swimming

swimming

Written by Suzanne Atkinson Sunday, 04 December 2011 02:02

I can't wait to get into the pool today.  Two days ago I had what felt like a breakthrough swim.  Those days are so exciting and I hardly wanted to get out of the pool.

I've made huge improvements in my swimming the past 2 years since being involved as a TI coach. But as always, I want to be better, and faster.   While speed isn't necessarily my primary goal, it's hard not to sometimes look around at other swimmers in the pool, know that many aspects of my technique are "better" than theirs and yet still they seem so comfortable swimming 10 sec/100 faster than me. Rather than engage in "secret racing" I choose to focus more intently on my own swim and what I can do to improve it.

The breakthrough came at the end of a set of the following:

4 Rounds of:

3x100 Free + 1 x 100 IM on a 2 minute base, rest 2 minutes between rounds.

The intent of the set was to hold a consistent SPL for the Free while maintaining or improving my speed. The IM was focused on mainly the short axis strokes doing some focal points I've recently been working on. I managed to hold 17/18 SPL for all of the free (1 or 2 lengths of 19), and descended my time from 1:40 to 1:34 while doing so.

But the lady next to me was still swimming 1:25s for 300yd repeats!

At the end of the set I focused on my catch. I've been workign on this for awhile with Coach Dave, trying to eliminate a "too early" elbow drop. Even though I'm following his, and my own advice, I just continued to feel awkward.

I tried another focal point I was reminded of by Terry this past week..."Move your elbow forward".  In the catch position, the notion of moving the elbow forward helps bring the forearm into a better catch position keeping the elbow from dropping too soon. From a standing position, you can see how this small thought & movement helps bring the elbow into better orientation for a good catch.

I tried 2 lengths of it and it still felt awkward, my stroke count was 22 and I was frustrated.

I motioned again at the side of the pool and relized that there was only so much "forward" I could gain while practicing the movement standing still at the end of the lane.  I reasoned that when i swim, my body is already moving forward...why not try to simply KEEP the elbow moving foward as my arm fell into place?

The next thing that happened was magic!  I swam as I normally do, but this time I thoought about moving the elbow forward not with an awkward twist in my shoulder joint, but simply keepign the elbow moving as my body slid over the rest of the arm.  There was a point where the arm then naturally moved backwards as if I was lifting myself out of the pool deck on a press out.

I had mentally visualized this, and even demonstrated the movement on dry land hundreds of times...but it suddenly came together in the pool just by delaying the stroke a fraction of a second.

I used the momentum I already had to move the elbow forward in a relative manner to the rest of my arm.  I swam the next 2 25s in 20 seconds and the next 50 in 40 seconds and hardly felt winded. In the recent past, these would have been all out sprints for me.

The key was in waiting, and during that waiting time, the palm is applying that oh-so-gentle pressure that I've heard about, as the body rotates and continues to move forward...but what follows feels like silky magic, rather than the big arm of water I'd had before.

I definately will need to experiemnt more with this and I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

What does your catch feel like?

swimming

Written by Suzanne Atkinson Saturday, 09 July 2011 09:05

Swimming in Open Water can be a nerve-wracking experience for some swimmers.  Even if you are a fantastic pool swimmer, the open water presents challenges that can be psychologically difficult to overcome unless you are prepared.  Learn to think about open water sighting in a new way and you'll find yourself more relaxed and confident in the water.   This is the first of a multi-part article on open water sighting where I'll cover the mental aspect of finding your way.

In contrast to walking upright, riding our bikes or running, the visual information you have while swimming is limited.  We receive so much visual information on a moment to moment basis, our brain actually discards or ignores most of it.  The eyes have specialized to filter out peripheral information to just colors and movement, while the actual "focus" of our vision involves just a small part of the retina.  Contrast this to swimming where your head is down, eyes are in the wtaer, visibility is often limited to a few feet or a few inches, and you can understand why some people may panic or be fearful of open water.

Seeing where you are going while you swim is like driving a car at night. Imagine driving your car from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh during a snowstorm at night.  It's about a 5 hour, 300 mile drive. Even though it's a couple of hundred miles from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, you can drive at night only being able to see few hundred feet ahead of you at a time.  Driving in a snowstorm, visibility may only be 30 feet...yet you can still drive in a straight line from point a to point b with just small bits of visual information at atime.  You don't need to be able to see downtown PIttsburgh from the Philadelphia airport in order to make it there.

The act of gathering visual information about our destination while swimming is called "sighting".   Rather try to fight the water lifting your head up for several seconds at a time in order to get a clear and unobstructed view of your landmarks or buoys, accept that it's OK to only see a little bit of information at a time.  In a few more strokes you can take another peek and gather some additional information.  You only need to see a little ways in front of you, or that you are mosty headed in the proper direction. 

The actual sighting technique, which I'll talk about in detail in the next article and an accompanying video, requires just a "peek" above the water.  A small slice of visual information.  in a brief moment, the light hits your retina and travels to your brain faster than you can process it.  By the time you've thought about what you have seen, there is already new visual information streaming into your brain.

Try this exercise to help train your mind that you only need brief "slices" of vision in order to navigate.   Face some direction that has discrete objects in front of you such as parked cars, people, planted flowers or even zoon animals.  Close your eyes.  Now as quickly as you can, open and close your eyes and keep them closed.   What did you just see?  Keeping your eyes closed, see if you can pick out the elements of the actual scene in front of you.  how many cars were there? What colors were people wearing? Which directions were the animals facing?  More than likely you wont be able to recall the entire scene.  Repeat the quick glipmse, this time specifically trying to gather a missing piece for your minds eye...the color of the last car on the right for example.  Or was that a mother with a stroller, or was she pushing a piece of luggage?

