"Fly" Like an Eagle

By GARY SMALL

My father taught all the kids to swim at our school in the town where I grew up in Zambia. This led to me gaining a reputation as a good swimmer. And I suppose I was…for the shortest of distances. But as soon as I had to take a breath, everything would fall apart.

When we moved to South Africa when I was 10 my reputation as a good swimmer followed and I was “requested” to appear for a trial with the swimming team at my new first school. All was fine for the first 10 meters, but then I started to drown. I recall being pulled from the pool and exiled from the “real” swimmers.

A year later, we moved to another city, and I again found myself standing on the starting blocks, for a match race with Joel, the school’s best swimmer in my age group. While I managed to get myself out of the water this time, Joel had finished 50 meters by the time I’d gone about 20.

Hoping to sort out my breathing problem, my father took me to another coach. He had me swim some pool widths, short enough that I could avoid breathing. He said I was a good swimmer and he couldn’t see a problem. I explained that as soon as I needed to take a breath, everything went wrong. He suggested that I should try an explosive exhale just before breathing in. My transformation was instant: The next lap I was suddenly breathing. My stroke had always been good; now I could keep going.

This transformation was not common knowledge at school, until an internal school gala, where everyone participated. Joel and I raced again and he beat me by less than a body length. I was just happy to have been able to complete a full 50 meters, but the coach ran up to me excitedly and next thing I knew I was on the swimming team.

I swam on the school team from age 11 to 16, specializing in butterfly and freestyle sprints. I don’t have a record of my times during these years, but in 1973 our medley relay team, for which I swam “fly,” was unbeaten in our region.

At 16, I discovered options that were more interesting than endless training laps and left organised sports, until 1995 when I resumed swimming after repeatedly suffering herniated disks. After a particularly disabling episode, I realised I needed to strengthen my core. I discovered that I really enjoyed training as an adult, and have not stopped swimming since. I started competing in Masters in 1999, and gravitated to free and fly sprints, as at school.

I first learned of Total Immersion in 2000, and took a workshop as soon as TI arrived in South Africa in 2004. After several years of training much as I had in my youth, I realized that, as an adult it would be essential to understand proper technique, as much to avoid injury as to have a chance at improving my times in middle age. The people who shared my interest in technique all seemed to be linked to TI.

The TI workshop effected the same transformation as my breathing lesson years earlier. My freestyle became much more enjoyable, and my new efficiency made longer distances possible. For the first time I ventured past 200 meters. I even swam a mile race and was hooked. I became a TI coach, and have taught TI continuously since 2005.

My success in freestyle was encouraging, but achieving similar ease in Fly took longer. I studied the old 4-Strokes DVD, and spent a lot of time on body dolphin and other drills, but could still only “survive” 50 meters in training and racing. I ventured into a 100-meter race and vividly recall the sickening feeling of being 15 meters from the finish, and realising I had literally nothing left to give. Every stroke from there to the wall was pure torture, as I could barely lift my arms from the water.

I watched others swim 200 meters with envy, and resolved each year to “crack the fly code” and complete a 200 meter Fly, but it never happened. I was still barely hanging on at 100 meters in practice, and looked forward to butterfly training repeats about as much as root canal surgery.

When the “Betterfly for Every Body” DVD was released a year ago, I eagerly studied it, and while I gained noticeably in ease, the 200 remained elusive. Reading Terry’s articles about how he had “solved” the 200 Fly, and even come to enjoy it after 40 years of frustration was tantalizing.

Near the end of 2007 I decided it was time to recharge my TI skills. I travelled from Spain to New Paltz for a week at the Swim Studio, then to the Kaizen Camp in Florida as a trainee coach. My expectations were utterly exceeded during those two weeks.

While I hadn’t expected anything spectacular, when we did the coaches’ session on how to teach Fly, in the course of a single morning, I had a series of startling insights into why I was exhausted after 50 meters and how to save significant amounts of energy. Here’s a summary:

1) Like most people, I’d always relied on a heavy, thigh-driven, energy-sapping kick. Terry taught us to soften the knees, then “flick” the toes, a quick, compact, efficient action that I could feel propel me forward to my “landing.”

2) I had always re-entered the water by diving downwards. Terry explained that our “primary landing zone” should be the area between the elbows and sternum with the arms landing lightly – even softly – forward. I could feel this send momentum forward, rather than down.

3) I’d always bent my arms on recovery and entry, with my hands almost meeting in front of my face, Terry taught us a wide-sweeping recovery with the hands landing just outside the shoulders. I could feel that straighter arms were more relaxed yet increased forward momentum.

4) After landing, I’d held my arms tense and almost immediately clawed at the water for my next stroke. Terry instructed us to “sink between our arms while leaving the arms extended-but-relaxed.” He had us swim a length with this focal point, taking our final stroke outside the backstroke flags. I was startled to find myself effortlessly travelling the final six meters to the wall. With this change, I immediately reduced my stroke count for the 20-meter teaching pool we used from six to four. I also felt a restful moment within each stroke that I’d never considered possible.

5) Where I had always relied on a powerful stroke, and push back to climb out and move forward, Terry instructed us to focus on a relaxed, rhythmic interplay between gravity and buoyancy. After sinking with gravity, we should just let buoyancy return us to the surface. Just before we felt the head breach, we were to briefly “turn on” our arm muscles in the catch position, then immediately relax them again. I was startled to feel my head and shoulders propel forward past my hands, while my arms simply flew out at my hips and forward again. As he promised this transformed ButterStruggle into ButterFly.

6) The final piece was the sneaky breath. I had continued to use the same breathing technique shown in the photo from 34 years ago – eyes forward, head up, neck tense. Whenever I’d tried to breathe in the highly-efficient neutral position I took in water rather than air. The wise and resourceful TI coach, Kim Bade, reminded me of the same trick that had turned me into a real swimmer at 10 – to exhale explosively just as your mouth clears the water. Suddenly, my face was practically parallel with the water, and I was breathing!

That morning was barely a month ago. Since returning to Spain, I hardly want to swim anything but Butterfly. On some lengths, I’m so relaxed I almost feel I could go to sleep yet keep moving down the pool. I feel much like the African Fish Eagle in the picture – surging forward on every stroke, while expending hardly any energy. I almost expect to catch a fish or two with my toes as I go.