Rio Swim Team

What Lies Ahead For RIO Pre-Comp

Things are changing for the Pre-Competitive Groups of Rio Swim Club. You may have noticed some of these small changes to the day-to-day business at Hamilton Pool. New faces have been seen around the pool deck. Familiar faces may be missing once or twice a week. The structure of practices may seem fast paced while drills/skills are more challenging than ever before. All these changes are occurring with the intent of improving the overall quality of our developing swimmers. Our road to change has been difficult and time consuming. Here is what we have done and what it means for your swimmer.

For the past few months, Coach Bob and Coach Patrick, with the assistance of the Competitive Team Coaches, have been breaking down each and every stroke to their basic foundations. From this, we have developed a set of “Core Drills” for each stroke. For each of the 4 competitive strokes, we have selected 3-5 Core Drills that swimmers will need to master before being able to move up to the next level (i.e. Advanced Stroke to Junior 1 or Junior 1 to Junior 2). This has enabled us to build upon skills previously taught and bring more advanced techniques to our progressing swimmers. All this has been done with the intent of not only continuing to foster a love of swimming, but also to develop “homegrown talent” for our Competitive Team.

Examples of Core Drills for Junior 1

• Freestyle: Streamline Kick with and without fins
• Backstroke: One Arm Lead Rotation
• Breaststroke: Heel Touch Kick
• Butterfly: Flow Kick

Examples of Core Drills for Junior 2

• Freestyle: One Arm Freestyle
• Backstroke: Double Arm Backstroke
• Breaststroke: Flow Scull
• Butterfly: 3 + 3 Fly Drill

We have already begun to implement these Core Drills, starting January 1 of this year, and will continue to use them as the foundation for each of the 4 competitive strokes. We will focus on these drills during our practice times and when our Satellite Locations open this Spring (Gilbert Jr, Queen Creek, etc), you will find that each location and each Site Coach uses the same Core Drills and criteria to evaluate swimmers for move ups.

We will be updating our Seasonal Progress Reports to reflect our changes and as soon as those are available, we will put them up on the team website for parents and swimmers to review.

– Coach Patrick