Swimmers' Log Books

[BigFish]

I'm just starting to get involved with Swim 21 for my club, and one of the questions I noticed jogged my memory about swimmers' log books.

My question is: what should go in them? I kept one myself a few years ago, but it was completely made up by myself. It basically just recorded training times and race times. What else do people keep in their log books? What would anyone out there expect to find in a swimmer's log book?

[swimmer]

as well as the usual training sets i include my RHR (resting heart rate) as soon as i wake up and before i go to sleep, before and after a training sets, during the training sets. Also my physical wellbeing (colds etc), mental state - happy etc, how i thought the sesison went, etc etc

[mammamedley]

A log book can contain as much as YOU want to put in it.
It can be as detailed as you want it to be.
I have log books from when I was younger and they were more like diaries and are a great read.
I have 3 of my brothers before he left to uni to the states which were more swimming related as he knew that other people would be reading them. They are the best log books I have ever seen and sometimes lent to anybody interested that I can trust to get them back! One coach I lent them too picked out sets for his top squad to try - that did not go down too well! Derek Snelling has the others and I assume they were shown around as examples.

The main thing I would say is do not worry if you miss filling it in for a while - just pick it up and recap over the days/weeks you missed. Your coach SHOULD have a record of what you've swum anyway.

Some ideas to put in your log book:
RHR
weight
height
details of female cycle
number of hours sleep
times of sessions
location of session
length of pool
name of coach
session content
comments after session
PB list
race records including all splits
Goal list
technique goals or 'technical innovations'
calender of competitions
Education aims
Mileage charts ie: daily,weekly, monthly, annually
Tapers - with details of past tapers - how they worked - where to change
Any qualifying times that need reaching
details of diet suppliments - when and how much taken
land training schedule and what done
training times of test sets

My brother used to use different coloured pens, blue and balck for neutral comments, green for good comments and red for any negative comments. One of my log books had so many negative comments (bad patch of a stroppy teenager)!! It is important to write as least one positive comment after each session. As our log books were read by so many people I would write in code or i could understand what was going on by reading through the lines. It is difficult to write your true feelings if you you know that the log is going to be read by your coach etc.

If your coach has a detailed plan and records what you are doing this information can be duplicated so check to see what information your coach has before spending too much time yourself.