practice will be finished at 6:30pm. No other group practices will be interrupted on this day.

The pool should be fully functional next week (although we may still be waiting for starting blocks). The town has apologized multiple times for the inconvenience and appreciates HHBF's patience and understanding in this matter. I, personally, would rather this type of thing get done now and limit us for a week rather than sidelining us for longer later in the season. I thank the town for handling this quickly and efficiently. Please contact me with any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Mike Thompson
Head Coach
HHBF

coachmikepodcast episode 7

2011-11-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

Anyone who missed Tobias Oriwol's speech to the Blue Fins last Wednesday night (or wants to hear it again) can hear it on my podcast as well as some stuff from Dean Boles on the training camp going on out west. Check it out! Also available on iTunes and on podbean.

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HHBF Awards Banquet 2011

2011-10-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday October 26th, 2011, HHBF held its annual achievement awards (achievement from the previous season). Club Records were celebrated (over 80 broken in 2010-2011 season) as well as qualifiers, top 8 finishers and medalists from the Regional, Provincial and National level were celebrated. Perhaps the most exciting moment of the night was the appearance of our Guest of Honour, 2008 Olympian, Tobias Oriwol (pictured above with Blue Fins, Livy Olson and Loren Monhemius).

Tobias's career spanned about 20 years and experienced many highs and lows. In his address to the Blue Fins, he detailed many of these things (his retirement and his reason to come back to swimming), but perhaps his most poignant message was about the importance of good team mates and being a good team mate. Toby was very generous with his time, very polite and extremely professional. An excellent speaker; I would highly recommend him for functions if you can get him (he is a very busy guy)!

We have over 90 people attend the banquet this year (Only HHBF's second annual event) which is significantly larger than last season. Not only was there a higher turnout, but HHBF was awarding more swimmers than we thought possible when we first organized the event 2 seasons ago. I must say I am extremely proud of my Team both as a member and as a coach. We have come a long way and will continue to evolve and progress. Wednesday night was a celebration of how much our swimmers achieved last season, but it was also proof positive that the Blue Fins have a bright future ahead.

I think Tobias said it best: "...While not everyone may get an Award tonight, it is important to remember that no one wins an award by themselves and we should remember the team mates that made it all possible."

HHBF Blue and White Meet

2011-10-24T04:17:00.000-07:00

Saturday October 22nd marked the unofficial kick off of meet season for the Intro, Intro Comp, Bronze, Silver and Gold groups with our annual HHBF Blue and White Meet. My initial observations was how much better this meet runs now than it did 3 or 4 years ago! I believe this is for a few reasons:

- Chris Henderson and Shannan Andrews have prepared the athletes very well! Fewer and fewer of them find this meet (for some of the intro groups, this is their first meet experience) overwhelming. Chris and Shannan are also very enthusiastic and energetic people and these athletes feed upon that. The junior coaches were doing their jobs very well! I'm pretty sure that everyone had a great time as a result.

- Our athletes from the Regional Development, Elite and Platinum groups were there volunteering their time which made the day run much smoother. Nothing helps more than having volunteers who know how meets run.

- Parent volunteers were outstanding! We had no shortage of help at all Saturday morning.

- The older athletes were very helpful with the younger athletes. I can't put into words how proud it makes me to see older athletes like Emilie Knighton helping with the younger kids just because she wants to be a good team mate. Athletes like that make a huge difference in the development of this club!

- There was a lot of pretty quick swimming from these younger athletes! I can't wait to kick off the official meet season.

Thank you everyone for all of your help on Saturday, we could not have run such a great meet without you. Historically I do not involve myself directly with the Blue or White team, but instead spent time floating around, fixing problems and putting out fires. This season, things ran so well, it freed me up to closely watch a lot of the races and I must say, I'm very happy with what I see coming up the pipeline for HHBF.

UPDATE: Thank you, Rob Copeland, for the pictures
Scary Update: That was my 200th post. My how time flies!

Thank you

2011-10-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

A quick thank you to everyone who reads and listens to my stuff. My blog is quickly approaching 30,000 visitors (at the time of writing this post) and my podcast was shut down by Podbean yesterday because there were simply too many streams and downloads of my podcasts. Podbean demanded because of the popularity of the podcast, I would have to upgrade to paid service or risk being shut down after a certain band width capacity. Thanks to a very generous donation from Coach Dave Ling of the Toronto Swim Club yesterday, I was able to upgrade and continue to provide uninterrupted service until I figure out how to fund this operation.

The response to what I have been doing is overwhelming and all I can say is thank you for appreciating what I am doing. I think that the sharing of as much information as possible is the only real way that we're going to make Ontario and Canada better.

Thank you, everyone!

coachmikepodcast episode 5 is up and ready for download!

2011-10-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

In episode 5, I talk to Team Canada Para-swimmer, Jenna Lambert, about her selection to the Pan Am Games Team and the coming Olympic year. I also touch base with Glenn Mills of GoSwim about his very successful business, new coaching tools and story lines for this season in the world of swimming. Check it out on iTunes or on Podbean or stream it from the player below. You're not going to want to miss this one!

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Wait... What..??

2011-10-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

Months after Michael Phelps' success at the 2008 Olympics in China, 505 Games announced plans to release a swimming video game based around Michael Phelps. The game was released on Tuesday and I've noticed 2 things so far:

1.) Many people commented on my Facebook and Twitter feeds when I posted the topic that they didn't even know that there was a Michael Phelps video game. So maybe they didn't advertise enough in Canada? How is it selling in the states?
2.) Not ONE media outlet has even been remotely skeptical of this idea. Everyone thinks its fantastic. Really!!??

In the interest of full disclosure; I do not own an Xbox 360 (the game platform) or the Connect system (the controller required) or the game itself so this review is based solely on the concept. But I HAVE to ask, was this an attempt by a 505 Games executive to capitalize on an athlete that is now not quite as unbeatable as he was 3 years ago? Does that guy still work there? Is he still thinking this is a great idea..? Yes, its a cool idea and looks like it may be fun to play for about 15min, and good for Michael, who likely made several millions of dollars to use his likeness in the game. But were gamers really sitting in front of their gaming systems this year and saying: "Dude, this game is missing the elements of pretend swimming and erroneous physical activity"..? I think not. I think this is a very niche, gimmicky video game and suspect that you will be able to pick up a previously owned copy on store shelves by Monday so save your money.

Yes, I love Michael Phelps and swimming and video games, but I also like children, loud music and beer. Some things are better when they're not combined. My humble opinion of the CONCEPT: Michael Phelps, Swimming and Gaming don't look like the peanut butter and chocolate combination they were hoping it would be. If anyone at Microsoft or 505 Games wants to send me a system and the game to change my mind, I'll listen. Contact me through the blog. In the mean time, the trailer and Michael's guest spot on Jimmy Fallon can be found below.

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Michael Phelps: Push the Limit - Phantom Trailer HD, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Episode 4 of coachmikepodcast now up.

2011-10-11T06:14:00.000-07:00

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Available for free download from iTunes (Search "coachmikepodcast") or from www.coachmikepodcast.podbean.com. As always, you can stream from the player above if downloading isn't your thing. This week some good interviews with 2008 Canadian Olympians Paul Midgley (coach) and Richard Hortness (swimmer). Gotta share what I learn: Check it out!

Train to Compete Camp October 2011

2011-10-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

From October 7th-9th, swimmers from all over Ontario were invited to participate in the Swim Ontario Train To Compete Camp at the University of Western Ontario. Swimmers were selected by highest combined FINA point score between the best 2 200m events and 400IM. Swimmers who were selected are as follows:

Females 1998: Jenna Malone, UCSC, Nicole Bullock, OAK, Alexis Bragman, TSC
Females 1997: Melanie McDonald, ESWIM, Rachel Hansen, GGST, Esraa Abdel-Khalik, ESWIM
Females 1996: Samantha Stratford, GMAC Riley Konrad, GMAC, Madison Pulfer, NKB
Males 1997: Alexander Jin, NYAC, Tyler Tong-McDermott, CCAC, Zach Shalovsky, NEW
Males 1996: Evan White, OAK, Oliver Straszynski, TSC, Teddy Kalp, NYAC
Males 1995: Tristan Cote, ESWIM, Kyle Haas, HHBF, Alexander Hamilton, NYAC

The purpose of the weekend was to push these swimmers to challenge themselves (against their peers) to learn to swim smarter and swim better under stress. The initiative of these camps was to identify Ontario swimming talent and to nurture that talent for the future.

The swimmers arrived on Friday October 7th for lunch, a quick briefing and then a 3 hour water workout. The briefing laid out the expectations of the weekend (Including the meaning of "World Class Swimming"). The workout involved some test sets that would be used later in the weekend. Dean Boles ran the camp. His briefing after warmup can be seen below.

The swimmers were challenged with a descending 50s set and some fast kicking; the results of which would be used on Saturday and Sunday during the main sets. Dean had challenged the young athletes to display something at a world class level. Swim Ontario had printed up some "gold" caps for boys that could kick 25m under water in under 12.50 seconds and girls that could do the same in 13.50 seconds. All athletes got a chance to try that out and practice it before the end of practice and debrief. You can listen to Dean's debrief from the first day's water session HERE.

The water session was followed up by an extensive outdoor team building session which included a high ropes course as well as some other team work games. The swimmers seemed to really enjoy this and I feel that, even though most of the swimmers already knew each other, these games allowed for some better cohesiveness throughout the group. Each of the swimmers learned something different about themselves and the "vertical playground" really brought out the athleticism in some individuals (HHBF's own, Kyle Haas, was exceptionally strong in this event).

