{"id":430854,"date":"2020-05-06T15:08:35","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T22:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=430854"},"modified":"2020-05-11T16:44:23","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T23:44:23","slug":"swim-practice-social-distancing-protocol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/swim-practice-social-distancing-protocol\/","title":{"rendered":"Swim Practice Social Distancing Protocol"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can we safely swim with 6 people in a lane?<\/em><\/h3>\n

We hear a lot about the rules of running a gym with social distancing.\u00a0 There is plenty of support about managing our pool bathroom, or how to navigate at <50% capacity for a business.\u00a0 But as swim coaches the final key is to understand how to keep swimmers 6 or 10 feet apart while they are in a lane together.\u00a0 We can tether them to bungees on a lane line.\u00a0 We can have 2 swimmers per lane (one at each end of the pool).\u00a0 We can create complex lane position assignments with some swimmers at the wall and others in the middle of the pool.\u00a0 But none of these options provide us any long term value if we need to \u2018socially distance\u2019 our swimmers for months or longer.\u00a0 Having some swimmers start off the wall while others start in the middle of the pool creates chaos, collisions, and confusion for swimmers and coaches.\u00a0 If you only circle swim from a dive and have swimmers get out at the end of each distance, you still have pile-ups if swimmers don\u2019t get out of the pool very quickly, and with exhausted swimmers, this certainly can\u2019t happen very long.<\/p>\n

We coaches need a safe way to get back into training swimmers. We cannot wait until the last possible moment to resume practices. We know that our swimmers\u2019, parents\u2019, and coaches\u2019 safety is the most important problem at hand.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have a lot of grace period to sort out how we build new sets at the same time as how we keep the swimmers from becoming confused and stopping at the walls together.\u00a0\u00a0 When parents see their swimmers stopping together in the lane, they will quickly get frustrated and pull their kids from our teams or move them to a team that they feel does a better job of keeping their swimmers separated.<\/p>\n

The SeaWolves Swim Team, located in Georgia, started training with Social Distancing protocols in late February, before stay-at-home orders were in place.\u00a0 The SeaWolves started with 2 small training groups so they could document their workouts, sets, and processes just before they had to stop swimming in order to have videos and methods ready for training the rest of their swimmers when the team came out of hibernation later.\u00a0 This early experimentation with social distancing protocols gave the SeaWolves the chance to evaluate what would work and what wouldn\u2019t.\u00a0 They quickly decided that all of their swimmers needed to have a \u2018home base\u2019 to return to as their new \u2018starting wall\u2019.\u00a0 When 1-2 of their swimmers were starting at a wall, it was a physical disadvantage to those in the same lane that were starting away from the walls.\u00a0\u00a0 They also learned that the process of rotating the stopping locations (such as rotating who was at the wall each set) was far too confusing and created accidental \u2018pile ups\u2019 between swimmers, even though the SeaWolves were training with headsets so the coach was talking to each swimmer 100% of the time.\u00a0 Still accidents happened and swimmers ended up stopped in the same locations.\u00a0 So their experience taught them that;<\/p>\n

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  1. It was best to assign a \u2018home\u2019 position for each swimmer.<\/li>\n
  2. The \u2018home positions\u2019 all needed to be away from the walls so no one had an advantage or disadvantage.<\/li>\n
  3. The \u2018home positions needed to be marked by a unique color, both below the lane line as well as something standing up well above the lane line so it could be seen when swimming on the back or on the stomach for any type of kick or swim sessions.<\/li>\n
  4. Each swimmer needed a way to store their equipment at their \u2018home\u2019 position to avoid going back to the walls for gear changes and thus avoiding any \u2018pile up\u2019 at the walls between sets (and also save time in the workouts).<\/li>\n
  5. Their gear storage needed to be out of way and not drift\/float into the lanes when circle swimming.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The process the SeaWolves developed allowed them to fit as many as 5 swimmers per line and none of them were starting\/stopping at a wall position (1 under each backstroke flag, 1 at each red line, and 1 in the center of the pool).\u00a0\u00a0 However a 6th location was possible at the wall, as long as that was for the leader in each lane and not the last person in the lane.\u00a0 If the last person in the lane is on a wall, they will easily push off and run into the person in front of them due to the clear advantage of a wall push compared to a start without a push.\u00a0 So as long as the front lane leader is on the wall and the other 5 swimmers are stationed along the lane line, this can work but not ideal.\u00a0 The layout the Seawolves used with 5 positions down the lane creates about 12 feet from each swimmer in the same lane and 8+ feet between swimmers and the swimmers in the lanes next to each other.<\/p>\n

    But the SeaWolves were left with several physical problems that needed to be solved:<\/p>\n

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    1. How to mark each \u2018home\u2019 position above the lane line so it was visible when swimming on the back<\/li>\n
    2. How to store all possible gear so each swimmer could stay at their \u2018home\u2019 position 100% of the time during a 2 hour practice and not create a lot of swimmer interactions as swimmers went back and forth to the walls to get their gear.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      They also had to re-invent their terminology so swimmers could understand old sets and new workouts:<\/p>\n

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      1. Was \u2018100 yard swim\u2019 from wall to wall or from \u2018home\u2019 position back to \u2018home\u2019 position?\u00a0 For this they decided to call \u2018home to home\u2019 a \u2018true 100\u2019.\u00a0 When they wanted to race 100 yards from \u2018wall to wall\u2019 the swimmers know that a \u2018wall 100\u2019 means that you have a easy swim to the first wall and then race wall to wall for 100 followed by an easy circle swim back to their home location (which actually works out to 150 yards as the kids were quick to point out!)<\/li>\n
      2. That a \u2018true 75\u2019 yard distance is not actually possible unless you have swimmers stopping across from their \u2018home\u2019 position and crossing the lane in front of other swimmers still finishing their swim.<\/li>\n
      3. 100 IM can be \u2018true\u2019 or \u2018wall-to-wall\u2019… but mostly it needs to be \u2018wall-to-wall\u2019 or the lead swimmers only have 1-2 strokes of Fly.\u00a0 Therefore IM swims need to have an \u2018easy free\u2019 on the front and back of the 100 or 200 IM.<\/li>\n
      4. With all of the swimmers starting away from the walls, coaches have to address HOW swimmers can start.\u00a0 Most swimmers naturally want to drop down to the floor to push off, but this process is near impossible in very deep pools and far too easy when part of your lane is only 4 feet deep.\u00a0 So to level the playing field, the SeaWolves decided they would have all swimmers laying flat with their right hand on the lane line (just in front of their Station Marker) and get ONE single pull on the lane line to start off.\u00a0 When some swimmers started from the floor and others from a kick and others from a lane pull, there are too many pile ups and it is impossible to get timed sets and compare times from such differences.<\/li>\n
      5. Timed set can be tricky.\u00a0 For swimmers without headsets they can start with the clock from their lane position (with a lane line pull) and then sight the clock as their eyes pass their Station Marker.\u00a0 If the swimmers have headsets it is easier if the coach calls out the times (every second) and the swimmers listen for their time as their eyes pass their Station Marker.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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