Spring Training Camp: PHOENIX, ARIZONA!!!
Hello TEAM,
During spring break, April 21-29th, LASERS took 22 athletes, 2 coaches and 3 chaperons down to Phoenix, Arizona, to train, bond and enjoy the beautiful sunshine! We had an early start by flying out of Saskatoon with a 2hr layover in Vancouver, then flying into Phoenix Arizona, where we picked up our 2x15 person (party) vans and headed to our 2 Air B&Bs. The camp continued with daily double practice sessions with a couple days including dryland sessions. One major focus of the camp was "Form under Stress" which really means holding great technical form while athletes worked through the sets and tired out. We added 400, 200 and 100 meter race pace work along with holding form, and we had a couple test sets grabbing data (stroke counts and 50m time splits) to measure consistency. We were joined by a guest coach, Ryan Upper from North Carolina, who is a well established Swim Coach studying athlete development through Race Pace work. He helped us work with the kids on Stroke Initiation as well as the Power Pull phase - heavy focus on grabbing, holding and pulling water properly. Ryan Upper has been developing a Race Pace program which he took the time to review with Laser coaches and spoke on his method and new program - very interesting and applicable stuff to our program going forward. We had lots of fun in and out of the pool and got many quality meters under our belt setting us up well for the next training/racing cycle in our season. We look forward to some FAST and exciting races at Michelle Moore in Regina and Mel Zajac in Vancouver this month leading to our provincial championships, Man/Sask in Winnipeg!
A few Highlights of the Camp:
-Training 2 per lane, outdoors in the sunshine!!!
-Team Dinner nights (each house hosted the other).
-Working with guest Coach Ryan Upper and his new 'Race Pace' program.
-Eating and Sleeping (and eating, and eating, and eating...).
-"Spa Day" at the Arizona Biltmore Resort (great water slides and pools).
-Game Night, Family Feud style.
-Hiking the "Hole in the Rock' trail.
-Shopping at multiple Malls and outdoor shopping outlets/plaza.
-Fun Awards and camp debrief over Pizza!
A few Favorite Pictures (many more pics HERE):
*A big THANK YOU to chaperon Matt Links, for all the great pictures and videos he took that week!!!
Over the week our TEAM bonded into more of a FAMILY, we made some BIG gains, physically and mentally, in and out of the pool, and we all had a blast training and hanging out in the sunshine - overall a GREAT success! I want to put out a BIG THANK YOU to everyone involved with making this camp run, including parents for trusting us with your athletes, the athletes for doing the work, and of course our amazing chaperons (Paige, Jess and Matt) for all the time and effort they put into making this camp run as smoothly as it did! As the saying goes (T.E.A.M.) Together Everyone Achieves More, and this is a perfect example. Looking ahead, let's get back to the pool and push hard to close this season out with some super solid racing at our next few meets and reach for those next level qual times. GO LASERS GO!!!
#OutTrainThem