Category Archives: Swimming

From TI Blog: How long can you sustain Fast Swimming?

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I just read this off of the Total Immersion blog and had to comment immediately:
How long can you sustain Fast Swimming?
I found it to be extremely interesting in its discussion on adaptation and about neurological training. He states regarding adaptation:

These days, the coaches of elite swimmers are far more likely to give a moderate training load, let the swimmer adapt to it, then give a slightly more demanding load, adapt to that, etc. Rather than one major peak per season, they’re looking to produce a prolonged series of carefully-calibrated smaller advances in capacity and performance.

I’ve always thought that shocking the system as in the past was only going to wear somebody down and I’ve adjusted my own training to reflect an approach that is very similar to what he describes. I up my training load, then spend about 3 weeks to cement that adaptation into my system before raising it again.
The other important point is here:

The seldom-acknowledged weakness in this approach is that, while it may work reasonably well for the metabolic systems (aerobic capacity, muscle strength, etc.), neurological capacity was poorly served. A swimmer who is barely surviving workouts, because of prolonged intensity or volume, is far more likely to “practice struggle” in their movements, hurting the neuromuscular imprint needed to swim fast.

Lately, I’ve really come to realize the importance of neurological training. This is not only practicing and imprinting proper form in swimming, but also in the way my legs move in running, and also getting my nerves to fire faster so that my legs are more comfortable in cycling fast, even when tired.
Driving your system to exhaustion so that you can’t even focus on form is just dumb. I’ve discovered this as well where I would get to a point of tiredness and can’t even maintain form while running. The result is that I start stomping more, heel striking, my legs start moving slower and slower: this is all bad not only for racing fast, but increasing the likelihood of injury.
This is why I am mentally extra focused on maintaining form in all 3 sports. It’s super important to practice this, especially when you get into tired states because the body just gets lazy as you focus on “keep moving” versus proper form. The worst thing that can happen, as the TI blog entry suggests, is that when you get tired, you start imprinting improper form or you never gain the ability to imprint proper form because you’re always tired and you can’t.
Love this blog entry and love how it validates some of my own personal discoveries.

