MSC Ops Blog
2009 Check Off Challenge Results
A preliminary pass through the 2009 Calendar Year results produced the following list of people who had swum all 18 events in official competition during the 2009 calendar year:
Gagnon, Sylvie 38
Levesque, Gilles 46
Marshall, Lynn 48
Murphy, David 60
Ouimet, Robyn 32
Pelletier, Claude 65
Smith, Christopher 77
To generate the list we took all the 200fly, 1500free, 400IM and 50back results and generated a list of all swimmers that had swum all four. We then used the form on the Check Off Challenge Home page to check each of the resulting list of 24 swimmers to see if they had completed all 18 events.
Because this method will miss people who registered for meets with variations in their name (e.g. some meets as Chris, some meets as Christopher or including initials sometimes and not other times) there are likely some additional people who swam all 18 events. If you swam one of your events at an out of country meet you may also have been missed. If you completed all the events please send us your name and any variations so we can complete the list.
Once the list is finalized we'll order and send out t-shirts. If you have earned a Check Off Challenge shirt (anyone completing all 18 events in sanctioned swim meets in either one calendar year or one season) please send us your preferred shirt size!
The next Check Off Challenge is for the 2009/2010 season (Sept 1st 2009 to August 31st 2010). You can track which events you have swum by looking at the bottom of your individual results page, which you can access from your "My MSC Page" or from the Check Off Challenge home page.
Please remember that you must swim each event, splits don't count!
Completing the Check Off Challenge is a great way to add variety to your swim season, see the Check Off Challenge Home Page for details!
Posted at 02:41PM Jan 20, 2010 by Lindsay in Status | Comments[0]
XIII FINA World Masters 2010
The fourth newsletter from the organizers of the XIII FINA World Masters 2010 in Sweden this July/August was sent out in early January, you can read it here:
http://www.carmamail.com/mail/OBS?muid=1X58Du358458179
Posted at 02:06PM Jan 20, 2010 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
First four clubs make it around PEI!
So far Etobicoke, Westmount Y, Aurora Ducks, and the Halifax Trojans have made it around PEI in the "Summerside to Summerside 'Round the Island Club Relay Challenge".
Etobicoke is well into it's second lap of the island and has already passed the main pack. Westmount and Aurora continue to go neck to neck with Westmount completing its first lap just ahead of Aurora.
See where your club is on the swim around the Island at:
http://mymsc.ca/maps/pei.jsp
The top 40 clubs are shown. Distances are the total distances entered by club members in the Million Metre Challenge since October 1st.
More challenges will be introduced in November, including individual challenges and more club challenges!
Posted at 11:51PM Oct 15, 2009 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Video of swims at Nationals available
This year we captured all the swimming at nationals on video! A lot of this video is available on the web via youtube, and we're uploading more every day!
Note that youtube supports different video quality levels, at the bottom of the video there will be an HD or HQ button which allows you to watch in higher resolution and better quality. High quality playback requires a faster computer to play smoothly than the default quality.
There are two ways to access the video, one is to just go to youtube and sort through the videos, the other is to go to the meet results on mymsc, find a swim that you want to watch in the results, and click the heat number to get to the video of that heat.
The videos on youtube are at: http://www.youtube.com/MscMncVideo The list of videos is several pages long and the title indicates the event and heat number.
The meet results on mymsc are accessed at: http://mymsc.ca/ShowMeet.jsp?id=263 This takes you to a screen which allows you to either look at the complete results (just click the "Show" button) or you can specify a specific swimmer, club, or event to limit the results.
Once you are looking at the results just move your mouse over the heat number and a tool-tip will pop up showing the heat number (rightmost column) and lane number of the swimmer, and if the video of the heat is available the word "video" will also appear. If the word video does appear just click the link to go to the video page.
So far, all the Sunday relays have been posted along with most events swum in the deep end on Saturday (men's events) and Sunday (women's events), we're currently uploading Monday's heats. The complete set of videos is well over 100 Gigabytes so we're starting with the shorter races and it will take a while to get everything loaded. The video of the shallow end was shot with one video file per event (we only had one cameraman to run two cameras!) so those videos have to be split into individual heats, which will take time. Come back as time goes on to see more and more videos!