The next day, the swimmers were challenged in several sets including a set of 20x100@1:40, where they had to even split each 100, hold their stroke count the same and hold a time that was derived from a set the day before. They also had 9x100kick @ 2:10 where every 3rd 100 was fast. The fast 100s were then added up and made into a 300kick time which would be challenged again on Sunday. The athletes also got their chance to swim a 25 kick under water to try to obtain one of Swim Ontario's "golden caps". Only 2 swimmers made the cut on Dean's "world class" times: Newmarket's Zach Shalovsky and HHBF's Kyle Haas. Dean also did a quick dive clinic with the swimmers, the video of which can be found below. Dean's debrief of the second water workout can be found HERE.

Day 2 finished with a 3 hour dryland session lead by Steve Topham. The athletes were challenged with functional exercises, movements and stretches. While it didn't look like much, Steve made these kids sweat! In the process they learned many new things about how their muscles and joints work as well as a few new things to get themselves activated before practices and meets.

On Sunday morning, many of the athletes were exhausted. Dean commenced his briefing (which can be found below). Many of the athletes felt that this was the hardest of the 3 water sessions, as it contained 400sets, a fast 50kick for time, a 300kick for time and a broken 200IM (amongst other sets). That did not stop many of them from attacking the day with enthusiasm and toughness.

The thing I noticed as a coach and observer (this having been my 5th consecutive T2C Camp and 2nd consecutive with Kyle Haas and many other of the same swimmers from previous camps) was how much faster the athletes were training but also how much better they had become at splitting, kicking off the walls and many other technical aspects of swimming. I was pretty impressed by the speed of some of the kicking as well as many of the 400s done early in the practice. HHBF's Kyle Haas was fastest in the 50FR kick by quite a bit (time of 31.47 seconds) and 3rd overall in the 300kick for time. Some remarkable improvement from the field. The camp wrap up can be found HERE.

I took as much info as I could from this camp as possible to share with others. As I often say, its great for a few coaches to get the information, but the technology exists to share it with everyone and the goal should be to better the landscape by sharing it all with everyone. It is my hope that swimmers and coaches will view, read and listen to this info and share it with others. The more people that can share in the info given by these camps, the better off Ontario swimming will be going forward, which is a very positive thing. For more information, please check the Swim Ontario site in the coming days and check for my newest podcast, available FREE for download from iTunes (and www.coachmikepodcast.podbean.com) on Wednesday October 12th.

UPDATE:
Workouts now available to see: FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY

*PLEASE NOTE: these workouts are designed for the TRAIN TO COMPETE athletes (Defined as 13-18 aged swimmers who are competing at a National level). The content should not be used for other LTAD ability levels, but the concepts and focuses can be used for any level.

Scooped!!

2011-10-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

Darn it! Swim Ontario was faster than I was to post this interview that I did with John Vadeika earlier today at the Swim Ontario office in Toronto. For more details and commentary about this interview, stay tuned for next week's podcast which will be available for download and streaming on Wednesday October 12th.

Off The Deck - Interview with Swim Ontario Executive Director from Swim Ontario on Vimeo.

coachmikepodcast Episode 3 is up!! Download Please!

2011-10-04T19:10:00.002-07:00

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Check out episode 3 of coachmikepodcast above or visit www.coachmikepodcast.podbean.com to download. As always, it will be up and available for free download on iTunes tomorrow (likely around 7pm.... I don't know when Apple updates their feeds... I don't get it).
On Episode 3: 2008 Canadian Olympian, Lindsay Seemann checks in to talk about her career, facing adversity and 2012 NCAAs & Olympic Trials. Rebekah Boscariol swims across Lake Ontario to raise money for Sick Kid's Hospital and Dave Ling (Coach of TSC) calls in to talk a bit about social media.

Good morning, Halton Hills!

2011-10-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

This morning was a pretty good test for the Elite, Platinum and Regional Development groups. An important aspect of swimming that I stress is being able to function properly under stress (that is to swim technically well when you're body is tired and doesn't want to). Up until this point, the main point was fixing strokes and spending a LOT of time on FUNCTION with limited work towards stress. This morning, we added a little stress.

Last night, the Elite and Platinum groups worked on goal setting with an important message; its easy to get excited about your goals when its nice outside and its exciting. Its not so easy when its cold and dark outside and there is a lot of work to do. Its much easier to stay in bed at those times.

This morning was cold and dark. The practice was basically long distance swimming... long enough to create the fatigue I desired in order to test everyone's ability to FUNCTION under STRESS (far from the exciting, goal oriented atmosphere, but still very necessary). While this morning's focus was not speed, I feel that those who put the effort into the right things got some great benefit from what we were doing. Athletes are going to be sore today and probably tomorrow, but lets not forget that it comes with the territory. We cannot break new ground without pushing ourselves.

The struggle for the next few weeks will be making sure that we are doing the right things in the water while we're tired and sore to make sure that we can get better, faster, stronger and swim properly. While no one does anything alone, we should remember that everything can be done with the help of your team mates; not by staying home to rest. We need to make everyone around us better and you can't do that if you're not there.

Lets get better today!

"We don't have to be superstars or win championships... All we have to do is learn to rise to every occasion, give our best effort, and make those around us better as we do it." ~ John Wooden

coachmikepodcast episode 2 is up!! Download, please!

2011-09-27T18:17:00.000-07:00

Happy to announce that episode 2 is up for download and can be streamed from the player below.... but come on, download it... be a pal! Available Free on iTunes; just search coachmikepodcast or visit coachmikepodcast.podbean.com ... and you can always link to it from the left hand side of this page.

Incidentally, I was approached by a few coaches and club presidents at the Swim Ontario AGM and Conference this past weekend to tell me how much my interviews with Sean Baker and Randy Bennett helped their executive committees understand how to be more supportive. One president said that he had played it for his executive. If you haven't heard those, click on their names above to listen. I hope that my work can be helpful to many of you: thats what I'm after.

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Announcing the Launch of coachmikepodcast on iTunes

2011-09-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce the launch of my new podcast named (rather uncreatively) coachmikepodcast which is now available free for download on iTunes**. Check it out; it will be your source for news in the Swimming world and interviews with sports personalities alike, all from a coach's perspective. Episode 1 is up and episode 2 is in the works, hopefully posted before the weekend. If you do not have iTunes, it can also be downloaded from www.coachmikepodcast.podbean.com, or you can download it from the left side of this page. For those of you who liked streaming it from my blog, I will also embed a player to allow you to continue to listen that way. Please support this endevour as I am doing it to help promote HHBF and continue to supply our swimmers and parents (amongst others in the Swimming community) with valuable information.

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** search "coachmikepodcast" in your iTunes search bar. You should be able to find it under podcasts. Also, please take the time to review it after.

Exclusive Interview with Garrett Weber-Gale

2011-09-19T08:16:00.000-07:00

Garrett Weber-Gale is arguably the biggest name that I have interviewed for my audience. Pictured above (left side, Michael Phelps is on the right), Garrett is a perennial member of the USA 4x100FR relay and is a double gold medalist in the 2008 Olympics, helping the USA to wins in the 4x100FR and 4x100MR. He was the first ever American under 48 seconds in the 100FR and is still relevant on the world stage, helping the USA to a bronze medal in the 4x100FR at FINA World Championships in China this summer.

It is not often that Canadians get to hear advice from an Olympic gold medalist (its been a while since Canada has had one) and Garrett has a lot of refreshing, truthful things about sport, nutrition, ups and downs as well as keeping it fun. CLICK HERE to listen to (and hopefully enjoy) my interview with Garrett Weber-Gale. Check out his links below.

Garrett's Website: http://gwgswims.com/
Athletic Foodie: http://www.athleticfoodie.com/

HHBF Team Building Day @ UCC (Norval)

2011-09-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

This morning, members of the Regional Development, Platinum and Elite groups drove out to Norval to do a little team building. The day began like any other - we let swimmers lay on a blanket, then tossed them several feet into the air (no joke). Some parents even took part. It was a lot of fun.

After that, we did a series of warm-up games (see video below) and then all participated in games which involved communication, strategizing and team work. The games were a lot of fun and everyone seemed to get into it, which was rewarding.

The day wrapped up with a game of "Stones" which is like "Capture the Flag" (for those of you familiar) but involved much more team involvement. The day was about having fun, breaking down barriers and getting to know your team mates above everything else and I think that we acheievd that with flying colors; it was a roaring success!

Special thanks to Bill Elgie who made this day possible and who was spectacular with our team, both in leading and organizing. Bill, on behalf of HHBF, I say "Waahhhhh"!!

Welcome Back!

2011-09-12T09:09:00.001-07:00

Be sure to check out my Welcome Back message to all Blue Fins.

Who Am I..?

2011-09-08T20:19:00.000-07:00

Great viral video below. Just watch it!

Lets Start It Off Right!

2011-09-08T09:31:00.000-07:00

For those of you searching for inspiration for this coming season, check out the video below. Video is of Matt Fox's first National Championship win in 100BK and Kyle Haas's bronze medal performance can be found at the 4:20 mark of the video. Its exciting that all this happened but also very exciting that we can all watch it again and again. Check it out!

Just a Few Minutes with an Olympic Hopeful

2011-09-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

I was joined via Skype (still trying to work out my audio on Skype and phone calls, btw) by Matthew Swanston of the Newmarket Stingrays and Stanford Swimming this evening. I had a limited amount of time with him before he had to get back to the pool to resume his training, but I was able to get some pretty important information from him regarding World University Games, the Olympics in 2012 and his swimming career path. Have a listen to a star in the making. This is a short one and wont take up much time, but is still a compelling listen.

Season Wrap Up With Brittany Maclean (ESWIM)

2011-09-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

Brittany Maclean had quite a summer while travelling to Singapore, China and Peru. She made the World Championship team in the 4x200FR relay and swam many different events at World Junior Championships (where she won 2 gold medals for Canada in 200 and 400FR). Have a listen to what she has to say about her summer travels, her successes and stuggels on the road.

