Sonic Endurance has been growing as a business since we founded it in January of 2013 and this past weekend we made another big step forward by holding our first swim clinic.  Stacey and I have both previously done swim video analysis, taught swim lessons and worked one-on-one with athletes to address swim limiters but this was the first time we pulled everything together in a clinic for athletes.  Personally I’ve had a love-hate relationship with swimming my entire life.  I started swimming for my local YMCA team (the Southington Stingrays) when I was five years old.  I swam for the YMCA team for 9 years and also swam for my high school team before getting frustrated with swimming and quitting half way through high school.  I got back into the pool in college when I played water polo for Dartmouth.  I went on another swim hiatus in law school and started swimming again in 2006 when I completed my first triathlon.  With a few breaks I’ve been in the water for over 20 years and in 2013 I officially became of US Master Level 2 Swim Coach.

kel swim

Since I’ve started coaching I’ve had a huge interest in translating pool skills to the open water, which is also a particular weakness of mine.  A super-smooth, super-long pool stroke with a tight flip turn will lead to fast sets in the pool but does not translate to open water.  Over the past few years I have been working on shortening my stroke, eliminating the front glide and beginning the pull phase of the stroke immediately on entering the water.  Do I have a great pool stroke for swimming a 400 or an 800 especially in a short course pool, not so much but I am seeing some small improvements in open water.    For the swim clinic Stacey and I wanted to focus on identifying what we call the “low hanging fruit for each athlete,” making sure they understood what the stroke should look like and then giving them the tools to make improvements.  We both felt it was really important to help the athlete prioritize what needs to be fixed first.  An adult on-set swimmer may have several issues with their stroke — dragging hips, crossover, slipping elbow, poor head position and under rotation to name a few — but that person needs help learning what they should work on first to make the biggest improvements in the shortest amount of time (in my opinion its always the dragging hips, you can have a fantastic front end of your stroke but if you’re dragging your legs like and anchor, you’re literally not going anywhere).

Swim Clinic Pool

On Saturday Stacey and I were able to film and coach fourteen triathletes in the pool.  We spent the first hour of the clinic taking underwater video of each of the athletes and running a drill focused workout so all of the athletes would understand how to do the drills we were likely to prescribe.  We had a range of swimmers in the pool from former high school swimmers with sub 1 hour 2.4 mile swims to athletes new to swimming and triathlon and we saw every possible form correction from slight sculling and pausing on entry to massive torquing and dragging legs and hips to swimmers with their eyes closed (open your eyes — you’re going to run into something or swim off course with your eyes closed).

stacey deck

After an hour in the pool we headed to the classroom (actually the babysitting room, that’s why the chairs were all so tiny) for an hour of watching videos and discussing swim tactics.  Stacey made fun of me because I pretty much talked non-stop for an hour — I can talking swimming, or anything related to triathlon, for much, much longer than an hour if given the opportunity.  My favorite questions from the classroom session all started with “X person/coach says all swimmers should . . .”  My philosophy for swimming and life are similar, while there are lots of things your shouldn’t do, there is nothing that works for everyone but everyone has something that works for them.  My answer to all of the these questions was typical of me as both a coach and an attorney — “it depends.”  Should you lengthen your stroke, maybe, it depends on how long it is right now.  Should you have more rotation, maybe, it depends on how much rotation you have now and whether too much or too little rotation is your limiter.  Should you work on upper body strength, maybe, only in the rare instance strength is a real limiter for you (at the clinic there were maybe one or two swimmers to whom this would apply).  As a group, we had a really good conversation and I’m looking forward to personally following up with each of the athletes.  My hope is that by doing more swim clinics in the future (we’re planning one in Pennsylvania in February and back in Connecticut in March) we’ll be able to help athletes and continue to develop as coaches and as an organization.

kel classroom

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Kelly Burns Gallagher

mccarter english employment litigator / oiselle team runner / coeur sports triathlete / sonic endurance coach & race director / witsup.com writer / dartmouth '02 / emorylaw '05

2 Comments

Deb K · January 20, 2014 at 4:44 pm

Seriously? Who on earth would swim with their eyes closed?!!

Oh, um. Yeah. :-/

I had a great time at the clinic, and really felt like I got to see things in a new way. For example – I had no clue what early vertical forearm actually was, but it wasnt what i had been doing! Thank you.

Jake F · January 21, 2014 at 6:28 am

Great clinic. I learned a lot in a short time. Put me on the list for March!!!!

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