To view the relays go to http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=MscMncVideo&view=videos&query=Relay, links from the relay results to the videos will be added soon.
Posted at 10:36PM Jun 01, 2009 by Lindsay in General | Comments[1]
Nationals Covered by Swimming World
Swimming World Magazine has a story on its website about Nationals with the headline:
Canadian Masters Short Course National Championships Demolish FINA Masters World Record Books
http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/21261.asp
Posted at 04:53PM May 28, 2009 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Psych Sheets out for Nationals!
Please see the 2009 Nationals web site for the psych sheets!
Posted at 07:09AM May 02, 2009 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Mastering Swimming - the book
I recently received a review copy of the book Mastering Swimming, Your guide for fitness, training, and competition by Jim Montgomery and Mo Chambers. What with the holidays and upcoming travel plans I'm not going to have time to do a proper review until April. In the meantime, here is the table of contents, which gives you an idea of what is covered.
The table of contents:
Part I Taking the Plunge
Chapter 1 Start With a Vision, Train With a Plan
Chapter 2 Set the Stage for Success
Chapter 3 Develop Your Water Sense
Part II Fine-Tuning Your Strokes
Chapter 4 Freestyle
Chapter 5 Backstroke
Chapter 6 Butterfly
Chapter 7 Breaststroke
Chapter 8 Starts, Turns, and Finishes
Part III Conditioning for Success
Chapter 9 Workout Essentials
Chapter 10 Pool Workouts
Chapter 11 Dry-Land Training
Chapter 12 Open-Water Training
Chapter 13 Make Your Plan for Success
Part IV Competition
Chapter 14 Competing in Pool Events
Chapter 15 Competing in Open Water
Posted at 03:18PM Jan 08, 2009 by Lindsay in General | Comments[2]
Nouveau règlement
Le 7 décembre le conseil d'administration de MNC a ratifié une nouvelle version de la partie concernant les règles des nages dans le règlement de MNC. La traduction du règlement est disponible ici :
Ces règles prennent effet le 1er janvier 2009.
Il n'y a qu'une règle officielle qui ait changé et il s'agit du changement de la règle de faux départ en une règle de non faux départ. La règle de non faux départ est la norme dans les compétitions internationales de maitres et dans les compétitions de non maitres.
De plus la formulation de plusieurs règles a été changée afin de réduire les interprétations contradictoires.
Un exemple dont les nageurs devraient être conscients est que quelque chose d'aussi simple que le port d'une montre est désormais clairement contraire au règlement. Par le passé de nombreux officiels se contentaient de disqualifier un nageur s'ils le voyaient utiliser sa montre afin de régler son allure, selon les nouvelles règles n'importe quel nageur vu portant une montre sera disqualifié.
La formulation des règles de la nage libre a été changée afin de clarifier que certaines parties du corps doivent briser la surface à un moment ou à un autre de chaque cycle du mouvement de nage plutôt que tout le temps. Dans certains cas des officiels ont disqualifié des athlètes nageant la brasse dans des épreuves de nage libre parce qu'ils s'étaient complètement submergés pendant une partie du cycle de nage alors que les règles interdisaient au nageur de se submerger entièrement sauf dans les 15 m maximum autorisés avant de refaire surface à la suite d'un départ ou d'un virage.
La règle de la brasse a aussi abandonné la formulation disant que l'unique ondulation doit être effectuée alors que le nageur est complètement submergé. Certains nageurs ont été disqualifiés pour avoir brisé la surface de l'eau avec leur ondulation ou pour avoir effectué l'ondulation après avoir fait surface.
La règle du papillon a aussi été modifiée afin de clarifier qu'il n'est pas légal de seulement faire une ondulation qui ne soit pas accompagnée d'un mouvement des bras.
Lorsque les nageurs sont deux par ligne d'eau, un nageur qui ne reste pas de son coté de la ligne ou qui a un contact physique avec l'autre nageur sera désormais disqualifié et obligé de sortir du bassin.
L'appendice 1 du règlement offre la liste des différences avec les groupes d'âge et les règles internationales.
