June Training: Heading for the Home Stretch

Feature by Tyler Remmel

PHOENIX, Arizona, June 13. THE month of June is a pivotal one in the training cycle of United States swimmers, a time when training ramps up just before tapering down. In a broad sense, the goal of every team is similar: to swim fast at the end of the season.

Every team has their own philosophy of how to get there though. These philosophies are as heavily influenced by internal factors like individual coaches' beliefs as they are by the external factors like pool availabilities. Sometimes, even things like weather and climate can have a drastic effect on the training that a team does during this month.

In Wisconsin, Lake Country Swim Team has very limited access to long course facilities.

"In June, we can finally go outside, enjoy our summers, and do long course training," said LAKE coach Tom Coons. "We've been cooped up most of the fall, most of the winter [and] most of the spring, so we do like going outside for as much summer as we can get."

When they get outside, Lake Country approaches its long course training differently than they do short course training. Race speed and over-distance training are the two top changes for the club.

Coaches Mark Kohnhorst and Coons also like to get swimmers outside as much as possible for dryland, taking advantage of favorable weather for runs or stadium stairs.

The pool availability for coach Duffy Dillon and Fort Lauderdale Aquatics is much more favorable than it is for Lake Country. They call the International Swimming Hall of Fame pool complex home, which means that they have access to a pair of 50-meter pools.

Dillon takes advantage of that fact as often as possible, and acknowledges, "We are in an enviable position."

In general, FLA leaves the pools set up so that one is short course year round, and one stays long course all year. Even during the short course season, the team will average three to four long course sessions each week. During the long course season, they simply even up the number of sessions in the short course and long course pools.

Crazy enough, sometimes workouts can even switch between the two pools. For example, Dillon says that sometimes he will have his sprinters warm up long course for a short course workout, so they can get a longer, lower intensity aerobic warm-up set in.

But as it turns out, when it comes to long course training, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Well, maybe not that exactly, but Dillon thinks that it's important to keep short course training integrated during the long course season. He says that turns and walls can tend to fall apart during the long course season otherwise.

Both Dillon and Coons stress the importance of good walls, even during a long course season. The types of training that their teams do long course are different, though.

Unlike Lake Country, who will do over-distance training for all four strokes long course, Dillon and Fort Lauderdale take a more stroke-axis-specific approach. That is, aerobic breaststroke and fly sets are done exclusively in the short course pool, never long course.

This idea of switching between courses is widespread, and not at all limited to these clubs. The Colorado Stars also switch between courses, taking morning practices in their long course pool and afternoons in their short course pool.

Not every team has access to long course facilities, though. Northern Lights Swim Club, located outside of Anchorage, Alaska, can't practice at a long course facility at all this summer. Instead, they are doing their summer training in short course meters.

Coach Cliff Murray knows that his situation isn't ideal during a long course season, but he has a good idea of how training short course meters can be translated into long course success.

"I've convinced all the kids…that we can train short course meters and make it just as effective as long course meters," he said. "It's a handicap, but I'm not going to let the kids know that."

Murray actually talks to his swimmers about what the differences between short course and long course are, and how racing in both courses is different. And he emphasizes how a lack of access to long course is a problem that's been beaten in the past, citing Ian Crocker as an example of someone who was able to be greatly successful without having any long course access.

"We're [still] in the long course mode," he said.

Sometimes, it's the unlikely or absurd events that might interfere with June training. For ASK Swim in Minot, N.D., that is just the case. Usually, they have long course access from the beginning of June through the end of July. But, with the flood crisis in North Dakota right now, the long course pool that ASK calls home won't open until June 20.

To compensate, coach Kathy Aspaas will modify the yardages of short course swims so that they more closely relate to the long course equivalent. That means that she tries to avoid doing swims shorter than 75 yards, and will routinely include off-distances like 125s.

Ultimately, Dillon summed up June training best.

"We try to tax our swimmers in as many ways as possible…June is like our boot camp," he said. "By June 30, they feel very tired."

One of the other reasons that June is so important is because kids are out or getting out of school. It is sort of like a strategic time period, where a number of different variables line up to create a great training situation.

"With school being over, we like [June] because we now move up on the priority list," said Coons. "During the school year, we don't fight family, we don't fight God, [and] we don't fight school. So we're number four on the priority list."

"Now with school over, we get to move to number three, which definitely helps," he said.

During the summer, coaches report seeing better energy levels from their swimmers. Spending eight hours in a classroom (and probably having a practice earlier that morning) can really limit how much a coach can expect from a swimmer during an afternoon during school. Naps and snacks can make it much easier on a teenage body to withstand the training, though.

Summer jobs can interfere with summer training, though. Some teams may advise against getting jobs completely, but most recognize that some kids will need to work during the summer months. Dillon tries to manage his swimmers' work schedules by offering jobs helping out with the club's swim camps.

There's also the idea of kids being kids and losing track of time in between practices. As a result, they might not take the necessary steps to be able to recover properly. But, STARS coach Michael Peterson and Coons agree that learning to manage time effectively and managing time around a job is a learning process, and they are quick to point out that swimming can be a tool to improve that skill.

While it isn't a perfect comparison, there is a definite relevance between June training and Christmas training. Both times are similarly distanced from the end-of-season championship meets, and both are consequently some of the most intense parts of the entire season. This is not news, and is one of the reasons that both times are highly popular for taking training trips. Tiffany Elias featured the benefits of taking a holiday training trip in the June Issue of Swimming World Magazine, and most of those benefits hold true during summer training trips as well.

Dillon and Fort Lauderdale Aquatics have not been able to take a training trip yet. A lot of variables ranging from tough economic times (Florida's tourism industry took a major, lasting hit) to the obligation of hosting camps have made it impossible to do a team training camp. They have all seen the benefits of training trips for other teams, as their ISHOF pool is one of the top spots frequented by traveling teams. Dillon is planning on taking one next year though, leading up to the Olympic Trials.

In general, it seems that there is a pattern of teams doing their aerobic training during longer morning workouts, and then using the afternoons as a time to work on race speed or technique work. This would correlate well with meet preparation and is comparable to the warm-up that might be done during a championship meet; a longer, workout-esque aerobic warm-up in the morning to wake the body from sleep and to loosen, and then riding that increased heart rate from the morning session into the evening, where a warm-up might be shorter and more oriented upon loosening tight muscles and fine tuning race details.

There are as many perspectives of what June training should or shouldn't be as there are coaches and teams. When it comes down to it, though, the results of this month of training will be seen in the results of the championship meets, and every team and coach is confident that what they're doing will lead to fast times when they get there.

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