Following my visit to Lakeside Aquatics, I took a couple days break from swimming to camp out in Tennessee, and then drove back up to Kentucky, this time to visit Lexington. This stop was a 2-for-1, as I was able to visit both Kentucky Aquatics (KYA), and the University of Kentucky Swimming and Diving Team! I’ll write separate posts for each, and this one will be the one for the USA-Swimming club team.
KYA trains at the Lancaster Aquatic Center, which is KU’s natatorium. As such, they do have to adjust their training schedules to that of the University team, and also allow for open spaces for the general membership, which creates some constrains with lane space, but they still have access to plenty of water in a prime facility.
I was only able to observe a couple workouts, but got plenty of lessons and takeaways on that short amount of time, as Head Coach Chris Fugmann was great about sharing some stories and insights into his training philosophy. Side note, on top of running the club and leading 2 groups, Chris also runs an HVAC company in his spare time (what spare time I asked myself)! He also gave me a few ideas of places to visit while in Lexington, and I wish I had been able to follow through on more of those.
One of the things that immediately stood out is that their Senior group circle swims alternating lanes going right-hand-traffic and left-hand-traffic. When I asked Chris about it, he pointed out some of the benefits he sees: kids get to learn and practice how to circle swim both ways, get a little more balanced and symmetrical, and are less likely to circle swim during a race, as don’t ingrain a pattern by circle swimming the same way every day.
One of the workouts I observed was a circuit which included a 30minute dryland session. I was impressed with his groups’ strength out of the water, and Chris pointed out he believes strength to weight ration to be one of the best predictors of swimming performance, and his kids have fully bought into the idea of getting stronger.
On my second day on deck with them, they did a set of 2x(10×100); while that might seem very straightforward, each and every one of the 100s was something different! It also had a mix of speed and just skill work, and in the interval between rounds Chris had a brief but great talk to his kids about planning to be better on the 2nd time through, and how looking to do better/extra instead of looking for the shortcut is rare, but necessary to be successful. It was a great little moment when a coach was clearly using time to inspire his kids rather than just put them to work!
As mentioned above, I had a real limited amount of time on deck with KYA, and really only got to follow their top group. Still, as you can tell it was time well spent on my end. While I don’t think I’ve seen enough to understand their program and training, there were plenty of things to learn and take home.
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