Intermediate to Advanced: The Different Types of Training

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In my interactions with my coach M2, I have learned that there are 6 types of training. These are:
1. Neuro-muscular – training of the nervous system to do something either differently, better, or to some form which maximizes efficiency and minimizes effort. Example: super short high speed treadmill intervals for 15-30 seconds per interval, form focus workouts for swimming.
2. Speed – training that results in being faster. Examples: swimming speed sets, sprinting track workouts for running.
3. Strength – training that results in you being stronger, and to put out more energy at the same effort. Examples: hill climbing in running, hill climbing or more watts on the computrainer in cycling.
4. Endurance – training for the ability to race or produce energy output for some length of time. Example: gradually lengthening the duration of a long run over a period of weeks.
4b. Stamina – I make this a sub-section to endurance, which is the ability to maintain a level of speed/strength for a long period of time. Example: gradually increasing the time of your intervals and reducing your rest periods while maintaining the same wattages during Computrainer bike interval workouts.
5. Recovery – stimulation of blood flow by raising heart rate and circulation but not raising effort to flush the body of exercise by-products and promote healing. Example: cycling on a computrainer at negligible watts, but high RPMs for about 20-30min.
It is somewhat obvious that whenever you go out to train, you’re most likely training more than one of these areas simultaneously. However, I wanted to point out:
1. You can train to focus on only one of these areas.
2. It’s good to have a mix of all 6 areas as you’re building for a race. The mix depends on where you are in your training schedule.
3. You have to be aware that potentially you could be detracting other areas if you’re not focusing on these areas.
Let’s talk about the first point.
Focusing on one thing is possible and many times desirable. Of the 6 training types, I’ve focused on mostly neuro-muscular, strength, and recovery. It’s all based on what you individually need.
For example, over the winter, I did a lot of treadmill training where I’d warmup with track drills, ie. kick backs, skipping, and then started doing 30 min intervals at super high speed, building from 6 MPH to as much as 11 MPH (where the interval drops to 15-20 seconds due to the fact that the treadmill takes too long to accelerate to that speed). By the way, I have not found a gym treadmill that goes faster than 11 MPH, although I have heard that you can actually get treadmills that go that fast. What this achieved for me, is not necessarily the ability to maintain an 11 MPH/5:27 min/mile pace over a race. It does help train my neuromuscular system to fire my muscles quicker so that I get used to running at a higher turnover rate, at paces I can maintain. This results in me being faster simply because my body is accustomed to moving my legs faster.
For strength training, over the last 2 years I started climbing and doing laps on Old La Honda and Kings Mountain. These laps have built up my leg strength considerably and increased their resilience on hill climbs, where I was defeated utterly at Ironman Austria a few years back.
I am also a big user of recovery workouts. I figure out if, for a given workout, I need to back off. If I do need to back off severely, often I’ll do a recovery workout. An example of this is a pedaling efficiency workout involving a lot of high RPM one-legged pedaling drills at minimal wattage. It doesn’t stress my muscles from a power standpoint, but it raises my heart rate and circulation so that blood is flowing through my muscles and the flushing effect helps my recovery so that the next day I’ll be able to perform a normal workout.
Second point: The mix.
Training all in one type means that you’re not gaining the full benefits or reaching your potential for a race. If all you’re doing is sprinting workouts on the bike, you may not be able to last an entire century. If all you’re doing is running at endurance pace every workout, you may find that you aren’t increasing your speed, or you don’t have enough strength to pass someone when you want to.
You need to mix it up and include all types and improve on them all. You can figure out, as I have, where my deficiencies are, and do some focus on improving some areas. But overall, you need to train all 6 types as you build through your season to the big race.
I tend to focus on neuromuscular workouts during the offseason, as they don’t stress my aerobic system and are great for recovery workouts. Then I move from neuromuscular focus as my training season starts to building speed and strength with a lesser endurance emphasis. This is because endurance is easiest to build, but speed and strength take lot more time. As I hit mid-season, I am adding more endurance and stamina into the mix as I try to extend the speed and strength I’ve built up to longer times.
Third point, watch out for what you’re not focusing on and don’t let it slide.
As you’re focusing on certain aspects of training, you have to watch out that you don’t reduce other aspects. An easy example is that as you build endurance, you may find that your form (neuromuscular aspect) gets really messy as you get tired. This is very bad! The trick is to maintain form even when you’re butt tired, and as you focus on building endurance. Otherwise, you could injure yourself through poor form, as your muscles are tiring and you engage other weaker muscles to compensate.
Another example is when you’re supposed to be doing a recovery workout, but yet you feel energized and so you try to push harder and do something with more energy. But then all of a sudden, half way through the workout, you find that you burn through that initial burst of energy which fails you later because you weren’t fully recovered and you don’t have enough stamina to continue. Recovery when you have to and don’t force yourself to do something your body just isn’t OK for.
Yet another example is not gradually increasing your workout intervals to improve stamina. You mentally don’t feel like doing fast intervals beyond a certain point, and thus your stamina never improves. You hit race day and you find that as you try to maintain speed, you can’t and you’re slowing down as you move through the miles.
While training typically involves the simultaneous training of all 6 types of training, I think that there is a lot of benefit to identifying where your personal needs are, and coupled with where you are in your training season, you can focus on specific areas which need improvement and advance them greatly. Categorizing the different types of training really helps in thinking about training and how to race faster.

