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A new morning workout schedule starts on Monday December 5th.  Morning workouts for Senior Team, and Masters will be at 5 AM to 6:30 AM on Monday through Thursday at the San Carlos Park Pool.  The morning workouts are optional for Junior Team swimmers.

RELAY STARTS: WHEN SHOULD I SWING MY ARMS? BY KATIE ARNOLD // NATIONAL TEAM COACH FELLOW What do high school state championships, college dual meets and the Olympics have in common? No one wants to be the person responsible for disqualifying a relay. The stakes are high and so are the point values. The common response to this added pressure is to employ safe starts. Unfortunately, safe in this instance actually means slow. When winners are determined by hundredths of a second, a slow relay start can be the difference...

Check out the new GCST "A" Team. We now show time rankings for A through AAAA using the motivational time standards from USA Swimming.  The new "A" Team can be found under Times and Rankings under the Swimmers tab after login.

TO SWIM BREASTSTROKE FASTER, DON’T PULL HARDER BY RUSSELL MARK // HIGH PERFORMANCE CONSULTANT The best breaststroke is about using your body to drive/surge forward with each stroke, and having a pull that allows your body to do that. The pull is an integral part of the stroke, but it is not the primary driving force of propulsion in breaststroke. Pulling harder or trying to pull more water can actually be counterproductive.   The breaststroke arm pull doesn’t determine breaststroke speed. If it did, the best breaststrokers would be pulling...

11/21/2011   By Chris Rosenbloom, PhD, RD, CSSD   From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day there will be a lot of media stories on weight gain during the holidays. Dire warnings will be issued about high fat and high calorie holiday dishes. But, what receives less media attention is the abundance of healthy foods that appear on mom and grandma’s table from November to January. So, load up your plates with these performance boosting foods: Sweet potatoes. Fresh sweet potatoes often appear on the holiday table in a sweet potato...

Savannah Bowser is 13-14 Girls High Point Rumnner-up, and Darrien Heil is 11-12 Boys Runner-up GCST swimmers do well at Turkey Meet at Sarasota on November 18-20.  Darrien Heil broke the GCST record in the 11-12 Boys 50 Breast. GCST swimmers turned 136 improved times. GCST Results 16 new championship qualifying times were turned in by 10 swimmers.  New cuts were made by Joshua Benzon, Zach Brewer, Bean Faunce, Kaitlyn Hauser, Makailey Hauser, Paige Madden, Michael Pineda, Mikayla Puckett, Ryan Sorenson, and Jessica Walsh.  New Cuts Event Winners were Savannah...

Check out the latest list of GCST Championship Meet Qualifiers, Seasonal Top 10 Times, and our All-Time Top 10 Lists.  All lists are updated with the Turkey Meet, and all observed high school championship meet results.

BACKSTROKE STARTS: PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR POSTURE BY RUSSELL MARK // HIGH PERFORMANCE CONSULTANT Many of the best backstrokers are having better posture on their backstroke starts. Their backs are vertical – straight up-and-down – and their heads are either neutral or tilted back. The best backstroke start position will vary by individual, but this is something that all backstrokers should try and play around with. You can change your posture by bringing your hips closer to the wall and/or by pulling in less with your arms. One advantage of...

The USA Swimming Sports Medicine and Science Committee has carefully reviewed the risks and benefits related to energy drinks and is providing the information below to call attention to the differences between energy drinks and "sports drinks" used for rehydration, to point out the risks associated with such drinks, and to provide suggested alternatives to use of these drinks. By Jill Castle, MS, RD Red Bull, Rock Star, Amp, Monster Energy—enticing labels for a tired and thirsty swimmer. Energy drinks are one of the fastest growing segments of drink sales...