Fowler Fins

The Fins YMCA Competitive Swimming program is supported by the YMCA of the USA and delivered by local YMCA units.  As a YMCA program, its goal is to promote the YMCA mission and core values through competitive swimming and diving.  

The Fins also are part of the USA Swimming Association under the Club name FINS.  This club team provides swimmers the opportunity to compete against other USA swim clubs throughout the US.  

The YMCA Swim Team program is a developmental swim program led by trained and certified USA coaches to improve swimmers’ competitive skills and endurance through progression rather than intense competition. Our trained coaches work to improve swimmers’ skill levels and endurance and to promote a healthy lifestyle. Our program embraces the YMCA core values and promotes progression at an individual level.

The YMCA Swim Team offers many practice options a week for beginning swimmers and more for advanced groups. Swimmers are encouraged to attend at least 2-3 practices a week. 

Fins Coaching strategy and philosophy are based on 4 fundamentals:

1. Have fun and enjoy swimming- Swimming is a hard sport, so it’s important to keep it fun, exciting, and enjoyable for the kids so they can continue to stay motivated and swim with passion and joy.
2. Character development – Swimming provides kids a great opportunity to foster and build kids character to be successful outside of just swimming. The Fins program aims to develop the kids’ character in areas of respect, honesty, leadership, hard work, discipline, and perseverance.
3. Science-based training – Practices and training will be strategically planned ahead of time for specific meets and competitions, so swimmers are peaking their swim performances at the right times during the year and performing at their max performance. Exercise Physiology plays a key role in the design of all practice sessions. This includes training the body for Lactate Threshold tolerance, Increasing Vo2Max, training both fast twitch and slow twitch muscles, mitochondria development, and anaerobic endurance development. 
4. Stroke Technique – Swimming fast is all about great stroke technique, therefore practices will focus on drill work and technique training to fine-tune all strokes to make swimmers efficient and powerful in all the strokes. Body position will be a big focus. Continually reinforce a good body position and stroke technique throughout practice.  

Requirements
Swimmers must…

• Have a YMCA membership
• Be able to demonstrate the following skills: Swim 25 yards freestyle demonstrating breathing to the side and good body position and swim 25 yards backstroke demonstrating good body position
• Demonstrate the fundamental knowledge of what breaststroke and butterfly should look like
• Mastery of strokes is NOT required to join!