One Arm Swimming Progression and Notes

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For those who are curious, the progression I swam to build my one arm swimming strength is below:
4×100 – 25 R, 25 L repeat; 4×50 – 25 R, 25 L; RI :10
2×100 – 50 R, 50 L; 3×100 – 25 R, 25 L repeat; 4×50 – 25 R 25 L; RI :10
3×100 – 50 R, 50 L; 3×100 – 25 R, 25 L repeat; 4×50 – 25 R 25 L; RI :10
4×100 – 50 R, 50 L; 4×100 – 25 R, 25 L repeat; 4×50 – 25 R 25 L; RI :10
2×150 – 75 R, 75 L; 3×100 – 50 R, 50 L; 4×100 – 25 R, 25L repeat; 4×50 – 25 R, 25 L; RI :10
2×150 – 75 R, 75 L build 25s; 3×100 – 50 R, 50 L neg split 50s; 4×100 – 25 R, 25 L; 4×50 – 25 R, 25L; RI :10
2×150 – 75 R, 75 L build 25s; 2×150 – 75 R, 75 L mod; 3×100 – 50 R 50 L mod; 4×50 – 25 R, 25 L; RI :10
3x( 150 build 25s, 150 mod); 3×100 neg split; RI :10
2×200 – 100 R, 100 L; 2×150 – 75 R, 75 L; 2×100 – 50 R, 50 L; RI :10
3×200 – 100 R, 100 L; 3×150 – 75 R, 75 L; 3×100 – 50 R, 50 L; RI :10
2×300 – 150 R, 150 L; 2×100 – 50 R, 50 L; 4×50 – 25 R, 25 L; RI :10
1×400 – 200 R, 200 L; 2×100 – 50 R, 50 L; 2×100 – 25 R, 25 L repeat; 4×50 – 25 R, 25 L; RI :10
10×100 – 50 R, 50 L; RI :10
1×400 – 200 R, 200 L; 1×300 – 150 R, 150 L; 1×200 – 100 R, 100 L, 1×100 – 50 R, 50 L; RI :10
Notes:
1. The net distance on the entire set is about 1000-1200 yards/meters. Total time to finish this workout is probably about 30-45 minutes depending on what I did after the main set.
2. I swim this workout on a 25 yard pool.
3. I started in the offseason and swam this workout 2X/week. It allowed me to focus on one arm swimming strength alone.
4. I would warm up with 400 EZ swimming, then jump into this workout.
5. I did this workout with fins, to give my body an extra push and not let me wallow in the middle of a lane when I got tired.
6. Following this workout, I would either do sprints of 50s, or pull with paddles and do 25 EZ/25 sprint alternating for about 200y. At the later stages, I would sometimes just cool down after the main set because my muscles were too tired. I did not attempt to force my tired muscles to do anything else afterwards, as I considered this a strength only workout and didn’t tie in any other elements like endurance. I would focus on that during other workouts in the week.
7. The stress on my muscles was quite high, especially after I crossed the 200y mark of 100 right arm, 100 left arm. At the same time, I started into the base phase of my training too. That’s when I started doing this workout once a week, and swimming normal Masters workouts another 2X during the week.
8. When you’re one arm swimming, you can really focus your attention on the stroke and pull of each arm. I really put my attention on each and every stroke, and try to make each one the perfect stroke and be able to repeat it through the entire set. What’s the perfect stroke for me:
a. Body form – Keeping as straight as a needle. I try not to let my flutter kick ruin my body straightness. I lay on one side and don’t let my body sway or rock. I relax and think that I am a log just floating on the water and just paddling the log.
b. Head position – I keep it aligned with my body. I don’t lift it up during any part of the stroke (another thing I found out I was doing!) but keep it in one place. I put my cheek against my bicep to maintain form and also close up the gap between my face and arm to prevent a possible place where drag from water can occur. I had to experiment with how deep my head was in order to keep my hips from dropping lower. With my body composition, I believe that my head is actually lower than many instructors might want it. But I also try to keep my forehead slightly up to cut through the water better, versus having the water barrel over my dipped head and create drag.
c. As my stroke enters the water, I try for the most quiet, non-bubble creating entry into the water. I am most successful with my right arm, not so good with my left arm. It has been talked about in other literature that creating bubbles wastes energy, and also is evidence of a messy, energy-using entry into the water. I try for perfect entry every time.
d. The moment it enters the water, I extend fully and almost immediately catch. The catch is when I bend my hand downward to “grab” water. Following next is my forearm bend to catch even more water, but as my forearm sweeps down, I also feel the actually stroke begin to work. I make sure that I bend ONLY at the elbow and keep my upper arm high. I don’t let the entire arm drop down deep into the water. This is evidence of getting tired and also will create more drag as the deep water presses against the arm.
e. I keep my elbow high as I pull back the arm, down the length of my body. I try to keep the elbow skating along the surface of the water, or perhaps less than an inch under the surface as I move my arm/hand back against the water.
f. I try to keep the stroke strong through the entire length of the stroke. In the past, I discovered that my stroke would always start strong, but then fizzle out towards the end. So I focus on using my big lat muscles to pull back and not my shoulders, which are small and would get strained. As my hand/arm passes my shoulder and towards my hip, I start thinking about using my tricep to sweep the water back behind me with the final extension of the hand. This is where I had the most problems, where I was losing energy at the end of the stroke and was just letting my hand just drift backward and not using energy to get that extra push at the end.
g. I focus on keeping the hand/arm pressing straight back against the water, and putting 100% of the backward force into exactly forward motion. In the past, my arm was drifting up and down, and even moving backward in a circle when it started getting tired. Your tired arm will start to move around in order to find the place of least resistance to move backward; this is bad! It needs to push against the area of resistance that creates 100% forward motion. I focused on making every stroke put 100% of my energy into going forward EVERY TIME.
h. The only thing missing from this type of workout is the addition of your hip roll into the force of the stroke. I only lay on my side swimming and don’t attempt to add my hip roll to give extra oomph. I focus on arm only and do not rock my body at all. I work on adding my hip roll during normal swimming.
9. It’s OK to repeat workouts until you master it from a muscle standpoint.
10. I found this workout to be extremely demanding on my swim muscles. I need adequate recovery afterwards, which is at least a day in between until my next swim workout.

