Our master team is dying.

I'm all for long workout, but 13.5 hours seems a little excessive!Only chaos does those kinds of Saturday workouts -- forums.usms.org/blog.php.

USMS has a Club & Coach Services staff that may be able to assist you. It is headed by Mel Goldstein. Contact Mel by email at: ClubCoachDev@usms.org

What are the workouts like? If you have too many workouts focused on other than swimming 25s or 50s, but instead focus on sets of, say, 200s - you will lose many of your more "mature" swimmers.

The NASTI'S (the team I'm on) practice 3X per week officially right now. Tues/Thurs is at 7 p.m., and Saturday at 10 a.m. We do not have an official coach however we have a nice core of members who will bring workouts and run them while swimming. How does a team like this make it over the years? Simple answer: Lots of fun parties and socializing amongst the members! Some folk refer to us as "The Drinking Team with a Swimming Problem!" Possible your group should get together outside of swimming more often? Just a thought........................... :angel:

Bobinator, I love parties! Excellent idea. While we are all drinking, we could recruit other boozehounds...whether they swim or not! Just sort of throw them in the deep end. Seriously, though, I appreciate the feedback. I have heard this from others as well.

The price really depends on the area. I am happy paying more then your club for 3 practices a week as we have a good coach. My team practices Mon/Wed/Fri from 9-10 pm in the winter and 7:30-8:30 pm in an outdoor pool in the summer. My coach does a lot of best stroke sets. This should keep triathletes happy as they can still do free.

Have you considered changing the fee structure? If people have to pay for all four workouts even when they can only make one or two per week it may make them feel pressured and resentful. Especially if the coach introduces something like a new drill in one session and expects everyone to automatically know about it in subsequent sessions. Some of the people in the club I currently belong to can barely swim. They've joined in hopes of improving, which is probably why most people from a non-competitive background join swim clubs. Does your club have something to offer people like that or is it just workouts? People don't improve from just swimming a lot. I agree that making some of the workouts distance oriented will attract more triathletes, but doing work on other strokes won't necessarily turn them off. There's a triathlon club that works out in one of the pools I swim in, and they do strokes other than free. Many triathletes do want to try other forms of swimming, especially in winter when they have time to experiment and play around a bit.

We have several tri-athletes that train with our team too. In general, they simply do the entire workout freestyle when the rest of us change to stroke work. Our coaches support them and helping each swimmer in the pool reach their personal goals (be it fitness, stroke competition, or competing tri) becomes the focus of our team and our coaches on deck.

I swim masters with 2 main groups and both have a few triathletes. But I notice that stroke work is kept at a minimum. In a typical 3,300 yard workout there's a 300-400 yd FS warmup, 200-300 yard pull and a 200-300 yard kick drill to start things off. A transition set might have catch up drills or simply state "drill" for some sets of 50's or 100's. But that's usually it for drills as the main set is all FS or with some IM mixed in. The Masters programs here are very cool with the Triathletes and don't expect them do do IM stuff, nor are snotty about it. To get your numbers up I suggest appealing to the local triathletes which means you might have to reduce drills/strokework etc. I understand the need for strokework but sometimes you've got to change the menu to attract customers. Triathlon is a very fast growing sport and might get a kick start this year if Lance Armstrong signs up for KONA. O.K. I mis-interpreted "stroke work" for drills etc. But again, when all others are doing butterfly, backstroke, breastroke etc. the triathletes are doing freestyle. It sometimes is a challenge due to ability (fs vs bs in same lane) but we seem to work through it O.K. I've seen many triathletes take on stroke work just to mix it up a bit, even butterfly! The key is to make them feel comfortable in the group.

The NASTI'S (the team I'm on) practice 3X per week officially right now. Tues/Thurs is at 7 p.m., and Saturday at 10 a.m. We do not have an official coach however we have a nice core of members who will bring workouts and run them while swimming. How does a team like this make it over the years? Simple answer: Lots of fun parties and socializing amongst the members! Some folk refer to us as "The Drinking Team with a Swimming Problem!" Possible your group should get together outside of swimming more often? Just a thought........................... :angel: x2 on this. We have BOARD MEETINGS at least once a month. BOARD MEETINGS usually consist of Pizza and Beer after the workout.