Brittany is a super talent that is home grown here in Ontario. The Swim Ontario community should be proud of what she accoimplished and excited about what is to come. She has a very bright future ahead of her!

Interview with Brittany Maclean (ESWIM).

**UPDATE: Brittany has since been awarded Swim Ontario's Athlete Of The Month. Congratulations to her and her Coach, Kevin Thorburn.

Morning Swim Show's Interview with Ryan Cochrane

2011-08-31T06:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the morning swim show spoke with Ryan about his performances @ World Championships and his hopes for the upcoming 2012 Olympics in London England. Its about 10min long. Check it out.

Article from the Independant Free Press

2011-08-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

Article from the Independant Free Press about HHBF at Summer Nationals and Canadian Age Group Championships can be found HERE. Better late than never!

Former Blue Fin still supports our team

2011-08-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

Click HERE for an interview with Jenni Veneruz regarding her business (In Focus Physiotherapy), the specialized service she provides that is limited in Canada and her support of the Blue Fins. Jenni is a classic example of the small business in Georgetown that everyone loves and sets a great example as a Blue Fins alum.

Why Does It Matter?

2011-08-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

Why do you swim? Every time I ask that question to any group I'll get a variety of answers (My parents make me, exercise, its fun, I want to win a medal at the Olympics... etc). I guess everyone has their own reasons and I'm sure that my reason to start swimming with ROW in September of 1987 was a solid combination of all 3 (Victor Davis had won Olympic medals while swimming for ROW in 1984, so it seemed possible).

I was a pretty awkward swimmer with little talent when I started at age 8. Sadly, I'm pretty sure that I failed to make a mark on anyone. My first swim meet in October of 1988, I could be found crying in the corner as my mom wept for me up in the stands (I credit my mom for allowing me to figure this out for my self and not getting involved. Coach Nancy helped me feel better and got me moving. She was the first coach that really made an impact on me and I'll never forget it). Slowly, I progressed, pushed by the faster athletes around me and trying to make it into the senior group, which contained several National medalists and Olympic prospects. The swimmers that I swam with in that period made a major lasting impact on me which have enriched my life in so many ways.

Recently, the world lost one of those swimmers who I looked up to when I was a young swimmer at ROW. David Hare was such a vibrant guy who was always making people laugh (especially me). He was a guy who I wanted to be like. Losing him reminded me of all of the relationships I had built in the span of 22 years that I have been involved in the sport. Many people have come together in mourning to celebrate what a great guy Dave was and how much of an impact he had on us and our lives. Even though I hadn't spoken to David in a few years, his loss feels very significant to me.

I guess the reason I'm glad that I swam wasn't necessarily the end point of where I got to or where I could have gone, but the journey along the way and the impact these people had on me... and the impact I have had on them.

So why does it matter? A very small percentage of swimmers will make an Olympic team; an even smaller percentage will win medals. Parents could potentially make you do anything to stay in shape. Sure its fun, but so are video games.

The best way I can answer the question why does it matter?

It matters because swimmers are great people with great character. It matters because you surround yourself with great people. It matters because you meet major physical, mental and emotional challenges. It matters because it lasts longer than 3 months and it lasts longer than a high school career. It matters because you will meet your David Hare who made you want to be someone better and it matters because you can be that David Hare to someone else. Swimming Matters. The people in it matter.

You influenced me more than you know, David Hare. R.I.P.

Amazon.ca Speedo Product Sale

2011-08-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Click HERE for Amazon.ca's Speedo Product sale details. Pretty good pricing for those of you who want to do your shopping prior to the start of the season and the rush.

Special Thanks to Halton Tire and Auto!!

2011-08-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

Thank you to Mike at Halton Tire Center in Georgetown for helping me out of a jam yesterday. My wife's car had a leaky tire while we were on our way somewhere with the kids (and we were late). I called Mike, he dropped what he was doing and helped us out while we waited with 2 small children. It took less than 19min to fix the problem and Mike sent us on our way happy as always. This was not the first time that Mike has helped me out. Halton Tire & Auto is another great local, family run business. Drop in and say "Hi" to Mike. Tell him I sent you.

Sean Baker: Inside An Inaugural Season

2011-08-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning, Sean Baker, of the Oakville Aquatic Club, agreed to meet me for lunch along the Burlington Lakeshore to talk shop about his philosophies, his situation with the OAK and coaching in general. Admitedly, I'm a little rusty here with all of my "umm"s and "uuh"s during the seguays (I AM still on my vacation, you know...) and this was done on a restaurant patio so the audio quality is what is to be expected recording outdoors. I edited it as best I could to remove much of the ambient noise, but techincal issues aside, Sean has a lot of important and relivent things to say. Please enjoy this interview. A previous newspaper interview with Sean can be found HERE.

MEGA BLOG: The story of how HHBF rocked Quebec

2011-08-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Alright, hopefully most of you will read the entire thing here, but warning, its long. MY plan was to blog while away, but I bought a Playbook and (long story short), it didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to. Since it was too difficult to type long posts on my phone, I figured I would tweet as much as possible and summarize when I returned to Ontario.

Footnote: I have been asked several times what the advantage is of following me on twitter as opposed to just viewing the tweets on my blog. I wish I had a good answer for that... I guess the main advantage would be viewing the quick posts as opposed to needing to visit the site from your mobile device. But the main advantage would be that you can only see the most recent posts on my blog page... if you missed something, you'll miss it forever. You can view all history of my posts when you follow me on twitter... really its preference. @Coachmikehhbf

Our trip began when Kyle and I left on the 20th for Senior Nationals in Pointe-Claire, Qc. A special thank you to my good friend, Alan Swanston and the Newmarket Stingrays for allowing us to tag along with them, making our stay easier and more affordable. I believe that staying with high profile athletes like 2008 Olympian, Lindsay Seemann and 2 of the fastest swimmers in the country, the Swanston brothers, really made a difference in how Kyle approached the meet. Traditionally, not a strong morning swimmer, Kyle has his work cut out for him to make it past prelims.

We arrived at the Pointe-Claire pool on Wednesday afternoon for a quick training session where I decided that Kyle looked better than I expected. At that point, we decided that Kyle was going to go after everything he could and make this the championship meet. Kyle's first race, 100BK was fantastic, making a PB and club record in the morning of 58.69. This got him into the B final which was much more than we expected. Sadly, I did not take into account that we did not grocery shop and Kyle's caloric intake for that day was far too low. His final swim was still 58.82, but could have been better.

50BK on Friday was even better. Kyle went 27.53 in the morning, which again, got him into the B final. After some good food in the afternoon, Kyle's evening race was much stronger with a final time of 27.28 and placed him 15th overall. Very strong placing and possibly HHBF's best placing ever at Senior Nationals (..?). 200BK the next day was no different, PB in the morning and good enough to make it into the C final in last place. That night, Kyle's goal was to win the C final, but he fell slightly short. Still made a HUGE PB and club record (2:07.65) but came 24th overall.

HHBF finished 57th overall out of 119 teams present and only 67 teams scored. I submitted Kyle for the Rookie of the Meet Award, as his overall results killed any other first timer there, but he lost to someone who placed 13th in 1 event with no other finals. Too bad, really, but there are lots of other swimmers who have left our club to swim for other clubs who barely make it into C finals at Nationals. Here we have an individual who is making B finals on his first appearance. HUGE showing for Kyle at his first Senior Nationals. Congratulations to him!

We then joined Elizabeth Skuriat and Matthew Fox in Montreal for 5 days of fun outdoors at the 2011 Canadian Age Group Championships (Aaron Brautigam was to join us on Wednesday night). We did some light training on Monday afternoon and Tuesday while the competition started Thursday morning. This was going to be a LONG one, as there were nearly 1700 swimmers going and the time lines for the meet were tight. They ended up having to double up the lanes on all distance events and cancelling some relays in order to avoid prelims sessions from running into finals. Combine that with the threat of thunder and lightning and this was going to be an interesting 5 days.

200BK was on day 1 and the combination of Kyle Haas and Matt Fox ensured finals births, but also the possibility of some medal performances. Kyle was technically going in 1st by .02 seconds after his performance in Pointe-Claire and Matt Fox was going in 3rd from his Gold Medal winning time at Provincials. I really felt that both swimmers had a solid chance to win their races.

Matt began the night going into the final in 4th place and was VERY nervous. His race started out slower than usual and he just couldn't get it going. After a disappointing 4th place finish, I wasn't sure how Matt was going to respond. Rather than going into a downward spiral, Matt was actually pretty happy. "Experience" was all he said to me afterwards and went to warm down.

Kyle was up next against his rival, Zach Zandona or Etobicoke (who is technically a year older). Kyle was ahead for the first 100m, then Zach poured it on in the 3rd 50 to make almost a full second lead on the field. Kyle's last 50 was really one to watch as he powered his way from behind and gained on Zach right down to the touch. In the end, Kyle was out touched and scored the silver medal. This was a great race and HHBF's first men's medal ever, but also our first medal in 3 seasons. Given that Kyle's previous best finish was 5th at this meet, a silver medal was a great placing.

Elizabeth's 1500FR was a bit further away from where she was previously, but in a good position for starting out at Acadia in about a month's time.

The next day was 100FR and 50BK. We knew that Matt and Kyle both had chances in 50BK but were not sure where either of them stood in 100FR. As it turned out, pretty well as both made the final in both events with best times (Kyle scraping into the last available spot again... see post from last season). 100FR was up first where Matt looked like he had been doing this for years (a real change from the previous night) and finished in 5th place with a time of 58.04. Kyle later moved up to 8th place in 100FR and set a new club record mark of 53.62.

Right before 50BK, I spoke with Matt and made sure that he was ready to race rather than to participate in this final and his response (which will stay confidential) assured me that he would end up on the podium. Sure enough, Matt finished 2nd with a time of 30.26.