One Armed Swimming

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Every now and then, my swim coach would make us do what he called the “scooter drill”.
You take a pull buoy and hold it one hand in front of you, as you swim with one arm for a set number of strokes. Then you switch hands and swim with the other arm for a number of strokes. It’s sort of like getting on a scooter and pushing constantly with one leg to make it go.
It’s also an annoying drill because no one is used to swimming with one arm generally.
I hated it. As I swam down the 50m length, I would be OK for a few strokes and then I start getting tired, and get slower and slower, until I’m totally wiped out just reaching the other wall.
I grew determined. I wanted to be able to do this drill, which others seemed to do OK and seem to be so fast going down the length of the pool.
During my off season, I started doing intervals of swimming with each arm for 25m. I would successively increase both the number of intervals and the distance I swam with each arm. I eventually reached swimming a 400m with one armed swimming for 200m each. I would then do other shorter intervals for a total of a 1000m set. I would do this 2-3X a week during the off season, and as I entered into the base phase, I would do this once a week while swimming normal workouts the other 2 times.
As expected, my “scooter drill” improved greatly. I got much faster and fatigued a lot less, as I was working out with one arm a lot longer than the scooter drill intervals. But another more amazing thing happened; my regular swimming got a ton stronger and faster.
One big thing I suffered from was that my stroke would kind of fizzle out at the end of the stroke, near my hip as it exitted the water. In doing one arm swimming, I was now able to keep my stroke strong through its entire length, and for longer durations. I could still be strong swimming for workouts up to 4000m. In addition, I was able to lower my stroke rate and thus not be so out of breath and/or wiped out AND my swim speed increased.
One arm swimming really bummed me out. I rallied, took matters into my own hands, and improved my one arm swimming ability in a focused manner. But then I realized the benefits of this strength increase in both endurance and speed.
Yes….amazing!

