We were fortunate to hear Mike Button, the world's foremost sprint freestyle coach and currently head coach at the University of Michigan, speak at the VII World Swimming Clinic. The clinic, hosted by Professor Nelson Vargas, at the La Loma high-altitude training camp in San Luis PotosÃ, Mexico was attended by an overflow crowd of coaches, trainers and administrators.
Mike opened the first day of the clinic with a riveting talk about Threestyle Freestyle.
In the Threestyle Freestyle talk, Mike explained the characteristics, requirements and elements of the hip-driven freestyle, the shoulder-driven freestyle and the body-driven freestyle. Based on his recommendations, we will further test and analyze these three styles with SwiMetrics, utilizing experienced open water swimmers in order to better understand which style is most appropriate for different open water swim distances.
The three-day conference continues until Sunday with invited speakers from Mexico, Spain, France, Australia, Brazil and the US providing the latest information and global trends in areas ranging from how-to-swim programs to open water swimming.
The data presented on open water swimming included a comprehensive demographic analysis of 704 open water swims in North America held over the past three years:
- 64% of the swimmers were male
- 36% of the swimmers were female
- the 30-49 male age-group comprised of 32% of all swimmers
- the fastest growing demographic was females over the age of 40 years
- approximately 183,000 swimmers participated in open water events in North America over the last 12 months ending September 2009
Copyright © 2009 by World Open Water Swimming Association
No comments:
Post a Comment