Backstroke is funny outside because there is no ceiling to follow and the sun can get in your eyes. Such was the misfortune of Kyle in 50BK as his entire left side struck the lane rope and cost him the win. Kyle finished 3rd only .05 away from his previous best after being slowed by the lane rope. Not a bad race, but certainly frustrating for him.

History in the making the next day, as both Kyle and Matt made the final in 50FR. History making simply because Kyle ended up snagging a bronze medal with a time of 24.35 (he didn't even make the final in this even last season), but also because Matt Fox had a swim off for an unheard-of 4 way tie for 8th place. In the swim off, Matt blew everyone away and dropped his time to 26, posting the 3rd fastest time of the day. In the final Matt ended up in 5th place with a final time of 26.53.

100BK was a strong even for both Matt and Kyle and before hand, they both looked ready to race it out. Matt was determined to win the event and make up for his podium miss on Wednesday. Kyle looked like he could lower his time from the week previous. This was going to be good. As fate would have it, the sun and no ceiling has little effect on Matt and his second 50 was miles better than the others as he made his way to HHBF's first men's gold medal ever with a final time of 1:04.04. Has also finished 8th in 200FR later in the evening.

Kyle's nemesis (the sun) was once again at large on the last 25 of his race when his elbow crashed into the lane rope, causing him to lose an entire stroke cycle (2 strokes to fix positioning) and came 3rd... but was still .01 faster than he was at Senior Nationals the weekend before. I'm encouraged that there is clearly a faster time in there, but frustrated for him.

Elizabeth and Aaron's races in the time frame were also very solid. Aaron's debut on the National stage in 100BR was equal to his morning swim at provincials (and it was done in the "wavy" pool, not the 10 lane finals pool). His 200BR was a best time as well and he placed 31st in that event. Elizabeth had a few days off during the meet as we decided it best to only swim in 3 events. 200FR was only a couple of tenths off of her best and her 400FR was not far off either. I am very proud of these two and do not want them to get lost in the mix. Each team member was very valuable to the results of the others at this meet: no one can do a 5 day meet on their own!

The last day found Matt Fox missing the final in 400FR (15th) while they doubled up the wavy pool which made it very similar to an open water swim. Kyle made the final in 200IM with the hopes to win it. A couple of snags in the plan for day 5.

1 - This was Kyle's 12th day away from home, his 15th day of taper and his 9th day of racing in 2 weeks. He was getting weak and tired.
2 - All the tents on deck were being removed which eliminated HHBF's home base (Thanks for letting us use your shelters, Cobra and OAK and NEW). Kyle could not find me before his race.
3 - You try to stay excited after maximum race intensity for your 22nd race in 2 weeks... its not easy.

Kyle finished 4th in 200IM in a time slightly slower than he won with at Provincials, which really was a result of the above 3 factors. Simply put: we just ran out of steam.

HHBF finished tied for 39th place with Sudbury/Laurentian out of the 189 teams that participated. This was our highest placing in history and our greatest medal haul (ranked 33rd for total medal haul). Considering that we were struggling to get swimmers into finals for HHBF's entire history, having 2 medalists and a National Champion is a big deal. I'm very proud of all these guys!

Perhaps the most exciting note from all of this is that we have a big pipeline of young swimmers who can see what the older swimmers have done and can say "Okay, that's not so hard, I can do that too!". As I mentioned after the short course season, it is important to be proud of these accomplishments, but just as important for younger swimmers to challenge themselves to get to the same place, now that the barriers have been broken and the "impossible" is now possible. All of the athletes at these meets are just people: they're beatable. The times can be achieved with hard work and dedication, but the dedication and hard work are a must. My challenge to all of you: Join us at this level! Teams across Canada took notice in July and HHBF is now a team that will be recognized and talked about for quite some time. Have some pride; Be a Blue Fin!!

*Incidentally, professional pictures from the weekend can be found HERE and results from the meet can be found HERE.

Happy Trails to Elizabeth Skuriat, who has suited up for HHBF for the last time in a while. She will be swimming for Acadia University in the fall and we wish her luck. She will be missed as she was a cornerstone of what I have been trying to achieve with this team since I took over. The dedication she put forth, coming back from injury to get back to a National level in February was a fantastic example for all Blue Fins. Hopefully she will be back to help us out at Division II next season and for the 2012 Age Group Championships in Calgary. See you soon, Elizabeth!

I will be taking a break from all things aquatic next week so my next post will not come until August 15th at which time I hope to have another interview for you to listen to as well as a wrap up from World Championships (hopefully an interview with some commentary on that). Thank you everyone for a great season! Lets do it all again in September, shall we?

HHBF's top story from the website can be found HERE.

COMING SOON...

2011-08-04T18:14:00.001-07:00

Mega-entry: which will sum up HHBF's final 2 weeks of action in Quebec. Stay tuned. This one is taking a while...

Sorry folks

2011-07-20T07:30:00.001-07:00

Sorry that I had to cut my series of World Championship team members short, folks. Life got very busy lately and my recent tablet purchase (intended to make that easier) didn't quite work out. I won't have the resources to finish that series, sadly, as I am en route to Montreal for Senior Nationals which begin tomorrow. I will do my best to keep you all informed and up to date with what's going on out here and in China. You're best to follow me on twitter, as you'll hear faster there. See you soon.

Ryan Cochrane: Canada's Olympic Hero

2011-07-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

I do believe that I have posted the above video before, but it provides some good info on Canada's best hope for anything significant on the world stage (at least in my opinion), Ryan Cochrane.

Ryan swims for Randy Bennett at the Victoria Academy of Swimming and competed in the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 400 m freestyle, where he finished ninth in the heats with a Canadian record time of 3:44.85 and failed to qualify for the final. Cochrane also competed in the 1500 m freestyle where he briefly held the Olympic record after swimming a time of 14:40.84 in the heats. This record was soon broken by previous record holder Grant Hackett, who swam a time of 14:38.92.[1] He qualified in second position for the final, and won the bronze medal on August 17.[2] It was the first Olympic medal for a Canadian swimmer since the 2000 Summer Olympics. It was the first medal for Canada in the 1500m freestyle in 88 years.[3]
At the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India Cochrane won Canada's first gold medal of those games in the 400 m freestyle during the first day of competition.[4] Cochrane also became the first Canadian man in 72 years to win gold in the 400 m freestyle at the Commonwealth Games.[4] He then went on to win another gold medal at those games, this time in the 1500 m freestyle.

Below is some youtube video of Ryan and Randy and you can find my previous interview with his coach, Randy, HERE. I believe that Ryan is the guy that Swim Canada should be hanging their hat on (I'm not the only one). I am very excited to see him race and set the standard for the 2012 Olympics.

...And just to stir up some emotion, Ouss Mellouli is a pretty nice guy too...

Mike Brown: A Medal Hope for Canada?

2011-07-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

I figure with Worlds coming up, I thought I would profile a few of Canada's athletes competing. Today, I'll feature Mike Brown.

Mike Brown (born May 5, 1984) started swimming at age seven. His best finish at a world championships was at the 2005 championships in Montreal, Canada when he finished 2nd in the 200 m breaststroke. Brown won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Australia, beating his opponent by 0.01 s. He was born in Perth, Ontario.
Brown competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in the 100m and 200m Breaststroke. He finished 20th in the 100m heats with a time of 1:00.98 and 4th in the 200m final with a Canadian Record 2:08.84.

After retiring in 2009, Mike returned to action last August. The video below (courtesy of The Morning Swim Show) answers some of the questions surrounding Brown's focus and goals while returning to swimming.

UPDATE: The countdown begins...

Home Stretch

2011-07-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

With only 2 meets and 3 weeks remaining in HHBF's season, things look pretty good. Kyle Haas, Matt Fox and Aaron Brautigam all look back to exceptional racing form, while Elizabeth Skuriat has finally gained the strength and endurance to put up some very solid distance races at AGN in Montreal.

First up with be the 2011 Summer (Senior) Nationals in Pointe Claire, Quebec where Kyle will race 50BK, 100BK, 200BK and 50FR over a 4 day period. The following week is the Canadian Age Group Championships in Montreal's Parc Jean Drapeau pool which is outdoors. This one will be attended by Kyle Haas, Matt Fox, Aaron Brautigam and Elizabeth Skuriat. Both Matt and Kyle have solid chances to win medals in this one so HHBF stands to have a fantastic meet. I hope whoever is running the HHBF club record board is paying attention, as they will have a lot of work to do in August when this is done.

It's worth noting that many friends of HHBF (Joe Bartoch, Andrew Ford, Brent Hayden, Ryan Cochrane, Randy Bennett, etc) will be at the FINA World Championships beginning July 20th. They will be broadcast on CBC. Broadcast schedule can be found HERE. We wish them the best of luck. This should be a good indication of what will happen at the 2012 Olympics next summer so tune in and show your support for MY sport and YOURS.

Pita Town

2011-07-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone. I've become addicted to Pita Town's shawarma wraps and other great food. I hurt my back earlier today and stopped into Pita Town for a pick me up (after visiting In Focus Physiotherapy for my back, another great Georgetown business) and noticed that, due to some construction blocking one of the plaza's enterences, the restaurant is less busy than usual. Wondering if I can count on some of my readers to help out Pita Town and owner, Jean-Claud. He's a great guy who makes great food. Stop in some time this week (hopefully Tuesday or Wednesday) for lunch or dinner. Check it out if you haven't been yet! Tell them that I sent you. You won't be sorry!

Pita Town
348 Guelph St. Unit 2A (Next to Quiznos)
905-702-9299
Open Daily from 11am-9pm

The Shawarma is AWESOME!!

Ontario Open Water Provincial Championships

2011-07-06T17:46:00.001-07:00

What a successful day for HHBF at the Open Water Provincial Championships! This was the largest and most diverse group that HHBF has ever had represent, and also the most successful by far.

