Great performances at the 2018 Irish Short Course National Championships in Lisburn

This was my third consecutive year at this meet and my most enjoyable so far. Described by Head Coach Richard Cassidy as his “favourite meet of the year”, Lisburn is a great venue! The racing pool is the 25m eight-lane format with a separate warm up/warm down pool. All events are Senior, with A and B finals in all individual events, except the 800 and 1500 freestyle which are HDW and the six 4 x 50 relays (two Women’s, two Men’s and two Mixed), which only have an A final. Spectator accommodation, though restricted, gives a very good view of the races.
At 21, we had the biggest SWSC team in recent years-nine female and 12 male qualifiers. Their performances were really impressive with 77 personal best swims, and six club records- three for Liam Custer (400 IM, 400 & 1500 freestyle), two for Beth Nolan (100 & 200 breast stroke) and one for Luke O’Sullivan (200 freestyle). Good morning heat swims meant many swimmers made A or B finals.
Despite all of this we didn’t win any medals since, as stated above, this is a Senior meet and our team is relatively young. Also, Irish swimming is rapidly improving with eight National records broken. One of the best of these was by Mona McSharry in the 100 freestyle, where she broke Michele Smith’s record from 1995 (which I was present for at the Nationals in the Grove pool in Belfast). The National Centres in Dublin and Limerick and UCD, with great access to facilities and full time coaches, are particularly successful.
Having said that, SWSC swimmers had great representation in A and B finals. In A finals, Liam Custer featured in three (two 4ths, 8th), Andrew Feenan in one (5th), Luc Galland in two (5th, 7th) and Sharon Semchiy in four (5th, 6th, 7th, 8th). Many made B finals-Liam (9th, 10th, 11th), Andrew (9th, 12th, 15th), Luc (13th), Paul Higgins (13th), Ellen Lee (11th), Rory Lee (14th), Beth (two 10ths, 12th, 13th, 16th), Luke (13th) and Sharon (two 9ths, 10th, 11th). In addition we featured in four of six relay finals, finishing with two 6th places and two 8th places.
For me, our best swims were Liam in middle distance events (great strokes and turns), Andrew and Beth at 200 breast stroke (true grit), Sharon at 100 and 200 freestyle, and 100 butterfly (doing everything right), but also from others like Lauren Farr at 50 back stroke, Ilann Wall at 100 freestyle and Ellen at 50 and 100 Butterfly, and many many more!
So what do we need to improve faster than the rest of Ireland? The “secrets” are more time (already Richard has instituted 06.45 starts in the mornings), consistency and constant attention to technique. Ards swim 16 hours each week! Why don’t we? Does everyone turn up for all sessions? We’re doing very well, but let’s try harder!
(Details of swims are on the SWSC website and John Rudd’s comments of top performers on the Swim Ireland website.)


Tom Cross

President’s Notes – July 2018

In April 2018 I attended the Commonwealth Games swimming in Australia. The venue was a 50m outdoor pool on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane with seating for 8,000 spectators. I had forgotten the excitement of major live events; last time being the 2005 World Championships in Montreal. Granted you see more detail on television but totally miss the atmosphere! The extremely partisan Australian crowd really got behind their team. Their Women’s 4 X 100 Freestyle Relay set a World Record of 3:30.05 on the first night, with Cate Campbell anchoring in 51.00, the fastest relay split ever. Another highlight was the Women’s 100 Backstroke final. Despite torrential tropical rain, both the winner Canadian Kylie Masse (58.63) and second place local Emily Seebohm (58.66) finished within 0.6 sec of Masse’s world record from Rio. There were also upset victories by swimmers from countries neighbouring Ireland. Duncan Scott of Scotland (with really great stroke technique) won a very tight Men’s 100 freestyle in 48.05, while Alys Thomas from Wales won the Women’s 200 butterfly in a superb 2:05.46. The latter is 28 years old and has persisted through sometimes difficult times. In the shorter fly events her stroke lacks flow, whereas it really worked in this longer event. While the Commonwealth Games only involves about one third of the world’s top swimmers, the results were of a very high standard. Teams from smaller countries get to compete for final and podium positions, with for example the team from Northern Ireland performing very well.

