I am always amused at how often master's swimmers will take individual liberties in workout to suit their own needs. For example:
* Swimming free instead of breaststroke or the stroke prescribed by the coach.
* One handed turns on *** and fly.
* Cutting corners to stay up with the lane
* Using pull gear when it isn't a pull set
* Kicking your favorite kick and not the one given by the coach
* Leaving 2 seconds behind (more like 2 tenths behind)
* Pulling on the lane line
* Swimming when it's a kick set
* etc...
Maybe its all those years of swimming under "do it my way or the highway" type coaches, that I still have a hard time changing anything in the workout. I must admit however that it does feel good once and while to cheat a little.
As a coach, I've asked many swimmers as to why they change the set or cheat and I hear a million different excuses. I'm very interested in hearing from all of you, all the excuses you have or have heard from other swimmers.
Some of my favorite ones are:
* I don't want to get passed!!!
* I hate the other strokes? (from a former IM'r)
* My tri coach say's I shouldn't swim other strokes
At our work-outs, we have 3 lanes of abilities, and we self appoint, although sometimes the coach will move us around to challenge us a little. Everyone is really supportive, and not condescening at all, so we have no issue with anyone "cheating". We also NOW have a coach that supplies different levels of a work-out so everyone does a work-out and gets done with a set at the same time. When we had a coach that wrote one work-out, it was usually geared to the top swimmers, and the slower swimmers either did not complete it, or cut corners to complete it. The slower swimmers hated that because they never got a sense of accomplishment for finishing a work-out. It is much better to have different levels of the work-out. We have one gentleman that is far faster than any of us. Sometimes the send-offs in the fast lane are geared to him, and the rest if us struggle to make the intervals, and sometimes it is geared to the slower of the faster swimmers, and then he adds reps so he does not wait too long.
Maybe cheating is a tough word?? As a coach I know many people who "modify" the workout due to several reasons that people have obviously pointed out. I think a good masters coach talks to their team enough to know limitations, swimming ability levels, doctors orders, plain stubborness, etc...
Please note, that I am making light of this situation because I know we are all adults and have the freedom to do what ever we want. I quess I just sometimes wonder why people sometimes modify "cheat" during workout when they are capable of doing something the correct way.
All I'm trying to do is a create a funny list of why masters cheat "modify" their workouts....
I'm sure some of you have some good statements out there....I love the ones I've read already.
Originally posted by aquageek
I also have it on good authority that lane lines are specifically engineered to enable backstroke pulling.
You sound just like my lane mate in the morning. I think he would actually consider competing again if there was a 200 lane line pull backstroke... I can't wait to tell him tomorrow about lane lines being engineered to help his backstroke. He will love it.
I think the bottom line is if you can't keep up in your lane you should move down to a slower lane, or if that isn't an option modify the workout such that you are disturbing the rest of your lane as little as possible. There's a big difference between skipping a 50 now and then to catch up and just totally going on a different interval than the rest of your lane.
Originally posted by aquageek
However, if you can't do the workout on the board, why are you even swimming with a team?
Ouch. I guess that helps me decide whether or not to renew for next year. :(
I do think this is something Masters should decide and set as a policy, rather than encourage less experienced swimmers (like me) to join and then just be irritated with us throughout the practice. When I picked up a brochure, it said you had to be able to swim 600 free -- it didn't say you had to be able to complete a 3,600 workout of stroke sets. I was totally honest with the coach about my ability level before I went to the first practice (and, of course, she could see me swim in the first workout). If you only want swimmers who can complete the workouts as prescribed, it would be much kinder to just state that up front.
Out of curiousity, what about older swimmers? I watched a meet this past weekend which had an 80-year-old guy competing in several events, very cool. However, I doubt he could keep up with the workout intervals without modifications.
Here's one of my personal favorite "modifications" -
I'm a decent mid/long distance freestyler, and I usually go first on those sets. Depending on the time of day I'm swimming, and of course, depending on who I'm swimming with, I may or may not wear paddles. If I swim at 6 am and we have a set like that, I don't wear them. If I swim at noon, I wear paddles, because if I'm leading - and you folks know how it is sometimes with lane democracy and you get "voted" to lead, and there's someone else who doesn't want to go first, yet your speeds are comparable, then by golly, I'm putting on those freakin' modifying paddles!!
Of course, I am like a slug when it comes to IM sets of any kind, so if we're working on 100 or 200 IMs on an interval, then I will modify my IM - on a 200, for example, I'll swim a 25 fly, 25 free, 25 back, 25 free, and so on. Otherwise I won't make the interval. On IM sets I should be in a slower lane. Yet on kick sets or long freestyle sets I'm fine where I'm at - so does that mean that I bounce from lane to lane during the workout, or do I modify myself?
We too have lanes that are set up fastest to slowest; however, even in each individual lane there are various degrees of speed, etc.;)
