To help you track your swimming yardage during the Holiday Fitness Challenge, we suggest using the US Masters Swimming Fitness Log, or FLOG.  This program can track for multiple types of workouts and fitness memberships.  And it’s FREE with your USMS membership.  Here are the steps you can follow to set up your FLOG and start entering your information.

1)  Go to the MyUSMS page to create a user id for yourself — http://www.usms.org/myusms/

2)  In the “HELP!  What is my user name or password?” section, click the link “go here to create one now” to create a user id in the discussion forums

3)  Enter your date of birth and click proceed

4)  Agree to the forum rules by clicking the check box

5)  Enter a user id, password, your email, and the answer to the security question to create your account.  If you want to enter additional information about yourself in the section below, feel free to do so.

6)  Go to the email account that you used in your registration.  You will have received an email entitled, “Action Required to Activate Membership for U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums.”  Open the email.

7)  Go to the section that says “To complete your registration, please visit this URL” and click the URL.  If you are an AOL user, you’ll need to click the second URL

8)  Click the link to take you to the MyUSMS area

9)  Click the link to “set up your MyUSMS area today.”

10)  Enter the last 5 characters of your USMS number, your last name, your birthdate, and your gender and then click “Setup My USMS.”

11)  Under the “Available USMS Member Online Services” section, click “My fitness log (FLOG)”

12)  To enter a workout for the day, click the date number in the calendar box

13)  Choose “Swimming” as the type of workout (if you want to enter all of your workouts, that’s fine, too.  Just click that name too).  If you want to track your weight and resting heart rate, you can make entries for those items as well.

14)  Click the length of the pool, the total distance and the units, the time you swam.  If you have any comments or details, enter them and click “Add Workout” at the bottom

15)  Click on “Preferences” in the left sidebar.  Click “Allow anyone to view my workout logs” so that our office can see what you are doing.  Click “Allow anyone to view my fitness measurements (e.g., my weight log)” if you want that to be visible as well.

As the fund-raising part of the Holiday Fitness Challenge, I would like Chicago Blue Dolphins to raise money for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. With the economy in the state that it’s in, stopping hunger over the holidays sounds like a pretty good thing for us to do for our community. We can think of it as “I’ll eat less to stay in swimming shape, and I’ll help bring food for those who need it.”

The Greater Chicago Food Depository, Chicago ’s food bank, is a nonprofit food distribution and training center providing food for hungry people while striving to end hunger in our community. The Food Depository distributes donated and purchased food through a network of 600 pantries, soup kitchens and shelters to 500,000 adults and children in Cook County every year. Last year, the Food Depository distributed 58 million pounds of nonperishable food and fresh produce, dairy products and meat, the equivalent of 119,000 meals every day. The Food Depository’s programs and services for children, older adults and the unemployed and underemployed address the root causes of hunger. For more information, log onto www.chicagosfoodbank.org or call 773-247-FOOD.

I asked my donations contact at the Great Chicago Food Depository to give me some statistics to bring an aire of urgency to the situation. She passed along some pretty startling statistics:

The need continues: The Greater Chicago Food Depository established a new record for demand over the past 30 years in September, with 427,660 visits to our member pantries in Cook County. The tally narrowly topped July, which held the record at 426,898 visits. The first three months of the fiscal year are 26 percent ahead of last year’s pace in pantry visits, and 70 percent ahead of the pace of two years ago.

Challenging times: The poverty rates for Cook County (14.8 percent) and Chicago (20.6 percent) continue to rise and are higher than the national average (13.2 percent). The unemployment rate in Cook County was 10.6 percent in September, four percentage points higher than last year (6.6 percent), and higher than the national average (9.8 percent).

Food supply: The Food Depository distributed a record 58.3 million pounds of food during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009. This fiscal year continues to reflect increased demand, having distributed 1.7 million more pounds than in the prior year period. Nutritious food is vital—produce is 23 percent of total distribution.

So, let’s get fired up to do some swimming over the next month and bring some food to the Chicago community at the same time.

And speaking of competitions…

The Kishwaukee YMCA in DeKalb, site of the 2008 ILMSA State Meet, won the bid again to host the 2010 State Meet. The meet will take place on April 23-25, 2010 (start getting your entry cards ready now!). There was a big push to get the meet pulled out to the Western Suburbs again. Kishwaukee YMCA did a nice job in 2008, albeit at a much smaller State Meet turnout than we get when it runs at UIC.

In keeping with the discussion on the technical swim suits, here’s an article from the November 3rd “Wall Street Journal,” Some Aging Competitors Call High-Tech Swimsuits Dirty Pool.