Importance of the Negative Split

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If there is one training principle I have come to both love and hate, it’s the negative split. It’s also one of the most important.
In short, it means that you increase effort and, thus (hopefully) speed, on the second half of your workout or race. Workouts can also be gradual in increasing effort, resulting in descending time so it is some times called descending workouts or intervals (ie. in swimming, you can do a set at descend 1-2-3, which means you descend time over the next three intervals). No matter what you start at one pace, but you end up at increased pace/effort.
Our bodies race like we train. When we go all out during a race, we often put out the most effort and have the highest speed during the first part of the race, when we’re fresh. Then when the second half of the race comes, we find ourselves getting more and more tired and often slow down as we hit the finish line.
This is bad! Slowing down as you approach the finish line, often starting from miles out, means:
1. You’re getting tired and depleted. Maintaining speed becomes a grinding experience or impossible. Your heart rate starts leaping higher and higher and you have no choice but to slow down or else you’ll flame out…or pass out.
2. Your better trained opponents are now passing you. That sucks right? You try to pick it up and you can’t!
3. As you get depleted, your muscles get stiffer and stiffer as lactic acid builds up. It just becomes a painful experience as you force your muscles to keep going, and you may be reduced to walking, or weak spinning for cycling, or for swimming your stroke rate just keeps dropping as your arms feel like lead.
4. Mentally, it just makes the race feel like the worst experience ever. You’re glad to hit the finish line and you wonder why in the world did you ever subject your body to that kind of torture.
However, training via negative splits or descending intervals means you condition your body to be able to perform while tired and give more energy during the latter half of the race. You learn to pace yourself and not go all out in the beginning, and your body learns to give that extra kick in second half while your energy levels begin to wane.
In every workout I do, I try to always finish with more effort than I begin. I slowly ramp effort and speed throughout a workout and then by the end of the workout, I am sprinting towards the parking lot where my car is. Or I’m on the way home on my bike and after doing laps on Kings Mountain, I’ll raise my energy level pedaling and get close to sprinting home on the bike.
It’s a tough workout, but over time your body gets used to it. Come race day, you’ll be thankful for training this way. During races you’re always putting out 100%+ effort and you need to be conditioned to give extra effort even while your energy level is dropping.
What a rush to be accelerating and passing other competitors and feel like a million bucks as you accelerate towards the finish line!

Swimming Cheek to Shoulder

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In the last USMS Swimmer magazine, there was an article depicting a swimmer showing perfect streamline, one arm extended, form in the water. She was practicing the extension to pierce the water in as needle-like form as possible, and practicing to maintain this form. One thing they talked about was the fact that her head in the correct position resulted in her cheek being against her shoulder while her arm was extended forward into full extension for the stroke.
I have form that really falls apart when I try to swim faster, and also when I get tired. I really wanted to improve my ability to maintain perfect streamline form while swimming at high stroke rates. To that end, I began swimming like the woman in the article and making sure my arm was fully extended and that my cheek would touch my shoulder briefly before I began my stroke. The other thing I began doing was breathing only once every 4 strokes. This allowed me to hold my head in a stationary position and not be disturbed so much by taking a breath. I could rotate my body back and forth along the line dictated by my head and neck and make sure everything was in line and not swaying back and forth, causing drag.
So I began swimming that way. Certainly taking less breaths was challenging, but I seemed to have gotten used to that by now. If I need to take an extra breath, I’ll take another breath after my last one and then go back to once every 4 strokes. But it does help me to relax and try to be very efficient in the water.
The other thing I noticed was that by touching my cheek to my shoulder, it made sure that my arm was fully extended on each stroke. Pulling so much while having my arm extended caused knots to form in my serratus and lats, and my pecs began to get sore as well. I am sure this is my body’s way of adjusting to the more extended stroke. It also made me realize how short my strokes really were, and how more efficient they could be.
I dealt with the knots with lots of ART and some reduced swimming until my muscles adapted.
The result: I am more easily maintaining fairly fast (for me) swim times for 50 and 100 meters. I am finding that I can keep a faster speed for a longer period of time, than the way I was swimming before this cheek to shoulder/less breathing method. Keeping my body in a better streamline was also helping me maintain speed and not lose speed between strokes.