Top of mind was Britney Dortona's silver medal winning performance in the girls 10-12 year old 3km race category. This is Britney's first provincial medal and HHBF should be very proud of how she did! This was Britney's 9th long distance race (6x800s, 1x1500 and 1x3km) since the end of May and she is likely exhausted, but she clearly saved the best for last. What a performance!

HHBF also had the following athletes place in their age categories:

3KM
Keri-Lyn Copeland (7th 50:40)
Bronte McMaster (17th 58:44)
Paige Olmstead (8th 58:45)
Brooklyn Shelley (18th 58:47)
Nicole Waddick (11th 1:00:58)
Shannon Kent (18th 1:04:50)
Megan Brosseau (24th 1:22.59)
Darian Zuraw (25th 1:31:07)

Note: Most impressivly, Darian Zuraw recently turned 10 so this is a HUGE achievement for her. 3KM in open water was tough enough for the older guys let alone Darian and the other younger athletes. I am very proud of this aspect of the day! A lot of young Blue Fins showing some toughness!

MItchell Krafczek (6th 45:33)
Eric Siegfriedt (18th 57:21)
Erick Ortega (19th 1:13:11)

5KM
Kyle Haas (7th 1:20:13)
Trevor Burwell (8th 1:20:26)

I must say that I am very proud of the number of Blue Fins that were brave enough to attempt this, but by how tough they were and how well they did. It was a great day overall and a fantastic way for some of these athletes to finish up their season. Don't forget; this is a provincial championships... meaning that HHBF had 5 top 8 finishes at this provincial championship and 1 medal. Really well done!! I am extremely excited about the day and the results. Great job, everyone!!

Full Swim Ontario summary can be found here.

HHBF finishes 25th at Provincials (out of 71 scoring teams)

2011-07-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry that I was unable to blog most of the weekend. During 4 day meet of being at the pool for at least 12 hours/day, I was just too exhausted. Those of you who follow me on Twitter were able to get the live results as they happened as well as some pictures. Based on how many are actually following, seems like a lot of you missed out on that. I really recommend setting up a twitter account and following me (coachmikehhbf).

This was probably the most emotional provincials I have ever attended, simply because it was the culmination of everything these athletes have been working for and more. Highlights included the following:

Matt Fox: First provincial championships in 100BK and 200BK (less than a second away from the meet record) as well as a silver in 200FR and a bronze in 100FR. Times he posted rivalled many older athletes in the meet and he's only 13. He also made senior provincials at age 13!! 2 club records to boot as well. This guy is going to continue to make the highlight wrap ups for time to come. Remember the name!

Mitchell Krafczek: Best times all across the board and finishing the weekend with a provincial final in 200BK and an 8th place finish with a best time. I'm very proud of him!

Keri-Lyn Copeland: I really enjoyed watching Keri-Lyn return to her top speed and best times. 50FR, 200FR, 100FR and 800FR were all bests and placed top 16 in them all. Very close to age group nationals in 100FR as well. Really strong meet from her!

Emma Fender: Club Record in 200BR and HUGE PB in 200IM. Right on top of best times in 50 and 100FR. Emma has just scratched the surface of what I believe she is able to do. A lot of raw talent in this girl.

Britney Dortona: We worked SOOOO hard to get the 800FR qualification for this meet after her late birthday. Brit was on top of her best times all weekend but some wicked improvement this season after starting in Gold and finishing in the Elite group. Her best results are yet to come!

Nolan Haas: Good return to speed and success this weekend! PBs across the board including a very brave 200BK (14 second PB). Nolan's best results are coming but it is great that he was able to prove to himself that he can get the 800 and 400IM prereq and refocus to sprint well at the meet. I'm excited about the possibilities here.

Trevor Burwell: Best times of the season for 100FR, 400FR and some very competitive races. Trevor is splitting better than he was ever able to in the past and came down for finals Sunday night to support his team. Great weekend!

Aaron Brautigam: PB in 200BR, despite being disqualified in 200BR, but great time in 200IM and 8th place finish in 100BR with a PB. I am very proud of the improvement and dedication to training Aaron showed this season.

Kyle Haas: Gold Medal and meet record in 200IM, Silver in 50FR, Bronze in 100BK and 200BK as well as 4th in 400IM. 5 club records broken over the weekend and 2 senior national qualifications, becoming the first HHBF man qualified ever. Great weekend for Kyle and his career is just getting started.

Watching Kyle break the meet record in 200IM, Matt ALMOST break the meet record in 200BK, Mitchell make finals, Keri-Lyn's 800FR and Aaron's final appearance were amongst my favourite moments this weekend. All things that made me so proud that I had to keep my emotions in check or risk looking silly. Having a senior national qualifier and having HHBF going to Olympic Trials next season also made me a little choked up. We have worked so hard for what we got: what a great weekend overall!

HHBF finished in 25th place and we beat Milton, again (34th). I believe this to be our highest medal count and best PB rate in history. There is just so much to celebrate tonight, I don't know where to start. This weekend really punctuates our great season.

I hope that all Blue Fins reading this understand that great things are possible through hard work and believing that they can be done. Both parts of that equation are necessary: Hard Work & Belief. These athletes showed the result of both. One thing I found myself telling people over and over this weekend: "You're wise not to bet against the Blue Fins."

Provincials Day 1

2011-06-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted! Huge day but a long day. If you're not already following me on Twitter, do it so you can get live updates on whats going on at the meet. You can find me at coachmikehhbf.

Matt Fox won the 13 year old boys 100BK with a time of 1:04.89 (just 2 tenths of a second out from where Kyle Haas was at this time 2 years ago) and was 5th in the 800FR with a HUGE new club record of 9:33.45. Matt was exhausted but happy with his results.

Kyle Haas came second in 50FR with a new club record of 24.62 and moved up from 7th to 4th in 400IM with a new club record of 4:45.27. Kyle was mostly smiles with some winces of pain after his 400IM. A great competitve swim that told everyone that he's better than just 50s. Not bad for only being in the 16 year old age category for 5 days.

Emma Fender broke her HHBF club record with a new time of 3:08.34. It was excellent use of a bonus race. Speaking of great bonus races, Mitchell Krafczek swam an outstanding 50FR, beating his best short course time by .01 seconds (New PB of 26.89). Aaron Brautigam was right on top of his best 50FR while Trevor Burwell added a slight bit of time. Britney Dortona swam her 7th 800FR of the month which was a little off of her best, but still swam very well considering the circumstances. Nolan Haas ripped off time in both 100BK and 100FLY, making some brilliant progress in the LC season.

What a great way to start out the weekend! Stay tuned to TWITTER to get live updates because I'm not sure if I can stay away to blog every night when I get home.

HHBF WINS THE HALTON CUP!!

2011-06-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

Combination of depth, strength and dedication earned the Halton Hills Blue Fins their very first Halton Cup on Saturday June 25th. The cup is awarded once/season after 2 dual meets between the Halton Hills Blue Fins and Milton Marlins Swim Team. The highest combined points after both meets wins the cup. HHBF had a strong lead (almost 2000pts) after the first meeting in February and continued to build on that lead Saturday.

"What a statement for our team to make," said Chris Henderson. "Not that long ago, we stood no chance against MMST. Now this is a great contest."

"I'm proud of everyone and am excited to make this one of my last moments with HHBF," said coach Ian Cunningham, who will leave to start a new career in Halifax after this season. "These young athletes worked hard and deserved the win."

I am very proud of what the Blue Fins have achieved this season but winning the Halton Cup certainly adds new dimension and meaning to everything. I believe that the cup belongs in Georgetown and we will have a strong fight on our hands next season, to keep it here. But for now, congrats to the following Blue Fins who made this victory possible:
A.J. Tarczy, Aleksandar Plackoski, Alexandra Taran, Anthony Hartsink, Arielle Sabourin, Ashton Sicard, Avery Jans, Aysia Leckie, Brett Russell, Bronte McMaster, Brooklyn Shelley, Carter DeForest, Chris Zanewycz, Clancy Harris, Colleen Jarv, Danielle Taran, Emilie Knighton, Emily Collis, Eric Siegfriedt, Erick Ortega, Erika Charbonneau, Felipe Escobar, Fraser Stitt, Heather Bradshaw, Isaac West, Jake Wilson, Jason Reid, Jeffrey Jiang, Jordan Horruzey, Jordan Stott, Justin Lochert, Katherine Peel, Kelly Smith, Lauren Monhemius, Loren O'Brien-Egesborg, Mackenzie Murphy, Mackenzie Warnock, Madeline Michie, Megan Brosseau, Megan Caissie, Michael Jans, Michael Jickling, Mitchell Brearley, Nicole Waddick,Olivia Fong, Olivia Olson, Paige Olmstead, Payton Shelley, Quinn Jaggard, Quinn West, Rachel Ironside, Samantha Burwell, Sarah Reid, Shannon Jickling, Shannon Kent, Simon Olsen, Simone Fong, Sydney Taran, Tatyana Austrie, Taylr Cawte, Ted Mosoi, Thomas Schofield, Veronica Fong, Victoria Gibson and Viktoria Plackoska.

I am unbelievably proud of this team; more proud than I have ever been because what we earned, we earned as a team. It is not very often, in an individual sport, that we can dominate as a team. Celebrate and enjoy this victory! Congratulations again!

*A special Thank You to Cathan DeForest for the photos!

My Interview with Randy Bennett

2011-06-22T14:47:00.000-07:00

For those of you unaware of Randy Bennett's importance in Canadian swimming, his bio can be found HERE. He is likely best known for coaching Ryan Cochrane to a bronze medal in the 1500FR in the 2008 Olympics.

