Tomorrow morning is my very first swim meet. I'm very nervous but it was time for me to finally see what I could do in competition versus practice. There are so many things that can go wrong like forgetting to exhale well under water, running out of steam during my 100 free, forgetting stoke mechanics, diving too deep, etc. I don't care how i do compared to others, I'm competing with myself. I always imagined my race times would be faster than my practice times and I know i will be very disappointed if that's not the case. Any words of advice on how to mentally approach this wold be greatly appreciated. Like you wet the bed in your first meet but it got better in subsequent meets:D.
One other question; how do I control the depth of my dive on entry. I rarely every get to practice dives because our pool doesn't allow dives off the blocks unless with the team/coach. So I can only practice it off the pool edge (my masters team doesn't do much start practice). Should I arch my back on head and trunk entry or angle my hands up? If I dive too deep (I hardly have a superb dolphin kick to compensate), I'm toast. It's pretty much hit or miss with me now.
Thanks.
You didn't ask about BR but here goes anyway.
On the BK to BR turn come off on your side and don't bother to turn facing forward first.
Unless you were really running out of breathe you were way too fast on your pullout.Count at least to 2(to 3 if you can) before the pulldown and then at least to 2 before the kick.
Your pull and kick were pretty good.
You were looking too much forward instead of down.
On the recovery concentrate on shooting your hands straight forward.You are shooting them up to get your hands out of the water.Getting your hands out of the water on the recovery is only a good idea if you are riding high enough at the time that you can have them out of the water while shooting them straight forward.This upward movement slows your flow into the recovery.
You BR has real potential though.
Thank you, I see what you mean by the shoot going out of the water. I'll be careful about that. And I should be looking down on my breaths, I often forget.
Incidentally, I was wondering...do these meet results show up on the US Swimming web site? I was hoping it would be a nice organizer for me to track my progress, like it is for my kids. Or are only certain meets, like zones, US swimming sanctioned? Or maybe I need to join US Swimming?
You didn't ask about BR but here goes anyway.
On the BK to BR turn come off on your side and don't bother to turn facing forward first.
Unless you were really running out of breathe you were way too fast on your pullout.Count at least to 2(to 3 if you can) before the pulldown and then at least to 2 before the kick.
Your pull and kick were pretty good.
You were looking too much forward instead of down.
On the recovery concentrate on shooting your hands straight forward.You are shooting them up to get your hands out of the water.Getting your hands out of the water on the recovery is only a good idea if you are riding high enough at the time that you can have them out of the water while shooting them straight forward.This upward movement slows your flow into the recovery.
You BR has real potential though.
Thank you, I see what you mean by the shoot going out of the water. I'll be careful about that. And I should be looking down on my breaths, I often forget.
Incidentally, I was wondering...do these meet results show up on the US Swimming web site? I was hoping it would be a nice organizer for me to track my progress, like it is for my kids. Or are only certain meets, like zones, US swimming sanctioned? Or maybe I need to join US Swimming?