Shaving for Triathlon

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A few years back, I got hooked on the notion of shaving my legs for triathlon. I remember hearing about it and the supposed benefits of shaving my legs. Some of these were:
1. Biking – if you get in a crash and you need to put a bandage on, pulling it off is less painful due to having no hair.
2. Biking – aerodynamics is improved by not having all those pesky hairs on your legs to create minor turbulence in the air as the air flows past your legs.
3. Swimming – less resistance through the water with all those hairs on your body creating drag.
4. General – It looks better than having hairy legs, and more consistent with the look of a healthy, motivated triathlete/cyclist.
One morning in 2003, I decided to shave my legs in the shower. It was a messy affair. Fumbling about with shaving cream and a women’s razor, I proceeded to take clumps of hairs off my legs and watch them slowly go down the drain (I hoped that my shower drain wouldn’t get clogged!!). I remember looking at myself in the mirror and thinking that it looked very weird to not have hair on my legs any more and that it felt almost…more naked.
The day after, I jumped in the water for a swim and I recall having this funny sensation of “feeling” the water more. I felt faster in the water, and unfortunately had no conclusive proof that I was faster than with hair on my legs. But I did feel better when I swam.
As for cycling, I somehow felt more like a real cyclist, and it’s funny that I noticed guys who didn’t shave their legs more out there on their bikes and thought they looked very…well…non-cyclist.
Then in the July-August 2007 issue of USMS Swimmer magazine, there was an article called “The Naked Truth About Shaving Down” where they give some scientific basis for why shaving is good for swimming. They claim that it helps swimming by reducing the amount of stimuli that your nervous system is receiving from the environment and that your motor output is improved when you remove that stimuli through shaving. So I guess this means that you control your muscles better through your perception of what is required to be slippery through the water and your ability to feel the water when you stroke. While I was definitely more sensitized to the water environment post-shaving, I cannot verify if my motor output is improved simply through shaving. And because I shave every week, my body has since gotten used to environment with my no-hair-on-my-legs level of sensitivity and I don’t perceive any additional sensitivity due to shaving now.
In the sidebar, there is reference to a study that showed that blood lactate accumulation was reduced significantly. If I were to read this small snippet correctly, does this mean that I am being more relaxed and efficient through the water simply because of the positive feelings that one gets while swimming with shaved legs (and/or body)?
Who knows. I try lots of things and don’t have conclusive evidence that everything I do improves my performance, such as taking certain supplements or the research that shows that having protein in your sports drink is better than not. Some of it is just insurance. That which does not hurt me might just help me.

Constant Propulsion Swim Method

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A while back I took a Total Immersion Course. I thought it was really good but it only gave me half the solution to swimming fast, which was to maintain a good body position while in the water to ensure minimal slowdown due to drag.
The other half had to do with stroking.
You’d think that by swinging your arms through the water, that all you’d have to do was cycle them faster and then you’d go faster….right?
Well, I found out that there are so many little details with the stroke that make a whole LOT of difference in your speed.
One of them was introduced to me by Marc Evans during a swim session in a endless pool. Basically, you never having one hand pushing against the water. You never stop stroking and just glide like Superman. As one hand almost finishes its stroke and has reduced pressure against the water, the other hand was already be beginning its stroke and continuing the pressure against the water. This is so that this hand has already begun its stroke before the other hand exits the water.
It took me a long time to master this even a little bit. Now, I can keep it up for short periods, but I am doing tempo sets at distance to practice maintaining this constant propulsion stroke for longer periods of time. When I get tired, I can’t keep the other hand from starting its stroke fast enough before the other hand loses its propulsion. I start getting back into small periods of time where I am doing a Superman glide and then my other hand begins its stroke. This is undesirable because as I glide, I slow down, whereas if I have at least one hand pressing against the water, I can keep my average speed higher.
I also found that when I do this, I can actually swim a 100m interval faster with less arm cycles and be less stressed aerobically. My arms definitely get tired more, but I am not gasping for breath like when I am just speeding up my arm cycles in an attempt to gain an extra few seconds in speed but with exponential energy expenditure.
I really could see the effect of constant propulsion swimming when the other week I was swimming with a pull buoy and paddles. As I set out on the interval, I noticed as I looked down on the black line on the bottom of the pool that my speed was pulsing as I stroked. I would speed up during a stroke, but as my other hand began to enter the water, my speed would slow until the other arm began its stroke. I realized that I was gliding too much and waiting too long between strokes, and not really creating constant propulsion. So I altered my stroke to begin a lot sooner and all of a sudden, my pulsing speed became less and I was moving with more consistent speed. Very interesting!
So now I practice constant propulsion speed while swimming with pull buoy and paddles to fine tune my timing on the stroke, and take that neuromuscular training to swimming without tools. When swimming with the pull buoy and paddles, I can really see the effect of constant propulsion swimming versus gliding too much due to the amount of water I can catch with the paddles. It’s a great way to get visual feedback on whether or not your arms are moving with the right timing to create constant propulsion.
I added this training to my tempo training with constant propulsion stroke, starting with reps of 100m and increasing that both in reps and in distance over time.