For me there were several “take home” messages which I think are relevant at club level:

  1. In general, the medallists had the best techniques in terms of starts, turns finishes and underwater and particularly surface strokes. To be the best one must optimise fitness and technique. The skilled and fit swimmer will nearly always beat the “just” fit swimmer! Do you know what works best for you and think about it all the time in practice?
  2. Top swimmers do far more warming up and down than most Irish swimmers. I know this is constrained by absence of additional practice facilities at many venues. However, where these are available at, for example, most Irish National events, I think we don’t use them enough.
  3. Most swimmers at the Commonwealth Games were aged between 18 and 30. Swimmers are physically best at these ages. Why do so many individuals of great potential in SWSC quit when in their mid-teens? With detailed organisation it is possible to excel both in swimming and at school. In fact, a recent study by an English neurologist has indicated that people do better in exams if they continue to do reduced training. My friend Jim Martin, who coached SWSC with me in the early 1970s and is now Head of Medicine at McGill University in Montreal, says that sportspeople make the best PhD students, because of their level of planning and their determination. As a University educator, I heartily agree! We want individuals to treat swimming as a lifelong sport through Masters events and triathlon!

The European Championships are being held in Glasgow from 3-9 August this year. I hope you will be watching. I know I will! See you at the Summer Nationals!

 

Tom Cross,

SWSC President

Presidents Notes March 2018

General Introduction:

Most swimming books are aimed at coaches and are highly technical. These notes instead are aimed at competitive swimmers and their parents. What I’ll try to do is present a single theme monthly. The opinions are my own (and so are any errors), but they are designed to make you think and to start discussion. They are the product of nearly five decades of coaching and observing elite swimming, but also stem from my background as a professional biological educator and researcher. I welcome questions, comments and criticisms from swimmers, and also from parents and club coaches (but directly not electronically). These notes are not designed to replace your interactions with your club coaches (and will all be approved by Director of Aquatics and Head Coach Richard Cassidy). Good interactions with your coaches are absolutely essential to optimising performance.  Instead they attempt to assist efforts to make you as good as possible!

Tom Cross, March 2018

Number 1: Being as good as possible!

When Director of the American Swimming Coaches Association John Leonard visited Ireland a few years ago, he was asked what he thought was the most important thing in competitive swimming. He said “Turn up (to all training session and meets)”. He then went on to tell us that Michael Phelps had not missed a single training session in seven years! Can any SWSC swimmer match that record even for the last season? Are you going to achieve it this season?

So what’s “enough” per week. For secondary school age swimmers of your stage it’s probably about 15 hours in the pool and a few hours of land work, consistently through the year, covering c50K per week in the pool. This will give the best chance of improvement. If you do half that number of hours/meters per week you will get about a quarter or less of the potential improvement. (Bill Sweetenham refers to 7-8 hours per week as the “twilight zone”).

No one can make top International level and achieve their full potential without maximal training both in the pool and on land. The two previous Cork Olympians in swimming went to other set ups in their last year before the Olympics, where they got 50%+ more quantity and considerably more intensity. But they had a background of consistency and high mileages in their own clubs. However, others have made great improvements in a domestic setting. One boy who swam for SWSC in the 1970s improved his 100m fly time by over 10% in the year between 14 and 15. He did this by upping his water time by 50% in the old 25 yard pool at Eglington Street.

You train long and hard so you can race better. Training results in improvement in both condition (termed physiological adaptation, with associated improvements in power and flexibility) and technique (behavioural adaptation in pacing; starts, turns and finishes; underwater and particularly surface stroke). It’s now a fashion in sports to say “enjoy what you’re doing”. It’s hard to “enjoy” getting out of bed at 5am on a dark, cold and wet morning to train for two hours (and repeating this more than 300 times in the season!). But it is necessary, if you are to achieve better and better performances in races. You should commit fully for each year at a time. Then at the end of each year you should assess your progress. How much did your competition times improve, did you enjoy the whole experience, how did you manage school and swimming, how good do you think you could be? Being as good as possible in competition is the really enjoyable thing! Being as good as possible in competitive sport is very time consumming but in the words of walker Rob Heffernan after the World Championships “It’s great when you win“.