Coaches and Sprinting

The masters coach is in a tough position. You have to please a wide variety of grown-ups who know what they want out of a workout. Sprinting a 50 or 100 is pretty specialized thing to do, compared to general fitness/muscle tone goals or the long-distance requirements of triathaletes (which I think a lot of masters swimmers are). I feel for a masters coach; you cant please eveyone all of the time... As a long time masters swimming coach my favorite workouts to coach are race centric practices. I was fortunately able to coach two last week. We share the pool with the College team, an age group team and us. The college team is winding down with a few going to the show next week, the age group team is at the sectional Zone championships which allowed our group to have lane choice (very rare), access to the starting blocks and use of the starting equipment etc. I don't want this to sound like a bunch of excuses but as, el desmadre, pointed out it is very difficult to be all things to all people in a masters swim program. In general to support membership numbers, which make aquatic directors happy, most workouts tend be general aerobic to anaerobic threshold type practices. We try to have a one or two stroke oriented workout, and one sprint focused workout a week. Over my years of coaching I've noticed when we pre-publish the type of workout we get less swimmers on stroke & sprint days. Also, we masters coaches don't always communicate the sprint concept well to our swimmers. Sometimes coaches confuse short sets with sprint sets and don't necessarily understand the amount of rest/active recovery (very generous) that they must provide in that type of workout for the swimmer to go full speed and get the benefit. Finally in my experience the average pool manager/administrator thinks of masters swimming like a buzzing mosquito that just annoys them. They tend to make it difficult to offer a rich offering and allow coaches to lead. And surprise some members will express there discontent over certain types of workouts to them. Instead of trying to set expectations, directing them back to the coach and pointing out the workout type was published, they tend to come back to us and ask for adjustments etc.

The masters coach is in a tough position. You have to please a wide variety of grown-ups who know what they want out of a workout. Sprinting a 50 or 100 is pretty specialized thing to do, compared to general fitness/muscle tone goals or the long-distance requirements of triathaletes (which I think a lot of masters swimmers are). I feel for a masters coach; you cant please eveyone all of the time... As a long time masters swimming coach my favorite workouts to coach are race centric practices. I was fortunately able to coach two last week. We share the pool with the College team, an age group team and us. The college team is winding down with a few going to the show next week, the age group team is at the sectional Zone championships which allowed our group to have lane choice (very rare), access to the starting blocks and use of the starting equipment etc. I don't want this to sound like a bunch of excuses but as, el desmadre, pointed out it is very difficult to be all things to all people in a masters swim program. In general to support membership numbers, which make aquatic directors happy, most workouts tend be general aerobic to anaerobic threshold type practices. We try to have a one or two stroke oriented workout, and one sprint focused workout a week. Over my years of coaching I've noticed when we pre-publish the type of workout we get less swimmers on stroke & sprint days. Also, we masters coaches don't always communicate the sprint concept well to our swimmers. Sometimes coaches confuse short sets with sprint sets and don't necessarily understand the amount of rest/active recovery (very generous) that they must provide in that type of workout for the swimmer to go full speed and get the benefit. Finally in my experience the average pool manager/administrator thinks of masters swimming like a buzzing mosquito that just annoys them. They tend to make it difficult to offer a rich offering and allow coaches to lead. And surprise some members will express there discontent over certain types of workouts to them. Instead of trying to set expectations, directing them back to the coach and pointing out the workout type was published, they tend to come back to us and ask for adjustments etc.