Beautiful morning for a swim

Jun
12

Beautiful morning for a swim

Posted by Kevin Doak on Friday at: 2:01pm (June 12th, 2009)
Today I woke up early and swam to make up for my malnourished practice yesterday afternoon. What a great way to start the day! I've been so busy and up so late that morning practices haven't been in the cards for quite some time. The swimmers and coaches were understandably surprised to see me there.

Frequently in practice, coaches assign sets which use different types of equipment as aids to either work on problematic areas in your stroke, or just make you work harder. This morning we used "Chutes" which are among the more recent athlete torture methods the swimming community has come up with. They're basically a thin belt with a 6 foot string attached to a metal ring and nylon fabric in the shape of a parachute. The top of the parachute has a draw string which can fully open or fully close the device. The point is to drag this silly thing through the water which obviously slows you down and makes you work harder to get to the other end.

When I was in college we literally used 5 gallon buckets attached to surgical tubing and a belt.

Its a commonly held belief that coaches just dream these systems up out of utter boredom and the sick pleasure of watching good swimmers flail through the water on a regular basis. Kidding of course... I think.

Honestly I'm not sure which swimming drag system I despise more! The chutes are easier to move through the water with (when open) but the string that attaches the belt to the chute can cause small cuts in your skin when kicking at full speed. At least the old school system used soft surgical tubing, but then you had to deal with a 5 gallon bucket attached to you at all times.

We did 20x50's @ 1:10 going 2 smooth 3 fast. It was a good set overall. The benefit to it all was that once I took these cursed chutes off, it felt like I was speeding through the water faster than ever before!