A Day in the Life: John Criste, Day 2

IRVINE, California, January 10. IN his second entry in the "A Day in the Life" series on SwimmingWorldMagazine.com, John Criste walks us through a tweak to his breaststroke turn as well as some cord resistance sets.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007, Day 2
Morning practice. As a swimmer these words are either music or pain to your ears. Luckily, I love going to morning practice so waking up early, as I mentioned yesterday, isn't too much of a daunting task. Unfortunately with my school schedule starting at 6:56 a.m., I am only able to stay in the water for about 40 minutes until I need to get out for school. I do my best to make each minute of morning practice count. I figure the more I can practice my technique and stroke efficiency, the longer I will be able to maintain them during a meet.

Speaking of technique, yesterday Ron [Turner] asked me to tweak a small part of my breaststroke turn. Trying something new always feels a bit awkward. After practicing my new turn today, I felt much more comfortable and the best part, I have a meet to try it in right away; my hopes are to speed up my turns in order to better both my 100 and 200 breaststroke times. Just when you think you've exhausted your mental and physical capacity, your coach can always amaze you with new information about your stroke, practice habits, mental attitude and approach to swimming in meets. It just goes to show that looking to your coaches for answers and actually communicating isn't a bad idea.

We started afternoon practice today with our normal dryland circuit, as opposed to the weight training that we did yesterday. Our dryland circuit consists of jump roping, push-ups, core exercises, more jump roping, and my favorite drill: burpees. Currently, we are going 40 seconds on and 20 seconds off and will build up to one minute on and 30 seconds off. Dryland was a great start to a great practice.

Today, I did one of my favorite sets as a breaststroke swimmer:
3x { 3 25s*}
• 1st 25 pull with buoy
• 2nd 25 kick (board optional)
• 3rd 25 swim
• all 25s done with cords

Using the cords when swimming really helps me to work on my stroke with maximum resistance. When pulling with cords, I get to work on my hand speed and "insweep," which really helps at the end of a race. Kicking against the resistance the cord challenges me to make it across the pool in the least amount of kicks possible, forcing me to get as much distance per kick as possible. Swimming against the cord resistance proves difficult those last few strokes before I hit the wall.

There are only 44 more days left until American Short Course Championships; a meet Nova is looking forward to. After all my work and getting ready for college swimming (Go Cardinal!) I am looking to meet my goal times at Short Course Champs. (Although, in California, our short course season goes all the way through May for high school championships.) There is still much work to be done. Goal setting is vital and should be done in a timely manner; a lesson I learned not too long ago.

GO NOVA!

John

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