Posted at 07:27PM Jan 07, 2009 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
New rulebook
On December 7th, the MSC board approved a new version of the Swimming Rules portion of the MSC rulebook. The English version of the rules is here:
These rules come into effect January 1st, 2009.
There is only one official rule change which is the switch from a one false start rule to a no false start rule. The no false start rule is the standard rule in international Masters competition and non-Masters competition.
In addition, the wording of several rules has been changed to reduce inconsistent interpretation.
One example that swimmers should be aware of is that merely wearing a watch is now explicitly against the rules. In the past many officials would only DQ a swimmer if they observed that the swimmer was using the watch for pacing purposes, under the new rules any swimmer observed to be wearing a watch will be disqualified.
The wording of the freestyle rules has been changed to clarify that some part of the body has to break the surface at some point in each stroke cycle rather than at all times. In some cases officials disqualified some athletes swimming breaststroke in freestyle events for totally submerging for part of their stroke cycle on the grounds that the rules prohibited the swimmer from totally submerging except for in the maximum 15m distance before surfacing after starts and turns.
The breaststroke rule also has dropped the wording saying that the single dolphin kick needs to be performed whilst wholly submerged. Some swimmers had been disqualified for breaking the surface with the kick or performing the kick while on the surface.
The butterfly rule has also been modified to clarify that it is not legal to simply kick without an arm action.
When swimming two to a lane, a swimmer that fails to stay in their half of the lane or that has physical contact with the other swimmer will now be disqualified and ordered from the pool.
Appendix 1 of the rules lists differences from age group and international rules.
Posted at 05:09PM Dec 10, 2008 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Sports Participation in Canada, 2005
The following are some brief excerpts from the Statistics Canada study: Sports Participation in Canada, 2005
Statistics Canada – Catalogue no. 81-595-MIE2008060
It is interesting to note that the report deals primarily with team sports, excluding activities like running, (non-competitive) and weight lifting, and I note that triathlon is only mentioned in the appendices.
Guidelines for determining whether a physical activity fell within scope as a ‘sport’ were determined by Sport Canada. Specifically, a sport is an activity that involves two or more participants engaging for the purpose of competition. Sport involves formal rules and procedures, requires tactics and strategies, specialized neuromuscular skills and a high degree of difficulty and effort. The competitive nature of sport implies the development of trained coaching personnel.
respondents aged 15 and over in the 10 provinces were asked whether they or any other household members had regularly participated in any sport during the previous 12 months. Regularly means at least once a week during the season or for a certain period of the year.
National sport participation rate continues to decline
The national sport participation rate1 dropped in 2005, a continuation of the downward trend that was observed in the 1998 General Social Survey results. Participation in sport declined from 45% in 1992 to 28% in 2005 in Canada. In 1998, more than a third (34%) of the Canadian population aged 15 and over had participated in sport on a regular basis; seven years later, the figure was about one quarter of the population. That was down from 9.6 million Canadians in 1992 to 7.3 million in 2005.
Participation highly concentrated in a few sports
Out of nearly 100 sports played in Canada, participation is highly concentrated in about 20 sports led by golf, ice hockey, swimming, soccer, basketball, baseball, volleyball, skiing and cycling. For men, concentration was mostly in hockey, golf, basketball, baseball and soccer, in that order. A quite different picture emerges for women. They preferred swimming, golf, soccer, volleyball and skiing.
Active participation declining while volunteering in sports increasing
In contrast to a declining active sport participation, volunteering in sports showed notable increases overall. The number of amateur coaches increased 1.6% from 1998 to almost 1.8 million in 2005. Similarly, over 2 million Canadians volunteered their time as administrators or helpers, up 18% from 1998. However, the number of adult Canadians who volunteered as referees, officials or umpires decreased 15% to 800,000 in 2005 after it peaked at 937,000 in 1998.
Relaxation ranked the most important benefit of sport participation
Active Canadians cited relaxation as the most important benefit of sport participation. In 2005, 73% of active Canadians ranked relaxation as the most beneficial outcome of participating in sport. Physical health and fitness came second with 68%. Improvement in social networks through association with new friends and acquaintances was ranked the least important at 34%.