Bubbles

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These last few weeks swimming I’ve been thinking about bubbles.
Not bubble bath mind you, but the bubbles I create while swimming.
If you read about bubble formation in swimming books, some of them say that it’s the byproduct of wasted energy. Energy that could have gone into propulsion gets wasted in creating turbulence in water whose evidence is bubble formation. There is also much written about quiet or calm swimming, which is the ease and flow of swimming that makes you feel and look like you’re gliding through water with little energy.
Lately, I’ve really tried to employ calm swimming and maintaining the form which minimizes turbulence in the water. It’s hard to maintain that form, as I lose concentration as I get tired. As I stroke and look at my stroke under the water, I noticed a big difference between both arms in bubble formation.
This was strange, I thought at first. My right arm would stroke with almost no bubbles at all, but my left with stroke back with a huge frothing of bubbles. As I analyzed further, I realized that I was not symmetrical with respect to my stroke. My right hand enters the water more at my head, and then glides straight forward out. My left hand, however, does a more traditional reach-out and over the water until it is almost extended, and then enters the water far forward of my head. Somehow, this reach-out and over causes huge bubble formation and if the texts are true, then I am wasting energy on bubble formation which could be used for forward propulsion but is making me expend more energy in a non-useful fashion.
So I’ve been really paying attention to my bubbles and trying to remove them. After figuring out what was different between my left and right arm strokes, I strove to make my left arm like my right arm. On slower stroking, I can make both arms even with minimal bubbles. As my stroke rate increases, it becomes harder and harder. Yet another thing to practice in the next coming months…

Focus: Counting Sucks!

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Marc Evans once asked me during a private swim session if I could actually do a drill and count how many strokes I do. It was a strange question, but very relevant as the task was very simple, which was to do 3 one arm-left arm strokes, then 3 one arm-right arm strokes, and then stroke both arms together for about 6 strokes (3+3).
I thought it to be a funny question, but then I jumped into the pool and did what he asked, although I did lose concentration a few times and stroked more or less than the instructions.
I asked him why he asked me, and apparently there are beginners who have not either not practiced enough, or even have the ability to focus on a particular drill. He was pleased that I could do it most of the time, but apparently enough people go through his swim session who cannot.
I think about this conversation a lot when I jump in the pool. It’s hard to do long distance in a 50 meter pool, and even harder in a 25 meter pool, simply because counting is tough, and doubly tough in a 25m pool.
This last Wednesday, we do our monthly 30 minute swim as a measure of fitness and also for stamina building. Sometimes I absolutely hate it, because I need to count. In order to do that, I have to really have razor sharp focus and I still screw it up. For 30 minutes, you can swim over 15 laps (or 30 lengths) and if you’re not used to it, it’s really tough to count the laps without phasing out somewhere in the middle and then you wonder, “wait was that lap 9 or lap 10?” Once you get there, you’re dead. You’ll never get back on count.
Swimming 30 minutes is definitely great mental training. It trains your brain to maintain power and stroke rate for a long period of time, but it also trains your focus for counting.
To make things easier, I switch workouts for 50 meter pools versus 25 meters. If I jump into the YMCA or Spectrum Club pool, I pick a workout with more 25/50/100 meter intervals. The most I’ll do is 200 m intervals. Beyond 200, I start wigging out because on a 25 m pool, you have DOUBLE the counting. And that really sucks. To do 250/300/400 m intervals multiple times is way too hard. I also try to do more speed sets, which tend to be shorter anyways but still stresses the muscles in a big way.