Tag Archives: ymca swim team

Last Week of the Summer Season

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As we enter the final week of this summer season, I want to thank all of the Hamden/North Haven YMCA Typhoon parents and swimmers for their 3 1/2 months of hard work and dedication!  You have all done a great job this season as parents have supported both the swimmers and the team, the swimmers supported each other and gave it their all throughout practices, and the coaches who put their time and effort into helping the swimmer attain great results.

With all of that said, Thursday will be our last day of practice as the 13 and over swimmers will be in competition on Friday evening, and Wednesday evening’s practice is canceled for the Senior group to get down to the yardage (well, more-so the rest) that we need this week.  If there are any questions about this, please let me know.

The coaches and I are looking forward to an outstanding performance from all of the Typhoon swimmers!  We wish all of you the best throughout this week as well as going into Yankee Cluster Championships this upcoming weekend.

Go Typhoons!

What Is Taper?

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I have been having quite a few parents ask about “taper”.  Some parents have a general idea, some parents know a great detail of what they used to do as swimmers, and some have no idea.  Either way, it is a good thing for all parents to understand what taper is, and what type of taper we (the Hamden/North Haven YMCA Typhoons) use.

First and foremost, taper is the significant decrease of yardage per hour while maintaining intensity within the practice sets.  So, while we will practice for relatively the same amount of time, there is more purposeful (and fast) swimming with more rest after each swim or set.

With that said, let’s take a look at the three different types of taper:

  1. Step Taper — This is where the yardage per hour for practices drop in a step direction.  So, the first week of taper will yield a specific amount of yardage that will stay throughout that entire week.  The second week of taper will step down to a lesser yardage and maintain that specific yardage throughout that week, etc.  So, if you were to graph out the yardage per day it would look like steps going down.
  2. Linear Taper — This is where the yardage per hour is dropped consistently per day of training.  So, for one day it will be 2000 yards per hour, the second day is 1900 per hour, the third is 1800 per hour, and so on until the final day of training.  If this were to be graphed out, it would be a straight (diagonal) line down from upper left to lower right.
  3. Progressive Taper — This is a combination of step taper and linear taper where the yardage is exponentially and mathematically decreased each day to look like a ski slope that plains out at the end of the training (if it is graphed).  This has been scientifically proven to be the most efficient form of taper through a 14 – 21 day taper process.

We utilize a progressive taper with our Juniors and Seniors as we typically plan for a 14 day taper period.  Again, this has been scientifically proven to be the most effective form of taper throughout several studies which involve highly trained athletes.  Typically, sprinters will see a decrease in time of 3% to 6% while mid-distance and distance swimmers will experience a 2% to 4% decrease in time.

For the Silver and Gold groups, we do more of a steep step taper where we will decrease the yardage within the last week of training to a significant exponential amount.  This allows swimmers (and coaches) to focus strictly on race technique, starts, turns, and breathing patterns.

Hopefully this helps our parents a bit in understanding what taper really is along with which kind of taper we use throughout our seasons.  However, if you do happen to have any questions, comments, or feedback just leave a comment below.

Yankee Cluster Championships – Summer 2010

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Going into the next week, we will be dropping the hammer with the Hamden/North Haven Typhoon swimmers.  Each individual swimmer will be focusing on race technique and overall meet performance as we near closer to Friday and Saturday.

For Friday evening, the arrival time for 13 and over swimmers at the Northern Middlesex YMCA is 4:45pm.  Warm-ups will start at 5:00pm, and the meet will start as soon as possible following warm-ups and one-way starts.

For Saturday, the arrival time for the 12 and under swimmers at the Northern Middlesex YMCA is 6:45am.  Warm-ups will start at 7:00am, and the meet will start (as long as all goes to plan).

So, in the coming week, practices will be a bit shortened for the Juniors and Seniors as we will be decreasing our total yardage by 100 yards per day until we reach our max taper at 1350 yards per hour.  The intensity of practice will maintain, and hopefully we will see an ideal 4 – 6% drop in times for our sprint/stroke events, and around a 2 – 4% drop for the distance events.

As always, if you have any questions about the meet or practice times, etc, please contact me at any point!

Check Reminder For Yankee Clusters

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Parents, I wanted to shoot a quick reminder blog post out there for all of you.  This week Thursday (July 15th), the check for Yankee Cluster Championships is due in the amount of $12.00 made out to the Hamden/North Haven YMCA Typhoons.  If I do not receive a check, I am assuming that your swimmer is not attending and will not be entered into the meet.