It kind of rehashes a lot of the discussion that we’ve already heard over the past year or so, but it’s a decent summary in the context of US Masters Swimming. The suits do give an advantage to swimmers because of their added buoyancy, streamlining of the body, and shaved-body-effects without the shaving. I guess what I can say is: If you care about whether you are the winner of an event, you might want to look at putting up the money because your competitor will probably be wearing one until they are banned. If you are competing against yourself, don’t bother because you really wouldn’t be the owner of those seconds that you dropped. It’s up to you.

As I was digging myself out of an email blizzard after being gone for a couple of weeks, I found this message from Rules Committee Chair, Kathy Casey on the USMS policy on swimming suits. If you own a racing suit, take a gander at the note below. You can take a look at the June 1st statement for details.

********************************************************************************

The FINA Masters Committee has recommended that the FINA Bureau, meeting in mid-January, approve its recommendation that Masters swimmers be governed by the same swimsuit rules as the elite pool swimmers. If the Bureau approves the committee’s recommendation, it is anticipated it would go into effect after the Bureau meeting. If this recommendation becomes policy with the FINA Bureau, USMS will implement it for our sanctioned swim meets.

For the time being and until the FINA Bureau issues its policy for Masters, the June 1, 2009 ruling that allowed technical suits in USMS swim meets is still in effect. If you choose to compete in a USA Swimming sanctioned meet, you must follow USA Swimming rules.

If you would like more information on purchasing technical suits, you may contact your swimsuit dealer or any of the following:

blueseventy; blueseventy.com
FINIS; finisinc.com
Speedo; speedo.com
TYR; tyr.com

When I was in Florida last month for the American Swim Coaches Association annual convention, I met some great coaches and had a chance to exchange some ideas. Out of these meetings came the idea for the Holiday Fitness Challenge, a way of keeping ourselves in shape over the holidays, raising some money, and to bring a broader group into a raffle at the Holiday Party.

The way this will work is you will choose an amount of yardage that you think you can complete between Sunday November 21st and the Hour of Power on Sunday December 20th. Pick a challenging number so you can push yourself a little bit. We’ll kick off the Holiday Fitness Challenge with a longer practice on Sunday November 21st to start padding your numbers. We’ll then head out to brunch because we’ll earn the extra calories that pancakes will bring.

To get in the game, you’ll buy in for $20 and get 1 raffle ticket. You can buy additional raffle tickets for $20.You’ll track your yardage over the month to see how you are doing with your goal. If you exceed your goal by December 20th by 15%, you’ll earn another raffle ticket. If you do the Hour of Power, you’ll earn another one. The more you swim, the better your chances of winning the prizes.

The proceeds from the raffle will go to a charity to be announced. We’ll have more information on the raffle prizes and how we’ll track the information in the coming weeks.

I thought this would be fun way to structure our swimming over the month of holiday parties and colder weather. Plus, it will keep you focused on looking good in a swim suit for your holiday vacations.

If you aren’t a member of the team, and you are just reading the blog, but you’d like to take part in it to keep you honest, shoot our office an email at info@chicagobluedolphins.com and we’ll figure out a way to support you.

Sorry that this post came in late…

We do sets called “stroke elimination sets” periodically in practice. These are sets where we start off with a base stroke count and ask you to take strokes off the count when you swim. We do these sets as a way of getting you to concentrate on your technique and form. By cutting out strokes, you are having to figure out ways to control your form to get more out of each stroke. For those will very high stroke counts, it’s also a way for us to communicate to you that you don’t need all those strokes to be successful.

Here are some examples of stroke elimination sets:

4 x 25 @ :10R — #1 @ Base, #2 and #3 @ Base-1, #4 @ Base-2
4 x 75 @ :15R — 25 @ Base-2, 25 @ Base-1, 25 @ Base
4 x 200 FR @ :15R — 1st 175 @ Base, Last 25 @ Base-1

In each of these sets, you’re asked to adjust your stroke to be able to achieve your stroke count target.

Here are some strategies to doing these sets well:

1) Start with a Good Base Count — Make sure you start with a base count where you are moving with a pretty decent speed (probably about an 80% effort). If you start swimming with perfect technique, you’ll probably already be swimming slowly and with a lower stroke count. To take strokes off that count will lead you to start drilling rather than swimming.

2) Slow down and rely on good body position and timing — Slow down both your speed and tempo and focus your attention on swimming with better balance and side streamlining, leaning forward and making sure you get to full extension on each stroke; these changes will help you cut through the water with less drag. Also work on your timing. Time the catch on your lead arm to start when the other arm recovers past your ear. We call this swimming “taller” because you spend more time in a long, tall position and transition quickly to another tall position when the hand passes the head.

