Posted February 24th, 2023
Hi all,
It's been a long time since I have made a post on here. I've been thinking about my summer plans and am doing my yearly maitnence on this website.
I am currently getting ready to update my registration system so that if I offer swim lessons this summer, it will be all ready to go. I should be sending info out about swim lessons in about 2 weeks.
Hopefully I have some returning faces this summer! I've missed seeing everyone while I've been in college.
See everyone very soon!
Posted July 21st, 2021
Hi all,
If you are in town, this week will be my last week of lessons for the summer. I will be touring colleges, doing summer homework for my senior year, and preparing for peak swim season. I need to see how intensive this school year is before I can offer after-school lessons. If I am not too busy, I'll be happy to do lessons this fall.

I will be sending out evaluations shortly, which show how prepared your swimmer(s) is/are to start swimming on a club or stroke team.

Here's some updated swimming information I included in my blog last year that might be useful to some of you. Feel free to read through however much of it you want:

Post #1: What a typical practice looks like at each age group:

I have a lot of people ask me what competitive swimming is like as a middle/high schooler. Here's a quick overview, since I have been swimming throughout the last 7 years (and before then):

An average day for me at practice depends on the meets coming up and the season we are in. During our swim lessons, I have been trying to reach about 500-750 yards of swimming in a half-hour. We could do more, but learning technique is more important than yardage for most swimmers. For me, up until middle school, the majority of practices were technique-based (around 1500 yards in an hour) and focused mainly on preparing swimmers for harder practices. The practices were easy and fun. For everyone who I have worked with, this is where their kid would start.

Middle school practices (about age 12-14) were slightly harder and longer. Since school-sponsored teams are for high schoolers only, club swimming or summer league is the only way to be part of a team. I practiced after school from about 4:30 to 6:15 pm a day. It was relatively easy but quite boring. The average yardage that we swam was about 2500-3000 yards (about 1 1/2 miles). This may seem like a lot, but for most older swimmers, this is nothing. High school swimming is a different story, however. Depending on the team your swimmer is on, it can be a lot of work. I am on Southlake's Varsity swim team, and during peak season, we have at least 5 practices a week, each of which is over 2 hours long. For some distance swimmers or committed D1 athletes, this can stretch up to 8-9 practices a week. Each practice ranges from 4000 yards (a sprint/rest day) to 6500 yards (distance day). In an average season, we swim somewhere around 750-1000 miles, or about the distance between Southlake, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia.

Post #2: Swimming lingo: Want to understand the language used in the Olympics? Here are some common terms used.

Length. A length can either be 25 yards (short course yards), 25 meters, or 50 meters (long course). The Olympics are hosted in a 50-meter pool.

IM. IM stands for Individual Medley, which is a combination of each stroke. It starts with butterfly, then backstroke, then breaststroke, and finishes with the fastest stroke, freestyle.

Split. A split is how long it takes to complete a length. Those are the 3 most common ones I can think of.

