Training to Beat School Record!

OK, so turns are really important and Strength Training. What kind of things can i do outside of the pool to help me?

Well as you seem to know the best strength training for swimming is swimming. But if you can't get in the pool, (no open swimming available in your area etc..) Then you will need to do some dryland work. The right thing to do depends on whether your bones have hardened or not. (For males this can happen as early as 10-12 and as late as 16-18). Do not do weights if your bones haven't hardened yet! If your bones have hardened then the following web page is one place to start. www.breaststroke.info/BRSTWE.htm But I think you should ask your coach, most coaches appreciate a truly motivated swimmer.

I suggest joining a USA Swimming Program. They have one in Santa Ana at Santa Ana college. It called Socal. And if money is the problem since I know Teenagers in Santa Ana come from immirgant families, I think they may be able to cut some of the pricing for your montly dues. Look under the teams in California under the USA Swimmming site.

Here's a point that's often overlooked. Practice your turns. Push hard with the legs. Streamline off the walls. And glide for as long as possible. Take a nice long pull out and then surface. The turns in breastroke are half the race. If you've got the lungpower to manage a powerful underwater pullout, that record is history.

Since school is starting soon I would first suggest that you ask your coach what you can do in the preseason to get ready for the season. You should realise that a 20 second improvement for a 100 is very hard to do. My guess is he would suggest the following. 1. Strength training. 2. Distance and drill work on your own time, if you can find a pool with open swimming. Since you are a *** stroker, the drilling is probably more important than the distance. (You might want to check out the workouts section for *** stroke drills) I am assuming this isn't a brand new team, but one that has been in existence awhile. If this is the case, the "relatively soft" record would indicate that the yardage being done is about like in my HS, (2-4,000 yards/workout). This is not very much, so you have to make every yard count. Before my freshman year I took a look at the workouts being done in Swimmers World and compared them to what my team did. The warmups in that rag were longer than some of the workouts we were doing. This made me realise that I needed make every yard count. So I went all out on every rep and every set, even the warmup. The only time I backed off the intensity was when the coach ordered me to. My goggles would fill with tears 2 or 3 workouts a week from the pain. My HS program was cut after my freshman year, (our pool was condemned and a replacement wasn't built), but I managed to set records in my low power program for the 200 and 500 free, and the 160 and 200 IM with this approach. I also snuck into states for the 500 Fr. (The area I swam in was populated by other programs operating under the same constraints as our program) There wasn't much pool time to be had, so the times were very un-impressive.

Well, on another site they mention just the rate for USA Swimming which is going from 35 to 45 a year. Unfortunely, I wasn't able to find the team rate per month dues. You can call Gina who is the Santa Ana coach at (949)387-7069. Since you do water polo which helps you stay a little in shape for swimming, you also might asked about lap swimming programs that are open during the school year from Gina or the Santa Ana rec department. Good Luck.

I just might do that, about the USA swim team, but i have Water Polo aswell im going to need to call the coaches that are in Santa Ana and see when are practices ect. Also, does anyone know the approx. rates of a USA swim team?

If you are doing water polo, you are already getting a good workout. Egg-beater kick will help for your breaststroke kick. If you have tried any goalie drills to pop out of the water, that will probably help your pull.