With that said, I am absolutely looking forward to a great two weeks of taper time with the Juniors and Seniors (one week for Gold and Silver)!  For those of you who have not gone through a taper period before, please make sure that you try to have your swimmers rest before the meet, eat well, and just relax!  They will be filled to the brim with energy over the next two weeks, and its important that they conserve that energy.

As always, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me!

Taper Time For The Next Two Weeks

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The 2010 Long Course season for the Hamden/North Haven YMCA Swim Team is (almost too) rapidly coming to an end. With tonight marking the last dual meet of the season (swimming against the Wallingford YMCA Dolphins), taper will start this upcoming Monday for the Juniors and Seniors.  Here is a quick look at where we have been, overall, for the season as well as where taper will take us over the course of two weeks.

Throughout the summer season, we have peaked at 3350 yards per hour for the Senior group and around 3000 yards per hour for the Junior group.  With the coming taper period, we will drop to 2150 per hour for both groups for the first week while we maintain work on anaerobic phases and race paces with increased rest and concentration on technique.

For the final week, we will drop the hammer to 1525 yards per hour and fine tune all of our race technique and strategies as the Yankee Cluster Championship hits that Friday (July 23rd) and Saturday (July 24th).

Overall, it has been a phenominal seasaon, and I cannot wait to see how these upcoming two weeks turn out for the Juniors and Seniors.

P.S.  The Silver and Gold groups will be going through a “mini-taper”.  Since they are full of energy anyway, they will be truly focusing on race technique and resting just that last week before Championships.

Go Typhoons!

Spring/Summer Swim Team Starts Monday!

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With our pre-season swim clinic almost over, the Hamden North Haven YMCA Typhoons look to start their Spring/Summer season this upcoming Monday (April 26, 2010).  However, before we move forward, let’s take a look at what we have done so far this past week and a half in our clinic:

Flip Turns
  • Increased the speed that they get around on the flip
  • Improved the efficiency of their last pull before the flip
  • Adjusted their hand positions prior to the push-off from the wall
  • Fine-tuned the smaller details of the turn to make it as efficient as possible
Freestyle
  • Worked on individual hand entry
  • Focused on improving the high catch and early vertical forearm
  • Improved body position and kick technique
  • Altered the follow through of the pull to increase torque
Backstroke
  • Worked the efficiency of  the kick
  • Introduced utilizing the core during the stroke to increase velocity
  • Practiced proper body position and swimming downhill
  • Implemented a new flip turn technique to minimize time between the last stroke and the flip turn
Breaststroke
  • Focused on kick timing to increase stroke efficiency
  • Worked on when to let go of the water during the stroke
  • Introduced “pressing”
  • Practiced the proper way to pull and shoot the hands for maximum torque and minimum drag
Butterfly
  • Improved the efficiency and the timing of the kick
  • Worked two different ways to catch and pull the water, and each swimmer decided which way was better for them
  • Practiced the timing of the stroke
  • Introduced a new butterfly turn in order to minimize arm drag during the breakout

Even though we have already had a great clinic with the swimmers, we still have an IM day, and a day to review with everyone!  All in all, this has been a very successful clinic, and the coaches can only look forward to what is going to be an outstanding (and fun) Spring/Summer with the Hamden North Haven Swim Team!

If you’re interested in finding out more information about the Spring and Summer season, please either visit our Registration Page or contact Coach Andy.

Happy Swimming!

Short Course Season Accomplishments – 2009/2010

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As we go into the New England Regional Championships, I want to recap our 2009/2010 Short Course season with the Hamden North Haven YMCA Typhoon swim team.  So, without further ado, here is how our season played out:

We started our season with our swim clinic about 3 weeks prior to any other swim team in our Yankee Cluster, and it proved to be very successful!  The swimmers learned a plethora of drills and skills that they would be then used throughout the regular season to improve their stroke and racing technique.  Following the clinic, we had our first meet in early October.

The 2009 National YMCA Virtual Invitational had 220 swim teams (in total 11,605 athletes throughout the U.S.) swam locally to compete nationally against each other which was the first time that an event like this has been run by the YMCA.  The Typhoon swimmers did extremely well with the following as highlight swims:

  • W. Munstermann placed 12th in the 50 free, and 15th in the 50 back
  • G. Livsey placed 19th in the 50 free, and 11th in the 100 breast
  • 10 and under boys placed 15th overall
  • Typhoons finished 2nd out of all our Cluster teams (69th overall out of 220 teams – not bad for being a young swim team)

The Autumn Classic was the next stop for the Typhoon swim team, and we did excellent!  Some of the highlight swims were:

  • A. Allen took off 9.23 seconds from her 100 free
  • G. Desroches dropped nearly 4 seconds on her 50 freestyle
  • E. Hodes dropped over 5 seconds in his 50 breaststroke, and over 3 seconds from his 50 free
  • N. Kern dropped 10.98 seconds in his 200 free
  • G. Livsey cut 5 seconds from his 200 free
  • M. Munstermann took down her 200 IM by 8.30, and her 100 free by 3.80

Our meet against Farmington Valley YMCA, though long, was a very fast meet for the athletes.  In total, there were 18 Typhoon swimmers that dropped time for a cumulative of over 3 minutes dropped by those 18 swimmers.  That equals out to an average of 17 seconds dropped per swimmer!

