Focus and Pacing are Symbiotic

By LOU THARP

Editor’s Note: TI Coach Lou Tharp is an assistant coach, for swimming, with the West Point Triathlon Club. This is a memo that Lou sent to the cadet members of the team days before their first race of the season, the Lake Havasu Triathlon in Havasu City, Arizona.

If you accept that you will lose focus, it is much easier to regain it, and you don't waste time being angry over losing focus…

The idea behind pacing is to allow your body
and mind to deal with a triathlon in an organized and confident manner. It allows you to manage your body and your expectations. The concept of focus is tricky because there are really three
parts to it:

• The first is what everyone thinks is focus –
  a single-minded concentration on the task
  at hand with the conscious and unconscious mind dedicated to the correct completion of a task.
• The second part is losing focus. Yes, the second part of focus is losing focus.
• The third part is beating yourself up over losing focus. Being focused and losing focus is human. Beating yourself up over losing focus is learned behavior and can be unlearned on the way to becoming a champion.

Thinking about fly fishing can help you understand how losing and regaining focus works. A fisherman casts his line into the river and almost immediately it begins floating downstream. To counteract this, a simple wrist flick brings the line back upstream. The key here is that the fisherman expects the line to go downstream, away from where it was originally cast. If you think of focus as the line being cast, and losing focus as the line going downstream, you can look at regaining focus as a simple matter of bringing the line back upstream, without a lot of drama.

If you accept that you will lose focus, it is much easier to regain it, and you don't waste time being angry over losing focus…which, of course, keeps you off-focus. For overachievers like yourselves, it's all about managing your body and your expectations so you can deal with a triathlon in an organized and confident manner. Here are some possible focal points for your first race.

Strategy: Monitor your stroke for degradation, then fix it.
Why: If you are able to notice when your stroke is falling apart, you can focus on employing the fix quickly. While doing that you won’t be vulnerable to anxiety. Common areas where stroke degrades and how to fix them:

• Patient hand becomes impatient. If you are spearing your hand into the water and immediately taking a stroke, you are losing glide speed and power. Let the hand hang out for a second so you maximize the glide, and set up for an efficient catch and powerful stroke.
• You start looking where you want to go. Sounds like it's the right thing to do, but when you look forward, your head comes up and your hips fall. When your hips fall so does your speed because they increase resistance dramatically. Relax your neck muscles and look down.
• Your patient hand is turning up or sculling. Before you start the power part of your stroke, your extended arm needs to be 30 to 45 degrees in relation to the surface and your hand needs to be pointing down. This allows you to get a maximum catch and a powerful stroke. Keep your fingers down from the time they enter the water.
• Your arms cross the center line. When your arms cross the center line, your ability to incorporate your hips and core body muscles into your stroke is compromised. You want to swim with body power, not arm power. Keep your hands outside the center line from entry to exit.

You're in a fun place right now. I've seen you do perfect laps followed by ones that are a little less than perfect. You’re beginning to recognize the difference between how effective and wasteful swimming feels. You’re also learning how to respond effectively when you feel degradation to maintain efficient, balanced swimming. With practice you’ll be able to do that quickly and in a way that allows you to be kind to yourself – while your competition falls apart.

Enjoy the race.


As an overweight, unhealthy novice swimmer in 1996, Lou Tharp, attended his first TI course, and soon after began swimming regularly, competing, and trained as a TI coach. Lou is training for USMS Nationals, Gay Games and Out Games in distance freestyle events. Lou is also a social entrepreneur as co-founder of both CreakyJoints, an international service organization for people with arthritis and TGI Healthworks, which helps people with a broad range of chronic diseases improve their quality of life through diet, exercise – including swimming – and a productive physician/patient relationship. Lou and his husband, Jim Bumgardner live in Upper Nyack, NY.

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