Posted November 29, 2020
Hey everyone,
Happy (late) Thanksgiving! Thanks again for signing up for DanielSwim last summer, it was a lot of fun to be able to meet and coach your kids. I've been working on preparing the website for next summer and have made some improvments to the registration process. I also have been swimming a lot to prepare for meets and swim around 3.5-4 miles a day. If you are interested to see my team's records, I will attach those below this post. Many of these records may not be up to date, but they are at least cool (in my opinion) to see. Again, thanks so much for signing up last summer for lessons and I hope that this upcoming spring/summer I can schedule some more lessons with you guys. If you need anything swimming/lesson related, email me at mrdanielhenricks@yahoo.com. Keep safe and keep swimming,
Daniel Henricks.
Posted July 31st, 2020
Hey everyone,
I am writing this blog to sincerely thank you for one of the greatest opportunities that I’ve had so far! This summer turned out not to be a waste; I got to teach all of your talented, kind, enthusiastic kids this summer. During the last school year, I thoroughly enjoyed taking a class over web design and the basics of HTML coding. My first website other than DanielSwim.com was a very simple “About Me” which was a brief overview of me. Then I created a study program to help me learn chemistry ions and formulas. Next, I created a calendar that kept track of school assignments. Finally, I created a prototype website for my local church that never was used but served as proof to myself that I had the talents to use coding to make myself stand out. When I was eating dinner one night, I decided that my love of swimming and web design could turn out to be something special this summer. And it sure did. I created DanielSwim.com, hosted the domain, and laid the foundations of how I would make my website and swim lessons something different this summer. I received a great response from Southlake Moms and so many people registered that I was worried I couldn’t schedule everyone. Since then, I have enjoyed teaching every kid something different, whether it was freestyle or diving for rings at the bottom of the pool. While I was doing that, I also continued with my swimming, as the CISD natatorium opened back up late June. As this summer comes to an end, I want to make sure you and your kids know where to continue from here. I’ve filmed some videos over some of the common topics that I cover, and I highly suggest that you watch those or some of the other videos on the page. In order to keep what I have taught memorized, I suggest swimming once or twice a week for 30 minutes in addition to going swimming for fun. If your kid is interested or already in a stroke team or club swimming, please continue doing that. Here is a guide for where to continue learning swimming and what I go over:
  • For beginners (ages 3-5):
  • Work on freestyle with the head below water
  • Work on freestyle with fast kicks
  • Work on going under the water for rings
  • Buy a kickboard
  • Buy goggles (Speedo brand is the best) if they don't have them
  • For intermediate skill (ages 6-8):
  • Work on freestyle with breathing to the side
  • Work on backstroke and breaststroke
  • Talk about stroke team if interested
  • Buy a kickboard and work on dolphin and breaststroke kick
  • Buy goggles (Speedo brand is the best) if they don't have them
  • For advanced swimmers (ages 8+):
  • Work on racing freestyle
  • Work on backstroke, butterfly, and breaststroke
  • Talk about stroke or club team if interested
  • Buy a kickboard and work on dolphin and breaststroke kick for extended distances
  • Buy goggles (Speedo brand is the best) if they don't have them
Thanks for a great summer, -Daniel
Hello all,
It's been a while since I have blogged on here, mainly because of the many other additions I have made to the website. I have added around 10-12 good videos to watch (about 10 minutes in length each) if you are bored and ever want to watch a couple of videos with your kids or just learn more about swimming in general. They are categorized by stroke. I also fixed almost all of the bugs I had before on the page. I've enjoyed using this page to show you all some of the cool videos and info I have. I will certainly be doing this again next summer.
I am taking a trip down to Corpus next Friday until the 28th or so, and for anyone who has lessons during that time, I will let you know if I am out of town. I will do one more week of lessons (the last week of July I believe) whenever I return then I will be finishing up for the summer. Over the past two weeks, I have worked with your kids on backstroke and some more breaststroke. I also have been working on a full 100 IM (1 length of each stroke) with the more advanced swimmers. This is one of the hardest events in swimming and so far I have been very impressed with how well they are doing swimming it. This week and next, I will work on review and a couple new drills and tips. I also may add in some butterfly and freestyle for some swimmers. That's all I have to say for now. Thanks for reading,
-Daniel
Hey everyone,
It's about to be the 4th of July. I am planning on doing all lessons for this week, but if you plan to be out of town for this or next week, let me know. Regarding COVID-19, I have not been exposed, but if you or a family member has, please let me know. It is important to me that I stay safe both for your and my benefit. Thanks.

Also, this week I plan to do a bit of breaststroke technique with the older kids and some dolphin kick and other kicking techniques along with treading water. I hope that I can continue to teach through the end of July (around July 24th) and then I will be preparing for school. I think I will add a "technique" section to the blog so that you and your swimmers can see some really fast swimming! That will be finished soon. Thanks again,
Daniel
Hello all,