And the times just kept getting faster and faster throughout the year!  Typically swimmers will usually flatten out (or plateau) with their times as the season progresses until it is time to taper.  However, the Typhoon swimmers truly didn’t experience this – at least not at looking through everyone’s times!  That not only shows that we still have room to grow, but that the swimmers have tremendous heart and dedication to get better no matter the circumstances!

So, the short course season went on and into Yankee Cluster Championships.  Last year, we (as an almost brand new team) finished 11th out of 13 teams.  This year, we were able to overtake significantly larger teams and place 9th overall out of 13 teams – as an aside, we were the second smallest team in attendance!  Not only were we able to accomplish that, but take a look at our other achievements:

  • 13 and 14 year old girls placed 8th overall
  • 13 and 14 year old boys placed 5th overall (and this includes 15 – 18 as well)
  • 9 and 10 year old boys placed 3rd overall

The Yankee Clusters wrapped up our regular season which produced 8 individual qualifiers for New England Regionals, but our swimmers wanted more!  So, we ventured off to the Last Ditch meet where we entered 8 individual events.  Four of those events ended up as qualifying times where we added 2 more individually qualified swimmers to our total!

Our year-end stats are still in limbo depending on how the swimmers do at the Regional meet, but here is a quick look at how we stand so far:

  • 43 of 66 team records broken (some broken several times)
  • over 50% of swims were personal best times
  • Out of 60 swimmers, 10 individually qualified for New England’s, and a 19 swimmers competing in relays which is almost 50% of our team that will attend Regionals this year – the highest number in our team’s history!
  • And, most importantly, a total of 60 smiles on 60 swimmers’ faces every week throughout the year as they learned and had fun with their friends!

So, congratulations to the swimmers, the coaching staff, the parents, and the Hamden North Haven YMCA community!  I will try to update all of you on our happenings in Boston as we travel this weekend so stay tuned for more Typhoon News!

Go Typhoons!!

YMCA New England Championships 2010: 3 Days Left

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The Hamden North Haven YMCA Typhoon Swim Team officially has 3 days left until they make their way to the YMCA New England Regional Championships in Boston, MA!  This 2009 – 2010 Short Course season marks the first time that the Typhoons have hit double digits in individual qualifiers ranging from the Hamden, North Haven, Bethany, and surrounding communities.  This also allows relay teams from each age group to attend the championship meet!

For more: New England Championship Information

Travelling to Boston!

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As the Hamden North Haven YMCA Swim Team – The Typhoons – head into their last week of taper practice prior to New England’s, here is a quick run-down of how the 2009/2010 short course season went:

  • 43 of 66 team records broken
  • 10 individual swimmers qualified for New England’s
  • 7 relay teams (a total of 28 swimmers) competing in New England’s
  • 13 and 14 year old boys placed 5th overall in Cluster Championships
  • 9 and 10 year old boys placed 3rd overall in Cluster Championships
  • 13 and 14 year old girls placed 7th overall in Cluster Championships

To say the very least, it has been a great season so far with the final meet coming up in Boston, MA!  For those swimmers in the meet, swim hard and fast!

For results, I will be trying to post each evening which events were swum and how each swimmer (and relay team) did with their swims!  So, check back for more information, and more records broken in a week!

Go Typhoons!

YMCA Yankee Cluster Championships 2010

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The regular short course season for 2009 and 2010 has officially ended on an extremely high note with the YMCA Yankee Cluster Championships this past weekend!  I want to congratulate all of the swimmers, parents, Coach Kait, and Coach Nicole for their accomplishments, achievements, and improvements throughout this year!

Here are some of the overall highlights from the meet:

  • 8 and under boys took 7th overall
  • 9 and 10 boys finished 3rd overall
  • 11 and 12 girls brought home 6th overall
  • 11 and 12 boys took 8th overall
  • 13 and over boys took 5th overall

Not bad for being the second smallest team that participated in Clusters – a total of 39 swimmers from our team that attended the meet!

If you want to see the results for this past weekend, please check: Yankee Cluster Championships.