Weekly Message - July 12, 2020

Monty Hopkins

Hello MAST families,

Two weeks into training and the trend is very positive.  Swimmers are paying attention, learning to cope with no lines on the bottom and the attitudes are very good during both swimming and dryland sessions.

Attendance – "If you miss a day, you miss a lot."  Here are the top attendance groups so far:

  • 75% Group - Here is a list of the swimmers who have attended 75% or more of the practices:

Lexi Sedgwick, Ellie Schiffer, Dylan Chapman, Jacob Eminger, Lyra Grammel, Ellyanne Grammel, August Menker, Lucia Miramonte, Lila Pease, Erin Belisle, Owen Hein, Jonah Otten, Abigail Roeper, Jonathan Walker, Katherine Ehlers, Elizabeth Eminger, Alli Plush, Ethan Shepherd, Lily Wright, Sophia McCalla, Lauren Menker,

  • 100% Group - Here is a list of the swimmers who have attended 100% of the practices:

Emily Hopper, Alexis Hopper, Cora Otten, Andrew Spence, Kristen Bruce, Lila Sager, Cate Alsten, Emmett Derrig, Jake Nerl, Riya Terala, Kendall Chapman, Morgan Clark, Isa Cornwell, Molly Craycraft, Patrick Derrig, Ellie Hausfeld, Paul Menker, Sophia Otten, Abbey Sauers, Shreya Terala, Nick Welty,

 

A quick review of weather rules:  On Friday we, reluctantly, ended the Red 2 / Red 3 practice when we heard thunder.  Our pool time is limited and we don’t like to cut it back more but we will always default to your children’s safety and welfare. If we hear faint/distant thunder we will check a weather app like Weatherbug Spark.  If the app shows a “seek shelter now” warning or lightning approaching and inside the 5 mile ring on the map, we will get the swimmers out of the pool immediately.  Thanks for your understanding and support.

 

Observations from your new coach.

* MAST swimmers pay attention during practice

* MAST swimmers are eager to learn

* MAST swimmers are hard workers

* MAST swimmers show a strong desire to improve

* MAST swimmers have positive attitudes

* MAST swimmers help their teammates

* MAST swimmers are respectful toward everyone

 

Covid Update:

As I am sure you all know by now the rules for wearing masks have been updated.  Please remind your swimmers to wear masks (except when exercising) and be strict about the 6 foot physical distancing.

From CDC – Stay home if you might have been exposed to COVID-19

Quarantine is used to keep someone who might have been exposed to COVID-19 away from others. Quarantine helps prevent spread of disease that can occur before a person knows they are sick or if they are infected with the virus without feeling symptoms. People in quarantine should stay home, separate themselves from others, monitor their health, and follow directions from their state or local health department.

What’s the difference between quarantine and isolation?

Quarantine keeps someone who might have been exposed to the virus away from others.

Isolation separates people who are infected with the virus away from people who are not infected.

Who needs to quarantine?

Anyone who has been in close contact with someone who has COVID-19.

This includes people who previously had COVID-19 and people who have taken a serologic (antibody) test and have antibodies to the virus.

What counts as close contact?

  • You were within 6 feet of someone who has COVID-19 for at least 15 minutes
  • You provided care at home to someone who is sick with COVID-19
  • You had direct physical contact with the person (touched, hugged, or kissed them)
  • You shared eating or drinking utensils
  • They sneezed, coughed, or somehow got respiratory droplets on you

Steps to take - Stay home and monitor your health

  • Stay home for 14 days after your last contact with a person who has COVID-19
  • Watch for fever (100.4◦F), cough, shortness of breath, or other symptoms of COVID-19
  • If possible, stay away others, especially people who are at higher risk for getting very sick from COVID-19

When to start and end quarantine - You should stay home for 14 days after your last contact with a person who has COVID-19.

For all of the following scenarios, even if you test negative for COVID-19 or feel healthy, you should stay home (quarantine) since symptoms may appear 2 to 14 days after exposure to the virus.

 

From Ohio Department of Health: COVID-19 Contact Tracing - Protecting Against COVID-19

ALERT: Scammers posing as contact tracers have been preying on Ohioans. Legitimate contact tracers will initially reach out by phone and will never ask for your Social Security number, your bank account number or any other financial information. NEVER click on a link or respond to a text saying you have been exposed to COVID-19. If you have concerns about whether a call is legitimate, contact your local health department. Report suspected scams to the office of Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost at www.OhioProtects.org or 1-800-282-0515.

Contact tracing involves identifying people who are likely to get sick because of being in contact with those who have tested positive. Contact tracing is an important part of Ohio moving forward as more businesses and recreation sites reopen.

Local health departments conduct contact tracing every day for various infectious diseases. If you’re sick, these local health department workers (nurses and other healthcare professionals) interview you and find out who you may have come into contact with and potentially exposed to your illness. Limiting contacts means the virus isn’t able to infect other people. The virus lives in people. Limiting contacts means the virus has nowhere to live.

The Ohio Department of Health has partnered with Partners in Health, a world-renowned organization that works to protect communities. The group will bring in needed resources to implement our plan. With their help, Ohio will increase the number of community tracers from a few hundred to possibly nearly 2,000.

The following describes the contact tracing process that will take place should you start to feel ill.

  1. You call your healthcare provider, who may decide to test you for COVID-19 if you are exhibiting the symptoms. While you wait for the test results, you stay home and isolate yourself from others.
     
  2. If you test positive for COVID-19, your healthcare provider will call you to let you know that you tested positive. They will notify the local health department, who will then notify the Ohio Department of Health so that the case is added to the state’s data. During this time, you continue to stay home and isolate yourself.
     