Back in November/December of 2010, I had listened to Randy Bennet address coaches regarding his periodization of his season, integrating his support staff and other coaching topics. It was at that point I had decided that I wanted to get an exclusive for this blog with his thoughts on the state of Age Group swimming in Ontario (specifically, that we're really good at getting athletes to a certain point in this province). I emailed Randy after he returned to BC from Ontario and he agreed that it would be something that he would do. However, being both very busy, Randy and I were never able to hook up and I figured the idea was lost in space. Not so! Thanks to the tip off from Matt Kwatyra, while HHBF was in London this past weekend, I found out that Randy and the VAS were going to be training in the London Thames Pool this week. As soon as I got home, I contacted Randy again and we arranged to meet today.

I was very nervous because I know that he is an extremely busy guy and felt like I was bugging him. After all, this interview will not end up on the nightly news or anywhere important; its for a not for profit Blog... who cares, right?

Once we hammered out our logistics, I packed up my young children, arranged for a friend to watch them and hiked out to London to meet around noon (on my afternoon off). I arrived at Randy's hotel just as he returned from a workout and he welcomed me like I was the most important person in the world... not what I was expecting. We sat and chatted about my program, swimmers, facility, township, challenges and successes for a long time before he was ready to get down to business. I was actually feeling very comfortable when this all began.

The interview that followed can be listened to HERE. Our conversation went much beyond the interview and I feel that I got validation of where I am leading my program, as a coach, but also I felt that I learned a bunch from this guy. Randy is a real visionary and a brilliant man! Thanks again, Randy, for your time today. I hope that you all enjoy the interview.

NB: if you can only listen to a little bit of it, check out the section from 27min 45seconds. His answer to this question and the follow up are UNBELIEVABLE!! Such insight!

What a weekend!

2011-06-19T14:03:00.001-07:00

Happy Fathers Day!

Yesterday, HHBF held a time trial in the morning at GHIP. The morning saw some success as Livy Olson, again broke the HHBF club record in 200FLY, this time in short course metres (SCM). Nolan Haas also obtained his 800FR prerequisite for provincials (fitting since he qualified in 3 events). Britney Dortona missed her 800FR standard and will get 1 more shot on Tuesday at a time trial in Etobicoke. Wish her luck.

At 2:00pm on Saturday, some of the Elite group made the trip to London, ON to train with Mississauga Aquatic club in London's Thames Park Pool (an outdoor 50m pool). The athletes (Britney Dortona, Emma Fender, Keri-Lyn Copeland, Matt Fox, Bjoern-Ole Schrader, Nolan Haas, Mitchell Krafczek and Kyle Haas) trained from 4:45-7pm on Saturday in the blazing sun. We then got some diner at Eastside Mario's and retired to our hotel. Sunday morning, the athletes woke up and went back to Thames Park for another 2 hour practice from 9am-11am which consisted mostly of longer swimming. London Aquatic Club and Team Canada member, Matt Kwatyra stopped by at the end of this practice to talk about his preparation for Junior World Championships in Lima, Peru this summer as well as his decision to stay local next season in order to focus on 2012 Olympic Trials. Special thanks to Matt for spending his day off with us.

The weather was fantastic! Very sunny and very hot on both days. Swimmers going to Age Group Nationals (which is in an outdoor pool in Montreal this summer) got the opportunity to get used to swimming against the wind and sun so that it does not shock them when its race time. Others will get the benefit from the long course training going into Provincials in 2 weeks. EVERYONE had a great time training in the sun and getting away as a team. A lot of us had fun and it is definitely something we are looking forward to doing again.

I got home around 2 today and took a nap. I was exhausted as this is a very busy time of the year! Now, I'm up and writing this post while I wait for my wife and children come home to enjoy some time with me on Fathers Day. I hope that all dads have a great day today! Happy Fathers Day, guys!

Santa Clara Grand Prix

2011-06-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

Results can be found HERE.

Check out the live stream below. Great Racing so far!!

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV

WHAT!!??

2011-06-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

How can Brent Hayden solicit more votes than the bronze medalist in 1500FR at the 2008 Olympics??? Ryan just broke a meet record at the Santa Clara Grand Prix in the 800FR. I don't understand why Ryan gets no respect. What does he have to do; save you from pirate captors???

Mixed Bag

2011-06-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. A few things to talk about in 1 post: a Mixed Bag if you will.

Last night was the HHBF Year End Party. Its amazing to think that this was my 6th one (techincally 5th because I was forced to skip one while sick) and how much the club has grown. When I started, HHBF did this in a church basement and you could count the athletes. Last night we had to use the Georgetown Secondary School cafeteria and it was still crowded. Watching the club and athletes grow never gets old for me. A lot of work went into making it a great night; thank you to all the volunteers who made it possible. A special thanks to Shellie Little-Taran for putting it together.

Individual Award Winners from last night were:

Intro
President Award
Kate Erdley
Julia Kerrigan

Most Improved
Intro - Female - Jordan Pawlowski
Intro - Male - Spencer Zylstra
Intro Comp – Female - Angela Wallace
Intro Comp – Male – Hartley Snyder

Silver Presidents Award
Anthony Hartsink
Jordan Stott

Bronze Presidents Award
Sydney Taran
Simon Olsen

Gold Presidents Award
Justin Lochert
Victoria Gibson

Regional Development Presidents Award
Viktoria Plackoska
Bronte McMaster

Platinum Presidents Award
Brooklyn Shelley
Quinn Jaggard

Elite Presidents Award
Matt Fox
Samantha Ceci

Rookie of the Year
Katherine Peel

The Mandy Bull Award
Avery Jans: Avery is an outgoing, loud cheering, positive, team supporting, Bluefin machine. From pompoms and face painting at meets to leading and motivating her lane at practice she is a ball of energy. Her humor energy and positivity (even at 5:30am) at every practice keep us smiling even when the sets are long and hard. Her ability to lead a set and keep everyone on track even when everyone (including the coach) has lost count on how much we've done, is second to none. She's a kind hearted, caring individual that is a joy to coach. Great Attitude, Great Attendance, Great Effort, Great Results! Congrats Avery.

I really want to express my mixed emotion (happy and sad) that Karl Massey and Elizabeth Skuriat will be moving on next season. Both were crucial to my plan to expanding the Bluefins to where we are now and set a great example that both school and athletics can be done. They will be missed as coaches and as swimmers. They're both outstanding citizens and we should be proud that they represented us for so long (hopefully Elizabeth can still represent us when CIS season is done). Since we couldn't watch the slide show that the club put together for them, I'll see if I can post it here in the next few days. Happy trails, you guys.

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I stopped in at D-Moos.com headquarters this morning to do some work and pass along a copy of the Andrew Ford Interview that we did last week. It will be airing tonight at 8pm. You can listen live here, but don't just wait for the interview (because I know you've listened like 100 times already... right?) listen all the time. Fantastic mix of music and the guys over there are great. They're huge HHBF supporters.

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We are past the due date for Ontario Open Water Championships. Registration for the event is still possible but I am doing the group registration for HHBF tomorrow. Anyone else that wants to save themselves the trouble of registering online had better make contact with me ASAP.

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My cousin, Paul DeCarli (I am obligated to refer to as a pioneer in the field of digital music editing) who resides in California, started up a great blog for music lovers from the 1980s. Check it out, it makes you think of songs and bands that you haven't thought about for ages. Thanks, Paul!
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That'll do it for today. Don't forget to follow me on twitter and check the blog over the summer.

Central Regions Day 4

2011-06-13T09:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday started out a little rough like many Sundays of 4 day meets do. After some hard fought 200FR races, Loren O'Brien-Egesborg began to swim more aggressively and posted a best time in 200BK and 50FR shortly after.

I was very impressed with Brooklyn Shelley's 100BR, in which she took off 5 seconds from her previous best and looked very strong and in control. Her and Britney Dortona had the best splitting on any events during the day.

AJ Tarczy equaled his best short course time in his 200BK and placed 11th overall with very quick walls.

50FR sswimming was very fast but the fundamentals were a little rough. It seemed like our swimmers were very eager to look at the giant Etobicoke score board, as many of the moved their heads up in that direction before they had actually touched the wall. Overall though, 50FR yielded some very good results: Bronte McMaster (31.30) finished 12th/55, Clancy Harris, also with a best time finished in the top 45 in the 13 year old age category. Kelly Smith and Olivia Fong were 22nd and 52nd in the 14 year old age category.

The girls 13-14 relay finished up the day in 20th place with many teams such as Milton, Gators, and Etobicoke scratching teams. There were 9 team scratches overall so our team likely would have beat more, had they swum, as the girls did a great job (over 3 seconds faster than we expected them to go).

The afternoon session saw Britney Dortona JUST sneak under the provincial prereq time in 400IM and shed a full 3.5 seconds in her 200FR. Olivia Fong and Britney represented Saturday's relay team and accepted the medals on Emma and Aysia's behalf (see below). Michael Jans and Quinn Jaggard swim very aggressive, smart races despite being slightly over their best times. Bjoern-Ole Schrader also placed 16th in 400IM.

HHBF finished 25th at this meet (Milton Marlins finished 26th for any of you keeping track of how many times we beat them this season) and I feel that we did what we went to do. It is unfortunate that many schools scheduled trips around this time of year, but I give much credit to those athletes affected for stepping up and racing after being out of the water; after all, they had no choice but to miss training for school. Even after having to miss that time, they were all eager to get back in the water, race, and do everything they could to represent HHBF as best they could. We did very well this past weekend and the HHBF community should be proud of these athletes.

ESPN Blog

2011-06-13T09:37:00.000-07:00

I really liked this view point on Lebron James losing out on an NBA Championship again last night. Its a really good read and I can't agree with it more. Thanks, ESPN!