Participation in swimming by individuals over 15:
| Active Participants | Belonging To Clubs | |
| 252,000 | 81,000 | Men |
| 513,000 | 141,000 | Women |
| 764,000 | 221,000 | Total (2.9% of population) |
According to swimming.ca SNC's goal is to have 70,000 registered swimmers by 2012. More information on how many of those 221,000 club swimmers are 15-18 would be helpful! Why do we only have 10,000 members registered with MSC?
Children's participation in sport driven by parental involvement
In 2005, the participation rate was only 35% for children aged 5 to 14 with neither of their parents involved in sport compared to 57% if at least one parent was an active participant.
A possible lessen here is that if you want active children become a Masters Swimmer!
Participation in tournaments highest among youths
The proportion of active Canadians participating in tournaments decreases with age. They are most likely to be young and still in school. The school environment is typically conducive to competitive sport at all levels of schooling. Schools have the facilities and infrastructure that make it easier for students to be part of teams that engage in tournaments.In 2005, 59% or almost 6 out of every 10 active Canadian youths aged 15 to 18 participated in tournaments. This rate was about twice the rate for active Canadians aged 35 and over. This is a trend that has remained stable over the past 13 years.
However, those in the 19 to 34 age group slightly increased their participation in tournaments over this period. In 1992, 3 out of every 10 active persons in this age group competed in tournaments. By 2005, 4 out of 10 participated in tournaments.
Posted at 06:12PM Oct 17, 2008 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Million Metre Updates
The last few weeks I've been preoccupied with registration system issues, that will be the subject of a future post, and I've been neglecting updates to the Million Metre Challenge page. Some of the update process is automatic, but I was doing the parts of the page with pictures manually. Paul Boisvert mentioned that his promotion up to the 3,000,000m group was overdue and that was enough to prompt me to rewrite the code that displays people with pictures.
From now on the order of the pictures, and their placement at the different levels, will be updated each time the totals table is updated, which should be at least once a week.
So, those of you that have made it past 1,000,000m and supplied a picture can now see where you rank in all time placement, and see who is moving up and who is falling behind...
Happy laps!
Posted at 10:41AM Sep 20, 2008 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Swimmer Registration - Filling out forms
The swimmer registration process begins with you, the swimmer, giving your club registrar your email address along with any forms or payments that are required. The club registrar will then create an account for you and activate it. When the account is activated the system sends an email to you at the specified email address containing a link to the registration system. When you open your email and click on that link you will be taken to a page that looks like this:
In the case of masters swimmers the primary contact is the swimmer. Most of the fields are self-explanatory so just go ahead and fill them out. The one non-obvious field is "Primary Contact Province" If you are in British Columbia or Ontario you should select Masters_BC or Masters_ON respectively. In New Brunswick select New Brunswick NOT Masters_NB.
The Step 2 page is contact data for a second contact, this is intended for families with two parents that are registering children, masters swimmers can just click Next.
The Step 3 page sets the user name and password that you will sign on with. You should record these someplace in case you forget them. Note that there is no second field to repeat the password so be very careful as you type it in. When you have entered both fields click Next.
In Step 4 you enter the basic information that is used in swim meets: your name, date of birth, and gender.
How you go about entering this data depends on whether you have been issued a nine-digit id number in the past. If you already have a nine-digit id from a past season then you should have the system retrieve your information. If you are a masters swimmer in Ontario you do not have a nine-digit id and your MSO id will not be used in this process.
If you have a nine-digit id and know what it is you should enter it in the first input box and click the Submit button next to that box. The system will then look up and fill in the rest of your data.
If you have a nine-digit id but don't know what it is you should enter your name, date of birth and gender and click the Submit button underneath the gender. The system will look up and fill in your nine-digit number.
If you do not have a nine-digit id (MSO member or a new swimmer) fill in your name, date of birth and gender and DO NOT click either Submit button.
When entering the date of birth click on the month, type the first letter of the month repeatedly until the desired month is shown, click on the date and type in the day of month, and then click on the year and type in a four-digit year.
If you do a lookup by clicking one of the Submit buttons and it succeeds a Swimmer Details section will appear just below the form, you may have to scroll down to see it:
If the swimmer information is correct click the Select link and the id number will be filled in and the Swimmer Details section will disappear. If the swimmer information is not correct contact your registrar.