You can practice this exercise anywhere and everywhere.   Do it until you are comfortable not having that continuous stream of visual information.  Impress your self with how much information you can collect with just a small slice of information like a slide show.

With these two major psychological barriers to open water swimming under control, the actual sighting technique you'll find to be a piece of cake.  Can you think of any other mental tricks that would help other swimmers with their open water sighting? Please leave a comment below!

swimming

Written by Suzanne Atkinson Thursday, 24 March 2011 13:30

I thought I'd share an email I wrote to one of my swimmers. Ironically, this swimmer has a beautiful stroke, very smooth, long, lean, streamlined and little drag formation.  But he's got two demons that possess his swimming.  His breathing and his kick.  (It would have been funny I'd written "his right side & his left side", or "his front half and his back half") But no, they are the common demons for many triathletes...breathing & kick.

Last month he & 2 friends came down for a dedicated 90 minute session on breathing and it was very enlightening, all three improved dramatically, and their underlying fears (YES FEARS) of the water surfaced and were driven out and replaced by positive breathing stroke thoughts. (Search the forums for my "Swim Breathing Thread)

Yet he still begged me for feedback on his kick.  Since we can't get together to swim anytime in the near future, I sent him this exercise to practice. For about 50% of the people I teach this to in groups, it's a true "AHA" moment.  Some still struggle with it and if you are one of them, don't worry.  You may simply need a different focus to make the connection. Anyway, here is the exercise, let me know if it works for you.

(Coach Ryan posted similar thoughts a while ago, but as new visitors are always coming to the website, no harm in repeating a great exercise)

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The Two Beat Kick (2BK) is an efficient kick used for by both competitive long distance swimmers and triathletes that helps provide a coordinated weight shift from right side to left side used in freestyle swimming.  The kick is used mainly for rotation rather than propulsion.

Here is a nice exercise to get the feel for the 2BK.  Start in superman glide and pushoff without kicking. Let the legs streamline behind you.  Glide until momentum stops or you need to breath.  Do this a few times focusing on streamlining your legs and keepign them "quiet"

Next, start in superman glide and rotate into Skate by gently pulling one arm back to your recovery position (arm molded along your side), and the other arm extended along a wide track.  Do this a few times on each side to get comfortable, reaquaint yourself with the motion.

Next, Start as above.  This time as you rotate to LEFT side skate (left arm extended), simultaneously kick downward with your right leg as a flick.  You should feel a connection between the right sided downbeat kick, and your body rotating to the left and ending in left sided skate.

Stand up, repeat.  stand, repeat. Stand, repeat.

Try the same thing on the right side.  Connect the opposite arm & leg to synchronize the downbeat kick and the extension to skate.

Start with that and let me know how it goes.

swimming

Last Updated on Tuesday, 26 October 2010 18:26 Written by Suzanne Atkinson Tuesday, 26 October 2010 17:46

I just got back from a quick 5 day trip to San Francisco Bay visiting a friend and 2nd cousin.  My cousin Steve is having a great start to his cyclocross season (they just started their CX season out there) and podiumed in his age group, 45+.  I hope that some of those genetics found their way to my legs!

While I was there, we took a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  If you love the ocean, you really need to make this a destination someday. It's on the site of a former sardine cannery right on the pacific ocean. In fact, it's so close to the ocean that the aquarium pumps in water from the bay as part of it's exhibits. I learned something really amazing about Tuna and similar fish during the Aquarium Visit.  Tuna use a form of propulsion called thunniform swimming.  In this type of swimming, the propulsion comes mainly from the tail and very little movement occurs from the fish's body.  As a result, the area just in front of the tail fin has a unique streamlined shape specialized for side to side movement!  A small ridge pointed to each side allows the part of the tail that articulates to move left & right while slipping through the water....leaving the large crescent shaped tail fin to propel the fish forward.

Look carefully at this video...it's short, but notice the narrowing of the body immediately in front of the crescent shaped tail. If you look closely, you'll see the horizontal ridges in this narrowest part that I'm talking about!

If reducing drag is so important for tuna, which are naturally designed to swim, how much more important is it for us lanky humans...with dangling arms & legs to work on reducing drag as well?  This made me think about importantit is for us as humans can improve our swimming by spending most of our time focusing on drag reduction.

The problem is that frequently our brain tells us things that aren't true about what our body is doing in the water.  We are not designed to live, breath and swim underneath the water and therefore GOOD swimming feels very unnatural to us...our brain simply doesn't know what it should feel like.  As a result we tend to learn one way and that way sticks.  The sensation that we are working hard feels "right" to us. 

Learning to reduce drag immediately makes swimming feel like less work and our brain tells us that we must be doing something wrong...so as a natural tendency, most of the time we actually convince ourselves that what we are doing is wrong...and we revert back to what felt like we were working hard.  After all if it feels hard, it must mean we are building strength and power.

We need to be willing to step back and look at what is really happening under the water and what allows us to slip easily forward.  If you feel yourself pushing hard against the water, something is probably not right.  Post a link to your swim video in the comments and i'll take a look at it for you!