  3. Next, a public health worker who is performing contact tracing will reach out to you to voluntarily talk and create a line list that is made up of who you have been in contact with. This traces who you may have come into contact with and may have been exposed to the virus.
     
  4. While you are still home and isolating, the public health worker who is conducting the contact tracing will call those who you may have been around and may have been exposed. Those who have been exposed will self-quarantine and monitor their symptoms for cough, fever, and shortness of breath. If they show no symptoms, after 14 days, their quarantine lifts. If these individuals do begin to show symptoms, they should contact their healthcare provider who may tell them to go and get a test.

For answers to your COVID-19 questions, call 1-833-4-ASK-ODH (1-833-427-5634).

Your mental health is just as important as your physical health. If you or a loved one are experiencing anxiety related to the coronavirus pandemic, help is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Call the COVID-19 CareLine at 1-800-720-9616.

 

And Now Back To Swimming Information - Things everyone can do to maximize time spent at swim practice.

 

In Swimming the best approach is to Focus on what you can control:  personal effort that leads to improvement.

One thing that motivates almost every swimmer more than anything else is improvement. When swimmers work to improve their practice times and/or distance covered they are focusing on the things that they can control.  Swimmers have no control over how fast others swim and are only setting themselves up for disappointment if they evaluate their success on the place they finish in a race.  Constantly working on personal improvement is the key.

What gets measured – gets improved:  Use a training journal to track the distance you swim you swim at practice, the intervals (cycles) you are able to do and your best performances during practice.  Swimmers in the Black 2 & 3 Groups should “Score” your practice effort on a 0-5 scale (see detailed description at the end)* as a way to comparing effort and result.

For aerobic (endurance) training work on hitting a faster interval, or swimming the same reps at a faster speed, or performing each lap with one or two less strokes.

The Right Process leads to Improvement in Performance, so get Process Oriented: When you focus on working hard and you are willing to keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone the improvement will come.  One of the benefits of the practice journal or log book is to record these little daily steps forward and let them add up to huge leaps in ability, confidence and improvement.

Three very important things everybody can do - and should always do.

  1. Breathe every three strokes in Freestyle - Most swimmers tend to breathe on their dominant side. Learning to breathe every three strokes can help balance out the swimmers muscle development and build a more efficient freestyle.  Breathing every three can also help the swimmer develop their endurance.
  2. Always use a strong six-beat kick - Using a six-beat kick in Freestyle not only helps you go faster and swim in a straight line but it also helps you become more fit because by working the large leg muscles you put a higher oxygen demand on your body.  Use that six-beat kick on every length of every practice.
  3. Master the underwater streamlined dolphin kick - Fast underwater streamline dolphin kick is critical.  Underwater kicking should be seen as the fifth swimming stroke.  Swimmers travel faster in underwater kick than any other discipline except for sprint freestyle.  If you commit to “working your walls” every time you push-off you will find holding your breath becomes easier and your speed will improve - dramatically. 

If you aren’t convinced underwater kicking is worth training… ask these three Olympians https://youtu.be/kc8k2GUnUsA(Lochte, Phelps and Shields)

Here is the Practice Scoring system for Black 2 & Black 3 – this is a “no grade inflation” system

5

AWESOME – The 5 is for those rare days when you do something incredible or entirely unexpected.  A good example is a personal best time in practice or a challenging set where you performed better than ever before.  These days will come to you if you stay focused on consistent hard effort in training so enjoy them when they do.  It’s also valuable to note what was happening in the days before a practice breakthrough.  Try to know yourself better so that you can create breakthroughs on a regular basis

4

ABOVE STANDARD – These are those really strong days when you went on a faster cycles or held times during practice that you normally don’t.  This is a great day and you should note what is great about it.  Build on these successes but if you see that you are scoring 4’s every day perhaps you will realize it’s time to expect more from yourself every day.

3

STANDARD - This is what you should expect to see on a regular basis.  As you improve what was once your personal standard practice should be a higher standard as the season continues.  Scoring 3 every day is the expectation but you should be looking for ways to take those 3’s to a higher level.

2

BELOW STANDARD – You did what you were asked to do and put in your best effort but for some reason you just were not able to swim as fast as you normally do.  Perhaps you have not been eating or sleeping well. Make sure you are properly hydrating. Watch for trends of 2 (or even 1) and discuss with you coach if it lasts more than a few days

1

BAD DAY – You were at (maybe you didn’t want to be) and you struggled the entire practice.  Your effort was not there and the results were not what you should see from yourself. Check your attitude.  Attitude can often take a “1” up to a “2”  If you are in practice and realize you are having an “off” day, find something, even if it is just a little thing, that you can do really well to try to raise a 1 to a 2.

0

ABSENT – You missed practice. Add a note explaining absence.  There is a huge difference between being ill (you should not try to train when you are sick) and simply skipping practice.  No excuses – be accountable for your effort and performance. 

To keep it simple try to score only whole numbers but sometimes there is a really good reason for ½ points.  For example the first part of practice was a struggle but one you got going you had a great day (3.5) but as a habit try to score whole numbers.

You should expect to score 3 most of the time.  If everything is “awesome” what word describes those things that really inspire awe?

The Final Lap –

That is a lot of information to take in but I hope that you will find something that will help you. 

To the MAST parents: It is an honor and a privilege to work with your children.  While improving swimming times is the primary performance goal, having a great experience in the process is what we strive for every day.  We coaches look forward to any input regarding your child’s experience because we know the best way to get results is to have the whole team working together to get better.

Monty