If the system fails to find an id it will show a message as shown below, again you may have to scroll down to see it. If you click the Assign link the Swimmer ID field will be set to "TO BE ASSIGNED" and the warning will disappear.
Once the top part of the form has the name, date of birth, gender and either a valid id number or "TO BE ASSIGNED" in it you can proceed to the bottom half of the form.
Fill out these questions and then click the Done button. You will now see the Step 5 screen:
Just click the select button next to the swimmer and then click the "Register Selected Swimmer" button. The final screen will show the swimmer name and a choice of three registration types, click the checkbox next to "Register as a Master Swimmer". When you click it Province and Masters Team input boxes will appear. Select your province (again Masters_BC or Masters_ON for MSABC and MSO members, the name of the province for other provinces - and not Masters_NB for New Brunswick). With the province selected the list of clubs will be displayed and you can click on your club. If your club does not appear in the list it means the club has not yet registered with the province, after making sure it isn't listed with a different name than you expected check with your registrar.
Posted at 02:44PM Sep 11, 2008 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Coaching Initiatives Roadmap
After discussions with Nigel (chair of the Coaching Committee) the following are the initiatives that are underway or upcoming.
Generic Coaching Adult Athletes manual for CAC
- written by Nigel under contract to CAC
- being finalized for publication by CAC
Stroke Evaluation Guide
- based on the NCCP stroke evaluation criteria
- fleshed out and illustrated with pictures and video
- add common flaws
- guide to using video for stroke analysis
- a very preliminary and incomplete prototype intended to just illustrate the concept can be seen here, visit the info links next to Breathing and Body Position.
Swimming-specific Coaching Masters Swimmers manual
- Expand the CAC document to cover swimming specific materials
- contract Nigel to write
Drills Videos
- or do we just link to goswim.tv?
- specific drills to correct stroke flaws?
Clinic Curricula
- how to run a video analysis clinic
- stroke specific clinics
Coach Certification
- built on the above materials, test and certify coaches
- deck coaches
- clinic coaches
Posted at 06:37PM Sep 06, 2008 by Lindsay in Coaching | Comments[0]
Waterproof Digital Cameras With Video Modes
I recently purchased an Olympus Stylus 1030SW digital camera. This camera is a 10.1 MegaPixel digital camera that is waterproof (to 10m), shockproof (6ft drop), and crushproof (220lbs). For a swimmer it's that waterproof part that makes the camera interesting, especially when you know the camera takes video at either 640x480 or 320x240 resolution and at 15 or 30 frames per second. This makes the camera a great tool for video analysis of swimming technique.
Video of your stroke technique can be tremendously useful for improving your technique for two reasons. First, it allows swimmers to see what they are actually doing, which is often quite different from what they visualize they are doing. Second, it allows the coach and the swimmer to get a closer look than can be done in real time from the pool deck. You can load the video onto your computer and watch it in slow motion or frame by frame.
Having a camera on hand means that when a coach sees a problem in a swimmer's stroke they can quickly capture video, pull the swimmer aside, show them what they are doing, and explain the change you want them to make. You can then take another video to see if they have understood and have been able to implement the change.
People have understood that video analysis and feedback are tremendously useful tools for a long time, but the tools needed have been big and bulky and far from cheap, and not well suited to the wet and humid confines of the pool deck. What coach wants to have a swimmer dripping on their new video camera as they try to peer at the small built-in playback screen? And underwater video cameras designed for swimming have often relied on an external video system including cables and video monitors.
The Olympus Stylus brings a completely different level of convenience to video analysis and feedback. It literally fits in your pocket at approximately 9cm/3.5" wide, 6cm/2.5" tall and 2cm/0.75" thick. Being sealed it is immune to pool humidity and being waterproof it doesn't matter if the swimmer drips on it, they can handle it with wet hands and watch the video without getting out of the water. The 5.5cm by 4cm HyperCrystal LCD screen is big and bright enough to be adequate for video viewing for most purposes. Give it to a lanemate and you can capture video from the front, the side, or underneath. With a pair of fins you can taking tracking shots.
