The month of December is a bane for most college swimming coaches. The mid-season shave meet, finals week, and winter break combine for a nice blend of panic and lack of control on their end.

They fear one wasted week will lead into another potentially wasted week over Christmas. Then the training trip begins. What’s left? Several weeks of piling on as much training as possible.

I find the timing of the mid-season rest meets poorly planned. Can it be fixed? Or maybe there is nothing wrong at all.

Now, this is highly unorthodox, and who knows if it would work, but what if we were to scrap resting altogether for the invites?

Stay with me here. You come back to campus after that mid-season big meet, dig your toes in, and continue training until finals week. Practice tones down as finals become priority No. 1, so you build in a little taper there to keep spirits and energy high. Then, swimmers can crush their finals and head home with their heads high, relieved, and ready to celebrate with their families and old high school cronies.

Call me out if I’m wrong, but it’s a bit naive to think that college swimmers do all the yardage coaches ask of them when they go back for winter break. Fifty percent is a safer bet.

Yes, it’s an inconvenient truth. While they’re home for a nice holiday break, swimming tends to take a backseat. Not to say they don’t do anything. I would always see kids working hard over break. They just wouldn’t be at every practice. Neither was I. It’s just nowhere near the kind of workload you were doing underneath the watchful eye of your college coach. You self-taper, per se.

This could be an opportunity, rather than a risk. You take this time to listen to your body. You take your workload down by 50 percent. You spend some nice time at home. You get cozy. You relax your mind but still stay physically sharp.

So you have a good time with your families and pals over Christmas. You do a little training. And then when you arrive to your training trip, here it comes…kick things off with a fast-suit meet.

The combination of finals week and your swimmers being gone for the holidays is a bit of a built-in taper as it stands. Having them throw on a fast suit can put up some fast times and elevate confidence going into training trips. It’s not a full taper, so the training trip can still hit the ground running. Those who know they have keep their yardage up are intrinsically driven to do so. All swimmers know that their training trips will be like the whitewater rapids on the river Styx. They still will need to give their base some love while home. Then they get to Hawaii or whatever, and kick it off with a bang.

Would it work? Who knows. Let’s hear what you think. All I’m saying is that there is no one right way to execute a mid-season rest meet.

But there is one right way to interpret your results: No matter how you perform, get ready to ratchet things up a notch, because there is no room for complacency leading up to March.

By Adam Mania