Central Region Championships

2011-06-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

This meet started on Thursday afternoon, but I have been too busy to write about it. Here are our highlights so far:

Thursday night: 800FR went well. Britney Dortona just missed the provincial standard by 0.22 seconds. All of the 800s were swum 2 per lane and not from the starting block (which I would argue would have saved her more then 0.22 seconds, but not much we can do about that). Sam Ceci, Colleen Jarv, Clancy Harris, Veronica Fong and Bjoern-Ole Schrader also had good swims in 800FR.

Friday: A few very solid 200IMs (Aysia Leckie under 3:00 for the first time and Emma Fender with a best time and placing 4th overall) and 50FRs (Aysia Leckie, again, with a best time and 6th overall and Britney Dortona and Veronica Fong placing in the top 20). Emma Fender obtained a bronze medal in 200BR with a PB and new club record (3:12.52) with Veronica Fong in 9th, also with a best time of about 2 seconds. Britney Dortona placed 6th in 400FR with a 2 second PB and Colleen Jarv placed 17th.

Saturday: The day started out very well with Clancy Harris almost breaking 1:10 for the first time in 100FR (she placed 25th/45). Sam Ceci and Loren O'Brien-Egesborg both had solid swims. Sam was slightly faster than she had been before and Loren was right on top of her best time. Sam placed 45th and Loren 54th out of 85. AJ Tarcy also had a best time in 100FR and placed 23rd. Loren placed 24th/48 in 100BK and AJ was 9th but did not make it into finals by scratches. The girls 13-14 200FR relay finished 14th after moving up from an 18th place seed. Some very solid swimming on this relay from Olivia Fong, Clancy Harris, Bronte McMaster and Kelly Smith (who was almost under 30 seconds in her leg). HHBF also beat Milton, who was seeded ahead.
In the afternoon session, we had some very exciting races! Emma Fender placed 8th in 100FR, but was slightly above her best time. Aysia Leckie and Britney Dortona was under 1:10 for the first time in 100FR, Quinn Jaggard placed 14th in 100FR with a new PB of 1:06.69. Veronica Fong and Emma Fender came 6th and 7th in 100BR. Livy Olson placed 14th in 100FLY in her very first race in this championship meet (she also had a 3 second best time by 3 seconds). Michael Jans (just returning from a school trip) muscled his way through a 200BK which was very heroic and well swum, but slightly above his best time.
Perhaps the most exciting moment of the day was in the girls 11-12 200FR relay when the HHBF girls (Aysia Leckie, Veronica Fong, Britney Dortona and Emma Fender) out touched the mighty Oakville girls by .01 seconds to win the bronze medal. They finished just behind TSC and NYAC and finished ahead of teams like Eswim, and Markham which is a huge achievement for these 4 girls. A great big congratulations to them.

So far, things going very well and I'm very proud of our performances. 1 day to go: I'll do my best to keep you posted.

Also, Swim Ontario picked up my recording of Andrew Ford's talk to the Blue Fins. See what they had to say about it HERE. This story also appears on the front page of Swim Ontario's website which is great exposure for our team. It really was a great visit. I encourage everyone to take a listen.

The Andrew Ford Interview

2011-06-08T20:11:00.000-07:00

National Team Member, Andrew Ford visited HHBF this afternoon to discuss his successes and struggles throughout his swimming career. As I did not have a video camera with a charged battery, I had to audio record the interview rather than video tape it. Complete audio stream of the interview available HERE.

Many thanks to the Guelph Marlins and Andrew's coach, Don Burton, for lending us Andrew for the afternoon. I think the Blue Fins got a lot out of the experience and I certainly enjoyed listening to what Andrew had to say. He has agreed to let me post this on the web so you can enjoy it too. He is a real class act and a fantastic representative for Canadian Swimming.

HHBF @ Relay For Life

2011-06-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, many Blue Fins participated in the Relay for Life. The HHBF team (which was organized by Bronte McMaster and Avery Jans) included Blue Fins team mates such as Jason Reid, Viktoria Plackoska, Michael Jans, Tatyana Austrie, Isaac West, Arielle Sabourin, and Olivia Fong.

Reports from the event were that these Blue Fins represented out team very well (and there are many reports that they were the only team that did not stop the entire time). Quinn West, Sarah Reid and Aleks Plackoski stayed and joined the team for the entire event and Coach Chris and his wife, Mallory, stopped by to do a couple of laps with the athletes.

I am very proud of the reports coming to me from my athletes and the rest of our team should be too. This was great exposure for our team and a great team building event for those who participated. Well done.

AGI - Sunday Wrap Up

2011-06-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

Now that I have some time to type; yesterday was a pretty good day. Highlights include the HHBF boys 15&Over 200BR LC record broken 3 times by 2 different people (first by Kyle and Aaron and finally by Kyle Haas @ 2:33.11), Loren broke the girls 15&Over 50fly record (32.64), Nolan broke the boys 13-14 50fly record, Matt Fox placed 6th in 100BK (highest placing 13 year old and a small PB), Britney Dortona had a huge PB in 400FR Trevor Burwell had a small PB in 400FR and Emma Fender qualified for provincials in 100FR.

All in all an interesting weekend. Almost every HHBF athlete had a different purpose there. With provincials and regionals not far away, its very tough placement of a meet. It was tough for 17 and overs because of some world class athletes filling up finals spots. It was tough for 13-14 year olds because they had an afternoon session that went right into finals (In Matt Fox's case, he had a little more than 90min between his race and finals). Ideally its a great meet for 11-12s (who don't have finals) and 15-16 as a good chance to swim finals. I may reassess the need for a meet at that time of the year next season, but as of right now, it was a pretty good weekend.

AGI Sunday morning check-in

2011-06-05T05:03:00.001-07:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything yet, but it has been a very busy weekend and I just haven't had the energy to type. This has been a very tough, fast meet; faster than I remember it last season. So far I have counted 5 2008 Olympians taking part (Tobias Oriwol, Joe Bartoch and Richard Hortness from Canada and 2 from Mexico) as well as a few more that are going to World Championships this summer (Brittany MacLean, etc) and many more that are going to Junior World Championships. This is a very fast meet.

HHBF is faring pretty well so far, especially considering many of our athletes are not rested and are swimming off events.

Thursday's highlights included Trevor Burwell reclaiming his 1500fr club record from Kyle Haas with a best of 18:07 and Britney Dortona just missing the provincial cut in 800fr, but significantly lowering her best time (she'll get another chance next weekend).

Friday saw Kyle Haas make 2 finals and win bronze medals in both while setting 2 new club records: 200im 2:12.83 and 100br (1:10.39), Trevor Burwell breaking the club record in 200fr (2:06.36), Mitchell Krafczek with a best 200fr swim and Matt Fox squeeking into the finals in 200fr.

Saturday was great and saw a best time and new club record from Sam Ceci in 100fly (1:12.28). Matt, Aaron Brautigam and Kyle all made finals which yielded some good swims, but the biggest improvement seen yesterday was in 400im where Matt and Kyle each dropped over 11 seconds and placed very high in the rankings. Great news as this is what we have been working on for the last few weeks.
(NB: I owe Newmarket swimmer Jake Silverthorn a donut as a result of one of our great races on Saturday).

So its warmup Sunday morning and I'm excited for some good races today. This will be my 3rd 13hour day in a row and I'm a little punchy so sorry for any type-o's above. I think today is going to be a great day!

Age Group International - Etobicoke

2011-06-02T07:04:00.000-07:00

AGI starts today in Etobicoke. This is a good opportunity for our athletes to get a sneak peak at their competition going into provincials, and also to swim against some very stiff competition. Athletes like Warren Barnes, Tobias Oriwol, Matt Kwatyra, Cam Cummings, Cynthia Pammett, Amanda Reason, Brittany MacLean and others will square off in a LC competition at the Olympium. It should be an interesting weekend for HHBF, but you'd be crazy if you expected me to talk about my strategy going into this meet on the internet. I'll update as the weekend goes, but trust me it will be a good weekend.

Psych sheets and heat sheets are available at ESWIM's Website.

Stay tuned for updates.

Athletic Foodie post

2011-06-01T05:50:00.000-07:00

American Gold Medalist, Garret Weber-Gale runs a website called "Athletic Foodie" which I have started getting very interested in. He is a very good writer and gives some great advice (although I take it in the context that he is an athlete, not a doctor) on nutrition and other things. I found his post today a pretty good read. Check it out.

HHBF Tag day a HUGE success!

2011-05-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

On the Victoria Day Long Weekend, 29 athletes from HHBF volunteered their time to collect funds for the first ever HHBF tag day. It was a roaring success, collecting more than $3000.00 from helpful people in our community. This was a little bit of a rushed effort, but a great one at that, and could not have happened without the help of Laurie Fox, who spearheaded the operation. Special thanks to Shannon Griffiths who helped with the fundraising and all other executive members who supervised, counted, rolled change and helped with this project.

Great big thanks to the parent volunteers that were on duty for each 2 hour shift.
We made sure that the kids were always supervised. We were also complimented at how kind and professional our athletes were during the shifts.

Georgetown was amazing and we had more locations than kids this year. So many store owners volunteered to allow us to tag at their locations, we simply could not do them all. It is very exciting to know that we have so much support in the community.

Stores to thank: Beer Store, 2 Metros, Dollaramma, Pita Pit, Superstore, Home Hardware.

Number of Kids who participated = 29
Average Box / 2 hour shift brought in ~ $97.77
Best Box $232 (Michael Jans)
Best 4 hour shift $337.14 (Chris Fox)

Great work and a great big THANK YOU to everyone that helped.

Guelph LC Meet

2011-05-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Livy Olson sets new HHBF record in girls 9-10 200FLY.

What a great weekend in Guelph! HHBF sees regular success but it has been a long time since we have seen this many spectacular swims in 1 weekend. Friday's distance session yielded a lot of PBs in 400FR, 800FR, 1500FR and 400IM. Saturday's session resulted in a whopping 94% personal best rate and today (Sunday) resulted in some spectacular races (I have yet to calculate the rate).