As every coach knows, it's the stuff that happens underwater that matters most in swimming technique but it can be hard to see exactly what is happening underwater from the pool deck. With an underwater video camera you can shoot underwater video from various angles and then examine them on your computer at your leisure.
The Olympus camera plugs into your computer with a USB cable and acts like a removable disk. Videos are are encoded in the AVI video format which can be opened with most video programs including Windows Media Player, Windows Movie Maker, and Quicktime Player. Quicktime Player is convenient because it allows you to step through the video frame by frame. It also has some very simple video editing capability. For a more capable video editing program Windows Movie Maker comes for free with Windows and allows you to do all the editing tasks you need for simple video analysis.
You can upload the AVI video files to youtube.com as is, or after editing. Here is a video that was shot in 640x480 at 15frames per second:
You may notice that it is a good idea to keep fingers away from the lens, and the hand strap out of the way. Youtube.com is an easy and free way to share video with members of your team. The video quality is sometimes degraded when watching online, and you can't do things like frame by frame viewing, but your teammates can download the video to their own computer using a site like keepvid.com for better quality and more control.
The Olympus Stylus product line includes the 7.1 MegaPixel 770SW model in the $200 price range, the 8 MegaPixel 850SW model in the $250 range, and the 10.1 MegaPixel 1030SW model in the $350 range.
Masters Swimming Canada intends to develop resource materials that will help coaches and swimmers make the most of new video technology to help swimmers improve their swimming technique, including guides to equipment, videography for stroke and race analysis, and software tools.
Posted at 11:36AM Sep 02, 2008 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]
Minimum Officials Requirements For Very Small Meets
When running a meet for a twenty or less swimmers, each swimming only
one or a few events it can be difficult to justify let alone recruit a
complete set of officials (there are approximately 30 officials at a
large meet). Luckily, the rules allow the referee to assign multiple
roles to an official when such roles are not in conflict. Many of the
roles can also be executed either prior to or after the actual swimming
of heats. This allows a small meet to be run with a smaller number of
officials than would be required to efficiently officiate a larger
meet. The following guidelines are intended for small meets, perhaps
held during workout time slots, that are limited to twenty swimmers,
swum in two to four lanes of the pool, with each swimmer only swimming
one or a few events. Such meets are particularly useful when offered
by clubs in areas with a limited number of meets within easy driving
distance, and for swimmers whose schedules preclude attending regular
meets.
The officials roles for a card meet that does not use electronics are:
meet manager, referee, starter, recorder/scorer, clerk of course, turn
judges, stroke judges, chief finish judge, chief timekeeper, safety
marshal, and a minimum of two timers per lane but preferably three (one
of which is head lane timer). For a very small meet a marshal is not
necessary.
Four positions have dedicated roles during the meet that are best not
combined with one another, these are listed in the first column.
Possible double roles are indicated with an asterisk.
| Primary Roles |
Turns Judge |
Chief Finish Judge |
Recorder |
Meet Manager |
Clerk of Course |
Safety Marshal |
| Referee |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
| Starter |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
| Stroke Judge |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
| Chief Timer |
* |
* |
* |
* |
* |
The turns judge role can be combined with the strokes judge, or the referee or starter can act as a turn judge for one end, provided the starter is also a qualified turn judge. The only position that should not act as a turn judge is the chief timer.
The only duty of the finish judge is to calculate official times, this can be done after the meet by any of the officials, likewise the duties of the recorder. The calculation of official times from the three timer's times can be automated into the data entry system if desired.
The meet manager normally has no significant duties during the course of the meet so that role can be played by any official trained for the role.
The clerk of course duties can largely be carried out prior to the meet and the chief timer can play a role in keeping the heats organized during the meet if required and there are no tight time constraints for the meet.
Duties of the Safety Marshal take place during warm ups and so can be performed by any official.
For a small meet with only two lanes the four officials plus 6 timers should be sufficient.
For a four lane meet there should be two stroke and turns judges for six officials, and 12 timers.
For a meet that only involved long distance freestyle events the strokes judge can be eliminated and the referee and starter can each take one end of the pool to act as stroke and turn judges as the stroke judging is very limited and it is only necessary to ensure swimmers touch the wall on turns.
Posted at 07:09PM Aug 31, 2008 by Lindsay in General | Comments[0]