3) Set your catch and drive past your hand — Another way you can take strokes off is by getting a little bit more power out of each one. Work on getting your forearm positioned with a good catch and then drive your top side past your catch point. As you put more pressure on your catch and more power into your drive forward, you’ll feel more glide in the stroke.

4) Slow down your Tempo Trainer — Another variation of this set, if you use a Tempo Trainer, is to methodically slow down your stroke rate and maintain the flow in your stroke. If your normal rate is a stroke per second, drop the tempo to a stroke every 1.1 or 1.15 seconds. Stretch out more into the stroke and work our catch as in #2 and #3. If you don’t add any pause into your strokes, you should start to see your count go down.

5) Work your walls — Another way that you can take strokes off your count is by doing a better job streamlining off the walls. Stack your hands, tighten your core, point your toes, and squeeze as you come off the wall. Maintain that position as you come into your first stroke. Keep your head down for the first stroke or two so you get some momentum going with your stroke before breathing. If your body is passing the flags on the push, you are doing it well. Having said this, if you body hits the surface and you kick for another 5 yards, that’s what we call cheating.

Hopefully these tips will help you and you will know what to do when your coach tells you to cut two strokes off the next 25.

I was at a fitness expo this weekend, and I got into a conversation with one of the trainers at Hi-Fi Personal Fitness about some complementary kettlebell classes this month. They will run on Monday October 19th and Monday October 26th at 7am. The classes will be about 45 minutes long and complimentary. The classes are normally $25 for 1 class or 10 for $200.

The kettlebells are cool because they do all-body fitness development. They work strength, cardio, and flexibility all at the same time. The instructor is a Level 2 RKC Instructor which is apparently a top of line certification.

Hi-Fi Personal Fitness is at 1030 North Ave. Suite 300. For questions, you can contact chicagokettlebellbootcamp@gmail.com or at 312.342.5712.

Check it out and see how you like the class and the location.

A variation of this practice will run on Tuesday October 6th in the 50 meter pool at UIC.

Like last week, we’re working on feeling our T-pace and working at a faster pace. This time, we’re going to be working a pace that will push you up toward your anaerobic threshold (heart rate somewhere in the neighborhood of 180). Here is the morning practice for the Level 3A’s (the fast folks):

• 400 FR @ 5:20– Hold T-Pace (or 3 x 100 pace if you don’t know)
• 2 x 50 Kick @ :55 – Fast kick
• 2 x 100 FR @ 1:20 – Hold 4-5 seconds faster than T-Pace
• 400 FR @ 5:20 – Hold T-Pace
• 2 x 50 Kick @ 1:00
• 3 x 100 FR @ 1:20 – Hold 4-5 seconds faster than T-Pace
• 400 FR @ 5:20 – Hold T-Pace
• 2 x 50 Kick @ 1:05
• 4 x 100 FR @ 1:20 – Hold 4-5 seconds faster than T-Pace

Hopefully you did your T-Swim last month (and put forth a good effort), so you have a pace that is an accurate reflection of your current fitness level. We’ll do 3 x 100’s in Warm-Up #2 if you didn’t, but it’s still better to have your baseline pace be from a 20 or 30 minute swim.

We’ll go through cycles of a longer swim, here a 400, where you are trying to simply hold your T-Pace throughout. This intesity should be light. The Level 3’s will follow the 400’s with 2 x 50’s kick, starting at a fast interval and getting slower. The kicks are in there to sustain the intensity and to get your legs warmed up for the 100’s. The 100’s are going to be at 4-5 seconds faster pace than your T-Pace, but held on the same interval. We’ll go through 3 cycles of that with the number of 100’s going from 2, to 3, to 4 at the end of the set. The set’s designed to be pretty challenging.

The Level 2’s and 1’s will follow a similar pattern, but they will do drill/swim 50’s to reset their balance and length after the high intensity swims. The pattern for the 2A’s are shown below:

• 2 x 50 Drill/Swim
• #1@ 1:30: Side Balance
• #2 @ 1:00: FR – Swim long and balanced – very easy pace

To get the whole workout for Level 3, 2, and 1, you can go to the Sample Practices page of our website and follow the link for the 10/07/09 practice.

This practice should be pretty challenging, so have fun with it and go to work (or bed) knowing that you put forth a great effort.

A group will be getting together to watch the Bears play the Cincinnati Bengals at Hawkeyes (1458 W. Taylor St.) on Sunday October 25th. Kickoff is at noon, so you can head over after the Sunday practices. Have some food and drinks, hang out with your teammates, and marvel at the fact that Cedric Benson seems to finally be making a career out of it.

We’ll send an Evite around shortly so we can tell the bar how many folks will be showing up.