Coach Rollins’ Road to Omaha

Today, December 2, 2009 officially started my comeback into the world of competitive swimming. The ultimate goal is to qualify for the 2012 USA Swimming Olympic trials in Omaha Nebraska. This will be a challenge as I will be not only training for my specialty event the 100 meter breaststroke, but also adding in the 50 meter and 100 meter freestyle. I have given this a lot of thought and been in and out of the water for the past year working on my stroke mechanics and I feel that I am at a place where I can start to commit more of myself to the water. The largest setback has always been my own body. From years of torture and pressure my knees are extremely weak. I had surgery on my left knee last year, and it is feeling great. The right knee is weak and I am consistently going to physical therapy to strengthen it. Unfortunately, I believe that I might have to get surgery on that one as well. We will see.

It has been a struggle making this decision. My wife, Caroline, has always told me she will support me in whatever it is I want to do. My family has also always supported my efforts. The coaches that I have asked to help me train are some of the best in the country. My father-in-law will be sending me workouts from Cincinnati, Ohio and I will be training in the afternoons when not coaching or working to better the Lumberjacks.

The reality started a couple weeks ago when I competed in a Masters swimming meet in Tempe Arizona and swam three lifetime best times. This includes my time as a swimmer at The University of Arizona. I thought to myself that if I can swim that fast with only a minimal workload, I can probably get back to the Trials.

I will be writing blogs daily about workouts and how my progress is going.

Today was my first dry-land workout followed by a light swim. The dry-land workout consisted of the following:

50 crunches, 50 crunches to the right, 50 to the left, 50 med-ball leg raises.

2x the following

20 stretch cord fly pulls, 25 full sit ups with the med-ball under my chin

20 stretch cord triceps extension, 50 side to side med-ball touches

20 stretch cord biceps curls, 1:00 of flutter kick on back

3x the following

5 pull ups, 15 over the edge leg raises

Afterwards got into the pool and swam a nice easy 1,000.

This was a good start. I am looking forward to getting a good swim in tomorrow and probably going around 5,000 meters.

Thank you all for the support!

See you at the pool!

Dave Rollins