Livy Olson and Lauren Monhemius joined the meet from Ian's group and both fell within less than a second of Central Region qualifications. Lauren, 10 years old, clocked a smoking fast 3:47 for her 200BR today which was very close to the HHBF club record and not far off of some of the times posted by the older athletes in the morning. Livy Olson (also 10) swam a long course 200fly and broke Erica Knox's club record by over 2 seconds. I am very excited to see swims like this coming out of Coach Ian's group. Its a great indicator that this club is very deep and that we have a lot of great swimmers in the pipeline in Intro Comp, Bronze, Silver and Gold.

I entered all groups in all sorts of events in the hopes that we can see some significant time drops and man, did we ever! Michael Jans ripped about 10 seconds off of his 200BK and about 5 seconds off of his 100BK. Katherine Peel dropped over 10 seconds in all 4 of her events. AJ Tarczy was meeting and beating his short course times in everything. Loren O'Brien-Egesborg had very solid 100 and 200BK events over the 2 days. Sam Ceci had a great drop in 100FLY. MItchell Brearly had a spectacular 100fly and 100BK. Isaac West had several very good races, taking off lots of time. Clancy Harris and Kelly Smith both had spectacular FR and BK races on Saturday and Sunday. Bronte McMaster showed some great backstroke ability as well as still posting good times in BR and FR while Brooklyn Shellie made some great progress in her 200BR today. Aysia Leckie, Ali Taran, Nicole Waddick, Sam Burwell, Shannon Jickling, Emilie Knighton, Veronica Fong, Quinn Jaggard, Heather Bradshaw, Meagan Cassie, Tatyana Austrie, Justin Lochert, Colleen Jarv, Carter DeForest, Jason Reid, Brett Russell, Filipe Escobar, Jordan Horruzey, Emily Collis, Victoria Gibson, Paige Olmstead, Viktoria Plakoska, Alex Plakoski, Frasier Stitt, Erik Ortega, Avery Jans, Olivia Fong, Quinn West, Arielle Sabourin, Jason Reid, Eric Siegfridt all saw time come off of more than one event and looked to have a great time... And that is just the surface of what we saw.

Congratulations to everyone that swam because it looks like everyone had at least 1 PB and most had several. I am feeling very excited coming off of this weekend with some big meets ahead (AGI, Central Regions, Halton Cup, Provincials, Open Water Provincials, Canadian Age Group Championships). Lets not forget that our mission is to have the best possible performance at the most meaningful meets so we still need to tighten the screws and adjust some things... that is to say: Practice time is still very important!

Congratulations for a job well done; What a great weekend! Thanks everyone!

New Massage Therapist In Town

2011-05-26T14:37:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone. I try not to do this all that much, but Kieu-Oanh Nguyen is a new massage therapist in town. She just started practice at the Move clinic (with our good friend Dr. Cameron). I must say that she is fantastic at her job! I am very particular about praise on the site so I clearly do think very highly of her.

She is trying to build a client base here in Georgetown. I strongly recommend her to anyone seeking therapeutic massage. I have been using her for a couple of weeks now and she has done me a world of good. Please book her up so she spends more time in Georgetown and I can visit her more.

If you are interested, please contact the Move Clinic:

116 Guelph St unit A
Georgetown, On
L7G 4A3
Phone: 905-702-1072

The Move Clinic is a proud sponsor of HHBF, let's give them some support.

Ontario Open Water Championships

2011-05-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

Info for the Ontario Open Water Championships is now available on the Swim Ontario website, but I'm so nice that I'll hyperlink the info right here. HHBF will be announcing our policy and procedure for training for this meet shortly so stay tuned. Please check out the details.

Open Water is fairly new in gaining attention with the swimming community and participation is pretty low compared to pool championships. This championship is a great way to get experience at the provincial and championship level. I highly recommend this competition: but only if you are willing to train for it. It is not an easy race; even when you are in shape!

AGM

2011-05-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

The HHBF AGM was last night and went very quickly and smoothly. I was very happy about a couple of things.

First, the amount of intelligent questions coming from the members about our financials. I am particularly happy that members are concerned about this and are asking important questions. This means that people are interested and possibly have ideas to improve things; and I couldn't be happier about that. Our current executive committee is great, but knowing that we have interested and very intelligent people in the club means that we can be better in the future and continue to be run well by smart and savvy volunteers.

Secondly, I was surprised by the lack of questions regarding this season's grouping changes and success plan... surprised but pretty happy. Not because I don't like answering questions; but because it means (perhaps) that I have been doing a good job communicating. This blog, emails, our website and other communication measures were put in place to make sure that information was available for everyone. We are always looking for ways to improve our communication but this is an indication that we are on the right path.

I think I plugged this blog about 10 or 20 times in my 5min talk last night, so hopefully someone is following up and checking what is written. For those of you who missed my post a couple of weeks ago showing statistically how we are doing: I have posted it for you here. A version of this post is also available in our newsletter. I hope that everyone continues to visit my blog and link other people to visit. I do this for swim fans and for HHBF and a lot of work goes into it (Its not easy to write 1000-2000 word original compositions a few times/week).

For those who are interested, you can all read my report to the Ontario Swim Coaches Committee regarding my trip to Indianapolis (which was funded by Swim Ontario and OSCC, not HHBF). A link to that report can be found here. Now that they've all seen it and given their feedback, you can all learn more about the opportunity and my thoughts on the trip. Enjoy.

No More Excuses!

2011-05-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Free live streaming by Ustream

The response I get from a lot of athletes and parents when asked "did you watch the ______ event online" the typical response I get was "I couldn't find it". Well, search no further. Coachmikehhbf offers live streaming from this very blog. All meet details can be found here and live results can be found here. My hope is that many many people watch and get fired up for the upcoming championship season. Enjoy!

Some good reading...

2011-05-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Through twitter, I found out about Dave Ling's blog, Get In And Swim which has some good video and analysis. Currently, Dave has some great stuff on about tonight's matchup between Cullen Jones and Josh Schneider in 50FR at the Charlotte Grand Prix. Videos and writing are great, check him out. I've known Dave for years; we used to swim "against each other" (he was a distance freestyler and I was a sprint backstroker, but we swam on competing teams so the phrase works) in the mid-late 90s. Dave currently coaches for TSC and does a lot of voice commentary work for OUA and Swim Ontario. His blog is quite good. Check it out.

Charlotte Grand Prix Starts This Week!!!!

2011-05-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

This week marks the start of the Charlotte Grand Prix. Swim Ontario has a contingent going. You can follow their progress here.
5 BIG stories to watch at this meet going into the 2012 Games in London can be found here.

My trip to Indianapolis was AWESOME. I wish I could be in Charlotte this week!

Mother's Day

2011-05-08T23:58:00.000-07:00

Even though I am a little late, I would like to thank all mothers who sit in humid pools, get up early, drive hours and hours and support their young athletes no matter what. I remember when I used to swim, my mother would drive me to meets and it would be our together time. I remember it very fondly, not thinking about how difficult it must have been for her at the time. Please know that your children appreciate all that you do, even if they don't know that they appreciate it yet.

My Mom, Arlene Thompson, is a wonderful woman and is responsible for who I grew up to be. Please forward all complaints to her.

Happy Mothers Day, mothers everywhere!

Time Well Spent

2011-05-07T13:29:00.000-07:00

Last night I was able to fill in for Chris and work with the Regional Development group and the Gold group after my usual 4pm-6:30pm workout with Elite and Platinum. It was a long night, but I felt that it was time well spent.

Using my iPod and a device I bought recently, I was able to show some very good video from GoSwim.TV. Glen Mills (who I met while speaking at the Swim Ontario AGM in September), runs a very good website, full of great videos. They really are helpful when trying to describe drills because they are very descriptive and visual... also, I think my athletes get tired of me talking all the time.

We worked primarily with the following 2 videos:

I felt that this video was useful, especially when many of our athletes have a hard time using the clock to calculate their times and when they have to leave on a repeat. I think that the following quote got through to quite a few people: "Without paying attention to the clock, swimming becomes exercise rather than a sport" got through to quite a few athletes. We need to remember that we're swimming to get better at the competitve sport of swimming, not just exercising. I feel that watching this video really opened some of our swimmers eyes to what other clubs expect of their athletes.

We then used this video to work on fly. Platinum and Elite followed it with a very long IM set with lots of butterfly. The expectation was to swim well while fatigued.
Regional Development focused more on timing and stroke past the drills:

My observations before the work on these drills was that many of the swimmers would use 1 weak kick and then allowed their legs to sink. As they sunk, their body position changed and so did the position of their hands on the catch. Rather than facing down, they were parallel to the surface which created an pull up rather than a pull forward (picture a kitten in the water trying to keep its head above water). After work with rythym and focusing strongly on the second kick, I was observing monumental increase in velocity, stroke consistancy and stamina through the stroke.

I was really happy that we did this work with those groups. I particularly think that Chris has done a miraculous job with the Gold group. There are many swimmers in that group that look to be of much better quality than HHBF has had in that rank ever before. They should all be proud of themselves, as should all of the groups that I got to do this with yesterday. Good work produces great results.

Glen Mills' website can be found at www.goswim.tv and all of his videos can be found on Youtube (his Youtube Channel is http://www.youtube.com/user/goswim098). There is also a free iPod App available. Please check him out, lots of great information available for free. Thanks for making all of this available to us, Glen!

Just a Regular workout at the Georgetown Indoor Pool

2011-05-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

http://occip.it/pt4tvt0n

The picture above was taken with an app on my ipod. Pretty cool: from today's workout. Check it out.

NOTE: If you look at it on your ipod or iphone with the gyroscope active, its super awesome!!