I hope that you are doing well. It is approaching the 4th of July and I wanted to write one or two more posts before the long weekend. By the way, I am planning to teach lessons through the holiday week unless I hear otherwise. Please contact me through text/email about schedule changes as always. Anyway, I wanted to quick talk about meets and what they are like for me or what they would be like for your children. Meets often are very long and boring for the parents. The time between events is exhausting because sometimes it may take a while for some of the heats to finish. With that out of the way, meets are very fun for swimmers as it is the only opportunity that we have to race against the clock. I love going to certain meets, such as the high school meets that we have, because the level of competition is unlike most other meets that I have ever seen. High school meets are more like a team sport versus club and middle school meets which feel more like an individual sport. The meets are usually scheduled something like this:

Warmup for around an hour (30 minute warmup sessions, around 800-1500 yards of warmup)
Relays, such as the 200 free relay or the 200 IM relay
Individual events

This is how most meets work. There are a few exceptions that I may cover another time. Awards are typically given to top 8, with top 3 getting medals. The team that wins gets a trophy or some sort of prize at most meets (one meet gives away rubber chickens to the winners). Awards then are distributed to the swimmers after the meet by the coaches.

If you are interested in signing up your swimmer for stroke team or club practice once they get older, it is a good idea to have a rough understanding of meet schedules. That's all I have for today. I also did change the homepage up a little. I will write more soon. Thanks for reading!

-Daniel
As you may have seen, I redesigned the blog! I think it looks a lot better now. Anyways, this week was another great week of lessons for me, as I started to get into some of the more advanced tips with some of the more experienced swimmers and the newer swimmers became a lot more comfortable in the water. It was great to see how happy the kids were doing their lessons and how they can learn so much in such a short amount of time. I have noticed that there is a possibility of severe weather in the forecast this week. If there is any lightning within around an hour of the time for your lessons, I will try to reschedule for another date as I would not feel comfortable teaching in the middle of a storm. If it is just raining, the decision is up to you and your kids. I plan to dive into some more advanced topics this week as I try to get the experienced swimmers familiar with all four strokes over the summer and I will also focus on treading water and more diving games (such as playing with rings/Sharks and Minnows). These are very important skills that I plan on focusing on primarily until they are mastered. Also, I added a new section to this blog about what middle and high school swimming is about. Please read it if your kids may be interested in doing swimming as a sport in the future. I will plan to release more of these posts in the future. Finally, please contact me as always if plans change for lessons, otherwise, I will see you next week! Thanks again,
Daniel.
I have a lot of people ask me what competitive swimming is like as a middle/high schooler. I have swam at tons of meets, memorized so many different ways to shave off seconds, and practiced for hundreds of hours so I figured I would share what we do in practices/meets.
An average day for me at practice depends lots on the meets coming up and the season we are in. In middle school, I practiced after school, from about 4:30 to 6:15pm a day. It was relatively easy but quite boring. The average yardage that we swam was about 2500-3000 yards (1.5-1.7 miles). This may seem like a lot, but for most swimmers, that is nothing compared to their normal workouts. I will include an average workout for a middle-school level swimmer (this may not be exact). Here is some translation of the swimming language that you need to know first:
1) Each length usually stands for 25 yards. So a 25 would be 1 length, a 50 would be two, and so on.
2) We repeat many of the same exercise, sort of like reps. So 6 x 100 on 1:55 would mean 6 repetitions of 100 yard swims on 1 minute and 55 seconds.

To everyone who registered for lessons, thanks so much for turning my dream of teaching lessons into a reality! I was so glad to be able to meet you all and be able to see your talented kids swim and show me their skills. Behind the scenes, I have been working on bug fixes and many tiny quality updates on the website. These go live right after I code them, so if they are not working at first, it may be fixed soon. I have released a payment page with a link to my Venmo that can be accessed both through mobile and desktop. I also have made this blog. Please continue to email or text me with changes to your schedule; otherwise, I will travel over to your house at the normal time unless you have already requested a different time.

I also started back my competitive swimming journey this week, as the CISD aquatics center opened this past Monday. It has been a little rough but I am finally feeling back in shape. I am so thankful that they opened the facility safely and allowed me to also be able to train so that I can use my practices as a resource for drills and activities for lessons.

Well, that kinda wraps up all I have to say for today. It's been fun coding this all by scratch and truly quite a test for my coding skills. If you have any questions about schedules, please contact me using the link here. Thanks, and see you next week!